A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 177 features a recap of Code Conference and Mary Meekers Internet Trends 2019 Presentation, as well as Part 1 of Listener Questions.
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Recap of the Code Conference in AZ.
Recap of Mary Meeker “Internet Trends 2019” from Code Conference
Listener Questions Part 1:
Q1: Perry Solomon What do you project the effect of the FedEx contract termination to be, this especially applies to 3P merchants using FedEx for SFP?
Q2: Danny Sheridan If a brand is ready to partner with an Amazon channel-consultant, how do they tend to find each other? Is the industry growing or shrinking from your point of view?
Q3: Ben Kates How will the CDP change in the next 3 years? How does personalization continue to evolve? Thanks for all of your time and energy into the show. -Ben from CompassRed in Philadelphia
Q4: Jamie Dooley Hey Jason & Scot! Have you heard any news or updates around Amazon Singularity? (combination of Amazon Vendor Central & Seller Central). I’ve heard the project’s rumored codename is “Hybrexit”….?
Tune in next time for listener questions part 2!
Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes.
Episode 177 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, June 14th, 2019.
Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Transcript
Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 177 being recorded on Friday June 14th 2019 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and I’m here with your co-host Scott Wingo.
Scot:
[0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners.
Jason Simpson good ol episode 176 we have both been on the road so tonight we are going to mix it up a little bit and we’re going to do
we talked about some road trips
at one of our favorite events every year is Mary Meeker Mega Jack of Internet Internet Trends drop so we have some thoughts on that.
And then we put out a call for listener questions and the response was overwhelming so we’re going to try to chip away at those in this episode and then save some for a future episode,
I took it off you are fresh off the plane from code recode how was that show.
Jason:
[1:21] Said I was fun so this is a show that’s put on by coat recoat it’s their big event called code it it’s always been in California for the first year
they moved it to Arizona and they moved it a little later in the year so that’s unfortunate cuz you end up with.
110 degree weather in Phoenix but I was excited to go because in the past they had some amazing guess they’ve had.
Live interviews with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and it’s the event every year where Mary Meeker delivers her state of the internet presentation so I.
I eagerly consumed it every year but this was going to be my first chance to watch her actually deliver a lot.
And so it was it was a good show I would say slightly unlucky every year has sort of a theme to the contents.
I’m and several other things have been very call Mercy oriented in this team to me was slightly less Commerce oriented there’s alot going on.
With a big media companies in the Basin arguments about a d regular regulation and content moderation and said the.
The conference been a bunch of time focused on that which is interesting to me but maybe slightly less relevant than some of the.
The previous year so with that one caveat I still found it to be an entertaining and informative show.
[2:46] And so it’s it’s like really put on by Kara swisher and one of the things that makes it work so well she’s got this problem at work and she gets a lot of a list.
I speakers that come and get interviewed and most of them get interviewed by one of the the
Rico journalist in the United State in these famous iconic red chairs so things kicked off this year with the
Susan wojcicki who’s the president of YouTube and YouTube had just just had a big internet kerfuffle over some
new rules they had around content moderation and so so she got kind of grilled on on their moderation policy and it made a ton of news because she
she was not a super eloquence defender of their policy and so you know you could you could
it was painful to watch you could feel that she was nervous and she was struggling to answer some of the journalist questions and some of the audience questions and I feel like there was some
criticism of her in the news Recaps of that interview so so very newsworthy not super focused on on Commerce.
[4:02] The next one to me was kind of interesting was Matt levatich who’s the CEO at Harley Davidson and I was kind of excited for you,
this was apparently already well-known but I didn’t know this that a major Initiative for Harley is Harley is making a huge investment in electric vehicles.
Scot:
[4:23] Yeah Yeah Yeahs their problems Millennials hate motorcycles and no young people buy and ride motorcycles so I’ve been there their theory is electrics going to solve that I guess we’ll see.
Jason:
[4:36] Yeah so he brought out like a mini version of one of their sort of electric bikes and half of his conversation was you know tough questions about Chinese tariffs and obviously he’s been up personal Target
President Trump and said it was all those dialogues but half of it was this whole like.
[4:56] Man it is an electric bicycle in brand for Harley and like you know when you think of the store brand elements of Harley like it’s you know it is the the.
The specific noise of the Choppers and all these things and now you’ve got this the silent I can so is interesting to hear mad talk about how.
How does he felt this business would be additive and not disruptive to the brand and you know he tried to fix the fact that like.
Hey you don’t get the signature sound of a Harley but for the first time you can actually hear.
Nature and have a conversation with someone while you’re while you’re out on the ride and and stuff like that so it was it was an interesting try somebody you I’d say that the jury seemed out.
The next interesting interview they had a couple of folks from Facebook they had Adam Missouri Oahu.
[5:53] Is that new CEO of Instagram he is a.
Run a bunch of big businesses at Facebook and took over Instagram when the founders left and then Andrew Boz Bosworth who’s like owns the devices in the virtual reality.
Practicing Facebook you know again they they were getting Grill the lot on.
Regulation and potential antitrust actions but intermix in their Adam was talking a lot about.
The future Instagram being Commerce and he didn’t get into a lot of specific examples but we have seen them
Instagram aggressively rollout New Commerce beecher’s pretty regularly and he gave the strong impression that they’re not done and there’s more to come there.
[6:44] Pause did not reveal a lot on the device side obviously there their they’re still very bullish on all the VR stuff they didn’t launch this like in home.
Video chat system called the Facebook portal and I was quite serious did you know here they would claim some.
Market penetration success with that product and they they they refuse to talk about how well it had sold which made me skeptical that it is sold very well cuz obviously there’s a lot of people.
The thing Facebook has a fundamental trust problem and people probably want to buy a camera on a recorder to put in the living room from Facebook.
[7:24] And I didn’t necessarily do anything to dispel that that perception.
So then they had a couple folks on from Twitter Kayvon and massacring all these names I’m sure.
[7:39] Tackletour who is in charge of product at Twitter and then Vijaya cattle who’s the chief legal counsel for Twitter and again,
you know Twitter has gotten slightly less heat than some of the others but they were really getting grilled on their moderation policy and so most of the dialogue was,
dominated by Vijaya and I I would say.
At the very least she seemed like a much more polished post spokeswoman for what their position is she held their own against the questions really well we didn’t get a lot of.
Super interesting things about the direction Twitter is going in from a product standpoint the one thing that cave on you know Express that he was excited for the future of Twitter’s functionality
is really exploring more.
Discovery by topics instead of by people so you know he obviously on Twitter the primary methodology as you follow people and have.
You know when your your feet is developed based on the people you follow you know there is a rudimentary hashtag system that is harder to follow specific topics and so it sounds like they have some some features in the word works too.
To sort of Bubble Up topics more on Twitter in and help you follow them.
[9:00] Andy jassy who runs the AWS business for Amazon he was certainly interesting again you know he was mostly answering questions about why they shouldn’t nawas off.
And I’m not sure he had a super credible argument for why they should you can get all kinds of the base by about that why they should or shouldn’t but.
Is it was interesting like talking like you know she got to ask a lot about the.
The evolution of competitors most notably Microsoft and and Google and it was interesting to hear this huge six-year head star.
He talked about when they were first launching the product how they were even they felt like there in Seattle.
At the very least Microsoft would quickly respond after they lost a service and so they were super eager to keep the service on a secret until this person wants so that they would have a little bit of a head start on Microsoft.
And he’s like never in my wildest dreams did we think we get the market.
And have the markets are cells for 6 years before Microsoft came back with a product and it reminded me of this.
Famous Warren Buffett quote that Jeff Bezos probably isn’t the guy you want to give a six-year Head Start 2.
But yeah so he was saying as a result of that like he he feels like AWS has two fundamental advantages over their competitors in the market you feels like they have.
[10:28] Many more services than any of the other platforms and so they’re there are more comprehensive and he feels like.
Obviously they have a much bigger market share than any other competitors and he feels like that market share fans lights to scale which translates to lower-cost so he feels like they have a fundamental cost advantage over over Google and Microsoft
that was kind of interesting in some ways the headline interview of the whole thing was Stacey Abrams who ran for just.
Just last Governor tutorial race in Atlanta not super relevant to our.
Our listeners I don’t think but they had a conversation with her and then Mary Meeker did come out she’s changed companies I think she used to be with Kleiner Perkins if I’m remembering right
he’s now with the new Venture Capital company called Bond but I was happy to say that the.
The state of the internet report you know it seems like.
It has strong continuity and didn’t really lose anyting 333 slides we’ll talk about it in a second so and she delivers it in 40 minutes so.
It’s a.
Super fasting and she keeps highlighting the fact the reports meant to be read not presented it so it was fun to hear her deliver it for the first time I think there’s some interesting things that you and I both pulled out of that.
[11:53] This is getting super long head that David Solomon in the CEO of Goldman Sachs of the thing I was interested in
with him is he has this credit card partnership with apple and we haven’t done a ton of details about it yet but he said that a lot of Goldman Sachs and Apple employees are currently.
Getting the credit card in the beta and that they’re they’re super excited and they feel like like the.
[12:16] Credit card has a lot of Utilities in a minute he’s that customers like that.
Previous credit cards haven’t had so I’ll be eager to learn more about that the next speaker was by my by far my favorite.
Of the show and probably the most people though the least impressive speaker it was this entrepreneur named Richard Browning who’s with a company called gravity.
And Richard and his buddies decided that they wanted to build their own jet patch and so he should really cool sort of making a video of by Kim out on the farm.
With this first mini jet engine that he strapped to his arm and and.
Yeah trying to figure out if it could with him off the ground and you any shows this evolution of putting more Jets on his body and you know.
Falling in wiping out spectacularly in all these sorts of things but the culmination of all this is he has built a jetpack that essentially lets a.
A person fly for like 20 minutes and it’s it’s a very Iron Man ask and so he he’s talking about it and showing the video and the monetization model for this is really it’s kind of a novelty entertainment thing like.
[13:27] You might go to a race and watch people race the jetpacks around a course over a lake.
I think is a model but what was super cool is after his speech we had a coffee break we all step outside and 110 degree heat and Richard flies in in the Jets we all got the.
Got to see him flying around live like only a few feet from us and it was totally woods yet and I’m pretty cool, as I.
[13:54] Sort of a technology geek standpoint that was definitely the coolest thing at the shop until then just a couple more to wrap it up.
[14:04] Cindy Holland who’s ahead of original content in Netflix.
I see we you know we both are fans of a bunch of the content not super content irrelevant but was super irrelevant is Cindy’s previous experience in Netflix is she was with Cosmo.
That one of the original e-commerce grocery delivery company so I thought that was a funny background.
And then our friend Scott Galloway you know who does a podcast with Kara Swisher he came out and did his.
[14:37] Presentation images always well-received he’s a really good presenter.
Yeah the inside baseball thing is he writes this great content every year for a show in Europe called dld which is in January and so he did this.
Content in January and was kind of recap of the 2018 predictions in is and what is 2019 predictions are and they’re both some.
Some clever insightful stuff in there and some funny silly stuff in there but you know if I work if you’re an Insider and you’ve seen it a bunch of times he did the exact same content and it seems kind of weird.
[15:11] Three making 2019 predictions and recapping your 2018 predictions in July so that was maybe a little goofy
and then the last two things Ed Williams who’s the CEO of medium was on he’s also one of the founder of Twitter
again not super relevant to us but he said interesting personality that had some thoughtful things to say and then one bit of news that I was sent that very relevant to our listeners
yes to the show and a journalist that covers our industry Jason Delray for who’s the Commerce.
Reporter it at recode announced that he would be releasing a new podcast this year it’s a series called The Land of the Giants
and idea is each season they’re going to cover one of the things companies so Facebook Amazon Netflix Google in the first season is Amazon so he’s the host
it’s a narrative podcast with a bunch of live interviews with people talking about Amazon and going to be 8 episodes is going to release in
in July so obviously
the podcast that you need to be listening to first and foremost is the one you’re listening to but that would be you know another good one to check out and I got the hearing Advance preview it sounded pretty cool.
So that’s my super long-winded recap of the code Commerce this year.
Scot:
[16:34] Free cool. Did you know Susan was this key couple fun facts her garage is where Google has started did you know that.
Jason:
[16:43] I did not I knew she was one of the early Google Earth.
Scot:
[16:47] Yeah and her sister married to Sergey Brin
and then they divorced after they’re no longer together but but she the sister was married to Serge a for a while and then her sister is the CEO and founder of 23andMe.
Substitute Berry Google entangled entrepreneurial women.
Jason:
[17:10] I feel like you are the perfect host for the People magazine segment on on the Jason Scott show now I love it.
Scot:
[17:16] Yeah and they were last seen dating and I’m just going.
And then I seem like so it’s kind of fun to watch these shows from Twitter and then hear you.
You don’t seem I was kind of getting over Twitter was you know.
Monopolies break these guys up politicians are coming for them it was definitely kind of you know
so so I know Kara is talked a lot about that Galloway has been since he released the for whatever that’s called he’s been really big on it seemed like that was the ultimate theme and it’s always funny to me like.
The tech people seem like so shocked by all that they don’t really have it. Answers how could you not know that was coming.
Jason:
[17:59] Prepare now that’s why I like the YouTube one was a little better than a liner like giving her seniority and roll like.
You just would have expected her to be totally buttoned-up and nailed it in
and I I need to send a complimentary way she up she just felt more like a real person who is like struggling with it and just kind of admitting that like.
But we don’t have it all figured out and we’re we’re pissing people off and we feel bad about it but you know.
They they definitely held her feet to the fire and that that was absolutely the big takeaway like not even so much should we split them all up and should we regulate them that the biggest takeaway is they all have a Content moderation problem,
and nobody’s figured out how to do content moderation at scale.
Scot:
[18:41] Yeah they’re all worried they’re so there’s a section of the law that protects them from being Publishers they’re all worried the more concentration to do the more they’re really kind of doing it at Oriole and then will they still be able to live under that sexual
indemnifies I’m from all these issues.
Jason:
[18:59] Scot out the former guest sucharita mulpuru who’s beat that drum regularly on Twitter.
Scot:
[19:04] Oh yeah absolutely.
Jason:
[19:05] So when other note there should have been putting on forever if their Marquee event
they have now on some smaller, more specific events they they have like a dinner at a lot of the shop talk events and you and I have attended a bunch of those and then they have a stand-alone Commerce conference which is,
a two-day conference in New York and that’s coming up again this September so it may be an event have on your radar.
Scot:
[19:30] Brickell
cool while you were enjoying the quote dry heat a phoenix I was in your canoes beautiful whether there it was not a hundred Ten Degrees that was good and then I got to knock something off the bucket list I got to go to my first Amazon go store
I feel like the universe has been trying to keep me out of there because last time you and I were in Chicago we tried to run by and it just closed like 2 minutes before I got there.
Jason:
[19:57] Yes I’m excited to hear I know you’ve obviously thought and talked a lot about it though but I’m excited to hear what what your impressions were from actually being in one.
Scot:
[20:05] So it’s kind of think it was in North Carolina it would be really exciting so we don’t have a convenience store like that.
But when it’s in New York and it’s next to kind of the Pratt and the dean and DeLuca and those kind of places it’s not as
kind of outstanding job Shadows selection and food called yet at 8 those doors are better not be able to do the,
just walk in and out just walk out technology thing
I was a little surprised I was expecting that I could watch the app and put stuff in a bag and watch it kind of go into my cart there’s none of that real-time kind of stuff in fact I was surprised I don’t know if it’s normal or not but it took about.
8 hours for my check out to complete now it’s starting to get concerned like I feel like maybe I ended up in humans.
Jason:
[20:56] That’s interesting.
Scot:
[20:57] I did go with my daughter and she was like she shopped in there as she wasn’t really expecting anything and she was like handing me a bunch of stuff.
Jason:
[21:06] And then separately from you or did you scan both again on on your.
[21:17] Sure that that is a challenging use case for them as groups of Shoppers by the way.
Scot:
[21:23] Yes I feel like we did something that cannot regret but oh and then she was like putting stuff up and back in a workout
Anixter was a purpose for in a really good.
It was funny it was very crowded and then there’s a lot of confusion about how it kind of worked like especially if you needed like forks and knives and stuff like that is kind of hard to find but people figured it out.
Jason:
[21:54] Yeah yeah I mean I would argue like this so I got a chance to go in the beta before it was open to the public and I would have said that
I swear in the beta it felt like everything got updated in the app in real-time but since the store is it open to the public you do get a receipt.
After you leave the store and in general I would say it’s kind of in that 10 to 15 minutes at 4 so your experience to me is an outlier but the but you definitely don’t have the real time thing and but there was you went to the newest.
Yo that just opened in New York but I got you were there that we could open I think which is the second one in New York and there’s a super important new amenity in that store I want to hear about.
Scot:
[22:34] Yes sadly I went to the old one,
it was an interesting part of town I hadn’t Sandlot time it is kind of way downtown called Brookfield Place which was a lot like you know you have a lot of the
DMV East or is all that kind of iPad once I was interesting is all I Cuts in your nose and say.
Jason:
[22:55] We actually mention that in the Hudson yard episode of you with Intuit.
Scot:
[22:58] Oh yeah I remember it well.
But yes just right after I left the open the second Amazon go store again the universe kind of sticking out its tongue at me
and that one has espresso and coffee drinks so now I have a valid excuse to try to go to that I’m excited to see.
Is it’s going to be a robot or a person or how that’s going to work now compares to our favorite Starbucks.
Jason:
[23:22] Yeah I have a New York trip I think the first week in July so I’ll be I’ll definitely make a chant a point of testing out there there espresso service.
Scot:
[23:32] Cook’s Chiloquin went back to gossier I’ve discovered when you have teenage girls they love to go to RCA so it’s kind of funny the dads all still sitting there, looking each other like what’s going on
we’re all in there for like 2 hours as the ladies try out all the different colors and flavors and skates and stuff so.
Jason:
[23:50] They do kind of comfortable man chairs did you find a man chair.
Scot:
[23:53] I did yes yeah it was good it just got fun to watch just got to like a vibrant energy to it this really cool if I would definitely recommend it to listen to check that out.
And then as per my co-host recommendation went to this really need a place called showfields this is a lot like they done it to it when he’s come Marketplace stores
down that phone that had a lot of fun interactive things so you can like jump on this pile of pillows to try them out and had a slide to go between floors that we enjoyed
I just want to find it it felt like.
Anika namakkal to me you know so so this is this is New York City real estate and there’s, like four things on each floor of a very big building that
and the space wasn’t like there wasn’t a lot of
crowded space air felt like a lot of retail space for not a lot of stuff so I’m not sure how that model is going to work long-term so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Jason:
[24:47] Yeah I totally one side note on Amazon go there was that there’s an interesting article that came out this weekend I’m embarrassed to say I can’t remember who wrote it so I’ll find a Lincoln put in the show notes but it was kind of talking about the early on Bezos City.
I bet he would only do physical retail if you could come up with an interesting concept and then this article goes on for critique a lot of the the Amazon retail Concepts as not being very interesting so you know talks about life.
The bookstore in the the four-star store.
Being early generic and then it called out Amazon go is the one novel concept and what.
There’s things you could debate for and against that argument but the dialogue on Twitter about the article was a lot of people pointing out that if Amazon go maybe the.
The least interesting of all of them because it you know it is a basic convenience store or you know.
A grab-and-go sandwich store and it’s it’s Marquee feature is.
That you don’t have to pay when you leave so there’s less labor in the store but then everyone on Twitter points out that
like there’s way more people working in that store then work at any 7-Eleven or or oboe Pawn in the country so like they had the technology they haven’t actually got that jumps down in the store.
Scot:
[26:05] Yeah I think it’s a work-in-progress I think they’ll get there.
Jason:
[26:09] Yeah I in Arizona at the Fashion Show Place Mall I did stumble across a new Amazon retail concept there is the one and only ring store in in the mall.
Scot:
[26:22] Did that predate that position has a ton of a vestigial tail.
Jason:
[26:26] It does not it does pretty look like it was built like by that business unit and not by Amazon that’s a perfectly nice store
but it doesn’t leverage any of the same fixtures or or four common elements from the other stores it looks like it was built by the ring team and apparently they used to have a pop up.
And they migrated to the Sprint store but yeah I just find it interesting there’s probably not that many doorbell stores in in the world and so this this may be the only one.
Scot:
[26:53] Pickle and then I feel like you and I both had fomo because the show that ended up being better than where we were was remarks and this is Jeff Bezos is held this kind of
private robots kind of a thing talking about space and things like that now they’ve opened it up where did you get to see some of the activities.
Jason:
[27:17] I did and so they do have that they still have this like super exclusive show that like it is invite only but then Remar what is an attempt to take the content from that super exclusive show and make it available to a broader audience
I’m in because it’s called Mars I erroneously assumed it was predominantly focused on space but Mars is an acronym.
And I think it’s like machine learning artificial intelligence and Robotics.
I probably at that wrong but that work into it seem like there’s a lot of super interesting content and I’ve talked to a couple folks that attended
and I definitely regret not having worked it into my schedule did you see me key takeaways that excited you.
Scot:
[28:02] There seems really cool demos and just forward-thinking things that’s where that’s where they announce Robert Downey jr. announce that he’s going to save the planet so that’s good.
Jason:
[28:15] Finally thank goodness.
Scot:
[28:16] Skip to leave it up to Tony Stark.
Jason:
[28:22] And bassist was there and the end doors and content himself as well.
Scot:
[28:30] Yeah the only all the unfortunate all the Press is about some someone kind of got close to him by a protester got like within two feet of him on stage and I think that free tarot now
that’s all it seemed to just going to take over the whole conference app that one episode.
Jason:
[28:49] Yeah yeah I feel like there had been a couple political things earlier where someone came on stage in the like none of the politicians have good security but a tree Mars they apparently had excellent security got wrapped up in exited very quickly.
Scot:
[29:04] Yeah they’re like white on rice of that dude.
Jason:
[29:06] Exactly so way way easier to grab a bite from a presidential candidate than the world richest man.
Scot:
[29:12] How to make sense.
Cool so we have both waited through the 333 page Mary Meeker internet Trends deck
I’ll go to a couple highlights so I always enjoy the back and it it’s kind of interesting just kind of get a feel for what beaker
is seemed pretty firm by the way is it’s her starting the firm so she’s like the principal now so she was kind of a general partner.
At the last tournament that this is her new firm that she started so.
It came on the scene I think she came out like a 3 billion dollar razor something pretty impressive so so she’s got a lot of stuff behind her now
look up of my highlights so for listeners it’s going to help you if you have the deck open right now so I’ll wait for you hopefully you’re not in your car cuz.
You didn’t wreck so you can review this.
Jason:
[30:09] Or on the treadmill.
Scot:
[30:10] Yeah if you’re on the treadmill with an iPad a spy doing sweetheart on your phone but you know it will put this in the show note so you can reference it later but you know the guy that
trying his first super in a company I kind of look at it is that lives mostly so you know all the stuff about you have people to plan on the Internet it’s going down all that’s not much there
I did like kind of presentation from slides 29 to 35 and it kind of starts out with the story of.
If your Castle TV if you’re out there buying traffic is going to be challenging and this is we’re seeing this with like the digital native brands for they can I get this hundred-dollar online.
Kind of sales rate in the de placa well it’s because you just can’t buy enough traffic that point to.
That’s why many of them open stores and it talked about a much better than it kind of transitions into just some data and supporting evidence that
a better way to build a business nearby and traffic is Happy customers so I spend all day thinking about this so it was good to kind of see some of that data and I plan on using a lot of it and you know cuz I talk
internally about some of those things a long time listener Parker block pointed out on side 50 that
Jason Scott show is not on the top 10 podcasts at least I don’t know I don’t know where we dropped off their Jason that’s kind of a bummer.
Jason:
[31:40] I think it’s just the summer of all I’m sure we’ll be back up by then.
Scot:
[31:43] Will be back next year.
And then I thought you would be excited on slide 51 they had some good data on the echo next at cirp cirp data seems to be
a little bit higher than we kind of think it’s going to be but it showed that code doubling in the last 2 years I believe switches
Trinidad like around 50 million that goes out there
that was a larger number than I was expecting and then slide 53 again kind of in my wheelhouse with what I’m building right now there’s 56 million consumers have in the on-demand economy so I thought that was good that’s grown more than
2x in the last 2 years and then probably the newest new thing I saw him there a lot of this was just kind of
restating and representing a lot of data in a nursing new way because really good at telling stories
I’ve always learned a lot from her about the how to tie that together but there was this set of international companies and I have to admit all these for new to me so
it’s in. So these where some of them are Chinese like the first couple like pee on duo duo.
Let’s wind in pain and then that’s kind of true the world there’s one called rap beats Wikipedia Indonesia.
[33:02] This is interesting when called shop ESO hpe
all suspicious about that but I kind of made a mental note to go check that out that’s out of Southeast Asia either one called Reliance jio so there’s this really interesting new models out there in the globe you know kind
different ways to connect B2B buyers and sellers different ways for marketplaces to be born different ways for Content neumega apps that the kind of combine all kinds of stuff
and my last point is I always come a camel known as I go through exactly kind of companies tend to get like one mentioned in other ones will get 10.
And you called me curse favorites so her favorites as best I could tell from the stacker Spotify and zoom
so she spent a lot of time talking about those two companies and if she was going to talk about personalization she would talk about Spotify what you talked about happy customers best way to grow your business you know the zoom founder is kind of famous for saying all the other
conferencing software out there just pretty much stinks and we just focus relentlessly on making it fall us and getting rid of that having to download the little
you know I called will charge that you have to download if you’re going to use GoToMeeting on those things those things never work.
Companies that she seemed to really enamored with right now is where the highlights at pick up.
Jason:
[34:27] Nice yeah so I think you had a lot of things that jumped out of me.
You like a Nuance on a happy customers one of the things she talked about is.
Effective customer acquisition strategies and she was really highlighting the freemium or trial
as the best path to customer acquisition and most cost-effective sustainable path and do I do know there’s even a knock that like these companies to try to grow by like buying eyeballs on social media.
You know is that is a self-limiting strategy but these companies that are growing by like offering a.
A freemium model and then updating people to a paid service are really strong and so and Spotify were both.
Like Marty examples of companies that leverage that that freemium model for customer acquisition so she was,
she was strongly endorsing that business model a fun fact for wisner’s Scott and I
time ago now moved from from Skype to zoom for our virtual voice recording this show so so we have a slide.
Little connection there but she made a funny joke there’s also a section about how big gaming is getting and how fortnite continues to dominate in terms of minutes and.
[35:49] Another area she talked about Zoom was the growth of remote workers and so she postulated you know some future where we’re all remote workers bending RR.
Are daytime hours in zoom in our nighttime hours in fortnite my Visa.
[36:04] The evolution of humanity which seems a little sad but I do like some fortnite so I’m okay with my new version of that I guess.
I thought that bad stuff is all interesting and if I were to try to.
Wrap up the the international mobile app sheet she highlighted like there were two big themes
in every geography delivery and same-day delivery is getting digitized a lot of these Services were around.
Getting packages and purchases to you same day and then in a lot of the digitally less mature markets like India is the emergence of a local super app
along the lines of what I think of is a WeChat in China so you know in a bunch of these markets they’re not buying the the.
Android operating system that comes with the play store or iOS devices to come with.
With the Apple App Store and so instead of downloading all your apps from some
some service these super apps have emerged that have sort of like mini apps that plug in and that’s essentially WeChat is in a way like a.
An operating system for these apps in China and that and she highlighted some other ones and other parts of Asia and India that I had never heard of it but you don’t seem to be emerging falling that model which as she said it made perfect sense.
Scot:
[37:31] Yeah pretty cool so we definitely recommend you know I think if you’re in this industry you need to have this guy on your laptop somewhere and I’m pretty good working knowledge of it because
you know. You never know what you’re going to whip somebody stats out and say did you know that this many people are on the internet days of this much time and.
Are there some good Ecommerce stats on there nothing really are shaking so that’s why we didn’t really cover them but I think it’s just really good to have a working knowledge of that deck because
it does it is foundational data that we need to find a job.
What was that it was kind of a slow news week so we’re going to cover news next week and so we put out a call for listener questions and we got a resounding response so we’ve got,
20 questions to go through which we’re not going to be able to do tonight but we’re going to do for the next 20 minutes or so we’re going to kind of see how many of these we can get through.
Light socket off the first question comes from Perry Solomon on Facebook
what do you predict the effect of the sex contract termination to be this especially applies it’s repeat Merchants using FedEx for SFP?
Jason:
[38:43] And I should care be all these answers to make the show feel more authentic I didn’t for you read or prepare for these questions at all so I take my answer to the green assault I don’t then
so just to recap for listeners.
[39:00] Amazon delivers a lot of their own packages they pay the US Post Office to deliver a ton of packages they pay UPS to deliver,
like the third most packages and they pay FedEx for the smallest amount of their packages so FedEx is there smallest the smallest piece of their delivery Network.
And FedEx chose not to renew their contract with Amazon and so you know next year you won’t be getting any FedEx packages,
from from Amazon delivery vehicle so.
The reason I suspect they did that is is I’ve talked about a lot on the show demand for package delivery is far outpacing capacity so FedEx isn’t growing,
as fast as demand is growing so they have a constrained resource how many packages they can deliver and when they sell that capacity
the biggest consumer out there in Amazon Amazon has all the leverage and gets to negotiate a great rate and I I think
FedEx felt like hey
we we can sell the same capacity to other people in the e-commerce echo system and you don’t frankly charge more and get more
and so I think it’s it’s really a matter of Amazon monetizing.
[40:17] Facebook FedEx they can to monetize their capability as a FedEx always points out there is
Amazon the small percentage of their overall business so it’s like 1.3% of FedEx deliveries so this is not a disaster for FedEx.
That’s a long-winded recap very specific question is hey if you’re a three piece seller on Amazon and you were filled for filling packages via FedEx how does that affect you and you answers.
If if you are owning the Fulfillment yourself you can still use FedEx and it probably doesn’t affect you because you were negotiating those rates with FedEx yourself you weren’t leveraging some
negotiated rate from from FedEx so I suspect that exit still happy to fulfill those packages for you and things won’t really change
if you are using FBA to deliver your packages.
Packages are no longer going to get delivered by by FedEx but that will mostly be or or that’ll be a hundred percent be transparent to you.
And you know it sounds like you already a seller so you may be more familiar with this but in general it’s pretty tough to make a living as a 3-piece on Amazon.
Without using a PA you got to be enough.
In a pregnancy category does not super competitive a success and so for most 3p sellers they’re using FPA and therefore Amazon’s picking the carrier or not you.
[41:46] Banisters.
Scot:
[41:48] Yes who won of the nuances and Perry’s question is he talks about SFP so there’s this this interesting middle program so so Jason you talk about your a third-party shipping yourself and then using prime
there’s a middle program called SFP in this called seller fulfilled Prime and that’s where you’re essentially saying I will use my own fulfillment center
and I will live up to the prime promise as as part of that you do have to put all of your shipping’s on out of your facility
on to Amazon’s effectively within their Amazon relationships with the carrier’s so that will affect the SFP people cuz you’re not going to FedEx coming to pick those up anymore now,
inside of that same Persephone at Center you can you can also do Native shipments which you may be doing for other channels or your website or what not
and of course you’re still free to use fax for those if you want to but if you do have certain thing doesn’t it as a p that does you know will not be going through this mechanism the other nuances
you know there’s two,
FedEx has a lot of international carrier carrying crossword trade stuff for Amazon that relationship is still in place and there’s also a lot of ground stuff so ground is a program we all think of it is kind of like being 5 days
but you can actually go to day all out of ground within your kind of
missing Coast even into Midwest sometimes that so fed up that ground program where.
[43:17] It’s almost within the prime promised for a lot of stuff so there is still a ground relationship
between facts and Amazon so I imagined Amazon will still use some of that for really short stuff where they don’t have a you know this
their own delivery, Network going.
[43:35] So you know it is interesting that the bigger than you might think this really fast in here is you know this
as Amazon builds this out we I have long predicted Jason I think you’re on board with this you have this Amazon Playbook is pretty well-known now you know so test it
it works test it figure out the model get the cost down scale it.
While you’re dogfooding it and then the third page of play book which is what always blows people’s mind is you develop the super-secret proprietary thing that’s awesome now open it up and that’s the part that
there’s not really good physical analog four and usually blows like traditional retailers mines it it’s equivalent of putting a Target in the corner of a Walmart right you would never do that in the real world
Amazon it just pastry The Playbook they just do it all the time.
There’s so many quesadillas it’s kind of obvious now so AWS is it was born this way FBA in the marketplace so those are three case studies so it’s clear to me that if I filled out all this delivery
I open it up and I effectively compete directly with UPS and FedEx and by that what I mean is Jason could ship a package to me here in North Carolina.
[44:53] Amazon the Commerce company not involved at all and he could probably you know
I’m headed to an Amazon driver and say I would like to go to the store Carolina you’ll go online printouts of postage and I’ll be like $2 because
the package is going to ride along this huge infrastructure where all the fixed cost is already been implemented and if Jason was the FedEx that to me it would be
8 or $12 so I think the
carriers of finally woken up in like a boy this could be a pretty serious problem for us I need to focus on getting ready for that and shipping packages for Amazon,
does Harley how help me get there
what happens if you think UPS can get much worse position because well over the potatoes 10% I look in the back of a lot of UPS trucks.
And I have not looked at a UPS truck in the last year that doesn’t have over half Amazon packages so let me just be me but you know a UPS is going to be in a really interesting
place when you’re the death novel is hey UPS we don’t need you anymore and we’re competing with you that that’s going to be a really tough day when that happens.
Jason:
[46:01] No no no great point and you’ve been being a dumb for a while I think this is the year of it
like that.
Players have kind of become public like both Amazon listed shipping as a business they compete in in in their their financial reporting and and I think in there,
shareholder meetings I know FedEx and UPS had to acknowledge potential competition from
UPS sort of affirming what you said sign out and look in the back of the UPS trucks one thing that gets a lot of people is FedEx and UPS built their business to deliver packages to other businesses
so they’re optimized for business-to-business and they they they’re much will.
[46:45] Weaker at delivering to residential addresses a couple reasons that interesting is Amazon’s built its infrastructure to deliver to residential addresses so it it
it can have some significant competitive advantages there and so if they offer their own service like you can imagine that the place will be strongest as in.
Residential address delivery there’s also huge opportunities and challenges in e-commerce in Reverse Logistics and returning packages and doing real time trials and all these things and you could imagine
that Amazon owning their own delivery vehicles and infrastructure they could have some unique offering there that we’ve never seen
UPS or FedEx try try to offer is actually quite a pain to get a UPS or FedEx driver to your residence to
pick up a package that you decided you didn’t want but I suspect that might have something to do with the the skewed packages in the back of the truck sure looking and if you’re looking at a truck in a residential neighborhood it probably does have a lot more.
Amazon packages but if you were working and you know big big high-rise office building you probably see a lot of FedEx trucks that are delivering fewer Amazon.
Scot:
[47:59] Question 2 also comes from Facebook in this is from longtime listener Danny Sheridan if a brand is ready to partner with an Amazon Channel consultant how do they tend to find each other is industry growing or shrinking from your point of view.
Jason:
[48:15] Interesting so I feel like it’s a it’s a little bifurcated there’s a lot of folks that.
Are relatively small businesses that are trying to sell in Amazon and you know at some stage in their gross they might need some help in severe looking for.
Pretty small providers are folks that can cost-effectively help you know like often a six-figure business potentially not even a 7-figure business so there’s a lot of independent contractors that are focused on.
On helping me the long tail of 3p sellers increasingly Amazon an important distribution channel for the really big players and so you see.
A lot of the the agencies like my own frankly bulking up their Amazon capabilities to help their big clients like the Procter & Gamble’s in unilever’s and Smuckers of the world.
[49:08] Have a better presence on Amazon so I think you’re seeing both I think you’re saying.
Big consultancies in agencies adding dedicated Amazon practices that are targeted at those Enterprise clients and they’re saying.
An increase in the Consultants that help the long tail and in terms of how they find them.
I think there’s a couple ways there there are some good Consultants that are on the speaking circuit and that you know do a lot of offer a lot of free content on how to sell in Amazon and
they get their name out and get down that way
a number of them have written books so I got at if you do a search on Amazon on how to sell in Amazon you’ll see there’s a vibrant set of books and those authors all tend to be consultants in that space in there are.
A couple of.
[49:59] Trejo’s that focus a lot on Amazon sellers and so one community that I I try to participate in is this Community College e-commerce fuel it’s a bunch of
mostly seven-figure sale seller so you know if people are selling between 1 and 10 million dollars of stuff about half of them use Amazon as their primary vehicle the other half try to sell direct our we have some Amazon presents
and so you know there’s a lot of sort of the Consultants that like Emerging Market themselves to those kind of communities any any other tips you have stopped.
Scot:
[50:35] It’s kind of starting to feel a little bit like Dacia world where you got some local people now you got some Regional players and you’ve got some national and agencies it
a lot of choosing the right consultant is are you a brand a retailer how big are you
how much Amazon experience do you have and then you’re where I’m seeing the most activity is around Amazon ads and we have a bunch of questions coming up around the Amazon ad Network.
This is where there’s just a frenzy of activity around Amazon’s add soap to on the Amazon side they’re releasing new units they’re releasing new apis there’s a lot going on there, show me how rapidly that’s growing.
Artists similar large number of agency type people that are kind of like you’re coming in from the SEO PPC World kind of in a Feeding Frenzy on that I do know on the soccer side of the company I started Channel visor
we’re not really a consultant, we’re really a software company and you know.
I do believe there’s an area for a we’re not included in this I don’t believe cuz we’re not we’re not online sign up.
[51:46] But if you are a software company I do believe within Seller Central there’s a little market place so this is kind of thing where I think at some point Amazon needs to step in and say
hey here’s Google send a great job with this you find out all their programs better than I do Jason but they have the steering say say
you know this company is a Google Certified AdWords Platinum company what that means is.
[52:11] You got there been to the certified Google training they’re using API stay support all the big initiatives and these kinds of things
I see Amazon kind of eventually doing that since your Marketplace and Amazon’s got like
thousand low marketplaces all throughout their that got all the App Store and all that stuff so I think we’ll see them normalize that
now that is interesting Aldi ad companies to Google Facebook Etc they’ve always got these oscillations for how they treat third parties trying to get between them and their customers,
Amazon’s not known just generally for really caring for that and you know
it is kind goes to the cycle were in the early days so I can wheel of agencies yeah they help us and then over time as growth slows they start saying how could we get more margin let’s cut all these agencies out of Facebook Google in those kind of more mature platforms
and that cycle I would say just you
we’re about to say I do and then you know here we are in the early stage and it seems like Amazon’s pretty open to encouraging this industry so it’ll be interesting to watch to see if Amazon all of the same Transit ultimately starts to squeeze margin out by eliminating those this gentleman.
Jason:
[53:25] And at the moment I was a Amazon has the least mature tools for advertising so it’s even more important the agency’s or to fill in a gap but as a tool sets get better.
Like it it becomes much more viable to eliminate those middle.
Scot:
[53:43] Question number 3 at give me a time check Jason how are you doing.
Jason:
[53:46] Yep we are 53 minutes in the show so we got about seven minutes left.
Scot:
[53:50] I’ll try to get these two Done Quick.
This is Adam from Facebook and it’s been cakes how will the CDP change in the next 3 years
and how does personalization continue to evolve thanks for all your time and energy on the show Ben from Compass read in Philadelphia I don’t know what a CDP is so I’m going to kick that one right over.
Jason:
[54:19] So I’m assuming like there’s lots of acronyms and some of them have multiple meanings I’m assuming he needs customer data platform which ties in with the personalization
so there’s an alphabet soup of all these
systems that a business might use to track information that they use for advertising and marketing person
purposes and for personalization and customer experience.
[54:44] Purposes and said started that a popular when you hear about a few years ago was called the DMP what which is a data management platform a lot of advertisers that didn’t necessarily know
the individual audience they were marching to might use a DMP to keep track of the segments they were,
are marketing to and then sort of evolution of the DMP is this CDP which is
a database of attributes on individual customers and customers a site misnomer
oven at the prospect not a customer so it could be both prospects and customers I’m so that it’s a database you would use to keep
Keep information about people I mean salesforce.com is a you know it in all the time that contact management systems are in some ways cdp’s there are
bunch of specialty CDP is that our Focus for particular use cases and.
In general how that’s going to bother with it in the next 3 years like obviously data gets more important expectations for four more
personally relevant experiences get more important and so all businesses just have to collect and act on data better A lot of these systems are still design for
a single-use case now so they’re sort of siloed on one particular thing and I think over the next three years they get more generalized and you know the date they become a system of record for Content that that.
[56:12] Get used in a bunch of different places so you might use it for your advertising and for your email and for your
on-site personalization platforms and all these sorts of things where is today.
Each EDP tends to be optimized for you no one or a few particular touchpoint so
in in super shorter I feel like that’s the evolution and I guess the last thing I’d throw out is a lot of people that already invested in these platforms are now having to take kind of a step back because the
the Privacy regulation is getting stronger and a lot of the data that had been previously collected and put in these systems
hasn’t been collected in a way in which the businesses are authorized to use at so 1 new
new Wrinkle In all these platforms is data governance and audit trails and making sure you have your permission to use all the individual elements you know about that customer in the way that you’re using up so it.
Maybe industry industry a heck of a lot more complicated.
Scot:
[57:12] And what he says how how does personalization continue about the sooner you can get some data to drive it are you a big believer in some of this machine learning AI is being a total game-changer here or or do you think that that’s a little bit
overdone.
Jason:
[57:27] I think it’s important but I do think it’s overhyped the I don’t think
just because inexpensive personalized it better and so I think it if your goal is to take an experience that was the same for all your customers and personalize it for each of your customers that’s actually dumb golf
because that doesn’t guarantee a better outcome like I think the reason you’d want to personalize those experiences is to make the experience more relevant for each customer interview,
you happen to have one experience that’s irrelevant for a hundred million customers as for example Apple does like
knock yourself out that’s awesome don’t don’t spend the money to the personalized that preaches hundred million customers.
It was one experience words but in many cases you have lots of different Shoppers with different missions that are different contacts and so you need to personalize to make it more relevant and so like if your goal is relevancy
yeah collect all the data and do what you have to do to get more relevant if your goal is just to be personalized for the sake of personalization I I would argue.
[58:28] That’s that’s kind of a silly goal
and you know I would argue some of the highest value personalization we’ve already been doing for 10 or 15 years I mean the recommendation files on Amazon are 35% of all Amazon’s revenue
you know his is a i and better data making those recommendation tiles better today than they were 10 years ago absolutely but it’s it’s.
Evolutionary not revolutionary so I think there’s places where it’s a big deal but I think however big a deal it is is overhyped by the vendors right now.
Scot:
[59:02] Cut it and then our fourth and final question for this installment Don’t Panic if you submitted a question and we haven’t gotten to it we have a good
15 more that will get to honor Nexus request and show this one comes from long time listener and guess Jamie Dooley Jason Scott have you heard any news or updates around,
Conoco Amazon Singularity which is the
so I think he’s making out that name I’ve never heard it called that but there is this combination going on at Amazon between vendor Central and Seller Central and he makes a joke that he has heard the project school name is a brexit.
[59:39] Play Leon the brexit turn I’ll kick off this one and then
and take it over to you so long time Amazon had two ways you interacted with them
that’s if you’re a brand retailers were always kind of in this third party bucket and then he sold other brands and then transfer into their Central the world’s all smushed together because every retailer wants to be a retailer and so what’s happened is just give you the slang so you should be that if you want to sell in the hole so relationship with Amazon
you would use this portal called vendor Central it is very simple it’s essentially a kind of you know
chatting with your buyer and uploading you know kind of negotiating and saying hey I’m going to send you a hundred widgets and and this kind of thing and then
South Central is the third-party Marketplace World Hunan Seller Central very quickly you know it’s kind of I would say.
[1:00:36] 10 to 20 x functionality of vendor Central soup. All def ba and there are you reporting
by box pricing Dynamic this that I’m so sorry Central really got more sophisticated as
as Brands kind of came on the scene song or direct they wanted the kind of had to use when they’re Central.
And then they wanted a Seller Central experience and then they started just do both which created this hybrid model that that we talked about on the show Jamie’s kind of
early Pioneer of his times at Doral Inn and Creek so.
[1:01:12] What’s happening is Amazon’s decided to squish the teams together and really have a central kind of a thing that makes sense but it’s quite painful from what I’m hearing you know I I talk to Brands and
they literally will talk to three Amazon people and get different answers of
should baby one piece rebuke and a 3p can they do hybrid who are they dealing with I’m so there’s no
to be a little. Of total chaos over the Amazon around this right now it’s best I can tell so yeah I do think it’s going to reconcile itself Amazon obviously is very.
[1:01:47] Focus on the consumer experience and Wildland on a great consumer experience but there is a lot of chaos there that have looked into wow you know they have this
they have these record reports to get around like.
Demographics your customers out there searching on reports
and then there’s a couple ad sites that used to be only in there and then the the more enhanced pages on Amazon used to be only available there so as their special needs together
so that good stuff coming from 1 p.m. to 3 p 1 P people were always like
gosh I really wish I had more control over my listing and I I had a lot more dynamic system for the set the other so a lot of that,
I think the game is going to be good and it has a lot of pain to get there.
Jason:
[1:02:44] Yep and I I guess I would just had a couple of things like early on Amazon head you know some interesting Protections in place if you wanted to be a three-piece seller and Amazon and therefore you’re using Seller Central,
you you you had to agree to let Amazon buy your product one p if they chose to so,
they make it a century kick you off the platform review if they ask to buy your product first party and and you chose the only sell it third party
the Indian that they have the flip side if you’re one piece out on Amazon you need permission to be a three piece or so
in some cases vendors that were hybrid sellers had permission but more often.
They were they were one piece hours in 3p sellers in Amazon just didn’t notice and in a few cases Amazon noticed and post it but more often.
[1:03:38] Amazon would just to let it ride and so like you know some some mergers that have already happened
there’s two businesses used to roll up two separate execs and we’re separate p&l is an Amazon now they roll up the one exact
and it’s way less likely that you was a seller are just getting away with it unbeknownst to Amazon so it.
It’s much more likely that Amazon has visibility and and you know is used for the implied in the question
they’re strong rumors out there that the tools will eventually merge the the
name for the tool I have heard the most and rumors is Amazon one vendor so I don’t know if that that ends up being the.
[1:04:18] The universal replacement for Seller Central and vendor Central will have to see but obviously you know a couple months ago there was a brouhaha Amazon.
[1:04:31] Cold the one piece hours so they said hey if you’re selling if you’re selling us just one p and you’re not doing 10 million dollars a year in Revenue it probably doesn’t make sense
breast keep you the one piece hour or so we’re going to ship you off that platform and the way you should have a relationship with Amazon at 3 p so they’re there were a bunch of hybrid settlers and small one piece sellers
aren’t you getting forced to go to 3 p.m. and you know all this stuff is playing out out simultaneously but I do like Jamie’s names.
I do think it would be funny if it was high brexit.
And I think given time that is going to be a good place to end because we have done it again we have used up our a lot of time we do have a bunch more questions to go to the store going to record Another show here pretty soon and release it in the very near future
there’s also some news happening while recording the show Chuy’s just
did their IPO today so if you do have any comments or questions about the
the stuff that we did discuss on this show please jump on the Facebook or Twitter and and let us know as always if you enjoy the show
we love that five star review and we didn’t get you a question keep your eye on the feed will have another show out super soon with the
the rest of the questions thanks very much.
Scot:
[1:05:50] It without your five star reviews were never going to make it back onto the top 10 podcast cast list so we really need everyone to step up and leave some reviews so we can be on there for the Meeker report next year coming to listen to show everyone we really appreciate all the questions and engagement out there in the community that’s what makes it really fun for us
and until next time.
Jason:
[1:06:12] Happy commercing.
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