A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 242 is an interview with Rob Gonzalez, Co-Founder and CMO of Salsify, in this interview, we discuss direct to consumer, the state of CPG commerce, and the digital shelf.
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Rob Gonzales is the Co-Founder and CMO of Salsify an e-commerce enablement SaaS company that has raised over $250m and focuses on helping brands sell online. Rob is also co-founder of the Digital Shelf Institute.
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Episode 242 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, October 21st 2020.
Transcript
Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 242 being recorded on Wednesday October 21st 2020
I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo.
Scot:
[0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners.
Well when we’re not talking about ship a garden one of our other favorite topics here on the Jason Scott show is
what we call branded remanufacturers going direct or direct to Consumer brands or just simply direct-to-consumer,
and this is a big topic and we’re really excited to have a guest here that is going to be able to really help us dive in on this and shed a lot of light on the trend,
so we are excited to Welcome to the Jason Scott show Rob Gonzales he is the co-founder and CMO a chief marketing officer which is one word short of Jason’s title I’ll just point that out of salsify,
salsify is an e-commerce enablement software-as-a-service company that has raised over 250 million I’ll do a dramatic pause there,
and focuses on helping Brands sell online Rob welcome to the show.
Rob:
[1:34] Thanks for having me glad to be here.
Scot:
[1:36] Yeah we know if listeners know this but we record late at night and you’re an early morning person so we really appreciate you staying up into the wee hours to do this with us.
Rob:
[1:45] Thank you yeah you guys are the party animals with e-commerce quit these hours.
Scot:
[1:49] That’s yeah that’s what we’re commonly referred to as the party animals of e-commerce.
Jason:
[1:55] You talk about sad states of Affair like what a lame industry this is if Scott and I are the party animals,
Rob it’s awesome to have you on the show excited to dive into the latest stuff but before we do we always like to get a little bit of a feel for the guests can you tell us how you,
got started and how you came to the e-commerce industry.
Rob:
[2:20] Yeah in 2006 I was working in an IBM research group and right across the street,
was in Deka Technologies one of my best friend’s Jeremy is also by co-founder at salsify.
[2:34] Got a job in Deca and loved it and convinced me to come over and in Deca Technologies for those who don’t know invented search navigation merchandising for e-commerce so if you were,
building an Enterprise e-commerce site in the 2000s you weren’t just buying a single platform like you are today you’re not just buying Salesforce Commerce cloud and it sort of does everything,
what you would do is you would buy a mix of different pieces of technology and Stitch them together to provide your whole Commerce platform so the search engine the navigation system all that stuff was typically bought separate from the core Commerce.
And in Deco is the leader in that space you think about like in that period walmart.com target.com,
homedepot.com most of the big e-commerce players about 60% of the internet retailer top,
using Deca for their search navigation and Merchandising Amazon actually tried to acquire them at one point in the 2000s to to be what would have what would become the A9 algorithm,
so really really great technology I was acquired by Oracle for a little over a billion dollars in 2011 and I like that number because,
I mean in 2011 e-commerce is basically nothing so to be a billion-dollar really e-commerce search company that time really shows that the impact that in deck had that that’s when I got into it.
Scot:
[3:53] Very cool the deck is interesting I keep I always bump up against folks that have gone on to do other things from a deck and you probably keep better track of this than I do,
and any Commerce we always talk about the PayPal Mafia that is out there and I say Mafia in the most glowing of terms meaning people that got their start at a company have gone on to better and better things in kind of a you know
an unusually large percentage of folks,
so you guys it salsify kind of come from there I believe some of the folks at toast there’s company jellyfish you know I think I think there’s like 10 or 20 e-commerce companies that got kind of born out of inductive is that is that kind of your take as well.
Rob:
[4:33] Yeah there’s a whole set of them and they’re across lots of Industries and in other places so in health care you’ve got a company called kairis,
in restaurant Services Toast of course raised a monster round at the start of 2020 at something like a 4.5 billion dollar valuation Sprout social went IPO this year they were founded by in Deca alumni,
you mentioned jellyfish is a relatively new company that’s doing really really well engineering Analytics,
so Steve Papa that a Founder CEO of and deca has been doing a play called parallel Wireless Next Generation Wireless Technologies,
and so yeah there’s just an absolute ton of companies that came out of that that group of folks and then other individuals like the chief scientific deca,
Daniel tunkel language the chief data scientist at LinkedIn after in deca,
one of the Andreessen Horowitz partner Julie you is is in deck alumni so they’re just all over the place it was a it was a heck of a company in terms of the talent that they were able to bring in.
Scot:
[5:33] Was there something about the culture that kind of was it like a entrepreneurial kind of culture like what was there something special about it that you think has caused so many alumni to go on to bigger and better things.
Rob:
[5:46] You know.
Jeremy Jason and I talked about that it’s really hard to pin down I mean I think the central thing is in Deca was known at that time for having an absolutely,
kickass engineering team with the best in Boston at and a lot of people believe that and.
Whether or not it’s true you know it at least had that reputation being in the top view so people that were really smart and ambitious in the Boston area.
Always had it on their list and in deck is interview process was really geared more towards hiring for just raw intelligence and ambition,
versus a particular skill set in any of the particular any of the markets I mean they just I mean they hired me as a product manager and I was.
Research software engineer at IBM I didn’t really even know how to spell product management before they hired me as one,
and that was pretty typical of a lot of The Hires that they had so it made for this really intense,
high-energy very smart culture but that also felt pretty chaotic a lot of the time to these you had a lot of smart people that were in there with their own ideas and their own Ambitions and trying to build their own things,
but yeah I think if anything I would pin it to that but it’s hard to say exactly what at that time Drew so many good people in one place.
Jason:
[7:09] On top of that it was all so very much the Rolls-Royce,
top of the the hill product in the space like for a long time,
Commerce platforms didn’t even bother building search into their platform because it was sort of a given that you were you were going to use in Deca or certainly if you were an enterprise-class customer you were going to use in deca,
and they held that position for a long time even after Oracle acquired mmm.
One of the things that’s interesting Mia that’s kind of one of those stories what what in my mind what really finally knock them off the hill was they ran up against a good open source competitors.
Rob:
[7:52] Yeah I completely agree with that solar elasticsearch they change the game from below the puts what made solar Nath elasticsearch even competitive was,
I’m compute capacity got a lot cheaper and,
like from it for the in decades and that guy had a couple dozen patents on their core engine was called the MDX engine the multi-room,
multi-dimensional index and the core thing that index allowed you to do was to navigate with you know sub hundred millisecond response times huge sets of data with high dimensionality and what that means is like if you go to walmart.com or you go to amazon.com.
Where they’re selling these days tens of millions or hundreds of millions of products,
and you look at that left hand navigation once you once you do a search so let’s say you go in there and you search for t-shirts and then the left hand navigation their selections such as brand color size price ratings,
Prime enabled all that type of stuff so clicking on any of those options reduces the space of,
things that match the original search of t-shirt that you are going after and it does so very very quickly.
The ability for a computer system to have a large amount of data and a large amount of those navigable.
I think about like a Walmart or Home Depot with literally thousands of product categories each with their own navigation structure so thousands of options to click from to navigate through the set computers.
[9:19] There weren’t systems that could do that back in two thousand one two three four five six seven bi Cube if you’re using business objects or cognos or something like that these systems,
would allow you to have a few dozen Dimensions at most right and then they’d sort of scale out so in Decca had this Secret Sauce of.
This index that could return search results in sub hundred millisecond time for large data.
And nobody else had that so so yeah this the open-source guys came along and they’ve got amazing products.
But but those products are not competitive except for the fact that computing power has actually gotten significantly.
Better and cheaper also in the intervening 10 years.
Scot:
[10:00] Pretty cool so that’s a good segue I’m the I’m the entrepreneur in this Partnership of Jason and Scott here and I always like to hear kind of the founding story,
you guys were at in Deca guys got bought by Oracle and then kind of walk us through to the the founding idea of salsify hopefully there’s a napkin diagram in there somewhere.
Rob:
[10:18] Well.
Becoming first of all e-commerce is awesome it’s the coolest if the coolest face to work in because it’s so dynamic in and it’s not just dynamic as a space,
the practitioners of e-commerce whether you’re in a manufacturer whether you’re in a distributor whether you’re a retailer the people that are that are in the weeds every day,
are just trying to new things out all the time it’s kind of cowboys wild west it’s Dynamic it’s just the greatest space to be in,
so after in Deca we really wanted to do another e-commerce.
[10:50] And the big the big challenge like going back to and Decca you look at the search and navigation think about the search experience on Amazon right or the search experience on Wayfarer or the search experience on Home Depot.
These are companies that have very large product assortments and a consumer often times when they go to the site isn’t quite sure what they’re looking for,
so you know you use a generic search term you searched for you know blue t-shirt or polo shirt are you search for running shoes or you know you search for like some of these generic generic phrases and then you start looking around for what’s available right.
And when you start looking around for what’s available often times,
first of all the content is terrible on a lot of these product detail Pages even today but second of all when you click on the navigation options a lot of products don’t show up I remember we did we did,
one of our early customers as a company called Drive medical which is there the largest manufacturer of durable medical equipment think like Walkers role laters neck braces things like that.
If you go to walmart.com and they’ve got dozens and dozens of Walkers and roll laters on Walmart.com Walmart had a filter called senior right so just show me products for seniors.
You clicked at that time is eight years ago on the senior filter.
[12:05] You’d see one Rollator like the role leaders of the you know the things that old people will use to assist them in walking and.
Like literally every Rollator should be marked as senior right like there’s not there’s not like a junior Rollator that’s not a role later for somebody who’s middle-aged like me it’s they’re all senior product,
and so that’s a failure of the data tag,
now we found it in Deca that navigation if you had really good search really good navigation really good content we could quantify the conversion rate Improvement and the lift,
you could also quantify things like the house how big the cart was going to be by improving those things and and we’re talking you know dozens of points of conversion Improvement I mean huge huge impact.
And the biggest challenge that a Home Depot or a Walmart or Target or any of these companies had in delivering these experiences that converted at a high rate was acquiring content that could actually see.
[13:03] Search and navigation and Merchandising strategies so our view at salsify and the founding pieces,
was a brand manufacturer you know the Coca-Cola is Legos Levi’s Bosch’s 3 M’s of the world,
should really really care about their products being optimized for search and navigation,
where retailers go where where consumers go to find the product so they’ve if you go to walmart.com if you go to target.com you go to amazon.com you go to Granger.com,
you want to be able to your product to show up first regardless of what the search is and you want your product to show up.
For the correct navigation filters when people are searching my navigation and our experience was.
Retailers got bad bad content and Brands really did a poor job servicing this type of content and we felt that there was a immediate opening in the market there,
for somebody to help a brand manufacturer optimized for search and conversion across all of the digital retail touchpoints that consumers might be looking for their products so that that was the origin story.
I’ll layer onto that that our view of,
the system as we were thinking about it before founding the company was that well if you start really optimizing on the search and navigation and you really start optimizing for the experience management to help to help Drive conversions,
on these retailers sites.
[14:25] You know really this is the first step towards building a multi-channel Commerce platform you know empowering not just the experience on all these different multiple channels but also the transactions on sometime,
so our view was let’s start with a multi-channel experience management system that helps people optimize search and navigation.
And then live will air on the Commerce capabilities because ultimately everything’s going to have a Bible.
So that was that was the founding pieces and idea and we got after it starting in September 2012.
Scot:
[14:56] So is it fair to say that and Decca you kind of learned that you know the the front and can experience can only be as good as the data in right so it’s classic garbage in garbage out thing so
so to really solve the discovery and customer experience you have to kind of go back a step to the brand because
they’re sending the retailer a bunch of junk data there’s only so much you can do to improve that right.
Rob:
[15:18] Yeah yeah in what makes it insidiously difficult is if you look at homedepot.com which in decal is powering I think still is actually powering but.
Home Depot has a very broad product assortment.
And things like the depth of the bathtub to finish of the faucet the lumens of the light bulb you know all of those filters matter their material,
buying information that you want to be able to search and filter and make decisions based on right so.
Those dip those filters on homedepot.com are controlled by site merchants in the site Merchants are constantly a/b testing.
Tip optimize the site experience so you know for faucets for example let’s say that you’ve got to finish that’s Chrome and a finish that’s like burnished metal and.
The site Merchant gets this idea you know what people don’t know what these things are I’m going to call them silver let me run a site test to see whether silver converts at a higher rate than Chrome.
[16:19] So they’ll run the test and the test will determine how actually calling things silver is a really really good idea we should start collecting silver as an option for the finish of the faucet so then what happens is,
the the set of options that you can pick from a drop-down to set up a faucet on homedepot.com now includes a new option which is silver.
And Home Depot was making changes to that site site search structure,
on the regular like every single day literally as they’re optimizing their site Amazon same thing at Walmart same thing these guys they’re constantly looking at the numbers and constantly trying to squeeze out a little bit more conversion rate,
so the site data strategy isn’t constant it’s in constant flux,
so if you’re a manufacturer and you solve faucets and you’re setting an item up on Home Depot today and you fill out like it’s Chrome and then tomorrow you could go fill out you know the next version of that item and chrome is no longer an option has been replaced by silver,
like that type of little.
Change X however many hundreds of retailers you work with is the is a problem with for the manufacturer so manufacturers weren’t,
weren’t we’re just not provided the content they were also bombarded with this cacophony of changes that were really quite difficult to keep up.
Jason:
[17:42] Yeah and I it’s funny I’m trying to get in my my time machine and go back to 2012 backpack then say you were a cpg company your Mondo he’s selling Oreos right the.
The person that was responsible at Mondelez for walmart.com was either the intern or it was like a.
You know 1% side job for the account team that sold to the Walmart stores and in Bentonville and so.
When they sold those Oreos in the store.
Walmart needed to know like eight attributes about the pack of Oreos but when they started trying to merchandise Oreos online the online teams like oh we want 30 60 80 attributes about the product and that poor intern,
had no juice or way to get any of that digital shelf content so I see like there’s a lot of like sales team recreating their own product content in Microsoft Excel and like manually uploading it to websites back then.
Rob:
[18:43] Yeah absolutely I mean and it’s just a hundred percent agree with that and it’s sort of it reflects exactly the priority of.
E-commerce and digital strategy in general and cpg in 2012,
I mean it just it was not it was on nobody’s radar right it was it was it was a maybe a fast-growing tiny little segment that almost nobody cared about.
Just about every segment so the you know the Mondelez example,
Not only was it some interns job to fill out the content but Mondelez also didn’t really have an e-commerce strategy from a product portfolio,
so it back in 2012 in order to even make make positive margin on a sale on Amazon Mondelez I don’t know if you remember this they’d be selling like the.
The three pack of the large packs.
Probably 25 bucks so you couldn’t just buy a small amount of Oreos you had to buy like a tremendous amount of Oreos on Amazon if you’re if you’re buying them and so they were yeah they were it was back then it was really everything was manual.
Jason:
[19:44] Oh yeah for the record I never noticed that because I just wanted to buy that many Oreos so.
Scot:
[19:48] Yeah what’s wrong what’s wrong with buying a three pack of Oreos Corner up.
Rob:
[19:52] I got to tell you that you know the birthday cake Oreos.
Scot:
[19:55] Hm
Rob:
[19:56] Say the greatest things imaginable.
Jason:
[19:58] I do my five-year-old is a big fan although we’re on Halloween Oreos right now.
Rob:
[20:03] Oh yeah.
Jason:
[20:05] So then we get in that time machine we fast forward back to 2020 you guys have done a couple of rounds of fundraising along the way but,
very recently you announced a big rise of like a hundred fifty five million dollars which is,
super impressive congratulations / now I’m nervous for you.
And it seems like a bunch of other vendors in the in the Commerce base of also done really well with investors lately I think I want to say Miracle had to raise the same week you did fabric had to raise this week obviously there’s been some,
some successful IPOs from the platform guys do you like,
is covid sort of heating up the space like what do you think is driving investor interest in the space right now.
Rob:
[20:52] Yeah I think covid is heating up interest in certain parts of the space.
So you look at the Commerce platforms like Shopify obviously is worth a gajillion dollars right now in market cap Bigcommerce IPO Dan had just a stellar Stellar IPO,
same sort of thing the multiples in that space or just really really high right now in the public markets.
For for us the.
[21:22] In general covid is accelerates Digital Trends and you know you could say that’s a positive thing for us but the,
range of companies that we sell to is you know there’s a whole markets that we generally sell to you that have been absolutely crushed so apparel for example apparel still hasn’t gotten off the floor this year right you know Footwear is not gotten off the floor this year,
and so for you know for us it’s been you know we’ve done we’ve done well during this period because it’s digital,
but but in Broad Strokes I don’t think it’s particularly different from from what we were you know going to do anyway.
With General rise with a company like a miracle,
miracle for those who don’t know they provide Marketplace as a service effectively so you know how Amazon you could you could buy one product from Amazon that are that are sold by Amazon and you could buy products.
On Amazon that are sold by third-party sellers Miracle is basically enabling any retailer to sell third party products on their.com.
And that strategy is a strategy is very attractive to retailers that are trying to keep up with Amazon,
they look at Amazon’s 3p margins,
and they just it’s looks like almost free money right and they say well jeez you know if we could get if we can get some of that that’s good that’s helpful to us and that also enables us to have larger assortments to compete with Amazon an assortment,
and these days when all of a sudden just about every ever purchased one online.
[22:51] For retailers to have a strategy to increase assortment in a dramatic way and increased margin that a bunch of sales that’s a hugely attractive thing so you see sectors like grocery for example I think Albertsons has a,
has purchased Miracle recently right Kroger I think is purchased miracle miracle recently so these big Grocers who generally had I would say like.
An online strategy that lied you know Amazon Walmart Target for example there are standing up these marketplaces now with hey so I think,
covid for miracle has been a huge accelerator in this in the space that they’re in,
so it sort of depends I guess on this date on where were you fit in the e-commerce supply chain as to whether it’s been like hugely positive you know a little bit positive neutral right and I think you’re just seeing the fundraising reflecting that.
Scot:
[23:45] Very cool we know the guys that Miracle congrats to them and to you on the big races the so
so that’s really good kind of I think that helps listeners kind of understand so you’ve spent the last 8 years like really entrenched in working with brands of all different categories
helping them get their products out to Market and you know the thing we talk a lot about is this direct-to-consumer kind of pivot that most brands are making
you know would love to hear what’s it been like watching that over the last eight years and and where do you think we are on that that Spectrum right now.
Rob:
[24:19] Man yeah we’re in like the first early Innings on that Spectrum so we hit I remember we went to if you remember a couple companies that have been acquired since then clavis which is now part of a central one click retail which is part of essential content 26,
there was a bunch of us that were playing in the Amazon content and conversion optimization space and 2015 16 17 which was,
yeah it’s got It’s funny to look back and say that that those were early days on Amazon but for a lot of manufacturers in particular that were.
[24:52] White learning about e-commerce at that point those were early days on Amazon and we had a one-click retailgeek has hosted a hackathon.
And I want to say to end of 2016 out in Seattle,
it was Amazon hackathon we had VP of e-commerce from like a hundred companies and the set of us were just hosting.
Sessions on particular win on Amazon topic.
And back then everyone was talking about how the future of selling on Amazon would be hybrid cell.
So if you’re a manufacturer what that means is that you’re selling some product direct to Amazon that Amazon is then owns and sells to consumer,
and you’re selling some product as a 3rd party seller on Amazon.
And what you sold is the first party on Amazon versus what you sold as a third-party of Amazon there’s a hole deep discussion on that that strategy which is change over time.
Whether you’ve got a 33 p backstop,
for if Amazon goes out of stock on one piece sales and whether you tell Amazon about it is a whole other topic and so people were discussing that the future the best-in-class operations for Amazon required,
that a brand manufacturer have the ability to pick pack and ship and each to a consumer for the purposes of this hybrid selling.
And so I thought honestly at that time given the focus on the topic that we’re now four years in.
[26:20] Just about everyone would be doing it or would have figured it out right we would have.
In the supply chain in particular the demand forecasting models the the,
Office of the CFO has to deal with updating the way that they think about p&l for the space and like you would think that they would have done those changes to make it possible to sell direct to consumer,
and.
You know we’re four years later I think the majority of brand manufacturers don’t don’t have the capability to sell direct consumer a lot of them are struggling to set it up right now in haste and covid-19.
[26:54] You know they didn’t have it coming into this year and so I think that space is really in its in its early Innings with the way the way that I think how it’s going to evolve.
And this might be.
I don’t know if I’m the only one who thinks this might be a controversial point the way I think this is going to be evolved is that the brand dot-coms are going to be the least important of the direct route to the,
so if you’re if you’re a manufacturer and you’ve got a brand.com and it’s got a shopping cart on and it’s powered by Shopify or Bigcommerce or Salesforce Commerce cloud or Dobie Commerce or whatever,
and you know people go to brand.com and they transact and then you ship them the.
I think that if you if you consider that one mode of direct-to-consumer another mode of direct consumer is selling as a three-piece seller on the marketplace.
Right you’re just basically using someone else’s website except instead of your website the power of the shopping cart another mode of direct consumer is the new by buttons that exists exists places like Instagram or Google shopping actions,
and you take the whole mix of those those things like by buttons everywhere as direct-to-consumer where you’re doing the merchandising and you’re doing the filling,
I think that we’re in the very early days of companies wrapping their heads around that I think we’re in the very early days of companies even investing in the capabilities to manage that and I think we’re also,
in a space where the at the end of the day the brand.com might be the least important of all those options.
[28:20] Which further complicates how they’re thinking about direct-to-consumer as a category so that that’s my general view on it’s I mean it’s I was I would have expected more change in the last four years but you know with covid I think we should expect.
Faster acceleration of this stuff in the next.
Jason:
[28:36] Interesting I do I love this stuff I want to unpack just a little bit of that so the.
Your perspective about brand.com is interesting I feel like I agree depending on the category right so,
in consumer packaged Goods or food or items where the unit economics aren’t super favorable the selling at from brand.com,
hundred percent agree right like like they should for many reason still have a brand.com but it’s not a very important touch point so it’s probably never going to be a big touch point for.
Doritos or whatever right even though I know they just.
Rob:
[29:14] Dot-com yeah.
Jason:
[29:15] Yeah yeah however I actually think for nike.com or apple.com.
The there is a concerted effort to make that like the primary destination and they in certain brands can make that work right when they have the right product in the right unit economics.
Rob:
[29:35] Yeah it’s actually it’s interesting there’s examples you pick up there’s a whole other thread here which is like in a world.
In the world of e-commerce where anybody can compete with you you know on the on the physical shell if you’re dealing with.
You know just a handful of other products in your category because there’s limited shelf space in the store on the digital shelf you could be dealing you know competing with dozens of different products in your category so the competition is significantly more Fierce and generally speaking,
there’s less market share for the leaders,
I’m online than there has been in store historically so people that are used to a certain amount of market share generally lose it as the dollars Move online.
And I think the solution to this in Broad Strokes is for a brand to be like a must-have brand right for a brand to be truly differentiated,
and Nike and apple are two Brands to your point that are truly differentiated and they built they built.
[30:27] Real loyal followings and so people will go to nike.com they will go to apple.com and they will transact direct and I see that as a result of.
Just just outstanding brand execution over a long period of time,
there’s there’s other examples that are in that same vein like lego.com I know you know you’ve got a little kid I’ve got a little kids like we got a lot of Legos we go to lego.com as the primary place to transact for Legos,
but Lego again is one of those absolutely iconic Brands Keurig.
Just as another one Keurig does a lot of volume on the current.com they’ve got the subscriptions on replenishment they.
A lot of offices will purchase from Korea got calm and bold things like that right and so I yeah you’re right that I think that I don’t know that it’s a category thing I think it’s a brand.
That we’re the ones that are really iconic brands are the ones that are going to have stronger contribution from their brand.
Jason:
[31:25] Yep yeah no that’s fair I think you do have to be that iconic brand I just meant like even if you’re that iconic brand if you’re in a category that doesn’t have super appealing unit economics.
Like that that alone could have wrote you can be the best fabric care product people probably don’t want to buy Tide from Procter & Gamble like they probably want to get it with all their other groceries.
Rob:
[31:50] It’s going to be interesting to see how that evolves I remember actually thinking this exact question I went.
P and p and g and spent a bunch of time on their direct to Consumer because they can you can buy anything from P&G.
Directing and Zoomer and so I ended up subscribing to the mach3 razor blades for from Procter & Gamble’s Gillette.
As you know and they’ve got like a subscription service for it and it’s great and then I went to tied,
and looked around and tie the interesting thing about the tide direct-to-consumer site is there are way more tied options available on the direct consumer site then you’re going to get in any store that’s around you,
and some of the options are really interesting compelling value oriented options for consumers when I see value-oriented I mean like.
Consumers that have a moral perspective on ingredients and things like that,
you know that they generally won’t find in whatever a Target or Kroger so there you know I don’t know it’s interesting to say how much that’s going to matter tide is also put a tremendous amount of investment in,
e-commerce packaging so if you buy Tide on Amazon you don’t get like the heavy plastic container you get these I don’t know what you call Mike these little plastic.
Jason:
[33:03] Yeah the frustration free and then you get the oh gosh yet the names skipping me but.
Rob:
[33:11] It bag basically it’s like it’s like a plastic bag with like a little thing that it’s meant to those like almost a refill more than the in The Jug that you normally Buy,
and so they’ve done that to make it more profitable to ship it basically and so the,
it’s just interesting to I think over time there’s no category that can’t find a way to be profitable,
from the margin and chipping perspective we look we fit We Fear had a profitable quarter Wayfarer people that company that a lot of people never thought would ever make money ever there’s no way they’re ever going to make money and they had they were profitable,
and they sell furniture and so I don’t know I think it’s all possible to make to do a direct-to-consumer it’s just a matter of changing maybe changing a bunch about how you do it.
Jason:
[33:52] Yeah fair enough and for sure don’t misconstrue anything I’m saying as you shouldn’t be trying to do that there’s a bunch of benefits,
in addition to the the gross margin dollar so.
But I did a couple other things came up that that are I’ll call him semi controversial so I do a ton of these direct to Consumer engagements with brands.
And I frequently talk about like the 12 flavors of direct-to-consumer right because everyone everyone immediately goes to brand.com and my hypothesis is for a bunch of brands,
prove your point that’s that’s the least important right so there are all these other things a hundred percent agree with you I Instagram check out or or,
collectivize on Google are these sorts of things and included in my list is 3 p selling right would you you clearly defined as a flavor of direct to consumer
but in my mind when I’m telling that to a brand quiet I actually feel like I’m lying because I think there’s a way in which,
3p selling our for sure 3-piece selling on Amazon is exactly the opposite of d2c because you never meet the consumer like you never have any act like you’re totally disintermediated from the consumer.
Rob:
[35:05] I mean not that fully though because you can I don’t know how many 3p products.
That you purchased on Amazon but if you get it from a small seller what will typically happen is they’ll be a card in the box,
so the small seller will ship you the box and the Box arrives and you open the box and there’s a note to you right and then note will often have a discount code for,
for a further purchase and it’ll say look if you have any trouble please just you know don’t don’t do the one star review call me I’ll fix your problem.
It does all that type of stuff so so I think there is that opportunity I’ll tell you a great story there.
[35:46] This is going back maybe five six years ago Bob land is the head of digital and customer experience at Darrell juvenile group in North America.
[35:58] And tv ads were getting pretty expensive for them,
and so what he decided to do was to take all of his TV ad budget and put it into post-purchase experience and the thesis was that in the particular for the for the car seats that Darrell was manufacturing they make something on the order of eight million car seats a year,
and,
the idea was that if they did that they could get repeat by and they’d get word of mouth and you get good reviews and all this sort of stuff so what ended up what he did was he invested in call center based in America,
where when you get your car seat you know I remember when you installed your first car seat it’s like,
absolutely impossible to know how to do it and you’re terrified that you’re going to install it wrong and your kids going to get hurt and it’s just you know the instructions are you know totally obscure like installing a car seat is miserable,
and so with Darrell did was you know you got a you got a car seat and it would have a little unexpected gift as part of the packaging that you would unwrap it that you weren’t expecting and it would have a note that says look if you have any trouble at all,
call this number and we’ll get you on a video and we will walk you through any any question that you’ve got.
And so they invested in a call center the invested in the video and they did that so and that resulted in a tremendous consumer satisfaction great reviews and I was a good investment.
[37:19] And so I think if you look at the 3p selling you you you are having ways their of investing in the direct consumer relationship,
that.
[37:30] Are not intermediated by Amazon in the same way that Amazon shipping that same product is right you can get creative with these approaches and start building relationship building Rapport building building consumer loyalty,
so yeah I agree I mean your point is well taken that you can’t do as much with Amazon as a 3p as you can selling on your own brand.com but I still think that there of a theme.
Jason:
[37:54] Yeah fair enough and I will say part of the reason you you mainly get that experience with small Brands versus large Brands is because.
You’re really skirting with the terms and conditions on Amazon Amazon to be a 3-piece hour and if you’re a small Cellar that risk calculation is worth it if you’re a big seller you can’t risk getting kicked off the platform so you,
have to be a little more careful.
Rob:
[38:17] Yeah some of those things like don’t give me a one star review or definitely in the dark gray dark gray Zone.
Jason:
[38:24] Yeah well the discount code in the box is really dark okay.
Rob:
[38:27] Yeah the dark razor.
Scot:
[38:29] Or the even better the you know gift card if you leave a five star review if that’s a that’s classic the so Rob,
you know I don’t know salsify is different customer categories but you’ve talked to the fair amount about like cpg you mentioned fashion
do you see each of these there’s kind of different category adoption going on because like obviously Electronics were pretty early on
toys of had to get some religion around direct-to-consumer because once T are you went out of business they were kind of left without a lot of options is there a spectrum across categories of behaviors you see in any interesting things there that you can share with listeners.
Rob:
[39:10] Yeah it’s been the categories go undergo their own evolution.
[39:16] With regards to that essentially how much sales are happening online so when we when we got started I remember we.
Spent the first like this is.
2013 and I every two weeks we would call into a different category to try to get a sense of whether they were interested in the product that we were solving and the most miserable two weeks was we called into dental equipment manufacturers for like a whole two weeks,
the see if they are interested in solving these digital experience problems and that went nowhere,
but you know the early traction for online is if you look at Beauty and personal care the cat at the percentage of sales that were online we’re pretty high early,
so a lot of the early companies that we worked with like the Johnson and Johnson’s and Reckitt benckiser and whatnot had already seen some of the some of the growth online and we’re already making some investment in the online experiences.
But you know other companies you look back in 2013 14 15.
But the other categories that absolutely were nowhere online our alcohol for example again there’s rules and regs about purchasing alcohol online drizzly wasn’t a thing yet and so on and so forth,
and so alcohol was nowhere and nobody was.
And you fast forward to the last two years and especially with covid covid has really made alcohol invest in e-commerce in a way that absolutely they.
[40:41] Step function different compared to what it was before but even so the last two years because of the rise of drizzly and others alcohol is come into The Fray and so now there are people with the title of BPD Commerce at Major alcohol manufacturers,
that have clout and that have that have budget that have investment and.
So yeah category by category when a category picks up online I think just sort of follows.
[41:08] A market being available in sales going.
I mean other ones that I’m kind of looking at in the future that word there’s really no online activity right now or like automotive automotive aftermarket pharmaceutical industrial supply distribution like electrical supply distribution plumbing supply,
there’s a there’s a there’s a bunch of those categories that I think are you know on some kind of.
Early part of the adopter curve right now that could accelerate pretty quickly with companies like you know Amazon business coming in and really putting pressure on Distributors so so yeah I think category by category has been pretty interesting at this point most consumer categories of,
I’ve got some some amount of ability to really execute and B2B I think is going to be the next next big wave over the next decade.
Jason:
[41:57] Yeah it’s exciting there’s so much opportunity I feel like there’s a bunch of categories that have barely been touched so they there’s a ton of white space there,
you hide it highlighted alcohol which is super interesting and I might even argue a lot of alcohol is a subset of grocery in a feels like.
Groceries another category that that hugely got accelerated because of covid like I’m not,
I’m not sure that many Grocers could spell digital a year ago and now it’s their number one priority our it seems like you guys are really well well,
situated for that are you seeing that as well.
Rob:
[42:34] Yeah absolutely yeah that the Grocer’s were basically you know year ago it was sufficient for them to maybe list products on a.com and,
and they would use their planogram images effectively as their images and there was a really much of a site experience to speak of,
and over the last year I’ll hold Albertsons a bunch of a bunch of these folks have made really significant online experience Investments I mean Albertsons you saw the two hundred and seventy percent growth or something like that,
they put out on digital the numbers are just super compelling there other.
Jason:
[43:10] Yeah they actually just had another earnings call this week and had another great quarter.
Rob:
[43:14] Another great quarter yeah they’re just they’re just absolutely crushing it Kroger I think was always a little bit ahead of the game from from a digital perspective and which it’s tough for a lot of these retailers is simply,
the cost to invest in making you know click and collect buy online pick up in store the.
Digital delivery to actually get these things to work and be profitable is just an absolutely massive capital expenditure,
and Kroger’s been spending a lot of money on it over a bunch of years and what you know covid has basically allowed them to do is to just sort of.
Go next level on it right actually actually really invest in you’re getting closer to Amazon like aggression and the way that they’re able to go after it so yeah grocery really came online you know it’s funny that you mentioned is alcohol is part of groceries,
the longer that I’ve been in this game the more the more I think about,
I sub sections of the grocery store is almost being totally different universes so like alcohols its own Universe Fresh Foods its own Universe Center aisles its own universe and so on and so forth.
In a way that I don’t think I appreciate it at all 10 years ago.
And each of those has had its own motion with regard to digital maturity and digital execution and all that type of stuff.
Jason:
[44:30] For sure and Frozen again would be a different one.
Rob:
[44:33] Frozen yeah.
Jason:
[44:34] Yeah the only reason I’m at the moment kind of bundling alcohol in a covid way in the short-term artificially,
like the thing you have to remember is seventy percent of alcohol spending pretty covid with on-prem like bars and restaurants and so now you know 90% of it is
off Prim so it’s sold through some retailer and at the same time because of,
everyone’s consolidating trip so where you might have gone BevMo for your booze and Whole Foods for your fresh and Kroger for your shelf-stable stuff,
now Kroger’s winning that whole trip because you can get booze fresh and shelf-stable there so at the,
like I don’t think this will last forever but at the moment alcohol sales at that grocery store as part of that Consolidated trip our way up.
Rob:
[45:21] Oh Dancing Yeah I hadn’t thought about it that way but yeah that’s that doesn’t surprise me this this stat that surprised me the most on alcohol and this is this is changed since then but.
Back in I think sometime in mid July I was talking to one of the heads of e-commerce of a major alcohol manufacturer and they were saying that.
With every restaurant in America being closed with every bar being closed with every Casino being closed with every cruise ship being close we’ve every Beach being closed and so on and so forth.
You would think that alcohol consumption.
And you know you think that the manufacturers there for their bottom line would be you think that Malcolm with something would be down and people they’re just selling less booze because all the places that sell booze are closed and what what I was told.
Who is that in Q2 actually sales for the manufacturers were basically flat so the in-store Kroger.
Bulk booze purchase and the ad home boozing.
Was more than sufficient to make up for every bar restaurant casino cruise ship Beach and so on being closed for the whole period.
Jason:
[46:39] Yeah no it it is crazy and benefited per your original point it was super hard to sell booze they’re all these regulations and God forbid you try to sell booze online it’s even worse and,
as a result of covid a lot of distribution laws got temporarily loosened and so like a interesting sub theme in all this is going to be if.
If legislators are going to try to re impose those restrictions or if we’re now in a digital delivery world for.
For Booze.
Rob:
[47:13] Do you have a take there what do you what do you think that those laws are going to be pulled back.
Jason:
[47:17] I think yeah I think they’re going to partially go back but I don’t think they’re going to go back to where they were I think just like prohibition you know once people get used to this stuff it’s pretty hard to take it away.
And so I don’t know you know what we’ll have to see,
I did want to ask you one more general question on grocery because obviously you guys you know really focus on the digital shelf I want a lot about the digital stuff from you guys,
um despite the fact that groceries booming and we’re selling stuff digitally I still feel like it’s the first inning right if I go to the most successful digital grocers in the US.
It still feels like a t-shirt product detail page with some some produce information filled into it right,
and I like to do this joke I have a bunch of big digital grocer clients and I always show them an audit of their product detail page,
and I have this funny image which is a true image for one of the very large Grocers of their kale product detail page and it’s like a forward description,
like organic Italian kale and then there’s a 256 word disclaimer saying that the information might be wrong.
Rob:
[48:29] Fabulous.
Jason:
[48:32] Um and so I do think like as consumers really adopt digital like I imagine the digital shelf in the future like you think about all the things you’d want to know about,
your your fresh produce before you buy it and you go to China and you look at all the content that the Imam or seven fresh give you,
and it just feels like man we’re so we’re still so early and all this grocery stuff do you see any hope that we’re gonna improve now that everyone is paying attention to it.
Rob:
[49:03] Yeah I mean like if we want to just pull back some of the biggest advertisers in the world are companies that sell.
Products cpg products into the grocery stores right and.
Groceries the biggest retail sector in the United States and and I think that if you look at.
[49:26] Things like television viewership and where where where the percentage of households that actually have a cable subscription just keep plummeting there’s more and more people going to Netflix means that basically people aren’t seeing television commercials.
I think the a lot of the brand dollars that are traditionally spent through a television through newspapers through other means like that.
Are going to need to be redeployed elsewhere to make a brand case and if you start from where the consumer is and work your way backwards consumers attention.
Is digital these days right and all of their shopping patterns I mean right now all of their shopping patterns are.
Online for the most part but you know increasingly in the future more and more will be and so if you’re a brand.
Yeah and you’re looking to make the case for your brand and make the and and really.
Not just sell product but you know build an emotional connection with the consumer and they’ll the heart of branding here.
Those product detail pages are the heart of your,
like more people will see the product detail page for your product on Amazon then we’ll see your TV commercial right more people will see the product detail page on Kroger then we’ll see your TV commercial,
and so I as more purchased behavior and as more traffic and consume fundamentally consumer attention goes to those pages.
[50:48] People will have to fix that problem of the Italian kale that you talked about like who’s ever selling that kale,
should talk about just like you going to Whole Foods right they don’t just sell the kale there’s like a tag that tells about the local Farm That Grew this kale and like all this stuff that’s what you that’s what you need to do it people don’t just buy a product they buy a story they buy values,
and so these product detail pages are going to evolve from,
being you know just a picture of the thing and a title to being full brand experiences and that’s what that’s what I think resonates with people,
and I think this is a broad statement about I mean this is this is a fundamental thing that I believe about most of Commerce like you look at Nike,
what are the greatest brands in the world we were already talking about then you go to a Footlocker.com or or a lot of other sites that still sell Nikes and the Nike,
photos are like the top of the shoe the bottom of the shoe side of the shoe you know the shoelaces.
There’s no there’s no lifestyle shots there’s no let’s do it there’s no embedded video about Nike there’s no nothing right and like that’s where Nike should just be reinforcing the case of the amazing brand that it is,
and and so I yeah in grocery were really I mean we’re really early days there,
but yeah I think it’s inevitable that people are going to focus on improving those experiences as the dollars and the consumer attention moves there.
Scot:
[52:08] Very cool if we if we project a little bit one of the things that I’m always kind of fascinated to hear people’s opinion on is if every brand is kind of going Direct,
and I know you’re not really a big believer in the brand.com but let’s say they’re all out there doing that and then obviously you know Mall type retailers that have multiple brands or closing at an increasing rate.
What’s the world look like when all these brands are going direct is there is there some new aggregation point or what does it look like how do we how do we discover brands in the next three to five years.
Rob:
[52:44] Man I mean that’s that’s a tough question there was a.
Shopify was running an experiment in in a location in Manhattan where they were.
Highlighting a handful of Shopify sites within like a mall like environment and.
They were also running other types of in-store experiments like that where they were saying okay well let’s let’s do like an interesting.
Um I don’t know about like that particular approach because to me it feels like the Amazon for starts towards like what reason do you have to go in there it’s like a bunch of random stuff you know they can’t go in there with a shopping list because you literally don’t know what’s going to be in there.
Jason:
[53:29] Gift for your aunt that’s the main the main mission.
Rob:
[53:33] It’s like yeah exactly like a gift store so I really don’t know I think people are going to experiment because really I mean commercial real estate is going to be pretty cheap.
After this whole covid thing and I’ll just go there’s a lot of retailer closures and most faces you know there’s a lot of love anchors like JC Penney went bankrupt and a lot of those doors are gonna close and and so I think there’s going to be a lot of cheap ways for,
people to experiment to try to answer that question I don’t actually know I mean I think,
increasingly in the world that we’re in we’re going to see more fragmentation of ideas and interests we’re going to see a lot more kind of Niche down interests of.
Smaller sets of consumers paying attention to smaller sets of things there’s less of a mass-market and more of this whole set of small markets of.
And each of those small markets of Interest have ways of perpetuating like new product Discovery across the individuals that are within the.
And so it’s possible that the way that Discovery happens in my view in the future is.
Isn’t like that mall in store browsing experiences at the past but rather,
small sets of people that have a shared interest like you know whether it’s the adult fans of Lego or.
[54:57] Whether it’s fans of the Premier League and soccer in Europe and whatever it is,
it’s these small groups of folks that have distinct places that they go and congregate where they’re going to share ideas of new things and there’s there’s a piece of me which thinks that.
People that figure out a way to unlock those types of communities and those types of engagements from a branding perspective or the ones that are going to succeed on a go-forward basis,
so that’s.
I know that’s not like a great answer to the question I could it’s a really hard question to answer but it’s where my kind of gut inclination is.
Jason:
[55:38] Yeah I don’t know I would give it a good answer I feel like that was very insightful II totally agree on sort of the fragmentation of markets and.
I sort of think a lot of these moments of Discovery are also going to therefore get more distributed to a wider variety of different touch points right so,
you know maybe for shoes it’s Instagram maybe it’s a recipe site for new food products things like that you know I think we’re going to see a lot more micro moments,
happening in a much wider variety of touch points which is I sort of think part of the vision you have for your company right is being the engine behind all those micro touch points.
Rob:
[56:18] Yeah that’s I mean that’s exactly right it’s my.
I believe I believe in that type of thesis and future and it makes it hard for a company to execute like one of the thought experiments I would like to have is.
If you were trying to build Procter & Gamble from scratch today does it look like you know several dozen brand,
giant like it is right now or does it look like a 2000 brand giant or 3000 brand giant where each of the brands is a little bit smaller and more targeted you know,
and I kind of think that there’s there’s something to that so like if I look at a couple products that I bought in like recently they’re related to the CrossFit community,
there’s a up-and-coming brand called Noble and OBU LL out of Boston,
that sells pretty excellent workout gear and it’s really the target the CrossFit Community right and they’ve got a lot of loyal followers in that Community I look at row get the fitness equipment manufacturer we are they.
David you’re killing it and covid are making it an absolute ton of money in covid as a lot of home fitnesses and the community that they’ve got is the.
CrossFit Community as well so these are folks that don’t have to advertise what don’t they don’t have to be in in for example Dick’s Sporting Goods they don’t have to be playing the Amazon game.
They’ve got a built-in brand with a built-in following into the building community and they’ve been able to do well based on that so.
[57:47] So yeah I think I think this whole micro moment small community touch,
engagement problem I think is a is a pretty important problem for lots of people to wrap their heads around and figure out how they’re how their company can or should or or won’t participate in that move.
Jason:
[58:05] Yeah for sure good good call out on no bull by the way and just for listeners know even if you’re super unfit like for example me the their kicks are still super cool.
Rob:
[58:17] They’re so cool.
Jason:
[58:18] I’m a fan too I do want to,
I am a hundred percent agree I think categories like apparel it’s playing out the most right like in the old world Paris fashion show the new trend skinny jean everyone in the whole world by skinny jeans at the same time I feel like that,
that model is just gone there’s thousands of micro trends for different communities all at the same time.
Rob:
[58:42] Thank God because skinny jeans were so I or me and.
Jason:
[58:46] The CrossFit guy they probably worked out better for you than they did for me but still.
I do want to Pivot because we’re running out of time do you obviously we’re coming up on holiday like depending on how you count it already started do you have any opinion or thoughts about what this crazy covid influence holidays going to look like.
Rob:
[59:07] Man I’ve been trying to think about this so my in my family my mom notoriously shops for.
Christmas.
Four five six months in advance right so it’s like with my brother and me and our kids will get an email from from her in August saying hey what’s where’s your kids Christmas list you know it’s like it’s August.
And so this year we got the Christmas list and it made me take a step back and think huh this is interesting because.
[59:41] They live in Florida we live in Boston we’re not going to see them for Christmas like we’re not when I would because it covid-19 traveling.
I think that’s true for a lot of people and what does that mean for the gifts that they’re going to buy and give them normally they shower our kids with a bajillion toys,
and like what are they going to do like ship a bajillion toys to where we’re living and have the kids open up a bill Jillian toys when you know they don’t get to see the kids open up the toys and.
And so I was trying to play this through in my mind exactly what what the impact on our own shopping would be and.
There’s not there’s not there’s not easy decisions on how do you actually make the grandparents and then they grandkids have a great connection across the country in this weird time that we ran,
and so I don’t know man I think it’s going to be absolutely bizarre holiday season just like in the early days I would never have predicted that,
flower of all things with sound with the sourdough Trend was going to blow up,
I’ve been making sourdough for years before it was cool you know and all of a sudden they couldn’t find flower anywhere because it was out of stock I don’t think anyone could have predicted that all of a sudden everyone is a home Baker,
and doing sourdough but that’s what happened and so for this holiday season.
[1:01:01] I think there’s a little bit of trepidation that I’ve got trying to predict anything it’s just everyone’s going to be trying to figure out how to do a remote Christmas with their families sending gifts all over the damn place,
and and so I’d so yeah it maybe maybe it means smaller gifts maybe it means fewer gifts maybe it means more of a focus on,
putting you know like checks for your college savings fund maybe it means you know all a mix of all of the above but it I the only thing that I feel like is for sure is that the.
The purchasing habits are going to look a little different than they did last year and for all the travel and get together and constraints that with us.
Scot:
[1:01:42] Pretty cool we won’t hold your feet to the fire on on holiday stuff one last one and this was just I was kind of in researching the show one of our many research assistants,
pointed out that you guys have at salsify have won several,
not only kind of local local best place to work Awards but some national ones so tell us about that and you know as a fellow founder.
That’s always one of the things I’m most proud about is if you can create a place that’s great to come to work that’s that’s kind of part of the fun of being a Founder I’d love to hear what is it about your culture that is caused all these Awards.
Rob:
[1:02:19] Yeah well I mean oh thanks for thanks for bringing up the I’m very proud of it.
Just like you said in terms of one of having great people and having a great culture as one of the great Perks of Being of coming to work,
one of the things that all three of the founders set in the early days is if you don’t if you’re not building a company that you love going to what’s the point now life is too short,
so first and foremost if we’re going to do anything let’s have this be a place that we just love to work and for us just based on our own personalities the type of jobs that we like.
Our jobs that were fast-paced that were intense but where people were,
supporting each other you know there’s there wasn’t backstabbing or anything like that people understood where you’re where you’re going and there’s Clarity on direction there’s Clarity on your role,
and where each individual had enough space and autonomy to really do their job without being micromanage right where people felt like they could have impact and control and contribution.
And so from the earliest days we focus on.
This concept we called empowerment it’s I know that’s a loaded word but this idea that people were really have an ownership mentality of the company and their role and position in it.
And we tried to keep that as true as we can all the way all the way through scale and so I think I think that’s largely what’s reflected there.
[1:03:45] The types of people that are attracted to that type of environment where you’ve got a lot of individual accountability and responsibility and it’s fast-paced absolutely love working working at in this type of place they tend to stick around a long time.
We also one thing that we did really well as a while back we got a chief people officer Colleen who’s just been absolutely outstanding helping us really codify the culture and.
Make it stick as the company scales you know when you’re when you’re a hundred people are you 50 people or 20 people,
especially because we have three founders we can be a lot of places and everybody can know us and we can perpetuate a lot of the ideas that we want and we get to this 400-person Plus,
range especially with covid and we’re remote we’ve got a European headquarters and we got office in Chicago and my people are all over the place most most of the people don’t know me personally I don’t know Jason person I know Jeremy person.
And and how do we set the culture up to perpetuate so Colleen has been really effective at working through the process of,
taking a lot of the early ideas and things that we cared about and keeping them true as we’ve gotten bigger,
so I think that’s what I would say is that the San Marino having a strong idea of the type of company we wanted to have what’s the core ideal we wanted people to stay true to overtime and having an operator really work with us to make it.
Make it scale.
Scot:
[1:05:09] It’s always weird when you you know you cross this Chasm of not knowing like two or three people that you’re walking by but they know you and you’re just kind of like this is really strange,
that’s when culture got to rely on the culture to really kind of get there you can’t you can’t do one-on-one when you have 400 folks in the company.
Rob:
[1:05:27] I do all these I’ve done all these like YouTube videos like whiteboard videos and things like that and the P that people team.
Has incorporated a bunch of them in the early trainings I didn’t know that they were doing this so for me it’s like I got this problem is compounded when people will come up and say like I saw all your YouTube videos and I don’t know there’s just something that’s.
Cool but it’s also it’s also like a little awkward for me you know what I mean.
Jason:
[1:05:58] Poor baby you rock stars yeah poor baby that you guys are all so popular.
But Rob hopefully like 12 years from now a bunch of those more Junior employees will be on podcast talking about the salsify mafia and all the successful companies that spun out of out of you guys just like we,
we started out with in deca.
Rob:
[1:06:20] Absolutely nothing would make me happier.
Jason:
[1:06:22] And that is going to be a great place to leave it because we have slightly exceeded our allotted time,
but really enjoyed the conversation Rob as always if folks have questions or comments,
we encourage you to hit us up on Twitter or leave us a question on our Facebook page and will continue the dialogue if you got something out of this show I hope you’ll jump on iTunes and finally give us that five star review.
Scot:
[1:06:46] Thanks for all the folks want to find you online what’s the best place to get to you or are you a tweeter or a LinkedIn person or both or.
Rob:
[1:06:55] Is these days I’m more of a LinkedIn person so if you search for Rob Gonzalez on LinkedIn on the bald guy.
I also would encourage people to go to digital shelf institute.org I read on the blog there quite a bit and we’ve got two we’ve got our own podcast where if you like my geeking out and nerding on technology you can get you can get more and more of that there.
Jason:
[1:07:18] There’s some very sketchy guests that have been on that podcast I will say.
Rob:
[1:07:22] Totally sketchy guess.
Jason:
[1:07:24] Speaking for myself awesome Rob thanks again and until next time happy Commercing.
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