A weekly podcast with the latest e-commerce news and events. Episode 301 is our annual predictions episode for 2023 and a recap of our 2022 predictions. We also recap the full retail year for 2022 and the NRF Big Show.
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This ended up being a slightly longer than usual episode, sorry! If we had more time, we’d make a shorter podcast (to paraphrase Mark Twain). So here are some timecodes if you want to jump ahead:
- Recap of the NRF Big Show 1:27
- Recap of 2022 Holiday and Full Year Results 22:43
- 2022 Predictions Scoring 30:34
- 2023 Predictions 54:51
2022 Predictions Recap
Jason:
- NFTs, Web 3, Metaverse, and Ultrafast delivery services are all overhyped and don’t deliver meaningful commerce revenue in 2022. Yes
- Shein exceeds $30B in annual sales, disrupting apparel industry Yes
- Adoption of BNPL services slows down to less than 15% CAGR in 2022. Yes
- Amazon opens more than 100 Amazon Fresh grocery stores No
- Last Mile evolves Veho, X-Delivery, shipium, or Instacart gets aquired No
Jason Total Score: 3 of 5
Scot:
- Amazon launches a competitor to Shopify webstore, possibly via a headless solution on AWS No
- Amazon wins ultra-fast delivery. Gopuff, Gorilla, or Jokr goes out of business in 2022 Yes
- Metaverse gets lots of buzz but no revenue Yes
- Livestream commerce goes mainstream in the US No
- Fabric gets acquired No
Scot Total Score: 2 of 5
Jason pulls out the rare win!
2023 Predictions
Jason:
- At least 2 retail bankruptcies (besides Party City)
- BNPL Consolidation (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay. Sezzle) – at least one merges/exits US or BNPL.
- Shopify launches an ad product such as a retail media network
- Meta/Google/TikTok lose ad share to new social media platforms and retail media networks.
- Live Streaming Commerce Still not meaningful in US in 2023 (less than 5% of social commerce in US)
Scot:
- Amazon uses this 2022 setback/slowdown/reversion to the mean for a public resetting of expectations, but behind the scenes they take share and raise the bar on shipping
- Shopify is acquired
- An innovation in e-commerce powered by ai (gpt4) surprises us by how fast it’s adopted and how cool it is
- E-commerce accelerates back to the mean in 2H after a mean regression in 1H. E-com returns 10-15% growth rates.
- Sephora and/or Ulta move to a subscription model for new product discovery
ChatGPT
“based on trends and current developments in e-commerce, it is likely that we will see continued growth and expansion in the industry, with an emphasis on mobile commerce, personalize shopping experiences, and increased use of technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Additionally, there may be an increased focus on issues such as sustainability and social responsibility in e-commerce”
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Episode 301 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 19th, 2023.
Transcript
Jason:
[0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 301 being recorded on Thursday January 19th I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scott Wingo.
Scot:
[0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scott showed listeners Jason I was looking in our in my podcast app I’m an iPhone user says looking in the Apple podcast app,
we had a review in six months so I thought of the top of the show here we would ask folks if you enjoy the show we sure would appreciate a review if you are in that
player you go into the app you find our podcast
scroll down a fair amount because we have so many episodes about four Scrolls I would estimate and then right there you’ll see the Low Five Stars we would love a five star review or any review that you’d like to leave that would be most appreciated,
we do this for the reviews so we appreciate it.
Jason:
[1:21] Yeah I would just add that makes a great New Year’s resolution because you can literally accomplish it 5 minutes after you met.
Scot:
[1:27] Yeah and you get a dopamine hit and feel feel better about yourself sand Jason and I will be very happy,
Jason today we are going to talk about two of my favorite topics so number one you just got back from the NRF Big Show
and then we are belated with our predictions and recap for last year’s predictions so we’re going to sneak that in here we’re still in January so I still think we’re kind of in the new year a little little close here recording on the 19th but I think we’re still in that window,
so how I was not able to make it at in our F this year but you did and I look forward to hearing what you saw there.
Jason:
[2:07] Yeah yeah it was a good time obviously the biggest efficiency was your absence.
But for any newer listeners that haven’t been there before National Retail federation’s in Trade Organization represents the retail industry and and this is their big event every year this is a hundred year old show,
that is always at the Jacobs Javits Center in Manhattan in mid-January usually in the middle of a blizzard.
Um so so a bunch of things worked in our favor this year during the last couple covid years the Javits Center got remodeled and so.
The main areas where they do Keynotes and a lot of the big presentations and content are now like a new very nice facility that’s very comfortable.
And it was unseasonable e nice weather so it was kind of like 30s and 40s and clear no no snow no no blizzard to have to fly home in.
Scot:
[3:05] That’s good.
Jason:
[3:07] So that got things kicked off on the right foot and then to me the most exciting thing was just the vibrancy,
I don’t think they’ve published the final attendance number but I’m pretty confident it’s going to be just a smidge north of their 2020 attendance so,
that you know given all the things that went on in the last couple of years being positive against your last pre coded year seems pretty good definitely felt like there was a lot of energy people were really happy to be there,
and I was particularly pleased because.
Last year was not a great year they tried to have the show last year there was just a big pain demick spike in New York right before the show so a lot of exhibitors.
Publicly pulled out other exhibitors quietly pulled out and just didn’t show and so you know it was kind of this weird thing where they had.
Um you know a somewhat empty Spartan giant trade Joe for where they you know they frankly made a bunch of exhibitors still come in spite of the fact that there weren’t very many,
attendees for them to talk to,
several of the Keynotes didn’t show up and came via Zoom so it was it was not a good event last year and I was a little worried that that you know people that were forced to participate last year would be resentful and less interested in coming back.
But it appears like we’re back to normal.
Scot:
[4:33] This retail thing is catching on.
Jason:
[4:35] Yeah yeah it’s not going away.
So a couple of the big trends and we won’t go into depth in any of these but you know maybe some of these will come up as topics in subsequent podcast.
[4:49] They’re the last couple shows there’s there there have always been what I’ll call digital shelves like electronic fact tags everybody knows I always like to talk about video displays on shelf Edge smart shelf so that know,
um what inventory they have on them and.
They get incrementally better every year so there were a lot more of them this year they were all better and cheaper.
For a variety of reasons I still don’t think 20:23 is going to be the year that they become.
Super common in the wild but the tech is getting better a related Tech that seems like it has a lot of new vendors in this space is what I call in-store analytics so that’s using cameras and computer vision too,
measure Shoppers in the store and kind of like Google analytics for your your store again I’m not expecting huge deployments this year but it’s,
the computer vision technology is just getting more and more amazing and so that the insights that these things can get from relatively few cheap cameras keeps getting better.
Um there’s a lot of automation at this show so you know there’s the usual.
Auto store and perfect pick which are two of the big automated Warehouse Systems but there are a lot of other.
[6:08] Startup automation things that could bring automated picking to store fulfillment or small fulfillment centers or.
Pick to light systems and gloves like a lot of.
Get more efficient about fulfilling omni-channel order stuff so automation was a big theme.
Another thing that got a lot of space and signage at the show was what all broadly call headless Commerce,
so Shopify made a big announcement right before the show that they were releasing a new offering called Shopify Commerce components and so this is kind of a.
Upmarket headless version of Shopify Shopify has always been kind of a monolithic web app that you know was a super good fit for very small start-up companies,
um and you know some of which have grown to be quite large on the platform,
and they’ve always had a second offering called Shopify plus which was.
Intended to be more Enterprise features but the plus mostly meant more Enterprise sales features not necessarily a lot more Enterprise,
features in the in the platform and so this new offering seems like.
[7:27] You know a pretty evolved set of apis and as a we’ve talked about in a previous episode of this show,
fine but they sometimes called the mock principles,
so they had a big booth that was mostly focused on this Shopify Commerce components,
Salesforce has a very similar offering they already are kind of more enterprise-e and so they were there and then there’s a,
I want to call my startup they’ve been around for a while now so I’m not sure it’s fair to call it a start-up but newer more modern Commerce platform.
It’s called Commerce tools in the chief strategy officer,
from from from Commerce tools Kelly has been on our show before they had a huge presence a big booth and sponsored a bunch of stuff so there were between Shopify Salesforce and commerce tools,
you definitely got a strong headless vibe in the show and then for old timers,
the trade show floor is divided into three sections there’s an innovation Center which is all new startups there we had a great Innovation Center this year was mostly International companies so I companies from Israel companies from France,
there were very small startup showing some pretty cool Tech there’s the upstairs trade show for which is all the.
[8:56] Kind of incumbent Legacy vendors the Microsoft’s the oracles the ncr’s,
all the big players with a really big boost and then the more digital players that you know they might exhibit it shop talk or would have exhibited it at shop dot org in the past,
they’re in the downstairs exhibit hall and it all this is not true but it felt like this year one of the rules that was in place to exhibit at the downstairs exhibit hall is you had to rename your url to end in dot AI.
[9:30] Every every single vendor downstairs.
Was you know some some execution of AI and some of them were super interesting and,
I think we’ll talk about this later but I’m very optimistic will be a big part of the Commerce ecosystem this year and some of them are,
you know pretty speculative and far-fetched so so you know a good breath of everything and then I’ll sum all that up that’s what the floor look like the content you know is mostly,
some some decent key notes from from Big retailers and the problem with key notes from the CEOs of big retards is they’re not necessarily going to share anything.
[10:14] Proprietary or new insightful like it’s kind of interesting to hear their their philosophies but like I don’t tend to learn a lot that I’m going to use,
um in my day-to-day gig from the content sessions and in our f,
um but what I do love is talking to all the people in the halls and aisles and by far you know kind of trying to take everyone’s temperature that I could I could get time with the overwhelming consensus was,
this is 2023 is going to be a really uncertain year for retail that there’s a lot of,
economic challenges that people are going to be really focused on profitability and a lot of the Retailer’s talked about how,
um their budgets are getting reduced significantly that the focus is really going to be deploying that Capital against things that can have a short term.
Benefit to their cost structure and help them get their profitability up and so I kind of interpret that as.
We’re going to see a lot more a lot fewer investments in customer acquisition and front end systems and a lot more investment in back-end systems and optimizations.
Scot:
[11:23] Pickle I got a million questions on Automation in you know kind of the state of Art and my mind is still the key the system is there something out there you think
at least on the you kind of mentioned in store but I’m thinking more Warehouse side anything there that’s kind of.
Jason:
[11:41] Yeah so there’s two big vendor like so Kiva is Amazon’s proprietary system and to my knowledge they don’t sell it to others yet do they.
Scot:
[11:49] No but it’s still kind of the state of Missouri.
Jason:
[11:52] Yeah yeah they certainly could have some point so so you know there’s kind of two philosophies of these like big fulfillment center automation.
[12:02] Go go get bring the goods to a picker or you know you know so you actually move Isles which is what the key this system does it moves bins,
um to a human picker that then pulls them out so the picture gets to stand still or these fully automated systems that like you don’t bring things in on conveyor belts and so there’s two big vendors,
um there’s a store a vendor called Auto store which is like a,
very dense set of bins that are stacked quite high and they’re shuttled around on conveyor belts so it’s a 3D delivery system of these these bins,
and there’s a bunch of big retailers if you’ve highly automated your your fulfillment center in the u.s. like you’re probably using Auto store or their competitor perfect,
and so both of those had full live demos at the show that where you know are super mesmerizing to watch because they have all these.
[13:01] These bins flying around but then went there were was a lot of startups that were more Kevo like,
so instead of like a conveyor belt that ends with your exact products you know in a bin ready to package,
um these are things that are like lifting shelves and moving the Shelf to a to a picker so even in that Innovation Center there were several Israeli companies that you know we’re in a tiny little 10 by 10 booth,
with the little robot that could you know lift up a gondola full of products and bring and move it around a warehouse.
Scot:
[13:34] Merkel and then
from afar I saw Shopify really hitting the we’re headless to kind of train which I thought was interesting because they kind of have,
you just kind of dip their toe in that water
I read it as they must be hitting some headwinds maybe at Shopify plus maybe some churn and realize they had to go into that market pretty hard so I wonder if our friends at Fabric and some of these other places were starting to take some share from.
Jason:
[14:02] Yeah so I don’t know if it’s as explicit as taking share I think there’s this notion new companies are highly likely to start life on Shopify and it’s a.
If a family member calls me and says I want to start a business and sell something online I’m sending him to Shopify it’s the easiest safest best best way to do it,
so there’s a notion that those companies ought to grow up and you know either by something else or spend a lot more money with Shopify,
and so I think a lot of people looked at Shopify plus and they said oh yeah that’s that’s for the startup companies to evolve into,
and then I think a lot of people are looking at the these Shopify Commerce components in that same way I actually suspect that’s not the case,
the overwhelming majority of startups that start on Shopify are are going to go out of business,
right I just the attrition rate is super high and so most companies aren’t getting bigger and need a bigger platform,
um the I think what they’re trying to do by having a mid-tier kind of mid-market offering is not so much help their existing customer base to grow its to acquire,
um
a new customer base that you know frankly has a little more proven business model and a little more stability to kind of help them with their Journey a little bit right and so,
um I think that was the intent but far behind Shopify Plus.
[15:23] Shopify plus never got a ton of traction and they actually had a pretty big staff reduction in Shopify plus earlier last year so.
E-commerce components does feel like a restart like they’re tackling I think the right problem this time like before they were tackling,
the Professional Services that they thought you know an Enterprise client would want in order to use Shopify this time they’re there they’re tackling the.
The functionality and the flexibility that a mid-market or Enterprise client might want so I think this is going to be,
an interesting play but I don’t think it’s so much that Bigcommerce or Fabric or Commerce tools,
um stoled customers from Shopify I think it’s more Shopify want some of those customers in its ecosystem as well and obviously they have a lot of resources to go after them so that’s kind of how.
How I interpreted it.
Scot:
[16:20] We will agree to disagree on the a.
Jason:
[16:26] As we’re about to find out from the predictions I am occasionally wrong.
Scot:
[16:29] Yeah we all are this is the The Humbling part of this program is trying to make predictions
and this current world we live in AI everything was one of the things you have to have a DOT AI anything that blew your mind,
you and I had chatted about you know we’re starting to see a eyes for example that’ll create product detail Pages where you anything getting some traction or is it all just.
Jason:
[16:54] Yeah so so I so a I think there’s a trend that’s super annoying to me I’m old and curmudgeonly is everyone knows but like,
there are a bunch of companies that are decided to AI is cool and then they’re just desperately looking for a problem to solve with AI and so and sometimes they don’t understand the space very well or the problems or the economics of the problem very well and so there are a bunch of,
AI companies,
the I don’t find particularly interesting right like there’s probably 30 AI companies that are like we’re personalization engine to do better product recommendations with a i.
[17:29] And personalized product recommendations is super important there are,
15 Enterprise products that have been using AI for 15 years and are the is the AI getting much better.
[17:43] Yes but.
Like the you’re not necessarily like bringing anything new to the party when you’re you know a small start-up in that space,
um so there are you know some things I don’t get super excited about.
The AI for inventory management is super interesting like these models that are doing demand forecasting that are doing kind of.
You know most retailers kind of have a pretty simplistic model for for inventory balancing like you know what what inventory do I put in what fulfillment center how much extra inventory do put in a store for store fulfillment,
things like that and now they’re using AI to make that much more robust,
um AI promotion engines so you know instead of kind of a one-size-fits-all promotion where hey we’re going to do 30% off this product across the whole country,
um we’re going to you know throw some business rules to an AI engine that’s going to decide like when and where to offer a promotion and it’s going to,
factor in a lot more localized factors and personalization factors and so you know there might be deeper discounts and,
in some stores and other some circumstances and others are even in someday Parts than others so so I think all of.
AI to improve these existing business processes is super interesting and then the the new use cases.
[19:12] I’m very convinced that the majority of e-commerce content the majority of product descriptions we read attributes we read are going to be written by AI in the future like it’s gotten really good there’s a bunch of benefits to having it read it.
I’m about in the old days Channel advisor at a bunch of clients they created product content for and then they syndicated that content to a bunch of different retailers and one problem was that content was the same at all those retailers so from an SEO standpoint it didn’t look very unique,
and one of the things that a I can do trivially is take your master product content and make 10 variants that are.
[19:48] Equally human readable but are unique so that you could Syndicate different content to eBay Amazon and Walmart for example which is.
Pretty cool and as we talked with mad about last week,
you know Goodwill finds is using AI to onboard all their new skews pretty efficiently so I think it’s really good for that and then the last thing I’ll say is there’s a lot of super interesting stuff around computer vision so both,
pulling product attributes out of pictures,
um using the security cameras in the store to to do inventory checks and to do merchandise and compliance checks and pricing checks,
um and stuff like that and using that that inventory to understand customer using those security cameras to understand customer Behavior better even using computer vision to do better loss prevention which loss prevention,
is a really big issue with this show and there’s an explosion in organized crime this year and so that you know kind of,
predicting crime events is kind of an interesting thing the days a eyes doing so like plugging a i into a camera is yielding I think a lot of pretty interesting use cases for retailgeek.
Scot:
[20:57] Yeah very cool did you get to see some of our favorite folks.
Jason:
[21:04] I did I did I saw a lot of past guests I think I made a joke on Twitter which we’re going to have to do a separate show about how sad I am about everything that’s happening on Twitter,
but the.
The most common thing that happens to me now is I have a loud obnoxious voice that everyone at this trade show can recognize yrg from this podcast and so everyone is super excited and I get tons of compliments I feel bad that you weren’t there because it’s kind of,
it feels nice to have all these people recognized us and talk about how we’re you know an important part of their,
there we can help them in their job so I really appreciate that and I want to say hi to everyone I,
I did cross paths with at NRF it was awesome to meet you and thanks for for stopping and saying hello but then the next word out of their mouth is where is Scott because I’m way more interested in meeting Scott than I was in meeting you.
And I have to say that you’re you’re too much of a big deal the coming in or out.
Scot:
[22:04] No just I’m allergic to the cold and had a little bit of work to do on my side the auto industry’s on a different cycle than the retail industry sadly.
Jason:
[22:15] Yeah but they are they are colliding have you like Auto Commerce is going to be a big thing.
Scot:
[22:19] Yes yes was almost all Automotive companies which is kind of out of never did not have that on my bingo card.
Jason:
[22:27] Yeah they’re going to have to rename it AES or something Auto Electronics Show.
[22:43] Yeah as everyone knows my pandemic hobby is trenching US Department of Commerce retail data in Tableau and kind of annoying that in our F ended on Tuesday night,
so try to get up Wednesday morning and fly home but I had to wait to leave my hotel room because the 8:30 in the morning Eastern Time on Wednesday the US Department of Commerce published,
their monthly retail sales data and this month is particularly exciting to me because it’s the December data so that lets us do two things.
Look at November and December together and kind of understand what happened in holiday and then it also obviously lets us Wicked January through December and start talking about,
20:22 as a whole year which lets me retire all my 2021 talking points so so that was exciting.
Scot:
[23:36] Recap of what what did we learn.
Jason:
[23:37] Yeah so that’s about a four-hour show but I’m gonna recap the two top lines in under 30 seconds so we’ll start with a holiday so if you add November and December sales which I would argue the best view of holiday is November December January,
generate data is not available in a lot of people think of holidays November and December so if we just talked about November and December,
and I’m going to take a narrow definition of retail for purposes of holiday I’m going to pull cars out,
I’m going to pull restaurants out and I’m going to put gas stations out because it’s a super volatile thing that’s not very tied to Holiday behaviors so November and December sales were up,
5.2% versus last year so from 2021 which was a monster year we went up another 5.2%,
now most people were disappointed when they saw that number,
big for a couple reasons last year we were up 13.4 percent using the same definition of retail so.
[24:38] You know a much lower rate of growth in last year and most people you know are having to comp against last year and they set their financial goals based on last year,
and also in the middle of holiday like especially around Black Friday a lot of,
third-party analyst publish a prediction they say we have Secret inside data we have credit card data and we think retail sales are going to be 9% or 12% or you know there were all these estimates,
there were optimistic,
all the digital guys came out and said digital sales are up significantly from the previous year and the inner F came out with these vague statements and said like more people are going to be shopping on Black Friday than ever before so you heard all this good news around Black Friday which made you think.
[25:20] This is going to be a big holiday season and then and so you 5.2 sounds like a huge disappointment compared to some of that over exuberant,
but to put that in perspective.
[25:34] The historical average growth is four point four percent so 5.2% is meaningfully above the historical average,
and I don’t want to say I told you so but all of you that attended my webinars about holiday performance,
I heard that that I was predicting in that five to five and a half percent even even back then so so there’s a rare occasion of me getting it right.
Here’s the piece of bad news about that whole thing that 5.2% was all inflation so if if you adjust those two months for inflation we were actually down 1.8% from last,
so the big takeaway from holiday is.
[26:12] It was disappointing it was much more difficult to make a profit on this holiday than it has the last several Prophets,
so a lot of retailers came in a holiday with pretty robust inventory levels they didn’t sell through their inventory what they sold they didn’t sell it particular High margins,
um and so that’s setting us up for a uneasy first half of 2023,
retailers have too much inventory and and not enough recent profit so we’re likely going to see a lot of discounting and you know more pressure on on income as they kind of work through all that in.
[26:47] So that’s the holiday Debbie Downer the full year is I think a better story the full year we sold seven point one trillion dollars worth of stuff which that’s the first time we passed the seven trillion dollar mark,
that’s up 8.2 percent from last year again last year was a monster year,
the best year in my my career of retail so,
being up 8.2% versus that you know again is a really good story it’s a bad news is you pull inflation out of that and we were basically flat we were up 0.2.
Um so through that lens 2022 was not a fabulous year but the one thing I would say is,
what’s really interesting is where is retail compared to before the pandemic and cumulatively,
retails up 31% from 2019 so so the full year of 2022 is 31 percent higher than 20,
um an average year over the last 20 years in retail for a full year would be up 4.7% so.
31% is still almost twice what we would expect over a three-year kakkar so you know not a,
knock it out of the park year but still you know very healthy industry on the backside of this pandemic.
Scot:
[28:09] So if we kind of you know there’s that famous chart you hate and then we reverted to the mean does this mean we’re kind of back on the meat.
Jason:
[28:19] Because it’s wrong and I get to make fun of it.
Scot:
[28:21] Do you love to hate how about that are you hate to love I don’t know and the so we reverted kind of back to the mean do you think that this kind of resets and we get back to that kind of traditional growth.
Jason:
[28:35] I still think there’s some factors yet to play out so I’m not sure we’re going to get completely back to normal for 2023 I think we’re going to,
we are still seeing some residual pandemic effects and the main residual pandemic effect we’re seeing is.
The spending is still skewing to experiences more than Goods so there was pent up demand for experiences,
so we’re you know we’re we’re possible we’re seeing people invest more in experiences and less than Goods,
but we’re also starting to see a lot more economic uncertainty especially in the bottom two quartiles and so you know you’re starting to see even kind of lower middle class people,
change their purchase Behavior you know you’re hearing in Macy’s earnings that they’re saying their consumers start starting to make some,
you know economic trades in their purchase behaviors and so a lot of that’s going to be.
Kind of cooked into this 2023 so I don’t think we’re quite back to kind of perfectly the mean but I do think the,
the ratio of store sales to e-commerce is likely to look a lot more normal this year than it has the last couple of years.
Scot:
[29:47] Pretty cool and this is the one that doesn’t really give us e-commerce data.
Jason:
[29:51] Yeah there’s some loose e-commerce data in there which is why I didn’t quote it but next month they will publish the queue for e-commerce data so that will give us.
A full year of e-commerce,
you know we’re starting to use these T numbers instead of B numbers in e-commerce.
Scot:
[30:21] Got it cool we’ll have to do a big show on that one and you can just have a two hours a day spewing data.
Jason:
[30:28] Why I can describe my charts it’s soup there’s no more fascinating podcast than listening to a dude drone on about a chart.
Scot:
[30:34] Yeah that he can’t see alright world will put a put a pin in that one and come back to it,
on the all right so let’s talk about predictions so I had to go back and one of our many interns research this it was back on episode 284 where we did our predictions and
as is our custom we like to rate and review the prior Year’s predictions and then lay down a stake for the next year so if we go
I guess you’ll kick it off so you’ll go through my predictions and I’ll say how I did and you’ll kind of chimed in and then we’ll flip.
Jason:
[31:10] Awesome and are we going to do off of yours and then all five of mine is that the easiest way to do okay.
So we’ll start with your first prediction Amazon is going to start getting serious about a Shopify competitor in potentially double down on headless.
Scot:
[31:27] Yet this was a Miss as far as I know you know what I didn’t see coming was Amazon has had a bit of a rough year in and especially the back half of 22 you know they’ve done some layoffs they’ve,
shuddered a lot of their physical stores they stopped their plans for big grocery expansion.
I’ll get that get that out on the record here early and yeah they’ve even started shedding warehouses so I think you know what what’s happened is in this post there’s been some really fascinating articles where,
turns out they had this automated inventory system and its name is Scott ironically with one t and it.
They trusted this thing so wholesale lie that it just went kind of Rogue and did not see the downturn you know this.
Track attacking back to the mean and
it kind of went Bonkers and so it’s a little bit of an interesting case study of AI gone wrong and that has them having their hands very busy with their Core Business and they have not had a chance to
punch Shopify in the nose and in some ways they may not have to because Shopify also had a lot of wind come out of it sales.
Jason:
[32:41] Yeah yeah I agree and I’m inclined to give you a note that too but if I were making an argument that you got it partially right the argument would be that they rolled out a really interesting feature called by with.
And we talked about on the show we had a beta tester on the show that was super bullish on it and it’s kind of a trojan horse that creates them interesting.
Problems for Shopify that like frankly I’m still not sure shopify’s figured out what they’re going to do about but that went from a pilot program to full deployment.
The week before in our F and it was a major feature of Amazon’s booth and it’s weird they branded the booth AWS but like.
The booth was talking more about by with prime than it was a WS and and you know they’re not they’re not in the same divisions Within.
[33:31] Um so you could argue by with prime is partly a Shopify competitor,
but in the interest of me staying competitive in the predictions I’m not gonna not giving it to you and I will say,
of your Amazon commentary is certainly true,
but be a little careful like you know people tend to look at some of that and go oh man Amazon’s really flailing like they’re really feeling you know it’s a huge thing for them to cut back on their fulfillment capacity and you know cancel some leases and just remember,
they bought more fulfillment capacity than anyone else in the world has in a single year.
The year before so it’s it’s not like they’re getting out of retail.
Scot:
[34:15] You’re spoiling one of my.
Jason:
[34:16] Find that people over over read into the you know that accurate – news but they think it’s it’s a more material part of Amazon’s business than it is.
Scot:
[34:27] Yeah I integrated that into one of my future predictions.
Jason:
[34:31] All right so so we’re going over one I like it so far I’m winning that your second prediction is Amazon puts a hurting on go puff and others go puff gorilla and Joker.
Don’t get out of 2022.
Scot:
[34:48] Yeah I’m going to score this one a win I don’t I think somebody’s out our business and I think go Puffs on its last legs if it’s did it do a Down Round and layoffs and I don’t.
I certainly haven’t even used it I don’t know if it’s I’m sure it’s still around but I feel like it is on its last legs and
I’m increasingly here in North Carolina like in Chicago you’ve had this for a while
I’m increasingly getting offers that say Hey if you if you throw a little bit more in the cart you can get this thing overnight which has been kind of you know I feel like Amazon is really starting to shorten that delivery window
in this post covid world.
Jason:
[35:26] Yeah so I’ll give you a yes for that I do think a lot of the instant delivery companies like pulled out of markets or flat went out of business or left the US in 2020 so I think that’s fair.
I’m not sure go puff is publicly position themselves as quite as dire,
as you did I could be wrong but they you know they’re the biggest player left standing and and I think they have some some positive and negative indicators.
The one thing I would quibble with is it’s not clear to me if they are if all this instant Commerce not working is because Amazon put a hurt on them or whether,
it just wasn’t a good business model than enough customers were willing to pay for.
Anyway right so I’m not sure if Amazon was the direct cause of all that pain or not but I do secretly think,
Amazon has much better service levels than a lot of people realize you live in a wonderful place but it’s.
It’s probably not a tier-one market for Amazon I talk to a lot of people in cities that The the vast majority of their orders are delivered same day and certainly the vast majority of stuff I ordered from Amazon,
I get that order in by noon and it’s it my doorstep before 10:00 that night and so that still is different than this instant delivery but.
[36:49] I think Amazon’s service level is darn impressive and I think you know that certainly you didn’t want to be an investor in instant delivery in 2022.
So I’ll give you a yes.
Scot:
[37:01] Yes Pooh okay.
Jason:
[37:06] So your third one is metaverse lots of demo videos no Revenue.
Scot:
[37:13] Yeah think I nailed this one the Facebook has had a lot of Pi interface for spending an inordinate billions and billions of dollars on the Oculus the sales have dramatically underperformed even
you know even moderate to light expectations there’s no real use case that’s popped out of here and then just generally and then certainly if we look at our e-commerce world there’s really not much going on here so this one’s been kind of a dud I’m a little
bummed because I love AR and VR I just don’t think we’ve kind of come up with the use case I think the wild card on
this technology is there’s increasingly detailed rumors of Apple having a device and if anyone can figure this out I think applicant but until they do,
I think we’re not going to see a lot of metaverse updates.
Jason:
[38:01] Yeah yeah I think this is a category that to me like if people are familiar with the Gartner hype cycle it fits it perfectly like.
There definitely is a chance that there will be a version of The Meta verse that’s very meaningful at some point but right now it’s wildly overhyped.
One could quibble with your in precise language like you say no revenue and of course there are some,
some novel examples where there’s a little bit of Revenue and the one that has meaningful revenue is for the kids is real box where you know it’s.
Game Revenue it gets its you know ingame credit it’s not like you know people are shopping for real world of goods in the environment so there’s a few things but I certainly think the spirit of your things exactly right that it’s,
it’s wildly over-hyped and not.
A financial driver in the in the near future and I would even argue nobody can even agree on a definition of what the metaverse is a it sounds singular to fight this pack that it’s it’s quite poor rural.
You know a lot of people think the metaverse has to be on web 3 which means it’s open and,
Roblox is the example most people use the meta verse which is not on web three and you know a lot everybody thinks of the metaverse is VR and a lot of definitions of metaverse so Ike.
Do not require VR so I don’t know I’m cynical in the short term for sure so I’ll give you a yes.
Scot:
[39:27] Okay.
Jason:
[39:29] For live streaming goes mainstream in 2022.
Scot:
[39:36] Yeah,
here I was hoping to kind of weasel out with the mainstream so I will point to some successes so what not is a
very collectible oriented Marketplace that is all live stream
and I think they’re gnd is north of a billion it may be closing in on two or three so that’s pretty mainstream and then I’ve read probably 20 articles in the last 10 days about Tick Tock e-commerce and every time I dig into it there’s no data it sounds like it’s just new so I was hoping to take credit for that in some way but
don’t think I can so I’m going to probably score myself a no on this one.
Jason:
[40:18] Yeah so tricky like I think there’s some use cases where a live streaming has become a thing and collectibles,
is certainly one and it does I guess toy depend on what you meant by mainstream here’s the thing the most generous definition of social commerce all social commerce in the US last year was about.
60 billion in total sales and live streaming was likely less than 1% of that 60 billion so I.
[40:48] Social commerce isn’t that big a piece of Commerce and live streaming is in a very big piece of social commerce so I through that lens,
I feel like it’s not a big thing and fun fact none of the Commerce on Tick Tock is wives.
It’s so people do I think confused short form video with live streaming,
um and so I tend to think live streaming is overhyped in the US it does work in China but what people don’t understand is,
that live streaming in China is,
flash deal-sales like all of them come with a significant price offer and the reason that you you want to watch that stream when it’s alive is because,
that offer has scarcity attached to it and that offer is not going to be available two hours after the video plays so you have to watch it while it’s being broadcast in order to get that deal,
um and you know none of the u.s. versions have really been that that deal oriented and without that deal why have live streaming when you could just record a short form video and,
you know 100 times more people watch it over the subsequent two weeks or three weeks or whatever so so for all those reasons,
I feel like live streaming has been a little overhyped in the US and I agree with you why I probably didn’t go mainstream this year.
Scot:
[42:09] Yeah I don’t know Tick Tock could be live stream it’s kind of there’s a stream.
Jason:
[42:16] But it’s yep are you watching it when the person talks I mean that’s what it boils down to or is it recorded on a server and you watched it days later.
Scot:
[42:23] I don’t Tick Tock I don’t want I don’t want my get brainwashed.
Jason:
[42:26] Yeah spoiler alert it’s not last.
Scot:
[42:29] Okay.
Jason:
[42:33] There is a live flavor on Tik-Tok but it’s been quite small.
Scot:
[42:37] Yeah I’m two for two so I’m Batman 50.
Jason:
[42:40] So you’re to noes to yeses and then your final prediction,
is that fabric which is a an e-commerce platform / Marketplace and and the CEO Fazal has been on a show a couple times and you were predicting that they would.
What says fabric acquisition so that could mean either that they made a big acquisition or they got acquired.
Scot:
[43:04] Yeah it was being acquired.
Jason:
[43:07] Yeah that’s what I said.
Yes and I met him at the show and I can confirm that he’s still at fabric.
Scot:
[43:14] How are they doing.
Jason:
[43:15] Really well well I think they feel like,
there are well positioned and benefiting from some of these headless trends that we talked about and we had a good chat Faso as a longtime veteran of the industry and ran e-commerce at Staples and and some other places so he’s always fun to talk to.
Scot:
[43:33] Here’s a head-scratcher so facile likes to be called Faisal and then we have a guy at 50 that wants to be Fazal so so and you know you know how it is like I know it’s I cannot get it right because I always
it’s 50/50 coin toss but it always lands the wrong way so it’s.
Jason:
[43:52] Yes I’m familiar with those dilemmas I also really struggle with fabric because his company is called Fabric and then there’s another company called fabric that make micro fulfillment centers for grocery e-commerce.
If you like you can have two companies with the same name in roughly the same space.
Scot:
[44:08] I give him.
Entrepreneur credit because he raised a boatload of money when valuations were super high which was smart if it’s enough to get through to the from the peak through the valley to the next week so we’ll see how it goes for.
Jason:
[44:25] I’m knocking on wood you just can’t hear it because I’m such a good audio editor.
[44:39] It’s kind of your historical average right now I don’t know I’m.
Scot:
[44:42] Usually do better than half yeah it.
Jason:
[44:43] You’ve done better actually I think that’s a down year for you I think it’s up here for me and a down here for you.
Scot:
[44:48] Post covid it’s hard to predict what the what’s going on in the world.
Jason:
[44:53] And and as we have learned doing five years of these as hard as it is to predict something happens it’s also timing is so tricky like very often we predicted something just in the wrong year.
Scot:
[45:04] Yeah I gave up on Amazon competes with the other shippers and that one still I still think it’s coming.
Jason:
[45:10] Hundred percent there’s a weird cognitive bias where like after you’ve been wrong once or twice you hate to predict it again even though it probably would be smart the.
Scot:
[45:18] Yeah yep.
Jason:
[45:20] I’m with you all right well let’s see if I can hang with you at all.
Scot:
[45:21] Alright let’s see how you did yeah
so your first prediction was you love web 3 you’re going to mortgage your house put all your money in FTS and this token that you were super excited about that was going to the mood called FTX how’d that work out for you.
Jason:
[45:40] It worked out better for Michael investor Tom Brady than it did for me.
Scot:
[45:44] Well I don’t know he’s in pretty rough rough time right now.
Jason:
[45:49] Neither of us are having our best years.
Scot:
[45:50] Butts.
Jason:
[45:53] I’ll be different reasons but I feel like you might have slightly misstated the spirit of my prediction.
Scot:
[45:59] Oh yeah I misread this so it says in FTS web 3 meta 15-minute delivery will be Duds less and ft dollar transactions will happen in 21 verses 22.
Jason:
[46:12] Yeah so I was down I didn’t think any of those things would be a big deal this year I guess one of those kind of overlap with you because you also didn’t think instant delivery would be a big deal.
And I don’t think any of them were a big deal we’ve covered them pretty exhausted lie but in order to make this a fair prediction I tried to put something that was more measurable and so I said in Ft transactions will be down in 2022 from 2021 and.
I got to be honest I looked it up before the show and so the good news is I’m right.
In Ft transactions gmv for an ftes and in the u.s. in 2021 was 25 billion 25 Point 1 billion and this year it was twenty four point seven billion so just barely down and I have to be honest,
I feel like I dodged a bullet because.
The way you buy an mft is with a cryptocurrency and the two main cryptocurrencies are each less than half their value.
From the beginning of the year and so you would think like,
in Ft transaction should be way down just because the value of the underlying currencies is way down but you know apparently like despite the fact that it’s not a mainstream thing it grew enough that I was I almost ended up being.
Wrong on my on my number but that’s a long-winded way of saying I feel like that’s a yes.
Scot:
[47:32] Got it
cool so we’ll give you a yes prediction to here in North Carolina we call it Sheen you fancy City people call it she in your prediction was that they would do over 30 billion more than double the previous year so since we’re a year
off so you predicted in 2022 they would double a guest from 2020 1.15 billion
you check this close and I do so I’m gonna have you self-regulate this one.
Jason:
[48:00] Yes I nailed it like almost to the penny except that you know they’re not a public company so we don’t we don’t really know the revenue but that
estimates for for 20 21 where 15 billion so I predicted 30 billion in 2022
they did a raise in March or may of May of 2022 and they disclosed during that raised that halfway less than halfway through the year they were already at 16 billion in Revenue,
year to date,
so I was tracking really well and they’re doing another raised right now as we speak and their side note taking a ginormous haircut on that race so the,
the May raise was that a hundred billion dollar valuation the razor trying to do right now is it 64 billion,
um but they disclosed in the in the deal docks for this raise that they finished the year at 30 billion which is,
means that their sales significantly decelerated in the second half of the year but it means my prediction was exactly right.
Scot:
[49:04] Very good congrats on that one.
Jason:
[49:06] Yeah and we could be out of time and not do the other other predictions if you want.
Scot:
[49:10] Well there’s one country showing let’s jump into this one
so your third prediction was buy now pay later which we call B and P L is going to lose momentum it had 29 percent growth and 21 and you said it would slow to sub 15 and 22.
Jason:
[49:28] Yeah and so it depends on exactly what math you’re using but the actual growth rate in 2022 is 48.6% so is that is that more or less than 15.
Scot:
[49:39] I find that hard to believe.
Jason:
[49:41] I do too I was surprised.
Scot:
[49:44] Yeah no I think I’m gonna give you this one because you know the stocks on all these are down clar NE is on life support and I don’t know I feel like these guys the the largest,
kind of tie up was Peloton and buy now pay later and you know Peloton is had a really rough go of that in 22 and took all you know down the biggest buy now pay later operator with a firm so
I feel like he just was a yes.
Jason:
[50:17] Okay well I’m not gonna argue with you I feel like they got a lot of,
negative momentum for a variety of reasons in in 2022 and right now we’re seeing their valuations go way down because their default rates are starting to go up and what I’m noticing is,
they’re all trying to Pivot out of buy now pay later into other,
other retail services but like depending on how much of a stickler you might be like they still apparently sold a lot of stuff on buy now pay later last.
I’ll take the yes or at least I’ll take a half a yes.
Scot:
[50:48] I’ll give you the win but I’ll scold you for bad predicting like never get specific with percentages.
Jason:
[50:53] I know I know well I was I feel like so many people make these like lame predictions that I was trying to be super specific but I agree that was that was dumb alright thanks man you should great all my stuff.
Scot:
[51:02] Now this next one is kind of a Whopper so this is this is kind of my favorite so you predicted Amazon would open 100 grocery stores how’s that one going.
Jason:
[51:15] It’s great they opened one store and that store opened 365 times.
But if you’re doing store count.
I missed it pretty substantially that I think they have 44 stores in the US and 17 stores in the UK so well short of 100,
the end and I’m way less optimistic that they’re going to invest in that that concept,
now than I was a year ago when I made this prediction so that’s definitely a no the only fun fact is compared to any other retail Concept in Amazon this one did pretty well because they literally closed every other one,
and they’re they’re laying off a ton of the retail people like right now as we speak unfortunately so.
So I think that’s a clear no it does not seem like the immediate future for Amazon is in brick and mortar.
Scot:
[52:07] Yeah yeah they’ve really pulled in the horns on that one.
Jason:
[52:11] Fun fact then this means nothing no one should interpret this but Amazon close their bookstores in 2022 and Barnes and Noble was opening new book store some joint too so I think there was a time when we would have said that could never happen.
Scot:
[52:25] Yeah one of these is not going to be going well
okay your last prediction was that last you there would be a last mile delivery acquisition of some kind you mentioned instacart v0x delivery and ship iam.
Jason:
[52:41] Yeah and none of them were acquiring so I think,
I miss this I mean if you go deep cut enough I found there’s a couple like four million dollar transactions that happen but none of the name ones did anything there they did some fundraising the the premise behind this,
this prediction last year was,
that one of the ways that a lot of e-commerce sites deliver packages is not exclusively through FedEx UPS in u.s. post office,
that increasingly they’re using a Federation of a bunch of small last-mile companies and that often there’s a middle man that’s helping aggregate all those small a smile companies that make it easier to ship with them,
and so my thought was that’s becoming a more important.
[53:27] Part of the e-commerce echo system that somebody’s going to try to make a big play there and kind of roll some of them up or acquire some of them and and you know kind of add them together and make something more valuable,
um and it didn’t happen last year and what’s interesting is,
Fedex rates and UPS rates are going way up this year like one of the conversations I had with a lot of e-commerce sites,
last year was that their last mile costs are going up at an untenable rate so this.
This methodology is becoming more important and more popular so this is a classic example,
if I were smart I should probably take this this prediction and double down again on it for this year but spoiler alert I did not do that I just took the no and I moved on.
Scot:
[54:12] All right so out of your five you had sixty percent so you had three correct and to wrong so you you win the year so congratulations
you get the virtual trophy you get an mft,
ironically you get the nft the Jason Scott exclusive one of one in Ft.
Jason:
[54:38] I’m super excited about that for all our listeners I only accept in ft’s that are minted on proof of stake blockchains I don’t accept proof-of-work blockchains because they’re an ecologically.
Scot:
[54:51] So it’s Solana for you all right I know we’re Up Against Time the shows always go a little long so I’m going to kind of lightning round my predictions for 2023.
[55:15] All right so number one Amazon uses the this 2022,
perceived setback that I think’s way overblown you kind of mentioned it at the top and,
I think what’s going to happen is sure e-commerce is going to revert to the mean but under the hood I feel like they’re going to be taking share at a really aggressive clip,
the reason to borrow on shipping the selection of things that are near you is going up,
I have through my day job I can see that they are making a lot of good changes with last mile delivery they’re still putting a lot of effort into that and improving it and making it better all the time so
so basically I think they’re going to you know if I have to,
get a little more specific I think they’re going to take a fair amount of share in 2023 from the rest of e-commerce so they already are like
more than half of e-commerce and I think they grab a chunk so that’s kind of how I would measure this is what percentage of e-commerce Amazon has and I think they’re going to take,
pretty good chunk.
Jason:
[56:19] I like it cool.
Scot:
[56:20] That’s my first one number two is I think Shopify is going to be acquired you know so I think they’re doing this headless thing the first party piece hurts them and a lot of
you know Facebook so that’s a natural Binding Together they’re there we’re going to talk about it in a future show but they’re kind of they have never really executed on this idea of a Marketplace
they’ve had a lot of weird cultural things where they talked about getting rid of meanings and then like their hole.
Admin interface was down for days it feels like something’s going on they’ve had a lot of people a lot of turnover they’ve gone totally virtual I’m not a fan of that I think it’s hard to be super Innovative and have to whatever the world changes have to hop on a DSM calls to figure out
what everyone’s thinking so I think
I think they’re they definitely we’ve hit Peak Shopify probably you know in 2021 and this is when it starts to be time maybe some people say hey this wouldn’t be a bad time to to tap out here,
we’ll see.
Jason:
[57:24] Wow that’s awesome one just quick curiosity one problem is the valuation like while it’s gone down a lot is still pretty high like so the pool of acquirers is pretty small or are you thinking the valuations going to keep going down low enough that there’s.
That more people might take a shot at it.
Scot:
[57:42] Yeah I think I think even at this valuation there’s probably three or four acquirers and I think the valuation could go down further.
Jason:
[57:48] All right cool I like I love the big bold ones.
Scot:
[57:51] Yeah you’re going to hate this next one so this one is where everyone thinks AI is hype I’m thinking there’s going to be a big innovation we don’t see it from these new AI engines specifically right now the state of the artist G PT 3,
I know people have seen GPT for and they all can’t express enough how game-changing it’s going to be so I think there’s going to be something in the e-commerce world not
this is like so it has to be kind of a big idea so I can’t be just like a chatbot or like another recommendation engine but I think there’s gonna be something kind of,
big here that’s hard,
it’s so different that it could be hard to I can’t tell what it’s going to be but I think something big is going to happen here that kind of makes our heads explode so that’s my prediction that we actually see a really,
disruptive piece of technology kind of AI that impacts the e-commerce world.
Jason:
[58:47] Okay I like it I don’t have a other than it’s going to be higher so you hard to measure but I guess we’ll know it when we see it.
Scot:
[58:56] Yeah.
Yeah and then since we’ve got great each other gives you a lot of fodder to push against ich number for e-commerce is going to accelerate back so I think
and the first half will have these recessionary wins
I’m a eternal optimist you’re typically on the pessimist I think we’ll have a soft Landing maybe we don’t have much of a recession and then in the back half will be kind of through this post covid Hayes hopefully I think
part of this prediction in Furs that inflation will will kind of get under control and we’ll see e-commerce
go back to kind of its average growth rate which has been historically 15 percentage so that’s my prediction there.
Jason:
[59:38] Okay yeah I think they’re a bunch of people that are like kind of e-commerce growth is tapped out which is I think they’re wildly wrong so I certainly take the bullish side of that one for you.
Scot:
[59:50] Yeah and then this one I have to give props to my daughter I was she was looking over my shoulder and I was doing these and she said I have one and I said you don’t understand the stakes I’ve got to be Jason because I did bad this year and she said
I don’t care I’m 16 and I spend a lot of time at Sephora and Ulta this is her speaking not me
I also do because I’m with her but now she can drive so I’m spending less time there and I think they’re going to come out with some kind of a subscription model so,
there you go I don’t know any specifics but that is her hot take.
Jason:
[1:00:21] Okay and and by that you don’t mean they’re going to transition their whole business to a subscription you mean they’re going to add some kind of subscription offering okay.
Scot:
[1:00:28] Yeah yeah and you know I was thinking you know what was that one there was a box that was Beauty used Beauty Box every over the name of that.
Jason:
[1:00:38] Yeah there.
Scot:
[1:00:39] I don’t think I made it yeah and I said you mean like that.
Jason:
[1:00:43] Box is that what.
Scot:
[1:00:44] Birchbox well very good man yeah old school way to pull that one out
and she said no it’ll be more like I can go to the store and they’ll I can I can pick up kind of like they’ll pull stuff for me that comes in and I could just go to the store and it’ll be already there for you.
To understand.
Jason:
[1:01:05] Clarifying question because far be it for me like I want to learn to like and your daughter certainly have the future behavior that neither of us understand yet.
Is she thinking like that in the same way that Birchbox was kind of a discovery thing she’s thinking this is some kind of.
Discovery thing of new products because I actually think Sephora already has a like you know if you use this amount of moisturizer will automatically send you a new thing a moisturizer every three months.
Scot:
[1:01:35] This was tied more to influence your site so I think there’s these influencers and they each have kind of staked out you know there
each store has a set of influencers and I think she’s starting to see them come out with seasonal products kind of like a yeah and I think that it’ll be a subscription to that kind of thing.
Jason:
[1:01:52] That makes total sense that would be new and I.
Could seem cool a lot of the traditional subscriptions lately have not done as well as some of us might have expected but so yeah this this will be interesting kind of like the next gen of those Discovery boxes.
Scot:
[1:02:09] One thing I did notice in my last six I think this is for they have a end cap that says inspired by Tick-Tock and it’s always empty.
And as estimate I was like are they she’s like oh every time they put something there so I was up and I was like wow that’s pretty amazing.
Jason:
[1:02:28] The Tik Tok made me buy it in cap.
[1:02:38] I’m 100% with you social commerce is a thing and it’s mostly not about people ordering stuff on Tick Tock it’s about people discovering stuff on Tick Tock and then buying it from Sephora.
Scot:
[1:02:47] I know I was trying to get some partial credit.
Jason:
[1:02:51] Yeah I like it though all right I think those are great.
Scot:
[1:02:54] And then in the spirit of my third prediction which was a I will change the world I actually asked chatgpt to make a prediction and it said.
Chatgpt:
[1:03:04] Based on Trends and current developments in e-commerce it is likely that we will see continued growth and expansion in the industry with an emphasis on mobile Commerce.
Personalized shopping experiences and increased use of Technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
Additionally there may be an increased focus on issues such as sustainability and social responsibility in e-commerce.
Scot:
[1:03:30] And when it said that I was thought I thought you were punking me I thought you were on the other side of the chat because I was like that’s exactly what someone at publicist would say.
Someone with a really long title like eight words that’s the exact kind of synergistic linguistic word salad that they would they would throw out.
Jason:
[1:03:52] Yeah there’s nothing super tangible in there but it sounds really good That’s a classic chatgpt answer.
Scot:
[1:03:58] So one way my my one prediction could come true as if you’re replaced by an AI so I’ll just I’m not that’s not a prediction is just one way I could cheat my prediction.
Jason:
[1:04:08] So fun fact is some people know I have a Forbes column and my my most recent Forbes article was about the demise of e-commerce being overhyped.
Often I read those articles from scratch myself sometimes I write an outline or a first draft and I send it to a pupusas copywriter and they send me back a first draft and then I edit it and.
When I do that I have to do a lot of work because of the copywriters are really talented writers and use proper English and I’m really.
Less sophisticated so to put it in my.
In my voice I have to change it a lot so this most recent Forbes article I had chatgpt writer and I said write a Forbes article in the voice of Jason Goldberg that has this title and makes these Five Points.
Um and so it didn’t really do any research for me it didn’t like pick any of the answers because I gave it all the answers in my prompt and the data I wanted to support it.
It was kind of like I handed it my outline and had it right the first draft in my voice and it was way closer to exactly what I wanted then the ones I get from the copywriter so I probably will never write a first draft from scratch again.
Scot:
[1:05:25] Does that mean that copywriters going to lose their job.
Jason:
[1:05:28] No she’s gonna move to higher value stuff from now the actual smart people to do some good with proper English.
Scot:
[1:05:36] Unrelated we going to have a new new podcast host.
Jason:
[1:05:42] The yeah that we’re way over on time but like the the really scary one is these awesome avatars that can make,
I can learn your voice and then sound perfectly like your voice are now out in the wild from several companies including Adobe and,
and I conveniently have 3:00 of my own voice and your voice on wreck so I think I can make the two of us say anything we.
Scot:
[1:06:07] Yep I think again.
Jason:
[1:06:09] Awesome all right well those all seem like good predictions that seems like you have a very viable chance of coming back and getting your nft trophy back for me,
I will whip through mine,
I suffered greatly because we are recording this late I wrote my predictions of the beginning of the year and I said Party City and Bed Bath and Beyond are going to declare bankruptcy,
and unfortunately pretty soon declared bankruptcy yesterday in Bed Bath and Beyond hasn’t cleared yet but they’ve announced publicly that there,
they’re likely to so I can’t really use that prediction but I’m going to say that there are going to be at least two other retail bankruptcies besides Party City in the in the space this year,
um you know I think Bed Bath and Beyond is likely to declare bankruptcy but I also think we might see some of the kind of model-based apparel retailers or.
There’s a few other other retards I have my eye on so I do think we’re going to see a little bit of attrition in the kind of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.
Um so I’m starting off with a positive note.
Scot:
[1:07:16] So retailers go out of business you win all right.
Jason:
[1:07:20] Yes that’s I’m yes I’m betting on.
The second one I’m in a way doubling down on my buy now pay later I wasn’t sure you were going to give me credit for last year so.
If they were hurt and swelling down last year I think at least one of them has to go away this year so like I’m not sure anybody goes away via a.
An actual bankruptcy but I could see a roll up or merger or acquisition of some of these guys so I’m saying at least one of the top four,
Kleine a firm after pay or says they’ll don’t don’t exist as a standalone entity at the end of 2020.
Scot:
[1:08:02] I think that’s pretty pretty safe.
Jason:
[1:08:07] All right in full disclosure I had a really unsafe prediction there that I changed to this.
My third prediction may be opposite of you you think shopify’s gonna struggle I’m I don’t necessarily disagree with that it’s interesting to think they might have peaked last year,
um but a offering that they haven’t made that they’re crazy to not make and I am pretty I’ll be shocked if I don’t see this year is.
We see some kind of,
aggregated retail media network from Shopify so you’re one of the million stores on Shopify you can opt into showing ads,
on your store and advertisers instead of having to buy ads from Individual stores that would all be too small and scale to be meaningful,
can buy ads from a aggregated Shopify interface that then.
Get distributed to all those sites like very similar to like Google AdWords but in the Shopify echo system.
Every other retailers kind of monetizing their traffic,
we’ve seen some other products now we’re shopify’s aggregating stores so there’s that shop app there’s now an aggregated search in that so I just think it’s a no-brainer that Shopify to try to defend themselves from,
from Amazon that’s making a fortune on retail media networks is going to try to launch an ad product in 2020.
Scot:
[1:09:33] Yeah we have a guest coming up a little bit of a tease what we call in the podcast Biz at ease we have a really interesting guest that’s going to talk about an R MN.
Jason:
[1:09:45] I love it will conveniently I feel like they come up somewhat in my next prediction as well which I think in in aggregate metal Google and Tick-Tock lose advertising Revenue in 2023.
Um so we’ve talked a lot about the the negative,
mobile privacy impacts on meta and Google Tick-Tock has actually been the most robust fastest growing,
platform of the of the traditional social media networks and 2022,
but I actually think they’re going to run into more and more concerns about the Chinese ownership and these like partial bands and all that sort of notes and there’s a lot of new,
opportunities for advertisers to spend their money so I think these retail media networks are starting to take real dollars Microsoft launched a retail media Network,
at NRF last week and there are new social media networks that you may be familiar with through your kids but that most adults working our industry have never heard of,
that are now getting quite large and out and growing more rapidly than the tick-tocks of the world and that’s things like be real,
um I think by the time at all Nets out I think the big three met a Google and Tik-Tok have less less share of the add digital ad space,
next year than they did this.
Scot:
[1:11:08] Kumar you big on be real.
Jason:
[1:11:11] I am not because it wouldn’t be real for a over-aged dude to be on be real.
Scot:
[1:11:18] Okay good so you are.
Jason:
[1:11:21] Be kind of creepy.
Scot:
[1:11:21] By not being on beer.
Jason:
[1:11:22] Exactly the way for me to be realized to stay far away from it but I like to watch age appropriate people that are using it,
and then my fifth prediction there’s a little salt in the Scott was wrong about live streaming is that live stream e-commerce still won’t be meaningful in 2023.
So and I’ll make it like slightly more measurable going back to my that stupid way to predict in the future comment from earlier so last evening still isn’t going to be 5% of social commerce Revenue next year.
For all the reasons already talked about like it’s an itch it.
[1:12:02] There’s a great use case which is 121 Commerce as sales people helping people in their home that’s a live streaming I think there’s Collectibles and Flash sales and you know some of QVC is live streaming stuff like that but there’s not going to be enough to really move the needle,
and I think marketers would be a lot smarter to be investing in in social discovery and the influencers that your daughter is talking about at Sephora,
then they would be to make a live streaming product in 2023 and I did not have chat gbt make any of my prediction so I thought just for fun.
Right if I were Scag Scott Galloway what would my,
my big shocking prediction be and I thought because he likes to do contrarian things and so my foe bonus prescription some predictions,
is that Jeff Bezos comes back to take over Amazon this year.
Scot:
[1:12:55] Yeah that’s he’s really dropped off the radar I may not be tracking it but I haven’t really heard from him for a while he was last seen on a boat in a bathing suit.
Jason:
[1:13:03] Midlife crisis and I feel like it’s almost over I feel like the stock would get a big bonus if he came back he handed the reals rains 2nd jassy on a specific day in May which was the anniversary of when Amazon was founded,
and so I think it wouldn’t be surprising to see him maybe not like.
Show Vandy Jesse out but maybe he comes back as CEO and Andy keeps the president title or something like that.
Scot:
[1:13:32] This is what Bob Iger did it doesn’t he kind of gave the reins to his dude left and then did nothing about talk bad about him and then the first sign of weakness came in and kicked him to the curb so that’s you know it’s good for the ego it could be part of this midlife crisis.
Jason:
[1:13:45] No I do think that was inspired by Disney I will say.
Jeff and Andy seem way less acrimonious and more collaborative so I don’t think it would have that same I picked you as my successor and now I’m going to stab you in the back and take my job back from you kind of vibe.
I did see an interview with Andy Jesse shortly after that Disney thing and the interviewer joked he said you seem like you’re a lot safer than Bob Iger.
We have certainly lived up to our reputation as being long-winded we’re a little bit over time but this is a super fun episode we’ll put all the predictions in the notes so you can you can see them if you don’t want to listen to the whole thing
and I’ll put a note up front that if folks want to jump the skipper first 30 minutes of updates and banner and get right to the predictions that you can do that as well,
so I want to thank everyone again for putting the time in and all the other great comments and feedback we got at the show but you know if you could do us one extra favor and write some of those great comments and feedback you gave to me live,
in a iTunes review we would certainly appreciate it.
Scot:
[1:15:00] Yeah and thanks everybody we appreciate you staying tuned for our predictions would love to hear your predictions tweet them to us LinkedIn Facebook or for Jason you can be real at him and he’ll watch someone else read that
and until next time.
Jason:
[1:15:16] Happy comercing.
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