The Jason & Scot Show - E-Commerce And Retail News

EP321 - Amazon Q3 2024 Earnings Recap In today’s episode of the Jason & Scot Show, Jason and Scot dive into the latest developments shaping retail, tech, and consumer trends heading into the 2024 holiday season. Here’s a breakdown of the topics covered in this jam-packed discussion: Amazon Q3 2024 Earnings Release Amazon Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript 🎉 Holiday Season Sentiment & Retailer Anxiety • With the holiday season shorter than usual due to a late Thanksgiving, retailers face the challenge of fewer shopping days. Consumer behavior trends indicate a shift toward essential purchases over non-essentials, creating mixed expectations for holiday spending. • The impact of the election is expected to influence consumer sentiment, media spending, and holiday promotions, with Amazon and Walmart predicted to perform above market averages. 📈 Amazon Q3 Earnings Highlights • Retail & GMV: Amazon’s retail revenue surged by 7.2%, with U.S. gross merchandise volume (GMV) rising 9.9%—nearly three times the industry average. • Efficiency Improvements: Amazon’s focus on fulfillment efficiency under CEO Andy Jassy is paying off. The company’s same-day delivery options and regionalized inventory system have led to a 25% improvement in fulfillment cost efficiency. • Growth in Essentials: With increased demand for everyday essentials, Amazon is capturing market share from traditional pharmacies, offering same-day delivery for prescriptions in select cities. 🏢 Amazon’s New Store Concepts • Whole Foods & Amazon Grocery: A new Amazon grocery concept opened in Chicago, catering to convenience items like packaged snacks and sugary drinks, which contrasts with Whole Foods’ health-conscious inventory. 💸 Amazon’s Profit Engines: AWS & Advertising • AWS: With a 19% increase in AWS revenue, Amazon is now operating at a 38% margin. Demand for AI-powered compute continues to push AWS growth, even as it faces GPU supply constraints. • Advertising: Amazon’s advertising revenue reached $14.3 billion, growing 19% year-over-year. With a nearly 70% estimated gross margin, advertising may soon outpace AWS in profitability. 🛒 Rise of AI-Powered Search & Perplexity’s Native Checkout • Perplexity’s Surge: Scot shares his switch from Google to Perplexity as his primary search engine, noting the emerging competition from OpenAI’s ChatGPT search. Perplexity now includes shopping links, allowing users to check out directly through Amazon, hinting at a new era of AI-driven shopping. • Impact on Retailers: Retailers need to rethink SEO strategies as search shifts toward AI-powered “answer engines” that may fundamentally change how products are discovered and purchased online. 📡 What’s Next for Alexa? • Amazon’s next-gen Alexa, powered by large language models (LLMs), faces delays into 2025. Scalability and usability challenges highlight Amazon’s shifting internal dynamics and potential headcount reductions in its Alexa division. 🔍 Is Google Search Under Threat? • Perplexity’s and OpenAI’s expansion into search could spell trouble for Google. With monetization still in the early stages for these answer engines, the retail industry is watching closely to see how they’ll shape online shopping behavior. ⭐️ Tune In, Subscribe, and Leave a Review! If you enjoyed the episode, help us reach more listeners by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for tuning in! Episode 321 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, November 4th, 2024.  http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show. This is episode 321 being recorded on Monday, November 4th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg. And as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott Show listeners. Well, Jason, you've been out there traveling more than I have. What are retailers saying about the holiday? Are they lots of excitement? Are they more worried about the election and they'll worry about the holiday? what's going on out in the retail end. Jason: [0:54] Yeah i feel like the the like webster word of the year is going to be anxiety obviously we're a day before election day and everybody's anxious half the country is going to be depressed no matter what happens there but i feel like retailers are also anxious about holiday it's a weird thing we won't we don't have to get into the whole thing but it's the shortest holiday season we get uh thanksgiving super late so it's five days shorter than last year. So there's fewer days to spend on stuff. Consumers have been spending slowly, trading down the lower priced goods, buying more everyday essentials and foregoing non-essential purchases for a while. And then the election is a major distraction. It also is really hard to buy media and break through all the noise. You live in a swing state. So I assume you haven't been able to turn on a tv or look at your phone for several days um yeah. Scot: [1:54] Wall-to-wall and three inches of mail every day it's crazy. Jason: [1:56] Yeah yeah and so like like even if you're not someone that's super focused on the election like it just like the black friday ads just don't break through all that noise and it's more expensive to put that by the media for those ads and all of those things so you know there's some there's some historical precedent in previous elections that you tend to get a little bounce in spending after the election, but no election's been this polarized before. So I'm less confident that history tells us exactly what's going to happen here. And then there's this huge vibe session thing still going on where, you know, people are generally pessimistic and anxious about the economy and, you know, laser focused on the price of goods and spending less, even though honestly, like most of the macroeconomics are actually like pretty solid. Like there's a lot of economic good news that you would ordinarily expect to translate to consumer confidence and more spending. Now there was a slight uptick in consumer confidence for the first time in a while this month. So there's plenty of tea leaves, however you want to interpret them, but there there's very little certainty. My I look at all this and I say, on average. Jason: [3:15] The biggest retailers that are, you know, best at really being highly efficient and low cost. So the Amazons and Walmarts of the world are going to do reasonably well. They'll outperform the market. They'll have lower margins and a bunch of specialty retailers and big box retailers and people that aren't quite as efficient are going to have a really hard time. But, you know, I hope I'm wrong. Scot: [3:39] Yeah. Wow. Lots of wasn't there. So we got through the the longshoreman thing. Right. And then isn't there a big budget thing where the government could shut down or are we is that been kicked into. Jason: [3:53] It's kicked till post-election. It may still be in, there may be another budget thing in December. But again, like, depending on what changes in the House and Senate, like, that could be like a trivial additional continuing resolution or, you know, someone could go nuclear and try to shut down the government. So I think it is a risk. Scot: [4:17] Yeah. Okay. I don't know. We'll see. So lots of mixed messages out there for retailers to try to parse there. Jason: [4:25] Yeah, exactly. But we at least know what happened to Amazon in Q3. Scot: [4:36] Amazon News. Your margin is their opportunity. Yeah, yeah. So on the eve of Halloween, Amazon announced their results. And coming into that report, Microsoft had reported kind of slowish cloud growth. Turns out they're having a hard time getting enough GPUs and they're really having to stretch to handle all their customers' needs, which you would think would be positive. But Wall Street is kind of because they also see this whole mixed signal thing. All they care about right now is short term signals. So they were kind of down on Microsoft. And then everyone and then Meta also reported and they had a great quarter, but then they said they're going to really ramp their spending on GPUs going into next year. So there's this really big kind of wall of worry around all this money on these GPUs, which are for AP. Scot: [5:28] Artificial intelligence or ai and they're mostly nvidia chips so nvidia is off cycle so that i think they report in the 20s like right before thanksgiving so i'm going to be watching that one carefully so you know amazon is largely driven these days by aws so that was kind of feeding into that there's a lot of concern that amazon was either going to miss for a similar kind of thing like microsoft or they were going to announce they're just going to like buy an ungodly number of GPUs. So there was a lot of, I believe the stocks sold off going into the report, which was interesting. Usually Amazon kind of lifts a bit the day of the report. So those ended up being unfounded. They achieved an 11% overall revenue growth and operating income hit 17.4 billion and beat forecast by 18%. And that was the seventh consecutive quarter of operating income above guidance, which is good. So Jassy kind of like reset it low enough and has gotten better now that he's CEO of kind of managing expectations is kind of how I read that. And then the looking forward guidance was very well received. So looking at Q4, they kind of gave a band of seven to 11% growth. When you have 11% and you're going into Q4 and you're kind of showing 11%, that's good because a lot of people worry that they're going to project a slowdown Because when they do this, they've already got a month's worth of data. So

EP320 - News, First Half Recap, Early Holiday Preview http://jasonandscot.com 0:23 Welcome Back After Hiatus 2:51 Upcoming Events in Retail 7:28 GroceryShop 16:02 Retail Growth Trends 21:28 Concerns for Holiday 2024 30:27 The De Minimis Provision 40:27 TikTok's Impact on E-commerce In this episode of The Jason and Scot Show, we discuss the current state of retail and e-commerce. We analyze macroeconomic factors impacting the retail landscape, noting a 3.4% growth in core retail and a maturation of e-commerce, dominated by giants like Amazon and Walmart. We address consumer sentiment heading into the holiday season and the potential influences of the upcoming election and interest rate changes. The episode also covers the role of AI in enhancing personalization experiences, challenges faced by dollar stores, and supply chain issues. We conclude with insights into Amazon’s recent earnings and their strategies to engage younger consumers through TikTok Shops. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Download the complete 54 page deck of all my insights from the US Dept of Commerce Retail Data for the first half of 2024 here https://rgeek.co/retail2024 Transcript [0:23] Welcome Back After Hiatus Jason   [0:23]Welcome to the Json and Scott show this is episode 320 being recorded on Monday september 16th 2024 I'm your host Jason retail gee Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot   [0:38]Hey Jason and welcome back after a very long time, Jason and Scott show listeners Jason our last show was an early May so it's been about a little over a 4-month hiatus and when people ask me I always blame you do you blame me. Jason   [0:57]I do blame you and I'm bitter because in my mind. Nobody's really complaining to you but like I I've gone called out on stage by like I've I've been heckled by people that are like what are you going to do a new show. Scot   [1:15]It's part of our it's it's a Nintendo like strategy where you you dribble you know if you could really constrain Supply scarcity that drives demand so yeah. Jason   [1:25]Yeah it it we are we are playing 3 dimensional chess in a world of checkered players. Scot   [1:31]Exactly the the real reason is as Chief digital Innovation retail and payments and grocery officer your title's gotten bigger and your your more famous your allies on a plane I can never record because I'm like how about now he's like Paris how about now Australia how about now India so you've been flying all over the world. Jason   [1:52]I sadly I have been it does feel like travel is back there there have been more International trips this year than any year before coid so I I can I can only partially deny that accusation. Scot   [2:08]Cool well we're glad that we have you here for for an hour give us an update what are you any uh show you know what's going on out in the world of retail as you've been expanding the globe for the Json and Scott show. Jason   [2:20]Yeah it's been another Super interesting year for retail we'll we'll certainly get into some of what we think are the key topics that have been planned out this year but I have attended a bunch of events I I can't even remember which ones where since this this last show visited a bunch of customers out in the field which is always great learning new things from them [2:51] Upcoming Events in Retail Jason   [2:40]but the upcoming show is in early October is grocery shopping in Las Vegas so I'll be moderating a panel on. AI enabling Next Generation personalization, at at that show which I always look forward to to grocery shop and then a week later they're they're shop talk is moving their show their other stuff to Chicago so they're going to have their first, fall shop talk that will be in my backyard in Chicago so I'll be curious to see how if the world wants another another iteration of shop talk every year. Scot   [3:18]Yeah give us the behind-the-scenes did you like throw down the gauntlet and said shop talk must move to Chicago or I'm not going to attend or and run all the speaking stuff. Jason   [3:28]I basically did that with everything I told every client that they had come to Chicago I told shop talk and I told you you had to come here to record the podcast and yeah you'll note we haven't had a lot of podcasts and you know I still have the same 3 customers here I've always had. Scot   [3:44]But you got to show them to me for at least that's a 1 w. Jason   [3:46]I did but they really just added a show they're just looking for more Revenue so like it seems like it's probably not. Not just me but I feel like your LinkedIn feed has been more active than me and mostly with accolades for for the the fund that you helped kick off. Scot   [4:05]Yeah yeah so the just to update everybody I'm in a post spiffy world so started spiffy in 2014 and then, you know decided to to we got to kind of north of a 60-ish million run rate which is plenty big lots of employees lots of things going on and I had started this little side hustle well first of all I started this thing for our little local ecosystem here called the tweener list in 2015 which was just a little passion project and then started a little fund around that called the tweener fund which invests in early stage startups so I've I've really enjoyed that and decided to, move on from spiffy and make this my full-time gig so have been really enjoying doing that and actually have. I'm sure you do this where you have a list of things you're kind of like want to learn about and you can hardly ever get to it and I've been doing a lot of that the last 4 weeks and 1 of the big 1 is AI I've been going really deep on AI and it's been been a lot of fun to play around with all the cool new stuff going on there and I got a couple interesting ideas I'm not going to reveal anything but there's some interesting if you think from a AI native remember how we used to talk about mobile native well now thinking AI native I think there's some interesting things that could happen in the world of e-commerce so I'm going to I may go back to thinking more about e-commerce so we'll see. Jason   [5:23]Come on back though we're we're waiting for you the water is fine man they're they're for your point there's a lot of super interesting stuff the grocery shop will be fun a a show after that that I'm looking forward to is NRF because you know they have this Innovation Pavilion and they've kind of upped the the, rigger around recruiting exhibitors at The Innovation Pavilion this year and I think it's going to it's a big year for Innovation so, probably be a cool time for all of us to meet in the New York in January with global warming it's not even cold anymore. Scot   [5:58]Not been there not too long ago and it's still pretty darn cold for this North Carolina. Jason   [6:04]Oh okay fair enough fair enough I'm just last year was the first time it snowed in like 2 years in New York at at in her uh and then. Scot   [6:10]Okay yeah yeah last time I remember trudging through like 6 inches to get to your hotel which was painfully far away. Jason   [6:17]I mean that's yeah that's been my normal life so it's been weird that you haven't had to take the heavy coat to New York so although I wouldn't recommend that if you go to New York in January I'd bring that vote uh. And, I feel like in addition to everything else I know we're going to jump into the retail but all the Apple software updates dropped today so cool new icons and emojis and and delayed chats so I can have, like Emoji based chats hit Scott Wingo at every hour of the day now it's amazing. Scot   [6:48]Nice I look forward to that at 4:00 a.m. I'll have my do not disturb on to counteract your your attack. Jason   [6:53]Yeah although I may need you talk about new things you want to learn 1 of the things I want to learn is how to make Do Not Disturb work right in the the modern app like the system because I feel like all the focus modes have made it complicated. Scot   [7:05]Yeah I have to have you know that that kind of funny YouTube where the dad puts on 6 seat belts that's me putting on do not disturb I have to do the physical thing check the moon do my watch hit D and D in a profile and then that's that that combination of things I don't know which of them does it but that seems to stop everything. [7:28] AI in Grocery Shopping Jason   [7:23]Yes I feel like I'm in a similar boat but it would be interesting to figure out how to do it for as intended. Scot   [7:29]Yeah or just we know it works so just keep doing it do so just give us a preview of grocery shop can AI do better recommendations than kind of the old school way we used to do it. Jason   [7:42]So 1 would hope certainly it can do it at greater scale than we used to do it there's some anecdotal evidence that it's. Better it you know part of it I'm I'm curious to talk to some of these folks So So Meta will be on my panel. They they have a strong POV you know what's going on in the digital ad space right now is all the the ad platforms are trying to talk you into going hands off the wheel and turning over. The bidding to their AI engines and I would say at the moment it's an uneven playing field there like if I if I talk to my. Performance media folks they'll tell you that the the AI robots from some of the platforms are very effective and tend to outperform a manual bidding and on other platforms that they they wildly do not so. Jason   [8:33]That it'll be interesting to kind of hear their perspective 1 of the panelists is hungryroot, which to me is a super interesting example they they're truly do

EP319 - Amazon Q1 2024 Recap http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep into Amazon's first quarter results for 2024, analyzing the company's performance in various segments such as retail, offline and online sales, marketplace, AWS, and advertising. They also explore the impact of AI on Amazon's business and provide insights into the company's future guidance for Q2 2024. Amazon Q1 2024 Earnings Release Amazon Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript In our latest episode, Jason and Scott cover a range of topics, starting with their reflections on recent events such as May the 4th and Cinco de Mayo. Jason shares intriguing stories from his extensive travels and interactions with listeners worldwide. Scott delves into the intersection of e-commerce and the auto industry, honing in on Carvana. The duo also delves into the U.S. Department of Commerce retail indicators data, shedding light on trends in retail sales and e-commerce growth. The conversation pivots towards Amazon's recent earnings report, contextualizing it within the realm of AI investments by tech giants like Meta and Alphabet, offering valuable industry insights and analysis. The discussion continues with a focus on Amazon's earnings report, zooming in on concerns around AWS amid heightened competition from Alphabet and Azure. The rising trend of AI investments, particularly in data training applications, is explored, alongside the growing popularity of open source AI models due to cost and privacy considerations. Despite a conservative Q2 guidance, Amazon impresses with robust revenue that surpasses Wall Street expectations, particularly in operating income. The retail segment shows exceptional growth, exceeding operating income estimates for both domestic and international divisions. Notably, Amazon's performance in brick-and-mortar stores, spearheaded by Whole Foods, demonstrates resilience with a 6.3% growth rate. AWS stands out with a 17% growth, dispelling market share concerns and showcasing accelerated revenue growth, illustrating Amazon's continuous growth potential and innovation prowess. Scott delves deeper into Amazon's positive quarterly earnings report, emphasizing the remarkable revenue performance, especially in operating income. Insights are shared on Amazon's successful agnostic approach to LLM models and the potential advancements in generative AI. The conversation shifts towards the burgeoning ads business at Amazon, underlining its profitability and future growth prospects. Scot also outlines Amazon's Q2 guidance and the potential impacts of consumer spending patterns on the retail sector, including concerns about changing consumer behaviors and economic pressures shaping market dynamics. Jason complements the discussion with additional perspectives on consumer behavior and economic influences reshaping the market landscape. Furthermore, we embark on a detailed exploration of supply chain logistics, with a spotlight on Amazon's expansion into third-party logistics services, revolutionizing traditional retail strategies by sharing proprietary capabilities for wider adoption. Insights from Andy Jassy shed light on Amazon's logistics business approach. The conversation expands to include how companies like Spiffy are embracing a similar model of sharing proprietary products to drive innovation and revenue growth, showcasing an evolving landscape of retail innovation. The podcast unpacks the complex world of grocery retail, highlighting Amazon's experimental forays like Just Walk Out technology and the Amazon Dash cart, while examining the challenges in delineating Amazon's grocery sector strategy. A comparison is drawn between Amazon's strategies and those of rivals like Walmart and Target, who are adapting their product offerings to match evolving consumer preferences, offering a comprehensive view of the dynamic retail and supply chain management sphere. Dive into our engaging discussion, explore retail dynamics, and keep a lookout for more insightful content. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 319 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, May 5th, 2024. Chapters 0:23 The Jason and Scott Show Begins 2:56 World Travel Adventures 5:53 Commerce Tools Elevate Show 6:53 Jason's World Tour Plans 7:22 Where in the World is Retail Geek? 20:43 Amazon's First Quarter Earnings 23:23 Sandbagging Strategy 26:45 Amazon's Dominance in E-commerce 27:44 Online Segment Growth Analysis 28:53 Offline Store Segment Analysis 31:35 Spotlight on AWS Performance 34:32 Data at AWS 42:02 Gen AI Revenue Growth 46:24 Consumer Pressure 49:56 Supply Chain Evolution 53:46 Leveraging Technology 58:08 Disruption in E-commerce 1:01:54 Amazon's Grocery Strategy 1:05:01 Retail Industry News Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show. This is episode 319 being recorded on Sunday, May 5th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason Retail Guy Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott Show listeners. It's been a while, but first, happy Cinco de Mayo, and also a belated May the 4th, Jason. Did you have a good Star Wars day? Jason: [0:49] I did. I did. I feel like Star Wars Day always makes me think of the podcast because I feel like we have spent many of them in my latter life together. Scot: [1:01] Yeah, absolutely. Any exciting new Star Wars experiences or merch? Jason: [1:08] No, I understand you got some vintage merch. merch. Scot: [1:13] It's not, but they, back when I was a kid, you would go and if you went every week to, I think it was Burger King, you would for the, I think it was Empire. I have the Empire right here. So definitely Empire, but you would get a glass. Now it turns out these were full of lead paint, which would kill you, but that was the downside. Jason: [1:32] Not recommended for drinking. Scot: [1:33] You got a very, yes, I never, being a collector, I never drank out of them. So that's good. Jason: [1:37] Saved your life right there. Scot: [1:38] Yes, but I did drink out of the Tweety Bird. So that me, me. I'm sure I got some yellow lead paint from a twitty bird glass. Anyway, so they came out with a Mandalorian kind of homage to those glasses and they were at the Hallmark store of all places, not where I usually hang out, but I got to go to a Hallmark store and the little ladies that worked there were, I wish them all an awesome May the 4th. And they looked at me like I was from another planet and it was hilarious. My wife's like, stop, they don't know what you're doing. Jason: [2:07] Wait, they didn't have a big May 4th section in the Hallmark store? Scot: [2:11] They did. The little ladies didn't know. Jason: [2:13] The overlap of people that still buy Papyrus cards and celebrate May 4th is probably not great. Scot: [2:21] It was very humbling. It was a humble May the 4th, but I got my glasses and I was happy. I'm happy for you. And then tonight we had tacos for dinner, so I'm hitting all the holidays. Jason: [2:30] I feel like we should have tacos for dinner every night, whether it's Cinco de Mayo or not, but I'm i am happy for that. Scot: [2:35] We do have a lot of tacos but this was a special single denial edition. Jason: [2:42] Well, very well done, my friend. Scot: [2:44] Thanks. Well, listeners of the pod have been all over me. They're like, why aren't you recording? And I said, it's not me. It's Jason. It's Jason. Because you have been traveling Scot: [2:55] the earth, spreading retail geek goodness. Tell us, we are way far behind on trip updates and all the different countries. It's like you're playing, do you have like a little travel bingo where you're just like punching, what is it, 93 countries? Jason: [3:09] I do. They call it a passport. Oh, nice. Yes. Scot: [3:13] That, uh, little book that you get to carry. Yeah. Jason: [3:15] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have been on a lot of trips and it sounds like you and I may be telling complimentary lies because I also, I've had an opportunity to meet a lot of listeners in the last, we'll call it seven weeks and which they're always super nice. And it's always super fun to talk to people. And obviously they're, you know, strangers recognize my voice in line at Starbucks at all these e-commerce shows. And then we strike up a conversation. And then the next question is always, where the heck is Scott? Because they're always disappointed to meet me and not you. And now the new thing is, and why aren't you producing more frequent shows? And my answer is always that you're dominating the world at Get Spiffy and that you're too busy. Scot: [4:00] Uh-huh. I see. Okay. Jason: [4:02] Well, we're both very busy. Scot: [4:05] You're traveling more than I am. I'm busy washing cars. Jason: [4:08] Yes. I think both are fairly true, but I did finish a grueling seven-week stint where I got to come home a couple of times on the weekends, but I basically had seven weeks of travel back to back. In my old life, that would not have been that atypical, but post-pandemic, The travel has been a little more moderate. And I have noticed that I have my travel muscles have atrophied and I don't really want to redevelop. Jason: [4:35] So the seven weeks was a lot. Please don't ask me for trip reports for all the commerce events because I kind of can't remember some of them. They're all a little bit of a blur. But I was at Shop Talks, I think, since the last time we talked, which is,

EP318 - Temu Deep Dive with Earnest Analytics  Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep Temu, the online marketplace operated by the Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, that has become the fastest growing retailer in history. Joining us on the episode is Michael Maloof is the Head of Marketing for Earnest Analytics. Earnest works with world-class data partners to acquires, anonymize, and productize insight about the entire U.S. Economy. They have posted numerous insights about Temu in the US this year: Feb 28: Temu’s 2024 Super Bowl ad blitz failed to accelerate growth March 5: Temu is growing fastest among high income earners March 12: Almost half of Wish, AliExpress customers shop at Temu In this episode we cover who Temu is, how big they have become, who their customers are and what retailers they are likely impacting, their go to market strategy (and especially their marketing spend), the controversy around their use of the Global Postal Treaty, and some of their potential risks. We also explore where they could go next. If you're in the commerce space, you'll want to make sure you are up to speed on Temu. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 318 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show. This is episode 318 being recorded on Wednesday, March 13th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg. And as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott show listeners. Jason, one of the topics that is coming up a lot this year, we talked a lot at a lot in our recap and our preview is Temu. By many measures, people think they're one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in history. If you watch the Super Bowl, I think they spent $8 trillion on ads there. So we want to do a deep dive into this and cover a number of topics. We want to talk about a little background around Temu. What's it mean for U.S. retailers? And, you know, it's a Chinese company. Does it even matter? If yes, why? Because Temu isn't public and they are a Chinese company, they don't really disclose any information. So we wanted to bring on a guest that is basically a Temu expert. So we looked around and we found Michael Maloof. He is the head of marketing at Ernest Analytics. Ernest works with world-class data partners to acquire, anonymize, and productize insights about the U.S. economy. They have posted lots of articles. This is how we found Michael. I think you know him as well from the trade show circuit. So he's going to help us do this deep dive into what's going on at Temu. Welcome to the show, Michael. Michael? Michael: [1:59] Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show. Big fan of your annual predictions and the work you guys do. So I'm head of marketing at Earnest Analytics. We're the leading credit card retail pricing and healthcare claims data provider for investors and retailers. Before Earnest, I was actually a tech and telco analyst over at Goldman. The two credit card data sets we work with now, Orion and Vela, are probably the most pertinent to my conversations about the consumer economy and certainly this conversation today about TMU. They sourced respectively from a large account aggregator, like a budgeting app, and part of a POS system in the US. And Ernest essentially takes these massive and messy data sets, normalizes structures, and then puts them onto our platform so everyone from portfolio managers to marketers can see this third-party data. For example, you'd see market share, competitive benchmarking, customer behavior, revenue predictions, and macro trends for thousands of companies, including TMU. Scot: [3:03] Awesome. Thanks, Michael. And then, so which sector did you cover when you were an analyst at Goldman Sachs? Michael: [3:08] Tech and telco. So anything in the tech space, we had a few marketplaces in there, telecom companies. It's been a while though. Ernest has been my home now for seven years. Scot: [3:20] Okay. Was this in the Anthony Noto era you were there? Michael: [3:23] This was in the vera rossi era she was my my lead where we recovered uh latin american tech and telco. Scot: [3:30] Very cool awesome yeah they did goldman did the channelizer ipo so i get to know the team there pretty well awesome well before we jump into the data which we're excited to kind of hear what you have to share here jason i know this has become a very hot topic in your world you you You spoke on it at NRF. In your day job, you're getting tons of questions about this. I think you're booked out solid with Tmoo briefings. So those people pay big money for it, and our listeners don't pay. Give us the free version of your backgrounder on Tmoo. Jason: [4:05] Yeah, thanks, Scott. And I'm sure we'll spice in some other tidbits as we go, but I'll try to give a concise bullet. it. Temu is a subsidiary of a company that used to be called Pinduoduo in China. It's now called PDD Holdings, which is infinitely easier to spell, by the way. And PDD Holdings is one of the largest e-commerce companies in China. On a market cap basis, they keep flip-flopping with Alibaba. So they're super competitive. They're way north of like $400 billion in GMV in China and had a really interesting trajectory, but a couple of years ago, they launched Tmoo into first UK and then US, now 49 other markets as a new retail concept. And so a couple of things I'd want folks to know before we dive in with Michael, first of all, the name is a loose English acronym for team up price down. So I always pronounce Tmoo as in team. [5:08] There are multiple pronunciations out there, even from Tmoo employees. So I'm not sure there's an official pronunciation. In the United States, they launched in September of 2022. So they're about 18 months old now. And most folks were not familiar with them until, a surprise, three months after launching, they bought a Super Bowl ad. So they became familiar to millions of Americans with the Shop Like a Billionaire ad that ran in the Super Bowl in 2023. And then as Scott alluded to, they bought five ads in the Super Bowl this year. So they haven't disclosed what they paid. A normal 30-second spot in the Super Bowl costs about $7 million. They ran four ads during the Super Bowl and one during the postgame. So estimates are in the kind of $20 to $30 million that they spent just on that ad. There's a bunch of estimates for how big they are in the U.S. I'm eager to hear what Michael thinks, but his old rivals at Morgan Stanley have them at about $16 billion in GMV in the U.S. But more interesting, Morgan Stanley estimates they're going to be $32 billion by 2030. So you think about a retail company that launched in September of 2022, and then in the first year, business sold $16 billion worth of stuff. That's the fastest growing retailer of all times. We do know from other sources that they get more traffic every year than Target. [6:36] They've been the most downloaded shopping apps on the Android and Apple app stores since they were born. So they've kind of owned the top of that list. And a couple other little interesting things. They are a marketplace. They have invented a model they call next generation manufacturing. So they're a marketplace. It's all three-piece sellers that are selling goods on Temu. But unlike traditional Western-based marketplaces, Temu does a lot more of the work, of listing the products and fulfilling the products for the factory. So they may, if you're a factory, they say the only thing you need is a cellular internet connection, and they provide you all the infrastructure to become a successful seller on Temu. There's somewhere between 80 and 100,000 Chinese factories that are currently sellers on the marketplace. And then one big innovation is this week, they're turning on the ability for U.S. Marketplace sellers to sell and fulfill their goods from the U.S. as well. So one interesting question about a marketplace is, are they competing for sellers with Amazon and Walmart? And now they're bringing that fight to American soil. So that, I feel like, is enough to get us started. There's certainly an interesting company that's worth following. [7:52] The way I originally discovered Earnest is through this show. One of our most popular guests, Dan McCarthy, has been on a few times talking about his his CLV methodologies. And our listeners have really enjoyed his his commentary. He has partnered with Earnest Data several times to do some really interesting analytics. And you guys at Earnest have published a couple of those as thought leadership. And so that's how I first met you. And then, Michael, I noticed you published like three articles on Temu this year. Michael: [8:22] That's right. Right. Teamio has been one of the top client asked for themes. It's definitely something we're seeing a lot in the press. We work a lot with those thought leaders as well. And that's something that we're getting a lot of questions on from everyone from business to fashion to Dan McCarthy. So glad to answer any questions there. We are kind of in a unique spot, kind of have the dashboard on the consumer economy, if you will. Basically what's going on within the last few days we can see everything from customer acquisition they have to their gross market merchandise value. Scot: [8:56] Got it let's let's start at the basics and let's pretend you know so i see Tem

EP317 - Amazon Q4 Results  Episode Summary: In this episode, Jason Goldberg and Scot Wingo dive deep into Amazon's fourth-quarter results for 2023, analyzing the company's performance in various segments such as retail, offline and online sales, marketplace, AWS, and advertising. They also explore the impact of AI on Amazon's business and provide insights into the company's future guidance for Q1 2024. Amazon had a strong Q4 earnings report, beating analyst expectations for revenue and income. In fact, it was Amazon's most profitable quarter ever. Retail sales were up 6%, which imputes a 2023 GMV of $515B - $660B in the US for all of 2023. The bottom end of that estimate would be a 9% growth over 2023, versus all of Core Retail in the US (x Gas and Auto) which grew 3.6% in 2023. This impressive growth was achieved while Amazon improved delivery times (6B packages delivered next day, and 1B delivered same day, same day offered in 110 metros) and reduced cost to serve by $0.45/package in the US (the first reduction in cost to serve since 2018). AWS accelerated growth but slowly declined margins. Ad revenue was again the brightest spot, growing 27% to $14.7B, resulting in $47B in revenue the last 12 months, and a $58B run rate. The income generated from that ad revenue was likely more than $27B, far in excess of the $21B Amazon earned from AWS. Once again demonstrating that Ads are Amazons biggest income generator. Amazons total GMV in the US likely falls in-between Walmart's expected 2023 GMV of $442B and Walmart plus Sam's Club total US GMV of $519B. Walmart reports it's Q4 on Feb 20. Amazon probably represented 24% of ALL retail growth in the US in 2023. Amazon, Walmart, Temu, and Shein alone likely represented 49% of all 2023 Us retail growth (leaving mostly crumbs for the rest of retail). Amazon also announced Rufus, a new Gen AI based search amenity for the e-commerce site. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 317 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, February 7th, 2024. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott Show. This is episode 317 being recorded on Wednesday, February 7th, 2024. I'm your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scott Show listeners. Jason, we've been talking about ARVR since before shop.org changed its name. And did you get a vision pro and how is it i. Jason: [0:57] Did not i feel like i've let you and our listeners down i desperately wanted to lie and say that we were recording this episode through our joint vision pros i did i did go do a demo and it it seems super cool i am sorting through my my highly poor vision to see what sort of corrective lenses i'll need to put into the thing, to pull the trigger. I heard yours has arrived though. Scot: [1:24] Yes, mine actually just came hours ago here to Jason and Scott, North Carolina headquarters. And it is sitting in a box staring at me. And I figured I would not get the show notes done if I started playing with that. So that's gonna be my weekend fun that I'm gonna work on. So I'll report back on that. Jason: [1:42] All of us that love you are slightly sad because we've seen your real eyes for probably the last time in a long while. Scot: [1:48] That is true yep yep these baby blues are going behind the goggles and i'm gonna drive the first thing i do is get in my car and drive that seems to be what everyone does on twitter so that'll be fun yeah. Jason: [1:59] That sounds wildly safe. Scot: [2:01] Yeah well you can see right through them so it's totally fun yeah. Jason: [2:05] No you can't. Scot: [2:09] Just kidding everyone do not do that at home and if you do blame jason Yeah. Jason: [2:13] But again, the Tesla is perfect self-driving anyway. So what, what would it even matter? It's like, I feel like you have multiple layers of AI overlords protecting you, Apple and Tesla. What could go wrong? Scot: [2:25] Yeah, it is not perfect by any means. Jason: [2:29] Yeah i'm glad we caught you i feel like there there's been a lot of travel and it's i know you you have kind of stepped away from the hustle bustle but i'm right in the middle of uh retail trade quarter trade yeah yeah. Scot: [2:41] How's that going you did so we haven't been able to catch up since you've done nrf i saw you were like posting like a wild man seems like you had a very active big show how was that. Jason: [2:51] Yeah it was pretty good i would big show is definitely back it was the largest attendance ever. There were over 40,000 people. So it was very robust. A lot of good, good conversations. I do have a lot of content out there. If anyone wants a deep dive recap, you can go find my recap on YouTube, but maybe we'll talk more about it later because we have such a meaty episode just talking about Amazon. But last week I got back from like, frankly, a more fun event then big show. Our friends at Commerce Next have a new show that they call their Digital Leader Conference. And it's kind of a small little gathering of like 50 digital leaders at a resort in Del Mar, California, exactly where I grew up. So I went and drank wine and talk shop with a bunch of folks and the Commerce Next team in San Diego and had a great time nice. Scot: [3:49] Did you have some say in where it was hosted you're okay i. Jason: [3:52] Did not um i think people were tired of hearing me say this but this is like a fairmont resort it's gorgeous but it was built on like what used to be like these trails behind my high school and i kept you know regaling everyone with how i probably thrown up all over this this facility from all the the runs our soccer coaches used to make us do there. Scot: [4:14] Nice that's a good pitch yeah. Jason: [4:16] Nice visual for all our good uh good podcast listeners uh and then i have two shows coming up so the end of this month is etail west which is usually a pretty good show in palm springs we'll probably be uh corralling a couple interesting podcast guests uh from that show and there's kind of a shop.org board reunion There was an actual shop.org board reunion that you and I missed that was last month, but there's like six former board members will be at ETL West. So we're going to get together and have a little catch up there. And then less than a month after that is our Shop Talk in Las Vegas. Scot: [4:59] Fun. Yeah. Have you had an opportunity to see the Sphere? Yeah, I have. Jason: [5:04] I have. I have not been in the Sphere, but I have gone by it. Hopefully, I'll be prominently featured on it for Shop Talk. Seems like that would be appropriate. Scot: [5:14] Yeah, yeah. That would be fun. Get a picture of you on this here and then go inside. Everyone says it's an amazing show inside of there. Jason: [5:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely want to check it out when time permits. Scot: [5:23] Cool. Are you speaking at either of those or just all of you? Oh, wow. Are you seems like a part of your your 2024 New Year's resolution is to talk about Sheehan and Timu. Are you going to be doing that that whole dog and pony over there? Jason: [5:39] Neither of my sessions are specifically on that. I'm sure I'm talking about it a lot in the hallways. It's coming up a lot. It's probably spoiler alert going to come up again in this Amazon earnings call. Scot: [5:52] Yeah and we've got the super bowl this is like we're annualizing the big timu reveal and so it'll be interesting to see if they i guess they've actually said i think it's an article that said they're coming back in a big way so yeah. Jason: [6:03] They bought a second ad so. Scot: [6:04] They will they will be back on a few have you seen like a super secret version, uh i cannot say oh okay oh okay oh all right exciting well it would not be a jason scott show without some Amazon news. And this whole episode is essentially Amazon news. We are going to do a Amazon fourth quarter earnings deep dive. That's right. On February 1st, Amazon announced their fourth quarter 2023 results. The setup coming into this one was we had Microsoft announce really solid cloud results that was largely driven by AI. People are moving their workloads to Azure and they are doing that to get their data over. And due to Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI, that has been a really nice big draw for their cloud offering. Then we had Meta announced, the artist previously known as Facebook, and they had tremendous ad performance, largely driven by AI. Long-term listeners will remember Jason and I, I'm pretty sure we're some of the first to call the impact of this thing called ATT and IDFA, Am I remembering that? You nailed them. Jason: [7:24] Yeah. Scot: [7:25] Yep. And that just really, that was like, what, four years ago, three years ago? That walloped Facebook, Snap, and all these companies that their ad system relied on cookies and third-party data. data. Facebook slash Meta has kind of come back from that and they credit it to AI systems they've used that have really driven the optimization of their advertising products and made the targeting basically nearly as good as it was when they had more precise targeting. Then Google was kind of like had a bit of a rough patch there. I think it's hurting them. They don't really disclose much about youtube and it probably did okay but their ads were kind of flat and their cloud computing did not see the benefit that that microsoft did and there's a growing concern there's more and more folks and some data coming out that shows that people are sta

EP316 - Annual Predictions 2024  Jason visited the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Pea Ridge, Arkansas featuring drone delivery. Here is a video for those interested. 2023 Predictions Recap Jason: At least 2 retail bankruptcies (besides Party City) Yes BNPL Consolidation (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay. Sezzle) – at least one merges/exits US or BNPL. No Shopify launches an ad product such as a retail media network Yes Meta/Google/TikTok lose ad share to new social media platforms and retail media networks. No Live Streaming Commerce Still not meaningful in US in 2023 (less than 5% of social commerce in US) Yes Jason Total Score: 3 of 5 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. Yes Shopify is acquired No An innovation in e-commerce powered by ai (gpt4) surprises us by how fast it’s adopted and how cool it is. Yes E-commerce accelerates back to the mean in 2H after a mean regression in 1H. E-com returns 10-15% growth rates. Yes Sephora and/or Ulta move to a subscription model for new product discovery. Yes Scot Total Score: 4 of 5 Trends revert to the mean, and Scot is back on Top! 2024 Predictions Jason: Retail Media Networks go In-store. At least 1 top 20 retailer launches a digital in-store ad network AI is even hotter at end of 2024 than now. Most text boxes in E-Com are GenAI powered. A least one retailer has an AI based auto-replenishment solution with significant adoption. Bifurcation drives at least two more retail bankruptcies, including 1 national specialty retailer, and one general merchandise/dept store. (two top 50 retailers) China companies focus more on West and get more traction. Shein successful IPO. Temu US gets to at least 75% of target US E-Com. Grocery E-Commerce goes from $95B to $125B in 2024 (after being down in 2023 per Bricks meets clicks). Bonus: Live-steaming, MetaVerse, Crypto still not a major thing in e-commerce; Management stops blaming performance on retail crime; and Smaller RMN’s fail. Scot: Amazon relaunches Alexa on a native LLM Temu falters as people realize it’s wish 2.0 RMN is currently $52b, growing 20% y/y, accelerates in 24 to 30% and $67b (coresight has the 52 datapoint) Instacart who’s stock IPO’d at $33 and now is $23, solves ads and pops to 40 While everyone thinks Shein/Temu takes share from Amazon, they end up hurting Nordstrom, Macys and Target instead – materially (10%+) focus on apparel, maybe take target out? Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 316 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 11th, 2024. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show. This is episode 316 being recorded on Thursday, January 11th. I’m your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg. And as usual, I’m here with your co-host, Scott Wingo. go. Scot: [0:39] Hey, Jason, and welcome back. Jason and Scott show listeners. Well, folks, this is one of our most popular shows of the year. This is our Jason and Scott annual prediction show. This is where being an audio podcast really works against us. You can’t see us, but Jason, I normally wear leisure wear when we record the podcast, but tonight we’re wearing tuxedos. Jason, I really like that cummerbund. It looks really good on you. Jason: [1:04] Thanks. Scot: [1:04] I feel like you’ve really elevated elevated your game this year the the suede tuxedo really suits you thanks thanks and the extra glitter on the bow tie was my daughter’s influence smart the the 17 year old touch as you can never have enough glitter that is literally what she says half the time so yeah this is the show where we make we kind of self-score last year’s predictions which would have been the predictions we made this time last year early January for 2023 and then we make new ones for this year the 2024 2024 predictions but before we jump into that Jason we’re recording this on the Eve of nrf big show and I know that’s a huge show for you it’s now I think it’s expanded it’s always a fun weekend show which I’ve always appreciated that that was sarcasm and then I think they’ve extended it you know I think it was like what was it Saturday Sunday Monday and now there’s like a Tuesday and then there’s pre-days and post days so it’s like a whole it’s like a whole month of nrf big show are Are you teed up and energized and ready to go? Jason: [2:06] Yeah, and I feel like if all those things weren’t exciting enough, you know, it’s like 113 years old, and it’s always over a holiday, Martin Luther King Day, and it always draws a blizzard, like either on the first day or the last day. And so this year, maybe we’ll get both. Scot: [2:22] Yeah, yeah, and it’s always fun. And it used to be there was nothing down in that part of New York, and now at least they have, what’s that thing called? Hudson Yard or whatever. Jason: [2:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I feel like Manhattan has grown up around Javits a little bit. So you are definitely right. I have clients and partners with offices that are now walking distance from the show. And Hudson Yard is pretty cool. Scot: [2:42] Yeah, very cool. Now, are you speaking and also on behalf of the listeners, what are you going there to learn more about? Jason: [2:51] Yeah, so in the highly unlikely event, there’s anyone that listens to this show that doesn’t already know what the show is. National Retail Federation’s big trade organization represents retail in the United States. It’s their big event. 30,000-ish people come to New York City. Tons of exhibitors in a wide variety of fields. The area that’s always fun for me is one area of the show is dedicated to innovation. So they give like inexpensive booths to small companies that, you know, aren’t ready to invest in a big booth. And many of these are startups or startups from other countries. And, you know, so it’s always, there’s always a lot of wacky dubious stuff there. But in between that, there’s usually some, you know, kind of cool ideas. And it’s often the first place you’ll see something that a few years down the road becomes, becomes one of the innovative new parts of retail. So I love walking the innovation center. Last year, retail media networks were the big thing at this show, and I’m sure they’re going to be a big thing again this year. People were starting to talk about AI last year, but this year, I think it’s just going to be off the hook. I think in order to get a booth, you had to say you were an AI company. I’m pretty sure the trash is getting emptied by AI sanitation engineers. [4:09] I feel like it’s simultaneously going to be wildly overhyped and super important and transformative to the industry. So that’ll be interesting to see how that all plays out. I like to talk about food and grocery a lot and InterF has done a lot to expand their coverage of the food industry. So there’s a whole separate portion of the trade show dedicated to grocery retail vendors and a whole content track. So that stuff is all interesting. John Furner, the president of Walmart, will have a keynote. A bunch of other retailers will have keynotes. Magic Johnson is kind of the outside speaker that they’re hyping this year, which is, I mean, fine, but I don’t go for those paid, not retail speakers that much. And then I am speaking, I am doing a session on one of the featured stages that is entitled, Coming to America, which is all about what Western brands can and should be learning from the Chinese brands that are now successfully doing business in the US. And so most notably, Timu, Shein, and probably a little bit of TikTok. [5:26] Yeah very cool i also saw on linkedin that you had what i would call a close encounter with a. [5:32] Drone experience what tell us more about that i did so i mean scott i’m sure you remember this but it was like i looked it up it was like 2013 that jeff bezos was on 60 minutes and was like oh and we’re going to deliver all the packages via drone wasn’t it the eve before cyber monday was like that sunday night before yeah cyber money yeah and so he made that announcement and you know that sounded incredibly far-fetched and i don’t know if you remember but i had a session that i was doing an internet big show that year and i dressed up a drone with the amazon air logo and landed it on stage at the javits center or i had someone that was better than me landed on stage at the javits center in the middle of my presentation as a joke and i got in huge trouble for that that’s wildly illegal that’s why they call you retail geek yeah sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission is my philosophy on that one. But back then, it was like this kind of silly science fiction. And since then, we’ve on this show and in the press and media talked about various kind of edge use cases where drone delivery might actually make sense or be economical. And we’ve talked a lot about some of these pilots that both Amazon Amazon and Walmart are running. And so I know it’s a real thing and you can really do it. And maybe in some use cases, it’s even practical at this point. [6:57] This December, last December, so last month, I did my last trip of the year to Walmart, which is in Bentonville, Arkansas, which side note, downtown Bentonville is beautiful for Christmas. They have a super cool light show. So if you’ve never visited Walmart, that’s the time to do it. But there is a small Walmart neighborhood market, which is their grocery store concept, which is in a small community of 5,000 people about about 30 miles away from Bentonville called Pea Ridge. An

EP315 - 2023 Turkey5 Recap with Salesforces Rob Garf Episode 315 is a recap of Turkey5 (The five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) 2023 with Rob Garf, Vice President and General Manager, Retail at Salesforce. This is Robs' Six time on the show, having previously been on episodes 110, 248, 282, 299, and 313. Jason and Scot discuss the "Turkey 5" with their guest Rob Garf, VP and GM for retail at Salesforce. They analyze data from various sources to provide insights into the holiday shopping season. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, e-commerce grew 7.75% in Q3, while total retail only grew 2%. Jason emphasizes the need for e-commerce to grow at least 7.7% in Q4 to stay on track. Adobe's data shows that Black Friday sales were up 7.5% and Cyber Monday sales were up 12.4% from the previous year. The speakers also discuss data from BigCommerce, MasterCard, and Salesforce, highlighting growth in online sales on Cyber Monday and Black Friday. Rob Garf adds his observations on retail industry trends, noting an increase in demand and robust pricing. He mentions a rebound in demand in Europe, excluding the UK, and highlights retailers' focus on profitability and inventory levels. The discussion then turns to Amazon's innovative advertising approach during a Friday NFL game, where shoppable ads were displayed via QR codes. Jason believes this strategy will benefit Amazon, as it monetizes viewership and reinforces the brand. Discounting played a significant role in driving demand during Cyber Week, with retailers offering an average of 30% off. Consumers were patient, waiting for attractive deals, while retailers managed their inventory and discounting strategies well. The luxury category, however, did not perform as strongly, with only a slight increase or even a decrease in sales. The hosts touch on the resale market and the growing popularity of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options and mobile wallets. They discuss the potential impact of mobile wallets on shopping behavior and note that BNPL resonates with new consumers and has replaced layaway. Finally, the hosts mention the passing of Charlie Munger and the filing of an IPO by Xi'an, encouraging listeners to support the show and announcing more holiday shopping data and reports on Salesforce.com. 0:00:46 Introduction to the Jason and Scot Show 0:05:04 Black Friday: First Sales for Vendors 0:14:06 Softness in Consumer Electronics and Toys Market 0:14:55 Black Friday and Cyber Monday Impact on Holiday Season Shape 0:16:32 Retailers' Inventory Management and Positive Growth Forecast 0:17:47 Retailers analyzing profitability and customer profitability. 0:18:29 Increase in Demand and Robust Pricing 0:22:34 Amazon's Innovative Advertising and Potential Profitability for Holiday 0:26:27 Discount rates over Cyber Week in comparison to previous years 0:29:04 Retailers' management of inventory and transparency in discounting strategy 0:31:52 Consumer behavior and the rise of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) 0:33:32 Mobile wallets and the impact on checkout process and shopping experiences 0:35:26 Buy Now, Pay Later Growing and Replacing Layaway 0:37:22 Charlie Munger's Passing and Xi'an's IPO Announcement Throughout this episode make liberal use of real-time data from Salesforce Shopping Insights HQ, which tracks how 1.5+ billion consumers are shaping shopping trends. You can see a real-time holiday dashboard, powered by Tableau so you can interact with the data yourself on the Salesforce Holiday Insights page. Episode 313 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday November 28th, 2023.  http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot Show. This is episode 315 being recorded on Tuesday, November 28th. I'm your host, Jason Retail Geek Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey, Jason, and welcome back, Jason and Scot Show listeners. Vigilant listeners will remember that we promised you a delicious turkey five Introduction to the Jason and Scot Show [0:47] sandwich starring none other than Rob Garf, VP and GM for retail at Salesforce. And that's what we're delivering today. Rob was here way back on episode 313 on November 8th. And he is back here today to tell us what happened during the Turkey 5. Welcome back, Rob. Rob: [1:05] Thanks for having me, Jason, Scot. Always a pleasure and look forward to getting into some of this really fun data. Scot: [1:12] Yeah, this is your record sixth time. So your old hat here. Before we jump in, we do want to just kind of set the table, keeping with the post-Thanksgiving, theme with some leftovers. I saw what you did there. Yeah. And we, meaning Jason and his army of interns, have gathered a bunch of data from other sources. So we just want to give listeners that, and we know you have your own data, and we want to paint a complete picture. So, Jason, give us the quick and dirty rundown of other data that we've seen out there covering the holiday period so far. Jason: [1:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it. And side note, Rob, we're going to keep making you come back till you get it right. Rob: [1:50] I appreciate it. I'm here. Jason: [1:52] I'll do what you need. Awesome. So, super quick reminder, Q3 data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, e-commerce for the quarter grew 7.75%, over, the previous year. year, total retail only grew 2% from the previous year. And so if you take e-commerce out of total retail, brick and mortar in Q3 2023 only grew 1.08%, so lower than traditional. So when you come into the beginning of Q4 and holiday in particular, in my mind, e-commerce has to grow at 7.7% just to stay at par. And brick-and-mortar has to grow more than that one percent. [2:37] So, and I like to start with the lesser data and work our way up to the gold standard, very best data we have, which is, of course, the Rob Garth. So our friends at adobe which have a different data set but similar methodology and slightly different definition so you can't perfectly compare apples to apples, they said black friday sales were nine point eight billion in the us which is up seven point five percent from the year before so that would basically be right at that par i was just talking about, they said cyber monday was up to twelve point four percent and that was hot off the press so i wasn't able to do the math on what growth rate that was. They said for the whole month of November year to date, that they see November up 4.6% from last year. So kind of below that par. These are all numbers Adobe is giving for e-commerce. [3:26] And of particular note, and I know we'll talk about this more, they've seen a significant uptick in use of Buy Now, Pay Later services, and they've seen deeper discounting than we saw last year. Now, Shopify is really out there with a big news cycle. And I don't want to say they won up Salesforce, but they bought the sphere in Las Vegas and broadcast their data on the outside of the sphere, which visually is, is super cool. But their data isn't so useful because they don't report same store sales. They had a, you know, some unknown basket of merchants that sold a bunch of stuff last year, and they had some unknown basket of merchants that sold more stuff this year, and we don't know if the same merchants were here this year and last year or if they added a bunch of merchants or, or if this is true growth. So, so while the Shopify numbers are interesting, if you're investing in Shopify, they don't tell us a lot about what's happening in the e-commerce world. I did see a super interesting quote from Harley Finkelstein, who's the president of Shopify, and it's possibly, possibly that he just misworded this, but he was excited after Black Friday and he said 17.5, thousand. So $17,500. [4:41] Vendors made their first sale this Black Friday weekend. So I took that to mean, not that they launched on Friday just in time for Black Friday, but that this was their first Black Friday where they sold anything. So that's 17.5 thousand new merchants. [4:58] And then he said, in total, 55 thousand merchants set their all-time daily record on Black Friday. Black Friday: First Sales for Vendors [5:05] And while those two numbers sound impressive, if you kind of think about it for a second, you go, wait, the vast majority of merchants on Shopify that are B2C are going to sell their record. Cyber Monday hasn't happened yet, so take that out of the equation, are going to set their all-time record on Black Friday. So not surprised, you would expect the vast majority of all merchants to set their Black Friday record. And 17.5 thousand of them are new. So what that says is there's only 37 thousand merchants that are a year old on Shopify that sold more this Friday than last year on Black Friday. And that's, I guess, less than I would expect based on the usual reports we get from Shopify. So that, I'll just record that as a moment and our stock analysts that cover Shopify listening on the call can weigh in on that one. [5:58] BigCommerce, a slightly weirder data set. They saw an outlier, they saw 14% growth, but again, random, they're not trying to report at the industry, they're just reporting their clients. And then a particularly interesting one to me is MasterCard. I have a love-hate relationship with MasterCard. Unlike all the rest of you, MasterCard gets a set of data for stores and retailers, so they try to forecast what happened in retail, which is super valuable. Historically, I've seen some weird deviations from MasterCard that make me cautious about their numbers. But this year, they reported Black Friday, they did not report Cyber Monday. Their Black Friday number was up 8

The Jason & Scot Show.  Podcast about e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Editor note: We're trying some fun new AI features for this episode. The following show notes were written by ChatGPT. We're also let AI remove all the "stop words" in our audio, and we've switched from Google to OpenAI for our audio transcription. Let us know your feedback. In this episode of the Jason and Scot show, our special guest is Sean D. Nelson, the CEO and founder of Lovesac. He shares his inspiring journey of starting the company as a beanbag business in his basement and growing it into a successful public company. Sean highlights the key moments of his entrepreneurial journey, including winning a million dollars on Richard Branson's reality TV show and navigating the ups and downs of the business. Sean has upcoming book and podcast, both entitled "Let Me Save You 25 Years: Mistakes, Miracles, and Lessons from the Lovesac Story." Sean emphasizes the importance of being a direct-to-consumer brand and how Lovesac has found sustained success by focusing on customer acquisition costs and offering a high-quality product. He discusses the concept of direct-to-consumer and shares his thoughts on its significance. Sean believes that having a differentiated product that provides value to customers is crucial, rather than simply relying on an online sales strategy. The conversation also touches on the topic of innovation and how Lovesac has been able to push the boundaries of what a furniture company can offer. Sean discusses their Stealth Tech innovation, which incorporates surround sound into their couches, as well as their commitment to creating products that are built to last and designed to evolve. Sean acknowledges the challenges of operating in physical retail and highlights the importance of their showrooms in reducing customer acquisition costs and providing a hands-on experience for customers. He also mentions their partnerships with Best Buy and Costco to expand their reach. The discussion expands to the future of retail and e-commerce, with Sean mentioning the transformative role of AI but cautioning that it takes time for movements to fully evolve. He emphasizes the importance of being patient and keeping an eye on developments in the industry. The conversation concludes with Sean expressing his long-term commitment to Lovesac and his desire to build something meaningful rather than focusing solely on personal gain. Listeners are invited to check out Sean's podcast and website, as well as his upcoming book, which will be released in January. Overall, this episode provides insights into the journey and philosophy behind Lovesac's success and offers valuable perspectives on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the future of retail. Chapters 0:00:46 Introduction and Welcome to the Show 0:08:36 The Journey of Love Sack: From Highs to Lows 0:12:05 Love Sack's Traditional IPO and Company Performance 0:15:49 The Importance of Having a Differentiated Product 0:19:49 The Value and Overhype of Market Movements 0:23:18 Sactionals: Built to Last, Designed to Evolve 0:25:56 Driving a Movement for Sustainable Consumerism 0:31:36 Innovation and the Evolution of Lovesac's Product Line 0:37:07 The Strength of Lovesac's Physical Showrooms in the DTC Landscape 0:40:03 Testing and Learning: Mobile Concierge and Shop and Shop 0:41:52 AI's transformative role in the future of technology 0:50:08 Long-Term Vision vs Quick Profit Episode 313 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, November 9th, 2023. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show. This episode is being recorded on Thursday, November 9th, 2023. I'm your host, Jason "RetailGeek" Goldberg, and as usual, I'm here with your co-host, Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey, Jason, and welcome back. Jason and Scot show listeners. Jason, we're very fortunate to have a entrepreneur on the show. I'm the entrepreneur side of our partnership. So I always really enjoy these. Introduction and Welcome to the Show [0:49] We have on the show, Sean D. Nelson. He is the CEO and founder of Lovesack. And a little birdie told me that he recently started a podcast himself. He started Love Sack as a beanbag company in his basement when he was around 18. And now it's a public company and doing relatively large revenues over 600 kind of run rate. If I look at the last quarter, I took a little glance at that. Sean, welcome to the show. Shawn : [1:13] Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you. Jason: [1:16] We are thrilled to have you, Sean. Listeners always like to kind of get the background. I'm imagining you don't have a deep background before you started Love Sack because you started it so young. But can you, like where were you in life when that brought you to start build your own product? Shawn : [1:34] Yeah, strangely, 25 years in and still running the same company I founded as my side hustle in college, which is exactly what Love Sack was. So 95, all the way back then, I made a giant not bean bag because I thought it would be funny. I literally, 10 days out of high school, got off the couch at my parents' house, having this dumb idea, like, how about a beanbag, like, me to the TV, like, the whole floor, like, huge. Drove down to the fabric store, bought some fabric, brought it home, cut it out, and then began sewing it up, broke my mom's sewing machine, neighbor finished it, took three or four weeks to try and stuff it, originally with beads, but couldn't possibly find enough, so looked around the house, I just found out my parents' camping mattresses chopped up yellow foam, you know, like those yellow slabs of foam you take camping, on a paper cutter in the basement. And eventually, I mean, foam, packing peanuts, old blankets, had this thing stuffed and started using it out and about through university, taking it camping, back of the truck, driving movies. Ended up putting it away for a couple years. And by the way, everywhere I took it, everybody wants one. Like everyone's always like, Oh my gosh, what is that thing? Where'd you get it? I was like, I'll never make another one. It was such a pain in the butt and put it away for a couple of years to go be a missionary for my church. [2:58] And came back to finish up university in 1998. And that's when I founded the company. Cause people kept bugging me to make them one. And it became my side hustle in college. And we tried to sell these things eventually beyond our friends and family and beer fest, May fest, October fest, car shows, boat shows, 10 by 10 booths, how we got started. Tried to sell them to furniture stores and they laughed at us and told us it was a dumb idea. [3:34] Eventually, at a trade show got discovered by the limited to this is like, you would not today as justice like in the malls, like little girls pink and purple fuzzy stuff for their bedrooms and, and clothing. Anyway, they ordered 12,000 little love sacks, not knowing it was me and a buddy and like a woodchipper shredding foam in the back of this furniture place. And, and that forced us to source over in Asia, which is, you know, where I had served my mission. So I speak Mandarin Chinese. There's a whole story there I won't get into it it was just kind of one thing led to another led to another week we built a factory to support that 12,000 sack order we then went out to the furniture stores who again laughed at us didn't want our $500,000. [4:19] Beanbags having completed that order wanting to keep the factory going so we finally opened our own store in a mall that didn't even want us there but finally capitulated let us in because they We had a space to fill for the holiday season, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it just exploded. We did a good job, carpet paint, neon sign, made it look like a proper mall chain store selling giant beanbags, and it just took off. Like, it worked. People came in, flopped down, music bumpin', big screen TV, playin' movies, had a great time. There was a couch in the corner to look pretty, be part of the decor. People kept asking about the couch, And that led us to eventually, many stores later, many states later, invent Saxionals, which is our modular sofa solution, which now drives almost 90% of our sales today. So we're more a couch company by far today than we are a beanbag company. And there was a whole, listen, I'm skipping over decades of time really, but there was a whole transition where we... We went through after we invented the sectionals and solved all these problems people have with couches not only can you ship it to your house via FedEx which was hyper relevant you know for. [5:32] E-commerce and digital marketing obviously but it's watchable and changeable, and movable and it can be with you the rest of your life that that led us to a whole design philosophy that now. [5:42] Drives are innovation we think is a really cool secret sauce called design for life but. 10, 20, 50, 100, 250 locations now. We came public in 2018 on about 100 million in sales. Right around the time there was just tons of fervor in this direct consumer movement. We had farted around, we'll call it as a furniture store, selling rugs and lamps and bowls and baskets and all the obvious things along the way. And it was really when we purged all that stuff around 2015, seeing the Caspers of the world emerge and Warby Parker's and even Tesla with their showrooms. Could we adopt a more e-commerce-led model with showrooms for people to kick the tires, so to speak? And that transition is really what unlocked the lovesack that you see today and where most of our growth has come since about 2015, 16, when we made that pivot, took the company public, wrapped around that direct consumer story. So we're not a digitally native brand originally, we were actually a retailer that pivoted and became digitally led. And now we don't even operate stores in the traditional sense. We don't, we don't stock things there. You 

EP313 - Holiday 2023 Preview with Rob Garf of Salesforce Episode 313 is preview of Holiday 2023 with Rob Garf, Vice President and General Manager, Retail at Salesforce. This is Robs' fifth time on the show, having previously been on episodes 110, 248, 282, and 299. It's happened again. Your Halloween decorations have come down (or at least your pumpkin is not in good shape), you survived Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, and now you're getting ready to ditch your in-laws and enjoy one of the most exciting retail weeks of the year. Yes, it's time for Holiday 2023! This year, we've decided to do things a bit different by previewing the holiday in advance of Turkey 5. Rob Garf has kindly joined to walk us through Salesforce's e-commerce forecast for November and December, and we compare it to all the other forecasts out there (NRF, Deloitte, Bain, US Dept of Commerce). In addition to the top line forecasts, we touch on retail versus e-commerce, changing shape of the holiday, discounting climate, inventory and supply chain impacts, top performing categories, the economy, and the impact of rapidly growing Chinese brands (Temu, Shein, TikTok). Throughout this episode make liberal use of real-time data from Salesforce Shopping Insights HQ, which tracks how 1.5+ billion consumers are shaping shopping trends. You can see a real-time holiday dashboard, powered by Tableau so you can interact with the data yourself on the Salesforce Holiday Insights page. Episode 313 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday November 8th, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 313 being recorded on Wednesday November 8th 2023 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners Jason is 3:13 the lucky number I had the 13 is kind of on there so I think we'll count it. Jason: [0:48] It's a lot of threes. Scot: [0:50] Yeah yeah I think it's a primal have to get one of our research analyst to work on the okay so we are recording this in early November as Jason said so at that critical part of the retail calendar all the plans are laid the discounts are on the table Cyber Monday. Thanksgiving Black Friday everything's teed up and everyone's waiting in anticipation of what holiday is going to bring us this year. And we know longtime listeners will know that our holiday turkey five coverage with a lot of sprinkling of data is second to none in the industry and this year we're going to take it up a notch in past years we've had our friend of the show Rob Garf VP and GM for retail at Salesforce on after the turkey 5 give us a real-time view of what they saw and for those of you that have been with us very long time this is her Jason's mom primarily those were episodes 110 249 282 and 299 man that's quite a track record this year we are going to take it up and have a delicious rub Garf before and after holiday sandwich it's kind of like that turkey sandwich but we're going to kind of sample it here before we even even have Thanksgiving. Rob before I before I go on welcome back for the fifth and I think record time on the show. Rob: [2:11] Wow I love it this is I will have to call the Guinness book up and make sure we get this knocked in memory on this is fantastic it's always good to be here and even better Scott and Jason and first of all thank you for having me on doing a little bit of a preview because as you mention were normally crawling through the data talking about the holiday weekend and seeing where everything lands after the critical time period and it's fun to take a little bit of a sneak preview and look at what we're anticipating and what we're seeing going into as you mentioned one of the most critical times of the year. Jason: [2:45] I think you're exactly right Rob I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner I feel like they should have always been part of our holiday tradition. And I do feel like we're getting all of the Rob protein with none of the nasty carbs so that's like a. Particularly healthy Thanksgiving treat but Rob before we jump into all of the good data remind listeners what the heck it is you do for Salesforce and how you get all this juicy data. Rob: [3:13] Yeah that's awesome let's by the way the listeners decide you know how. Advantageous this is after the fact I hope it is and again we'll do our best so yeah and I've been I always thinking about it thinking into this conversation now at Salesforce for over 7 years but I came. To the CRM Leader by way of demand where and if you remember demandware now Commerce Cloud was the leader and the cloud space and we instrumented the platform early on to get access to everything that flows. Through our Cloud so you think about all the Taps all the clicks all the swipes. [3:48] Now we don't have any access to personally identifiable information but we bubble that up and it becomes really The Benchmark for what's happening in digital and over the years we've included. Things from marketing and Service as well to look at a more complete buyers Journey. [4:08] And it's been really fun each quarter we release our shopping index which is available on salesforce.com built on Tableau and it's interactive so you can slice and dice it by vertical and by geography and it really helps. Retailers gauge how they're doing vis-à-vis their peer set which of course is extremely important anytime of the year but certainly even more important during. The holiday week now I think there's one thing that I sometimes forget to say so I want to make sure right cover it now which is. Our index and by virtue of that our benchmarks are from a outside in perspective so they are a look at the entire industry, not just Salesforce data we've modeled this over the last 10 years since its Inception so it's really intended to look at. The overall industry and benchmarking how peers are doing rather than speaking to anything that Salesforce is doing so that's my quick infomercial but hopefully more than anything just a little bit of credibility as to where we get the data, what we do with it and most importantly the conversations were able to have similar to what we're doing here. Jason: [5:19] God so that that sounds perfect. I do want just a couple clarifying questions before we jump into the actual data because I know we're going to talk about holiday like what is your official definition of holiday what what dates are you looking at. Rob: [5:38] Yeah thanks for asking that's always an important question so we've defined it over the years as the complete November and December so that's our holiday our peak season look. And we look at in particular for again the holiday weekend I know you call it cyber five or thirty five, we have cyber week which starts the Tuesday before, American Thanksgiving and works its way through Cyber Monday it's just something we started from the beginning and 4y like to like, your rear comparisons we've kept that intact so in on referencing cyber week or cyber five it's really looking at those, those seven days now of course the definition by some has been elongated and I hope we'll get into that in terms of when does the official real demand start but to answer your question straight on Jason it's for us at Salesforce November December. Jason: [6:27] Got it and so for historical purposes you've always been located in November December and then you're predominantly or exclusively focused on digital sales so you're you're reporting on what actually happened and forecasting what you think is going to happen in terms of e-commerce sales but unless I had this wrong you guys don't put a flag in the ground on on what you think is going to happen in brick-and-mortar is that true. Rob: [6:50] That is accurate now we do kind of go on the fringes a little bit because the bleeding between online or the blurring I should say between online and offline so we do have, data on buy online pick up at store we do have data on returns as well which is by virtue of, definition multi-channel omni-channel type of process but we don't put a stake in the ground because we just don't have the intrinsic data to be able to bubble that up and provide on the actuals. Jason: [7:20] Sure and then one other fun fact you reference the shopping index and you always have like the quarterly recap on there but I think. For sure during holidays and I think you're going to tell me your round you actually have a real-time dashboard up there so it's kind of a fun thing during the individual days of cyber week to kind of pop in and see see what's going on after your family Thanksgiving dinner to see if you're still going to have a retail job when this is all over. Rob: [7:50] Yeah yeah we do exactly so during particularly cyber week each morning the team is getting up super early as you can imagine and work around through the data and we're updating in real-time the data from the previous day and so for any retailer who is looking for the latest and greatest certainly by I would say 10:00 eastern time at the latest you will get that and see that up there we do have many customers who do use that in there Roundtable boardroom discussions each day to understand how they're doing it repairing it and more than anything Jason truth be told we need to get it up that early because our boss this guy named Marc benioff is typically texting us saying where's the data because I want to tweet it so yeah as much of a motivator as anything else. Scot: [8:40] Always fun when you get the text from The Seer. Jason: [8:44] Slack's slacks the he sends wax not to. Scot: [8:48] A

EP312 - Amazon Q3 2023 Earnings Amazon reported another strong quarter across the board for Q3, soundly exceeding analyst profit expectations and retail industry averages. In this episode we break down the AWS AI, Ads, and retail performance. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 312 being recorded on Monday October 30th right before Halloween I'm Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back to Jason and Scot show listeners Jason it's a Halloween Eve hallow Eve but also we just watch the Mac live presentation from Apple or live presented recorded earlier presentation from Apple about new Macs, so I don't know I think I'm going to ask you about Max first are you going to get a new Mac are you sitting out this upgrade cycle. Jason: [1:07] I am on the fence guy of course I want one I have scheduled a meeting with my family CFO to see if I can, I can justify it so so we'll see I did not order one tonight I'm actually. Still super happy with my M1 MacBook Pro so so I know M3 is at least three times better so so of course I want one but we'll see when I pull the trigger what about you is yours already on the way. Scot: [1:38] I have been a while without an upgrade and running a little long on the tooth on this guy so yes I have a new machine coming they were actually pretty generous on the trade-ins you should just do an experiment before you talk to the CFO plug-in that trade in and see if it. Jason: [1:56] That could be the. Scot: [1:58] You a better presentation also if you have an Apple credit card which I'm sure you do they have a really compelling offer there. Jason: [2:07] All right lots of lots of good good things to consider my nine-year-old has made it clear that we're not allowed to trade anything in it. Scot: [2:17] It's got dibs on. Jason: [2:20] He's very he's very aware of the technology trickle down. Scot: [2:24] Oh man well you can somewhere down the stream there's going to be one that you could trade in but I don't think it may have as much impact as your courage. Jason: [2:32] I I don't know if he's ever going to own a computer device with a keyboard will see but yeah he's actually not that interested in my laptop. Scot: [2:40] Speaking of baby geek or I guess now he's I don't know kindergarten geek. Jason: [2:46] Third grade geek. Scot: [2:47] Third grade geek what's he thinking about Halloween I hear he's kind of outgrown Star Wars which makes me casa. Jason: [2:56] He still like Star Wars but he yeah he is not doing a Star Wars character last year he did a Pokemon character he did Pikachu and this year he's stepped up to Charizard so that. Scot: [3:09] Very rare. Jason: [3:11] Enables well I think it depends on which Charizard butt. That steps up the whole opportunity to build pyrotechnics into the costume. Scot: [3:21] All right watch out for some evil Pokemon people that try to capture. Jason: [3:26] Yeah I think the big debate in our house which isn't hasn't fully happened yet is who's trick-or-treating with Stephen and who's staying behind to try to scare the bejesus out of neighborhood kids. Scot: [3:36] I'm thinking you and a gorilla suit or you could be in the last year's Pokemon suit or Pikachu suit that could be a fun combo. Jason: [3:45] Yeah last year I actually had knee surgery only a few days before Halloween so I won by default because I couldn't really walk but this year I feel like I have no good excuse. Scot: [3:56] Right as the title shows the purpose of this as we have some Amazon news to report on. Jason: [4:02] Amazon news your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [4:15] Well Jason it was a kind of interesting setup coming into Earth earning season this quarter the whole world was focused not on e-commerce not on marketplaces not on omni-channel not on payments some of our favorite topics but also not on ads one of your favorite topics but everyone is now obsessed with AI thanks to the success of chat Juju GPT so coming into the quarter Amazon was kind of on the backside of a lot of the other big companies so we had Microsoft come out and they did really well with AI the their partnership with open a.i. / chat gbt is bringing tons of workloads to azure. How much is their cloud computing platform and then Google really underwhelmed everyone with what they're doing there you know they're they're kind of tiptoeing it's very clear that they don't want to kill the Golden Goose that is Google search by putting too much AI to that so allow their experiments are in Bard which is kind of way off to the side I've tried barred three times I can never get it to have the features that they say it should because my corporate Google account you know either won't have access or it says that feature is not here yet. Um and I think people are really starting to worry about Google on this one. So then that teed it up where all eyes were on AWS to see how are they doing and I think we've covered this but. [5:44] The Amazons approach to this is to be kind of agnostic for lack of a better word so they're kind of like hey if you want to use. Any of these different models we're going to basically let you run them on AWS compute and we're going to have all kinds of different graphic Processing Unit or GPU tears available from you know their own chip set to older Nvidia chip sets to the new ones and kind of be y 0, LM bring your own large language model. [6:18] And then oh yeah also Facebook did pretty well and you know they're definitely through the worst of the Privacy changes that Apple put out and they have an approach to AI that is an open source one so they're basically saying hey we're going to integrate this in our products and what we build we're going to put out there kind of almost scorched Earth in a way saying why don't we just open source this thing and maybe that will slow down our competitors who are going to use this to to generate their own revenue and because they don't have a cloud piece they don't and they're pure advertising it doesn't really, Concord hurt them to do this so they're not making Cloud Revenue off of it but it's become a popular one and it's called llama in case anyone is it from there then, okay so just not to leave everyone in suspense because we usually talk about AWS kind of later in the Amazon update we're going to cover it first so the ended up having a really good ADB is showing so I would say people got kind of panicky and we're expecting it to be down and it kind of came in line. [7:22] But what that people excited was part of the talk track on the conference call Co jassy said that they're winning some big AI workloads they talked about some big deals had close towards the end of the quarter that we're pretty significant and what's happening is as you know what's what a i chat gbt is trained on the broader internet and anything that they can throw into there. [7:49] And that's interesting but what's happening is corporations and. Both big corporations for internal use but then also other corporations they're wanting to train a large language model on their data and they also don't want that data to kind of leak into the broader ecosystem so that's that's really benefiting Amazon because it turns out a lot of the data that companies want to train these lme's are are already in AWS so instead of paying all this money to pull the data out of AWS and then synchronize it back into your LM as as Amazon anticipated with this kind of open bring by0 LM model. People are bringing the LMS to them and using the data because it's already in AWS and it's easier for the llm to just kind of go right there and grab it versus moving the data around. [8:44] That may not make a lot of sense so let me give you kind of a random example let's say you're a big added see like I'll pick up, this one called publicist they're out of France and most people haven't heard of them and let's say that that French Ad Agency wanted to save a bunch of money they could take like. Let's say 3:00 of content from like a podcast transcript or something like that. And they could use that content let's say someone of their company like a detailed digital retail payment strategy vice president general manager type person with a big crazy title like that. They could put that data out there and run an llm on day ws and train that data on it. The llm on that data and then they could have for example just picking something random they could have a retailgeek bye. That was basically as good as the human probably ninety percent so good enough but you know this thing could run 24/7 you could actually you could have as many of them you could clone it on two different processors after you get through the training mode and you were in D quote-unquote inference mode and it also doesn't take breaks it doesn't need, Starbucks vanilla lattes constantly it doesn't have expense reports it just. Does its job and doesn't complain and doesn't ask for raises so that's that's a that's a use case that something like that would work did that make. Jason: [10:08] Specific hypothetical there Scott. Scot: [10:11] Is randomly chosen just kind of picked it out of the are there. Jason: [10:14] It almost sounds like the more words in your title the more vulnerable you would be to AI disruption. Scot: [10:20] I thought about that but it is does make sense because that's essentially more tokens for the AI to learn just like right there in your title you're basically asking for it if you're a robot Overlord you're kind of picking on who to go for a first I would look for large titles person. I don't know I don't kn

EP311 - Video Commerce with Qurate's Brian Beitler Brian Beitler is the Founder and General Manager of Live Shop Ventures, a video commerce initiative within the Qurate Retail Group, which is the parent company of HSN and QVC. Brian has also served as the CMO of Qurate Retail Group, in addition to many other interesting marketing roles in the retail world. We met Brian at Etail Boston and arranged this interview. We cover video commerce, differences in adoption between Western and Eastern Markets. The role of livestreaming, and the benefits of being a "commerce platform with video" vs. "a video platform with commerce." We also explore the origin on Live ShopVentures, it's first video marketplace on a mobile app, Sune, and the benefits on incubating a start-up within an established company. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 311 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, August 31th. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 311 being recorded on Thursday August 31st 2023 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners Jason as you know one of the most common questions we get from our huge listing audience is about live streaming with e-commerce is it a big deal why is it seem to be growing faster in the East versus the west and how important is it to live live streaming so we thought we'd get a expert on the show as a guest that could help unpack that for us all and you better than someone who's LED marketing for numerous historic Brands and served as the CMO for the mother of all video shopping sites QVC / HSN and so that's exactly who we found, we're excited to welcome to the show Brian beitler he is the founder of mobile V Commerce app called soon and the general manager of live shop venters both part of the Keurig group. And I'm not sure Jason but that's a lot of words in the title but I think it's maybe half of the words in your title but welcome to the show Brian we're excited to have you. Brian: [1:36] Grateful to be here and I'll work on trying to lengthen the title so I can keep up with Jason. Jason: [1:41] Set your set your goals higher Brian. Brian: [1:43] Thank you for having me. Jason: [1:48] Brian we are thrilled to have you and as our listeners will quickly figure out and we are eager to jump into all this video Commerce stuff but before we do we always like to give the listeners a little bit of perspective about our guests background and where they're coming from and in your case it's a super impressive retail / consumer background so can you can you give us the version that your mom would share with her friends in the elevator. Brian: [2:15] Happy to do so so I'll back up a decade or two but I started well where I consider I started my career was at Mattel that huge toy conglomerate in fact they're very popular right now coming off of a I think a major hit movie. It's doing very well. Yes I think so has the rest of the world at this point but I started my career there and fell in love with the toy industry and thought that's where I would really spend. My entire career when I left Mattel. In the early 2000s I at the time was leading the core part of the Hot Wheels brand a dream job as a father and a former young boy. [2:56] But I thought I would give myself a taste of retail in the toy industry so I actually left metallic thought I would spend a couple of years on the retail side working with it. A brand I knew we all knew and loved at some point in our childhood called Toys R Us and truthfully I the reason I'm here today is I fell in love with retail there, and what was different for me about retail versus consumer packaged Goods was just the speed of retail it felt like it moved at light speed compared to kind of course EPG brand management, and you know I often tell the story you know working in those days to change you know the package on a five car pack took a couple of years to get it to Market and. I joined Toys R Us and we had this idea to launch a birthday club and. At the time I went to the CEO of the company John I learned and it was how quickly could you get it in Market could you do it in a couple of months. And that and I was often running and in love with retail and so spent a couple of years there and then just continued to be given these remarkable opportunities to work with, really amazing Brands and helping them reshape their narratives with their consumers or and or finding new Pathways new emerging ways, I could grow I was you know there at Bath and Body Works when we launched e-commerce we redesigned the site as a marketing site decided oh we might be able to sell something. Through here and that's been my journey so from from Bath and Body Works to Kohl's department store. [4:24] Then my hand in the bridal industry and private Equity with David's Bridal and then women's apparel and you know fast forward. A few few years and here I am at curate Retail Group. Working in what I think is an exciting future for digital Commerce. [4:42] All of those roles you know usually leading the marketing you know the marketing or e-commerce function for those various Brands and learning a lot making a lot of mistakes a lot of mistakes I'm getting a few things right every now and then, and you know kind of Landing in a pretty exciting place here at grea where we think we're going to do something you know again interesting a new in the digital space. Jason: [5:04] Yeah and a couple of fun facts brand you've LED marketing for for a bunch of those Brands you just mentioned and while you were doing that I was nominally helpful in building a bunch of the the backend e-commerce functionality for those same Brands and so I think without knowing it you've hated me your entire life for all the the features you wanted and didn't get or the the the pace of evolution so I just wanted to apologize publicly for all of that. Brian: [5:34] I appreciate that. Jason: [5:35] But one of the things I particularly love about your career is is I have this theory that, you know though all of retailers has been profoundly disrupted by digital but not all at the same time and so there were there are industries that are disrupted a long time ago and there's you know if you're a grocer or a car dealer you're probably getting disrupted you know right now and I feel like you serendipitously or maybe intentionally have have been in a bunch of Industries. Right at the peak of their disruption so your Toys R Us when when shopping online became a thing and then urine Beauty when that became a thing and then you are you are in the the the heat of the the apparel Wars online and now you're you're squarely in the v Commerce space and it's you know one of the things we talked about the most on the show so whether you did that on purpose or not congratulations on on surfing that digital disruption wave. Brian: [6:32] No I appreciate that I think much much of it was serendipitous I would say that the pieces that probably weren't was my desire to always work for, brands that were leaders in their respective category or industry and as I look back and reflect that's probably one of the things that has been the most rewarding and probably given me the best. Growth is being able to work with you know brands that were at the Forefront Mattel at the time was the leader in in toy manufacturing still still are. Toys R Us at the time was the leader in toy retail Bath & Body Works was the largest kind of. Bath & Body brand at the time Cole's was it was a chaser of you know kind of the discount Department space and ran past JCPenney's and Sears and its competitors and so that for me has been exciting because you know I think being with those who build powerful platforms, let you learn from the best and you know here I said today with curate retailgeek which owns QVC and HSN. You know the largest livestream platform on the globe by far the industry, leader having changed the landscape of how you could use television to shop you know some 35 years ago and continued it for nearly four decades now so that part of trying to work with brands that, I felt were really leaders in their space because I thought it would be a great place for me to learn has certainly been intentional and then this digital Crossroad just happened to kind of line up and almost all of those places at the time I was there. Jason: [7:56] That is awesome and today I sort of perceive you you are on the Leading Edge of the curate retailgeek Roop with your current responsibilities and I definitely want to talk about those but if I have the story right before you took on your current role you also had broader marketing responsibilities for the core QVC HSN Brands is that. Brian: [8:19] I did I did that's that's right I joined you know curate retailgeek rupe. And 20/20 is the chief marketing officer for QVC and HSN are two largest video Commerce businesses, at the time and you know fast forward we obviously are in the midst of those businesses are in their own form of transformation and disruption right for. In some ways you know you talk about a Crossroads, ask for businesses you know having come through retail when e-commerce was exploding and and Retail foot traffic was being affected as people. Spent more time online and less time in stores if you look at where accurate retailgeek Roop you know is today right streaming has remade the way we View television and so we've had to remake our business, there as well primary our audience used to be

EP310 - Sam's Club VP E-Commerce, Sabrina Callahan Sabrina Callahan is the VP of E-Commerce at Sam's Club. She participated on a panel at E-Tail Boston entitled "Humanizing your brand through effective storytelling". After her panel, she sat down with Jason to discuss all things digital commerce at Sam's Club. This broad ranging discussion included: Mobile's impact on shopping Challenges and opportunities of membership clubs (and their unique access to data) Role of omni channel Connecting digital marketing channels to digital experience Building a brand for Sam’s Club in the digital era Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 310 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on live from e-Tail Boston on Tuesday, August 22, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this episode is being recorded live from e-tail Boston Trade Show on Tuesday August 22nd 20:23 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott wasn't able to join us so you're getting twice the Jason for the same great price which if you think about it is double the value. And while I know it's disappointing to miss Scott we're making up for it by having a way better guest I'd like to welcome to the show Sabrina Callahan who's the VP of e-commerce at Sam's Club. Sabrina just completed a panel here at retail and titled humanizing your brand through effective storytelling Sabrina welcome to the show. Sabrina: [1:04] Thanks for having me Jason. Jason: [1:06] We are so excited and I'm hoping this ends up being a permanent replacement for Scott. Sabrina: [1:09] I think I'm up for it I've heard him so I think I could do it. Jason: [1:12] I feel like in the first five minutes you're way more interesting and pleasant than he then he he's kind of a curmudgeon. Sabrina: [1:18] I'm not I'm just not even going to say anything but just know that I'm ready. Jason: [1:20] Smart so before we get into all the meaty topics I always like to let listeners kind of get to know the background of the guests a little bit so did you work for Sam's Club straight out of the Cradle how did you come to Sam's Club. Sabrina: [1:34] Surprisingly no not right out of the Cradle. I've been here for the last four and a half years and Jamie rule mark my five year so I'll get the coveted 5-year badge but kind of backing up all the way to, my background I was born and raised on a small farm in Kansas. Jason: [1:53] And in Kansas a small farm is like 100 acres right. Sabrina: [1:57] Yeah exactly so I grew up on the farm grew out in the field by somebody dad does all of the crops and my uncle has the dairy so I was out on the tractors driving the semis trying to not get myself. Killed you know all of the fun things that come along with Farm life and left went to University of Kansas. Chuck that's exactly right that's Rock Chalk. And then graduated in journalism and then made my way down to Dallas so as much as I love Kansas and small-town farm and and everything I wanted to kind of experience, bigger city and been in Dallas ever since and we love it there so worked at a start-up in the beginning my entire career has been in digital and marketing and brand and social media and everything that goes kind of along with that storytelling and driving digital performance so I was a star but at startup and then I went over to Hilton corporate and was there for about seven years loved it there I think I. Jason: [3:00] Are you okay this event is a tan on Hilton property. Sabrina: [3:03] I know listen you're not supposed to say it don't say it. Jason: [3:07] To our loyal Hilton listeners were sorry. Sabrina: [3:10] But what if he found out I was staying at the Hilton and walking all the way over. True loyalty rate my shoes weren't word up for it today but no I was at Hilton for about seven years I loved it there and really grew up there and they took a they took a lot of. [3:28] You know bets on me and allowed me to thrive I was there in the e-commerce space really when they launched the pilot of e-commerce, and and got to work with some of the biggest hotels, in the world with them and a lot of great opportunity got to start managing people you know they kept growing me and investing in Me And It ultimately LED I was in the e-commerce space for the majority of the time and then It ultimately LED to driving and leading the social media strategy and Innovation for Hilton so it was across all 15 Brands and at the time. There was a lot of opportunity to kind of pull it together and say what's the role of social media, for a for a big company right not just hey we're going to go post but how do we think about the tech stack how do we think about the member feedback to drive business impact how do we think about, content and how do you think about influencers in the role of influencers in the partnership and understanding the rules of the Ft c-- all of the fun things that come along with that and then how do you make sure that, the Brand's all understand the value of it and lean in the right way so I got to present Hilton's first Evers social center of excellence and then that led to, a lot of opportunity that opened me up in the social space and I was on maternity leave with my third baby, when Walmart came knocking. Jason: [4:50] Wow congratulations on that by the way. Sabrina: [4:52] Yeah three babies is a lot especially we're in August right now and school starting so it's slightly chaotic around my house but still good so. No so then Walmart and Sam's Club came knocking and I didn't think I would leave Helton but I really had some fantastic conversations during my interview day and a lot one of the last ones with was with mr. Tony Rogers and have you met him before he's. Yes so you know you know. Jason: [5:26] Put my life in his hands on an airplane before. Sabrina: [5:29] Oh yes good luck yeah. That's good you're here to talk about it so that's good no and so we. We hit it off and they offered me the job and and four and a half years later it was a big giant move in a bet for me but it was obviously well worth. Jason: [5:49] Very cool and you've actually had some really interesting responsibilities at Sam's waiting up to your your turn responsibilities briefly talk about some of the projects you've been in. Sabrina: [6:00] Absolutely so his pitch if he will at the time was come build a 60 billion dollar brand with me. Now how can you say no to that so that was a fantastic first start and so coming in really we built the brand together I learned I think about 10 years worth of information from him about Brandon, three short years but we developed the brand so the look and feel the tone of voice the target audience we revamped all of the marketing channels including you know site email everything digitally and then really launched social media right so Facebook Instagram Pinterest, YouTube you name it all the things that have to do with social media including the influencer strategy again and and moderation and care so. We did some really fun things I think it was a bit of a whirlwind so our first brand campaigns got to do you know the Super Bowl with Kevin Hart all of the the fun things that come along with leading you know a pretty awesome brand. Jason: [7:09] That is very cool and for listeners that might not be familiar Tony was the former CMO at Walmart and Sam's and the next time he calls you I have a feeling free jewelry is going to be part of the offer because he. Sabrina: [7:21] Yeah I should make a list of things that I want. Jason: [7:26] It should be a long list but be my suggestion that he's at signature Georgia. Shout out to tell me I know he listens every week very willingly and so in the current role you are responsible for All Digital at Sam's Club and is that a thing is digital a fad at Sam's Club or. Sabrina: [7:44] We just a Fab yeah who probably probably gone. Yeah no big deal yeah is super super fat yeah so I along with two of my peers we lead the e-commerce business and so I'm basically the upper funnel piece, so working really closely on the traffic strategy so what types of traffic re driving in and then how are we actually moving that traffic down the funnel so you can think about that of all of the Cross category, you know Stories the homepage anything that really allows us to show the breadth of what Sam's club offers so not just the categories and Merchandising but also the membership the Sam's cash that we offer the Travel and entertainment all of the things that come along with an actual full membership not just retail only. Jason: [8:32] Yeah and there's all kinds of interesting Dynamics to me it seems about marketing em in a membership environment versus a. Traditional, wide open and retail business so I assume you're trying to get people in the funnel for membership and at the same time you're trying to get members in the funnel for individual transactions. Sabrina: [8:54] Absolutely right the bigger the base the more sales you can expect so it's a balancing act right in terms of we need them to be purchasing things but ultimately we need more members and we need them to renew right so at the end of the year would it becomes renewal time we want them to see have seen the value throughout the year that they say oh this is a no-brainer when we're on the brand side or I was on the brand side a lot of it was we're trying to build brand Advocates because there's nothing more powerful than someone saying you've got to join Sam's Club I joined and I love it, so that was the the sole purpose of we're building Advocates we're building brand passion we'r

EP309 - Instacart IPO Filing  Warning: Given the complexity and breadth of topics, this is a longer than usual episode with a runtime of 90 minutes (if we had more time, we'd produce a shorter podcast). Update: In this episode Jason mentioned that he didn't think Instacart accepted SNAP payments. It turns out that Instacart did start accepting SNAP earlier this month. On Friday, August 25th 2023 Instacart filled its S-1 IPO form with the SEC, in advance of its intention to make an initial public offering. The complete filing is almost 400 pages. In this episode we summarize all the key points, including a number of surprises, in the filing. If you want to follow along with the actual S-1, you can download it here. Scot suggests you focus on pages 101-124. Topics Covered: Cover Page and Entry Level Items Overall Growth Trends 25:50 Unit economics 42:90 Cohort Analysis 48:10 Instacart Ads 56:30 The Big Risk/Concern 1:00:11 Other observations (Instacart+, Carrot Services, Generative AI) 1:22:50 Other episodes mentioned: Episode 255 - Instacart Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire and Episode 224 Customer Cohort Analysis and CLV with Dr. Daniel McCarthy. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 309 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, August 29, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 309 being recorded on Tuesday August 29th I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners. We are going to jump into the talk tonight because one of our most popular shows as you know Jason the format is a deep dive and we have got a great Deep dive for you guys this episode. Last Friday August 25th there was a very big event not only in our favorite world's grocery which is Jason's favorite world and my favorite world of e-commerce and then Jason's favorite world of. But also in my favorite world of startups so this is this is a pretty big event and we wanted to dedicate a complete episode to it. I mean it is the filing of the S14 instacart. [1:24] And just to set it up the you know in my world of start-up land it has been very hard to get an IPO done so there's been a couple post coated and like late 2020. And then summon 21 and then there's been a dry spell there's been something called a dese back so you have this spec which is this. [1:44] Special-purpose acquisition thing and you can kind of go public through this kind of complicated convoluted thing. Tends not to go very well so there's been some of that like in My World Mobility there is one called get around and there's been a couple others and those typically have not. Gone so well they're down like 95% bird the scooter company did this as well. So it's been a very dry IPO market for startups and thus of interior backed investors. So there has been a lot of anticipation around when is that a PO when they're going to open who's going to be brave enough to kind of stick their foot out there first. And you know a lot of people have been rooming that instacart would be out there there's a couple other companies in this kind of unicorn Stratosphere stripe is another one that we cover a lot on the show from the payments world. There's also the others you can think of Jason there's this one. There's a software one that is just doing really well in AI that's been mentioned a lot not not open AI it'll come to me in a minute. So you know so this is kind of the real. Bang the Big Bang of here's a company that is being brave enough they're gonna go first and we're going to see what happens so it's going to be really interesting and we thought because it hits this Venn diagram of all of our favorite things that we would spend a fair amount of time on. [3:10] So first of all this is a 400 page document so our value add to the listeners is we have distilled it down into what we think are the most interesting little tidbits and some of the things we've learned from instacart it is nice because there's been a lot of rumors about how instacart Economics work and Jason has been tracking their ad piece which is you know cpgs have really seen some really nice results from that so we know that's been active and the areas we picked apart we thought we would cover tonight is I wanted to kind of give you a quick and dirty Scott's guide to reading an s-1 and we'll start at the cover page that's there's actually a lot that happens on the cover page so I want to spend a little time there and kind of give you a little I haven't taken a company poet behind the scenes of what's going on on there and then we're going to talk about some of the overall growth things that just kind of help you understand. [4:07] How to think about instacart how they're growing and what they do and what role they play and then unit economics one of the things that is happening more and more in these s1's is they're doing a more comprehensive cohort analysis and this is basically showing hey if if I car to a customer in a certain period how are they doing now and what are those Trends so that this this had a lot going on there of course we want to talk about the ad business and then little bit of a catch-all for other observations, Jason anything I missed before we jump into the cover page. Jason: [4:42] No I think you mostly covered it just one slight correction it's four of our five favorite things for those listeners that tuned in to hear us talk about Ahsoka we're going to do that on an upcoming episode so that Star Wars would be our fifth. Scot: [4:56] Yes sadly there was no Star Wars in this one so it's that one little part of the over the Venn diagram was left is its own little circle out in space. Jason: [5:06] That's a we call that a teaser for a future episode. Scot: [5:09] Yeah yeah we're we're Pros were 300-plus episodes into this thing and this is the kind of you know Pro level that we deliver on the pod. So you guys missed it Jason forgot to plug in his microphone earlier so that's a yeah we're still still learning every day, so when you open an s-1 the first thing you see is the cover page and it you know a lot of people just Breeze by it because it's a cover page but it has a lot of really valuable information so first of all the first thing that I noticed is I was searching for this on Edgar and I kept typing in instacart and it wouldn't show up and I was like WTH I know this s1's out there why can I not find it and then I saw an article and it said oh the company's real name is maple bear so that's the first thing you see on the cover is the company we all refer to as instacart its actual Corporation name is maple bear and it does business as instacart so I thought I did not know that prior so that was the first thing I learned right there on the cover so that's interesting so if you do go to the will put a link to the s-1 in the show notes but if you do Brave the Edgar SEC database yourself throwing a little Maple bear there and not instacart. Jason: [6:22] Not to be confused with Amazon's house brand Mama Bear. Scot: [6:26] Yeah yeah and I'm sure there's a honey bear and brown bears there's a there's a lot of a lot of bear things going on. The other thing that I was like to see is what symbol are they using I think it's fun to kind of you know as an entrepreneur to kind of think about what symbol you're going to use that best personifies your brand Channel Bowser we had ecom's so that was an exciting one so we captured e-commerce Shopify go. Jason: [6:52] The best ticker symbol of all times by the way. Scot: [6:55] Thank you thanks thanks I appreciate it. Shopify head shop and that was a good one and instacart / Maple bear is going with cart so I think that's a that's a that's a pretty nice one you know it kind of there a multi grocer chart cart and we all think about instacart I'm sure they hate being called Instagram so this kind of like really punches on the cart so maybe they get away from everyone mistakenly calm Instagram. Jason: [7:19] I think it's solid. Scot: [7:20] Yeah A-Plus on the symbol and then in the you'll notice that a lot of the evaluations and how many shares they're selling are blank and that's you know in this draft of this one which is the first kind of public one that they're dropping out there they'll they'll iterate a couple more times they'll do their Roadshow and then write one that, it prices they'll update the S12 include all that information so they'll make kind of literally a game day decision the night before IPO of how much based on the order book how much they want to sell and at what price so that, that's going to be blank through probably several more iterations as we go on then this is did you want to do something in. Jason: [8:04] No I was just I was just thinking that they I assume they left it blank because the underwriters were out of practice. Scot: [8:10] Yeah no no they they are there waiting and that's a good point because when you go public the the companies that take you public in this context they're all investment banks on Wall Street. But they they filled this role of Underwriters and basically what they're doing is they're acting as market makers they're going to cover your stock when it's public and they're also going to be basically pounding the pavement to sell your stock to buy side by side analysts and firms on Wall Street. Which there's two buckets of there's mutual funds and hedge funds there's also retail that I guess there's three buckets, retail would be you log into Schwab or Robin Hood and the die

EP308 - Amazon Q2 Earnings http://jasonandscot.com Amazon reported a strong quarter across the board for Q2, soundly exceeding analyst expectations and retail industry averages. In this episode we break down the 1p and 3p retail performance, AWS, and the Ads. We go into depth around Amazon disruption reorganization (to a regional model), Amazon's newest efforts in grocery, and health care. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 308 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, August 4, 2023. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode a 308 being recorded on Thursday August 3rd 2023 that's a lot of Threes 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 Scott showed listeners well Jason today is one of my four favorite days of the year it is Amazon earnings day. Jason: [0:51] I was going to guess it's the 4th Halloween okay. Scot: [0:54] Nope good guess and today was a real doozy so we have a lot to talk about and of course it wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show without. Jason: [1:05] Amazon news your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [1:18] That's right sometimes I hear from listeners why do you guys spend so much time talking about Amazon well my rationale is a it's one of my favorite subjects did be not only is Amazon the biggest retailer but it represents over half of e-commerce and for our listeners I think their data is pretty much the standard compared to even anything like comscore or adobe, just by definition of them having so much data that it is the basically the best source for what's going on and then given our macro environment we're at the tail end of the last show you were talking about how it's setting up for kind of a bad holiday so we're heading into this it's a critical quarter and for me Q to see what Amazon is done really sets us up for the back half of the year. And especially holiday. So kind of a canary in the coal mine and right now there's all this confusing data coming out about the consumer you see things that sentiment is down travel to starting to tip over housing is slowing so there's some negative but yet credit card spend is going pretty well and so this is probably the best read we're going to get on the consumer heading into holiday. [2:39] So I think of it as Scott foreshadowing the whole industry that's why we like to spend a lot of time on it, so the other thing I'll point out is it's been kind of a rough period for Amazon the last, probably 6/4 a day that things have slowed down post covid they've struggled they've done some layoffs but having watched Amazon if we zoom zoom out having followed them since 97 they're really good at reading the room and if the market and the externalities are saying you're free to invest they will invest like crazy and you know and by saying that I mean they'll focus on Revenue growth implementing infrastructure but then when the macro turns - and they can move to harvest pretty quickly so, a lot of that kind of goes as good as Wall Street so Wall Street will love them and give them a lot of rope and they'll invest invest invest and then while she starts to worry they're like oh my gosh this is scary your spending so much things are doing this and then they will turn very quickly and can then get into Harvest mode and produce results that's a really a big theme for this quarter so that's part of the set of the other part of the setup is we have some eCommerce data coming into this what is that, what are those tea leaves tell us before we jump into Amazon. Jason: [4:00] Yeah so we have data from the US Department of Commerce through June and it is a really complicated story so that the top line is a little bit of a worrisome sign so year-to-date January through June of this year retail sales are 1.9 percent higher than they were during that same period last year so time now to put that in perspective in the 10 years leading up to covid we average retail growth of 4% a year so so far this year the growth is less than half of the industry average and then the last three years of growth the last 3 years of Cook post covid were the biggest three years of retail growth in the history of retail so we had these three monster years and now for the first time we have a six month period That's, well off the average and, Q2 was worse than q1 now you know people always say well what about inflation in these numbers if you adjust all these numbers back to 2019 dollars to sort of take inflation out of it, retail sales this year are actually down 2.8 percent from last year so so. [5:15] All of the Mir growth we have this year is really due to its unusually high inflation now big caveat there, the information news is actually pretty solid in inflation in June is only up three percent year over year which. [5:32] You know before all this inflation stuff started the Fed was always trying to keep inflation between two point two and three percent so. [5:39] Information down and three percent if it if it stays down there is pretty encouraging but from a retail standpoint, you have this weird thing you have the macroeconomics getting better there's a lot more economists saying we're not going into a recession we somehow managed a soft Landing you've got the inflation numbers coming way down all the wages and employment numbers have continued to be robust so you're all these favorable macroeconomics and now the consumer has stopped spending and you hear every retail are talking about how, consumers are trading down a cheaper Goods they're buying more needs and less wants and all of these sorts of things and so. If you if you kind of look at the retail industry average. There are two retailers that have hit consistently been outperforming the industry average and those two retailers are Walmart and Amazon which are the two, largest retailers in the United States of America. Um there's some controversy over who's actually bigger but we'll leave that for another show if the bottom line is if the two biggest retailers in the market are both outperforming the industry average. That's a bad sign for the rest of the retailers. Scot: [6:54] Someone's losing share. Jason: [6:55] Exactly exactly and I would note we don't talk about it a ton on the show but then there's two Chinese companies that are. Dramatically grabbing share really quick so she and and and Tim ooh so you know outside of those four. It's not looking super up to Mystic for, for retail so I was super curious to hear not only how Amazon did but what they're what guidance they gave for Q3 and what they were seeing in terms of consumer spending because we do have this weird paradox. Macroeconomics getting better, but retail spending getting worse so that being said like what what did Amazon report Scott. Scot: [7:40] Well it's an interesting quarter because again for like the last six quarters are 18 months it's been kind of using Wall Street language Wall Street always comes in with expectations and then you either meet those beat them or miss them and or sometimes I'll call it in line if you meet their expectations well this was this was pretty much an unprecedented four-way beat with a raise and that's that last part is what about next quarter so the current quarter is did you how did you do and then did you for future Revenue expectations did you stay in line with those or did you raise them so this was kind of like one of the best quarters you can have using all the Wall Street language and I say a four way beat so number one is earnings per share, while she was expecting 35 cents and they handily beat that at 65 cents so that's the first one the second one is revenue revenue came in at 134 billion versus 131a clear beat. [8:41] AWS Revenue there was a lot of worry around this because Microsoft was really showing their first of all Microsoft had to break out as your separately for the first time and it used to be all clumped in together in this kind of cloud bucket, where they could kind of have office they're hiding what was going on with Azure so now that Microsoft had to call, carve out Azure it has been slowing down very dramatically so everyone was very worried about that a WS beat the expectation was 21.8 and they came in at 22. I will talk a little bit more about the growth things and some other color there third-party exceeded expectation the only thing that was really kind of in line is online store Revenue but the margin improvements if you can't go back to that EPS were so dramatic that everyone was fine with Alan being I think it was like. [9:30] Point two percent miss or something it was like basically in line so that was the only piece that didn't beat and everyone was fine with that because all these other things really swamped the outcome there and then to cap that off the midpoint we'll talk about it but this represents about 11% growth all in for this quarter and the next quarter they guide for growth for 11 to 13 so they're basically saying hey we beat your expectations this quarter and things are accelerating into Q3 so and then they also on the bottom line that guided up for next quarter as well so that went really really well um and that was a pretty amazing so let's peel the onion and see what we can learn you want to take us through the retail business. Jason: [10:18] Yeah for sure so the the retail business globally grew 11% so that last year this in this quarter they grew nine percent so accelerated growth, North America grew 11 per sent an international grew ten percent International really struggle

EP307 - PrimeDay, NRF Nexus, Commerce Next http://jasonandscot.com  Amazon Prime Day 2023 occurred over June 11 and 12th. Adobe says total sales were up 6% over 2022. Discount levels were much more conservative than holiday. We give a complete breakdown. Commerce Next 2023 was held in New York City June 20-21st. NRF Nexus 2023 was held at the Terranea Resort in Southern California July 10-12. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 307 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, July 23rd 2023. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 307 being recorded on Sunday July 23rd, 20:23 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners, Jason it's been a minute since we recorded a pod as the kids would say we've had a series of feels like the universe doesn't want us to podcast either I'm out of town or you're out of town in a place where we don't have Wi-Fi or a mic and then I had a little kid drama and we had to reboot and but here we are we're finally getting the pot in them. Jason: [1:07] Thank goodness and we're I think we're going to talk about this in a minute but I've been to several events and people are starting to get on me they're mad, that we fallen off of our regular recording. Pace in so I feel like I hope we will get credit for recording a rare Sunday night show and I'm looking for even extra credit, I'm actually recording this on vacation at an upper Lake Michigan lake house sitting in my car stealing the neighbors Airbnb Wi-Fi. Scot: [1:42] Yeah I give you 100 extra points on that one yeah definitely definitely some kind of new Ninja level podcasting that you're doing there. Jason: [1:51] I feel like that alone deserves a five star review on iTunes. Scot: [1:55] Yeah I feel like at some point the police are going to tap on your window and it's going to be fun to listen to that when it happens here you hear you explaining what you're doing in that that foggy car there. Jason: [2:05] Exactly I promise to keep the bike running if that does happen. Scot: [2:09] Maybe some post-show editing we'll call you've been a busy on the road retailgeek so I know you went to Commerce next and NRF Nexus which sound kind of relatively somewhere they both got that NEX in there, I was not able to make those and we purposely haven't really talked about it so I'm excited to hear your take on the State of the Union that you've been at to trade shows. Jason: [2:36] Yeah yeah I think Commerce next might have been shortly after our last recorded show so it happened June 20th in New York City in Manhattan at the the Midtown Hilton and this is a show, I don't know what year it is it's been going for a while but this is put on Friends of the show Scot Silverman who's been on several episodes and his Partners Veronica and Alan, and you know they they sold the show so as to raise some money last year so the show is getting, more serious they're hiring more staff they hired another friend of the show Jill Dvorak from the in our EFT, to manage content and it was you know bigger and better than previous in our interests Commerce next shows which were already good so I thought it was a good show in New York. [3:33] Two days one track of content for the most part on the main stage so you know you got to see most of the main speakers, there were like lunches and breakout sessions I did a session on sort of the evolving art of platform selection and you know this kind of shift from monoliths to, to these sort of mock based headless platforms and the pros and cons of, in picking the Best in Class vendors for each little Point solution versus all-in-one sweets from one vendor and, we had we had some good dialogue about the relative merits of all those approaches and sort of the evolution of the technology platform. [4:19] Which I used to talk about and work with clients all the time and I feel like. Kind of I've lost some of my muscle on that like it it comes up less often and I think part of the reason is all this stuff is getting, somewhat commoditized and it's just easier and safer to pick a solution and and you know get into the e-commerce business than it used to be. Scot: [4:43] Yeah the Pod we've talked a lot about headless and then there's that whole acronym of what they do which escaped to be just as internet yeah mock then you work on them and not the best branding is that this till the very much, you know what folks are looking at or are you just kind of walk them through the 30,000-foot layer of you know and on-prem open source SAS and then headless or her like what's. Jason: [5:13] Yeah so it's yeah so it's mostly Cloud it's headless it's it's you know multi-tenant Cloud headless. You know what Gardner calls compostable Commerce so you know 8 micro services or you know efficient apis or however you want to look at it but often it's like. [5:39] Rolling your own UI or buying a you I versus getting a you know pre can you I from. What they the funny term for the old Legacy Solutions is monolith so I guess AP Oracle and IBM now HCL are these like mono. Monolith Solutions and like Commerce next and fabric I'm Commerce tools are kind of the more modern architecture is for the actual platform. You know once on an interesting you know Shopify there's headless version of Salesforce you know Bigcommerce they're all kind of playing in this space and the interesting thing is it used to be a huge game-changing decision what you picked and. In many ways it just is less important it's a less critical decision to your overall business because they're all like pretty good and somewhat interchangeable today with any of them the sort of modern ones it's you know the folks that are. Kind of still trying to feed the servers under their desk and keep the the you know sort of on-prem, proprietary Stacks going you know are the are the folks that are usually behind. [6:57] Also and I know even, Wes about the specific nuances event of individual vendors but the there was a robust Exhibit Hall at Commerce next and by far the most common vendor is a all-in-one, AI based marketing Suite so you know all these tools that have like a CD P email server SMS server personalization engine like all of these sort of. Out marketing Outreach Tools in a single vendor driven by Ai and I have great empathy for anyone that needs to buy one of these things because there's like, 30 of them and they all have the exact same words on their Booth the same same Basic Value prop so it's a crowded space right now. Scot: [7:46] Yeah yeah that was gonna be my next question the AI Buzz is sweeping through every company and I'm sure I'm sure our e-commerce vendors Are Not Alone. Jason: [7:54] Yeah yeah and there were a number of sessions at both shows, switching per second from Commerce next which was June in New York to Nexus which was July in California so interrupt Nexus is kind of the spiritual successor. Before in a ref acquired shop dot-org we used to have this great shop dot-org show but we have another great show the shop dot-org merchandising Summit that was a smaller show in California there was a little more sort of tactical Hands-On type stuff, and in some ways this interact Nexus is the spiritual successor to that it's like four or five hundred person conference. At beautiful Resort the Tara no resort in Southern California on the beach. [8:47] One track of content great networking and just you know a nice week to spend with, many of your co-workers and, I was vastly Overexposed at this show I feel like they spent their whole Budget on the venue so so they had me do way too much content so the first night the big keynote was an interview with Kara Swisher so I got to interview. Kara Swisher who you know famous Tech journalists started New York Times started the code conference so I interviewed Steve Jobs Mark Zuckerberg Jeff Bezos you on mosque like all those guys multiple times and so you know very famous interviewer, here's the brutal part of this the most common thing that happens to me at these shows is people recognize my voice from this podcast. And they're super excited and then the first thing they say is oh it's great to meet you but where is Scott. Because everyone is way more excited about you than me which kind of hurts so then like now I've made the big time I'm on the big stage interviewing Kara swisher and what do you think everyone says to me. Scot: [10:10] We're Scott. Jason: [10:12] Yeah because she does a podcast with Scott Galloway. Scot: [10:15] Galloway. Jason: [10:16] Exactly and so if they're not disappointed. Scot: [10:18] The big dog. Jason: [10:19] Yeah yeah that it's me instead of you they're disappointed that it's, it's a me instead of Scott Galloway and I did mention probably on stage that we both did podcast with egotistical co-host named Scott, but I also alleged that my Scott was way better than her Scott and she agreed even though I don't think she knows who you are. Scot: [10:43] No no lies detected. Jason: [10:45] No exactly. Exactly no but we had a pretty good conversation she's. David very opinionated and outspoken but she's also pretty well informed so we got pretty deep into Ai and some of the pros and cons and some of the, the near term and far term use cases around AI we talked a lot about social commerce and why it's, hasn't caught on here yet and it you know has has more legs in China she's very psyched and in favor of autonomous vehicles I thought you would. You like that and so I feel like we had a pretty wide-r

EP306 - Apple WWDC announcement, Generative AI, and Holiday First Look  Apple previewed a new mixed reality headset called the Apple Vision Pro at it's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this month. Apple calls the new category spatial computing and we speculate about how it may or may not be a big deal. We also discuss the latest Echo hardware from Amazon, which is mostly disappointing. We discuss the rapidly evolving generative AI space and some of the commerce use-cases. And we take a first look at Holiday 2023. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 306 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, June 8th 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 306 being recorded on Thursday June 8 2023 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners well it's been about a month our weekly pot has become a monthly cut pod because our lives have gotten pretty busy here in this postcode world I know you've been traveling a lot what else is new with you. Jason: [0:57] Yeah yeah it's finally feels like summer which I'm very grateful for, a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world of Commerce that keeps me engaged but I feel like the main reason our podcast is slow down is because you are an entrepreneurial mogul. Scot: [1:15] I don't know about mobile but I'll take the entrepreneur piece yeah the day job is a occupying 100 or 99 point, eight percent of my time and I used to be able to use speed like 97 and I could squeeze in more time so I podcast start button but got a there's a lot of cars out there to take care of and we're doing our best to get to all of them. Jason: [1:35] And we are grateful for it I feel like I'm I'm going back in time about six months because we've been on such a leg but I feel remiss. There was a huge accomplishment like six months ago you were named one of the founding members of the. Marketplace Hall of Fame. Scot: [1:57] I saw that yeah yeah. Jason: [2:01] Here's the thing I'm going to say about that I didn't know that much about it and I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear you're a founding member but like. Don't like five names and it was like Jeff Bezos Mar Quarry. And you and Jack Ma I'm like I'm like man you are going to be the best looking dude on that Mount Rushmore. Scot: [2:24] Yeah usually I'm I'm kind of Groucho Marx not sure I want to be in the club but this is one I was very happy to be being is like me and like three or four other billionaires all I'll take I'll take being included in that group. Jason: [2:39] Yeah yeah you don't want to be the fanciest house on the Block so. Scot: [2:42] Yeah I got a yeah I'm I'm excited I'm punching way above my weight on that list for sure. Jason: [2:48] Yeah well so anyway congratulations on that for sure I know and westerners would appreciate it and then while I'm thrilled for summer I've been a little down about one bit of news. Scot: [3:00] What is it Jason. Jason: [3:01] Disney click closed the Star Wars Hotel before you and I got to go there. Scot: [3:08] Yeah I know we could have done a live stream when this thing was announced I was excited and then I saw the price and then I saw the promo video and then I saw the reviews and you could just tell they had totally the totally whiffed on the whole thing it was. It was it wasn't just kind of a hotel you stayed at you had to just do that thing alone you didn't have to but it was so expensive. You're paying like two or three thousand dollars a night which I don't know this gonna be some. Someone in California makes these decisions I guess I don't understand the the tolls of the everyday American or even the higher in Star Wars hand that's a that's a big ask and you know I'm not in the cosplay so I think they had this if we kind of put on our marketing hats they had death by a Thousand Cuts so you had to be a Star Wars fan number one number two you had to be willing to spend 5K on this fancy hotel experience number three had to be in the cause playing and then number for the experiences that people that try to gave it you know at best a. Jason: [4:11] Yeah mediocre. Scot: [4:12] Yeah it felt very Star Trek e which is definitely a problem for Star Wars fans and you know it had a lot of kind of fun Spacey kind of vibe but like not enough Star Wars so yeah but you know. I'll say kudos to them for trying but it was an expensive mistake and I'm sure they can repurpose the real estate it's not like they're gonna I'm not shedding a tear. Jason: [4:36] Real estate has been depreciated I'm sure. Scot: [4:38] I think they'll be okay but yeah you know it is bummer because I was kind of hoping it would work, I've done some other Star Wars experience you'll stuff that was really fun there was there's this group in the UK and they go create movie scenes and industrial areas it's really weird the way it's described is called like underground movies or something like that they did a Star Wars experience that was like amazing where they had a Cantina I guess galaxies Edge is kind of like yeah. As when I mean I haven't been yet but I'm actually going to go this summer so I'm excited about that all. Jason: [5:11] Yeah it's really good you should. Scot: [5:12] Yeah everyone says it's good so that's on my list. Jason: [5:15] Yeah I'm in the same boat like it I don't feel like I'm disappointed that I missed it because I feel like. It sounds poorly executed in poorly conceived but the high-level concept of a. Experiential Star Wars Hotel experience I was super excited about and I hope the fact that this does didn't work isn't going. Like slow down future future ideas on that space because it could have been cool if they did it really well. Scot: [5:44] Yeah yeah I don't put salt down. Jason: [5:47] Onto something more reliable Apple announcements. Scot: [5:51] Yeah this was exciting so I'd love to get your take on the Apple Vision Pro so first of all the the earlier announcements I was kind of like I was getting a little concerned because they're like you know coming up the biggest new feature in Mac OS is a really cool screen saver and then the phone had a new sleep display mode I'm like, we've kind of jumped the shark if this is the big new OS features there were some other ones and I'm being a little bit facetious but there were there were to say there were minor tweaks which is kind of a Fair assessment I think. [6:24] And then they finally gave us that one more thing that we've been waiting for and I went and our crack staff of interns went into the Jason and Scot show vault and you and I and 2016 gave a talk at an in our F / shop dot-org event where we were asked to talk about the future of retail and in there I remember I pulled up the presentation we talked about drones and 3D printing and then we talk about a rvr and at that point in time Facebook they're used to this company called Facebook now you may know them as meta they they had just acquired Oculus and we were speculating would Apple enter the game and turns out we were right but like many of our predictions we were maybe a little early if I've done the math on this right we were about seven years ahead, but I think the wait has been worth it because they definitely swung for the fences on this one and you know the the feature sets and the user interface no one none of us have experience to have read the reviews of folks that have sounds like it I can't wait to get my hands on one and I'm definitely ordering one so excited to hear what you think. Jason: [7:37] Yeah yeah so maybe half a step back Apple tends to do two big events a year they and they do as software announcement and they do a hardware announcement this is normally the software announcement where they detail all the. New releases of the various operating systems for all the devices and they do sometimes, launch devices at this which they did again they launched a number of new configurations of Max and then in like September they announced. The hardware which is up you know generally includes a new phone for October. So you don't necessarily expect a huge new hardware product at this announcement and I was I was kind of with you most of the OS and announcements were very incremental the new. Computers were all like like very very incremental there is like. [8:35] The new 15-inch the the MacBook Air is now a 15 inch. So that's maybe going to be an appealing laptop for people that want to pretty powerful laptop that's super light. But I will say there's a number of small enhancements in the OS has that I'm looking forward to like they their incremental but they did you know call out a number of sort of pain points where like. The autocorrect on the keyboard can often be very annoying and they're going to use a large language model too. Um what you keep your curse words and proprietary language a lot easier and, a few little bits like that and then yeah to your point like at the end they go and one more thing and as I assume most of our listeners know that's magic language at Apple, that's that's the language Steve Jobs used before he pulled the first iPhone out of his jeans pocket or the first MacBook Air out of the manila envelope and you know that language has been used to introduce a lot of apples game-changing products and it frankly hasn't been used very much. In the in the modern era so the mere fact that they started the innocent reduction with an one more thing tells you that Apple thinks this is a. In extra big deal an

EP305 - Amazon and Shopify Q1 2023 earnings  Amazon and Shopify both reported their Q1 2023 earnings last week. Amazon had a strong first quarter, slightly over-shadowed by it's slowing AWS growth. Shopify also had strong Q1 2023 earnings although it did not achieve profitability. Shopify also announced a second reduction of headcount and announced that they were selling all of the recently acquired logistic assets. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 305 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, May 4th 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show, this is episode 305 being recorded on Thursday May 4th May the 4th be with you I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott showed listeners Happy Star Wars Day May the 4th be with you hope everyone had a great Star Wars Day Jason people can't see you but you are wearing your Jar Jar Binks cosplay. Jason: [0:53] I kind of assumed people just assume I'm always wearing that. Scot: [0:57] You should do the whole episode and jar jar speak well said Jason what's a new at the Amazon what. Jason: [1:10] I feel like people don't get the jar jar one I did I did do an act during covid-19 doing all this pitch theater online I did a pitch on Halloween in a Darth Vader mask. And we won the pitch so I feel like I should be doing costumes more. Scot: [1:28] Awesome you guys intimidate them and it's called the Darth Vader intimidation closed when you wear the Vader the Vader suit. Jason: [1:34] Exactly exactly and it had the voice changing thing and so it is. Scot: [1:38] Honest I find your lack of faith yeah there's a lot of death lot of lot of puts you can use in a pitch. Jason: [1:48] Yes unfortunately not a large enough chunk of the total addressable Market are Geeks. If you like is wrong I know how I got in this like funky like creative advertising world with all these I kept custody clients like I totally don't fit in. Scot: [2:09] Yeah been a misfit toy my whole life so sir not going to stop anytime soon embrace it Jason. Jason: [2:15] Yeah it was announced today that we won a big new client lvmh and so I like went on LinkedIn and joke that like it was largely thanks to my my stature is a luxury influencer. Scot: [2:29] Nice congrats your tick-tocks on luxury have one the death. Jason: [2:32] I know I know for a long time people were like why are you wasting your time with that and now they know. Scot: [2:38] Who will we have it's been a while since we dropped a pod because we both had spring breaks and then you've been traveling a bit so it's great to be back. Jason: [2:49] Yeah it's super fun to catch up with you and with the audience. I feel like the last show we did was right after shoptalk so I did get to see a bunch of folks and now you know it's a treat your season is starting to heat up so I have a bunch of upcoming trips so. If listeners are going to any of these shows make sure you make a point to catch up with me and you could see the jar jar costume. In person so I'm actually doing this show from. The famous Mayflower Hotel in Washington d.c. because I'm in town for the. Home and Commercial products Association I'm doing the keynote for their annual conference tomorrow morning. And then I'm going to sap Sapphire which is their big customer show in Orlando in on May 15th if you like. There's a fair amount of our listeners that go to that show and then to fun ones that are you know core Commerce shows after that we have Commerce next by our friends Scott Silverman is in New York in June so June 20th. And I'll be doing some fun stuff stuff on stage there and then in RFC you know has their kind of future looking executive digital Summit. [4:07] On the beach it Tara no in Rancho Palos Verdes it's called the inner F Nexus on July 10 and all both be giving a keynote and I will also be interviewing Kara Swisher so I feel like. I'm going to spend an hour just making fun of Scott Galloway with her. Scot: [4:25] Nice yeah that's good the dog dog is off the porch whoo. Jason: [4:30] Exactly I was thinking about like maybe bring a mask I've already you know I have audio collection of a lot of my favorite Scott Galloway predictions meaning which didn't come true. Scot: [4:43] Macy's Woodberry Amazon and apparel. Jason: [4:47] But I feel like this is. Scot: [4:48] Amazon to be Roadkill. Jason: [4:50] Like Freaky Friday like so like Cara is this like super famous interviewer and I am interviewing her and we're doing it at Tara know where she started code conference so it's very topsy-turvy. Scot: [5:03] Yeah yeah just bring red tears without her trademark thing. Jason: [5:07] I assume she just travels with one of her own yeah that Herman Miller red chair yeah. Scot: [5:09] BYO RC okay. Jason: [5:15] I actually think she's not with Vox anymore so I don't know you know she may be in withdrawn not she may have said said goodbye to the red chairs will have to ask her. Scot: [5:24] Look that's that's question number one. Jason: [5:26] Yeah but besides all of that we are just getting started on q1 earnings season and you know of course for most of our listeners one of the most important earnings calls happened last week. Scot: [5:39] Yeah it wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show if we didn't have some Amazon news. So on April 27th which was last Thursday when we're recording this Amazon had their earnings it was what Wall Street would call a clear beat meaning both top and the bottom line where a beat this is welcome news because Amazon's earnings have been kind of like not not mrs. but not amazing. [6:07] So revenues came in two percent above consensus which is a slight beat but what got Wall Street very excited was operating income came in 57 percent above and longtime listeners will know I usually cover the retail portion of Amazon and Jason covers the cloud or a WS part, we're going to mix it up because I read all the reports and what was most interesting right now in kind of the world of Internet stocks the whole world has been turned upside down by chat GPT which is put out by open AI Sam Altman startup who is partially owned and supported by Microsoft there and investor and the hole, infrastructure runs on Azure their cloud computing, platform this has been a huge win for Microsoft because it's enabled them to add a chat gbt like component to Bing. [7:02] And you know the buzz is that, search is dead a lot of people are even speculating maybe even apps will be dead you know maybe maybe you don't really need apps on a phone if you could just talk to your phone and say hey book me restaurant reservation as 6:30 at the one of these three restaurants why do you need a nap if an AI can go to that room so there's there's a lot of people in the Wall Street and Tech world are, I would say there's like this wall of worry around this new innovation and this is real so chat GPT was the fastest product to 100 million users what was it Jason like four weeks or something. [7:42] Like an egg yeah if you see a chart it's like this a vertical wall whereas like Facebook and some of those kinds of things were previous record holders for this and it took, you know years and so-so. Jason: [7:54] Two months to a billion or 4 months to a billion users. Scot: [7:58] Yeah so it's just this crazy adoption curve unlike anything we've ever seen before so you know there's, this was top of mind when this came out so the so while streets pretty obsessed with what's going on with the cloud also Amazon's Cloud division has been slowing their growth it was the you know the darling of the Amazon portfolio and now it's been slowing because as we head into this recessionary period, also another concern is we cover this a little bit last time but Silicon Valley Bank failed we've had all this kind of startup craziness and a lot of those startups use cloud computing and Amazon so, so that was what all eyes were on and you know what we saw was the growth did slow to 11 and a half percent which was less bad than what people were thinking so is kind of viewed as positive which is always one of these counter, Wall Street all about expectations not like the real absolute numbers but 11.5 percent growth is this is this part we've been covering this for for. [9:04] Years of this point five years and it's always growing north of 50% but this time it really slowed down and they're even projecting for next quarter or slow 2011 Amazon did Jesse did talk a lot about AI there they've talked about how they're going to do a lot of people the other problem with Chad gbt is it looks the prior to the prior a I think we all spend a lot of time with which was Alexa now feels wildly inferior because you're having these really robust conversations with chat gvt and Alexis can do like, yeah it's not really like at that level of conversational AI you can get some weather maybe play a song and a couple other little things add something it'll talk to you about do you want to reorder your dog food and yeah that's about it right so very, Barry and then you know that used to be cool and now in a world where we're chatty be teeing it feels inferior so Amazon like Google is a little bit on their heels from this and they basically came out and said we're going to do a lot around Alexa here and it will we're dedicated that being by far the best voice assistant, and we'll be adding chats ubt like capabilities but then for AWS they basically said look there's all these language models out there and we're going to be neutral will

EP304 - ShopTalk Recap  ShopTalk 2023 took place at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas March 26 – March 29th, and seems fully back to pre-pandemic levels. Over 10,000 attendees, 600 exhibitors, and 50,000 one on one meetings, make ShopTalk the premiere digital commerce event in the US. In this episode we recap everything you may have missed if you couldn’t make it to Las Vegas. We also briefly discuss e-commerce in Brazil, around Jason’s recent trip to São Paulo. Key Themes At ShopTalk this year: Retail Media Networks Social Commerce and Shoppable Video Artificial Intelligence Retailers Becoming Plaforms Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 304 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, April 6th 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.  

EP303 - Amazon, Walmartand E-com Q4 Results  In this episode we cover: Amazon Q4 Earnings Walmart Q4 Earnings US Department of Commerce Q4 e-commerce data Discussion of Temu and other Social Commerce News Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 303 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, February 23rd 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.  

EP302 - Kasey Lobaugh, Deloitte Chief Futurist, Buying into Better: The future of the consumer industry Deloitte Chief Futurist, Consumer Industry, Principal and Owner, Kasey Lobaugh, joins the podcast for his fifth appearance. Having previously appeared on episodes 68, 114, 180, 213. Deloitte has published some new new research, Buying in to Better: The future of the consumer industry, in which they uncover dramatic change in the consumer industry that over the next decade will impact the markets, models, and mechanics of consumer industry companies in significant ways. Also discussed The rise of digital goods and services: Opportunity over threat, and a monthly consumer tracker: Consumer behavior trends state of the consumer tracker | Deloitte Insights Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 303 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, January 25th, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.