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.

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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 wo