Joshua Warren  0:06  
If you look at what Apple wants to do, they won't be looking at their smartphones anymore. They'll be using their really cool. Apple Metaverse, access devices, whatever they want to call them to be in the metaverse. And so if that's where they are, and they're having a problem with their device, or they're having a question about an order or something like that, they may actually want to interact with your brand there in the metaverse rather than take their headset off, exit out of their game there. However, whatever the metaverse looks like for them, leave that and then go send an email

Darin Newbold  0:44  
Well, hello, and welcome again to Commerce today. My name is Darren and as always with me, here he is, Josh, we got some exciting and it's kind of a fun one to talk about this time. Although I am going to tell you right from the start, you had told me this was all hocus pocus and muckety muck. But here we go. We're talking about what is it VR and should we be in the metaverse?

Joshua Warren  1:07  
Yeah. Is your brand. Metaverse ready? And you're right. I had said not too long ago that the metaverse was still way off still a buzzword, not something that you really needed to worry about. So you can't be there. I was hoping you wouldn't notice you wouldn't remember. You are paying attention though. Every now and then. So yeah. Basically, I have realized kind of Washington tracking the trends. There are some areas that brands I still think you know, unless you're a big brand and for the very specific use case, it's not time to put the average ecommerce brand into the metaverse. But it's time to get ready for that.

Darin Newbold  1:45  
So this isn't you're not talking about Ready Player One and I can have my full VR bodysuit on ready to go and have those experiences.

Joshua Warren  1:53  
Yeah, yeah. And you know, we're not even ready, unfortunately, to record this podcast in the metaverse but that that we're Next Up Next up, it's going to be fun. But no, I really feel like there's two areas. All joking aside. And the first one is kind of simple. And that's just define what your goals will be once the metaverse is ready for you. So are you going to be there? You're going to be there just to have brand awareness. Like you know, Chipotle has had some Metaverse appearances just so that people think about Chipotle keep it top of mind they've launched the new products that way, that sort of thing? Or are you going to be offering customer service that way? And I think that that could get really interesting of being able to interact and provide customer service? Or, you know, are you going to you're going to actually try to sell your products via the metaverse. And I think that's going to look very different for different brands. And there might even be different goals and things you want to accomplish to the metaverse but I think determining that first figuring out, you know, what are you going to do will help you as you kind of move into the next step of an outline, because it's really important to know, you know, if you're not going to do product sales, then you probably don't have to worry as much about your product data. But if you're going to do product sales, then you're going to need need to start getting that ready.

Darin Newbold  3:15  
Well, yeah, I mean, that's a whole whole different set of photography and and what it looks like 3d imaging for for your products and all of those things. But I was going back to kind of in, in, in the first set of goals, and just thinking about brand awareness. I recognize that makes sense. Hey, you know, advertising at the end of the day, and that's if you if you remember, I made the comment about Ready Player One, but you know, the evil empire in there. I can't remember the name. But anyway, they were they were gonna they found out that, you know, what is it 80% They could cover the screen before somebody's head explodes or whatever. So I get it brand awareness and being able to advertise things and get some knowledge out there. But when you start moving to a customer service situation, or, or or much beyond that, and I've seen a specific customer service, how would that work? Because you're kind of saying that someone has VR that would be then require customer service, and I guess helped me and maybe I'm not thinking about this, right? And because you're looking at me like Darren, you're doing weird here, so help me out.

Joshua Warren  4:22  
No, no, it's a good point. And I think I kind of I jumped ahead a little bit and when I didn't say kinda from the start, and when we go back to the episode, please don't but if you go back to the episode where I say that don't worry about the metaverse, it's not there yet not ready yet. I compared it to omni channel and I talked about how for years we heard the buzzword omni channel omni channel people didn't even know what it was but they were selling it and then all of a sudden omni channel is a very real thing and now it's table stakes and you know everybody has it well. Omni channel when it comes down to it just means meet your customers where they are where the customers are you Good to be there. So right now, not a lot of customers in the metaverse one year, three year, five years, 10 years. I'm not even going to try to guess. But some number of years from now, especially if you're targeting younger consumers, your customers are going to be in the metaverse, they're going to be spending their time at least a portion of their day. You know, if you look at what Apple wants to do, they won't be looking at their smartphones anymore. They'll be using their really cool Apple Metaverse, access devices, whatever they want to call them to be in the metaverse. And so if that's where they are, and they're having a problem with their device, or they're having a question about an order or something like that, they may actually want to interact with your brand. They're in the metaverse, rather than take their headset off, exit out of their game there. However, whatever the metaverse looks like for them, leave that and then go send an email. I mean, think about people used to file customer service concerns and complaints by mailing a letter. I think email,

Darin Newbold  6:02  
will you. I can imagine.

Joshua Warren  6:05  
I've heard about about this thing called the post office. Yeah. And I think eventually, I mean, if you just look at the natural progression of things, eventually sending a support ticket via email or via web form. People are gonna look at that and be like, that's like sending a letter is to us right now.

Darin Newbold  6:24  
All right, you convinced me. I appreciate that. All right. All right. So moving on. So you said kind of one of the big areas was was these three items within it. So what's your second big area?

Joshua Warren  6:35  
So the second area that brands can can start being ready for the metaverse and this goes back to some thinking I was doing about some of our earliest ecommerce clients that I've worked with. And that is start producing your product images and other content in 3d. I remember kind of the first wave of E commerce, the responsive wave and then even when Apple started releasing retina devices, like each of those times, Sony brands scrambled because they said we don't have product photography in the right format, the right size, the right resolution to make it look good on the web. While now Metaverse it's 3d, your standard web product photography is going to look terrible.

Darin Newbold  7:17  
What Okay, so now, how do you get that? Where would merchant or where would somebody go to even start this process?

Joshua Warren  7:24  
You know, it's interesting. There's a few different approaches to it. And I looked, Tommy Hilfiger actually has started, they now design all of their products in 3d. That is just how when they are developing a new product, they design it in a 3d app. And that way, not only do they naturally have 3d assets they could use in the metaverse, it actually cut two weeks off their process for product development. So just made it more efficient.

Darin Newbold  7:50  
Wow. Well, okay, so Tommy Hilfiger. They have their own products, but many merchants are, are reselling others products. Is there a place for them? Or how would they approach this? Yeah, there's

Joshua Warren  8:04  
a few different ways. And it's funny, I actually knew a brand or a company a couple of years ago that was gonna solve this using Blockchain and cryptocurrency and they had this whole idea of they basically, were developing 3d scans of commodity products. And then you would throw a long complicated thing that I don't know if they even fully understood. You would use blockchain to purchase the right to display those in the metaverse as you were selling products or needing to represent products. That's a little out there. I think in the meantime, though, you're either gonna have to produce these yourselves, or you're gonna have to go to a database like that, or ask your vendors, your suppliers for these products. And I know that Google actually they haven't gone in this direction with it yet. But Google just released a AI product with their vision technology that Kroger has purchased, that has a database of common products that it can use AI to basically understand, Okay, I'm looking at a camera view of a shelf. And here's a box of cereal. And here's a box of this, here's a box of that. And it's kind of for the opposite of this. It's to allow them to basically alert and say, Hey, you're running low on this product. But in order to do that, they had to train it on a whole lot of 3d models of those products. I can see Google even where someone similar kind of selling or renting a service that would provide that data. The other thing you can do, though, and this is actually what this is something that's interesting that IKEA has actually been struggling with this and trying to figure this out. You can take a 3d photo, there's ways that you can just take the photos and 3ds you can use a scam. There's laser scanners that can convert things to 3d, or you can actually just render it so again, you're kind of designing it in 3d. And when they were looking at the IKEA finally decided that they are rendering it in 3d. And it's a little bit easier for them because furniture, there's not necessarily a lot of detail, especially in IKEA furniture. No offense, I mean, I'm we're using an Ikea table right now. So what they did is actually 70 70% of their product images that they use, or that are catalogs and on the web already, are actually rendered 3d images. And they're just only displaying the 2d view on the web. And that way, they're doing that instead of trying to take a 3d photo.

Darin Newbold  10:32  
So how would or you're my first thought was around, I don't know, things, things that you see on Amazon, a lot of times, they take so many pictures. And they have the front, the back, the top, the bottom, the left the right. And all of that is there is there ways to three digitize those A levels of pictures to then create a 3d there are there are I imagine they're probably not the best, but

Joshua Warren  11:00  
well, and there's some devices out there some equipment that retailers can purchase that have been on the market for a number of years now that utilize a camera on a boom that moves and or the product is on a turntable that moves. And it captures photos all around. And that's typically right now just being used to show all those different views. But there's software that can then take that stitch it all together create the 3d image. And so that is a even a place to start is if you if right now your processes, you're taking a photo of all your products, but you were taking kind of one view, well, you already need to be doing more than that. And so it might be time to invest in one of those turntable systems or boom arm systems to where you're able to capture all those different views. And just make sure you know, you don't necessarily have to worry about stitching it together in 3d yet. But that would be a good way to build up that content so that when it is time to move to the metaverse, you already have what you need to build the 3d content.

Darin Newbold  11:57  
So I've got to ask the question, because I know I know someone out there is thinking the same question right now. And they're gonna say, all right, Josh, crystal ball, wind, do I really need to be doing this?

Joshua Warren  12:12  
I mean, if I knew the answer to that, I don't know. Hi, hi would probably

Darin Newbold  12:16  
be probably wouldn't be doing this project.

Joshua Warren  12:19  
That'd be off making billions in the market. No, I, you know, honestly, I don't know. And that is one of the reasons that I'm kind of saying, hey, consider start doing this now. Because what's gonna happen is, there's going to be a point in time where it's super clear that everybody needs to be doing this. And there's going to be those brands out there that had started preparing. And they're going to be one of the first ones out in the metaverse and they're going to do insanely well. And there's going to be other brands that said, Oh, I think it's really far off in the future, I'm not going to worry about it, I'm not going to do it. And they're going to be starting from scratch and it is going to take them much longer. And this is what I saw even very early in my career with E commerce is the first movers the people that jumped on first, it was so much easier to get traffic, it was so much easier to get sales, there was less competition. I mean, this was back back then you could literally just on before Google even but whatever search engine you were targeting, you just told them what keywords to show your site for and they would believe you and you would get a ton of traffic. I think we'll see something like that with the metaverse where at first, it's going to be a little wild, a little crazy, a lot of traffic and a lot of a lot of opportunity that the brands that are ready for it will really capitalize on so I don't think you know, I'm not going to tell the clients I'm working with you must start taking 3d images today or tomorrow or even this year, it's more of a conversation of what would it look like to start doing it this year? And how could that benefit your other projects you're already doing? How could you use it now so that you're ready in the future? And if if it doesn't fit at all for you know, this year, okay. Wait till next year,

Darin Newbold  14:00  
but maybe have the discussion. Exactly. So it's kind of one of those where get your leadership team together. And maybe this is a topic you throw out and kick it around, and maybe even put a time box on Hey, where it's been 15 minutes. Let's hear some ideas. And then a quick K, do we want to keep rolling this or bring it back? Or do we put it on the shelf for another month or two and come back to it? One last thing I wanted to ask you around the 3d images because I keep thinking on that. What about utilizing a video that does a three dimensional that does a full round view. Because I'm thinking about this around more around like clothing where you're in because you're showing clothing you're either gonna wanna show it on a on a mannequin or on an ideally on a real person

Joshua Warren  14:47  
on this. If you asked me this even six months ago, I'd probably say I don't know what that was. I don't know how well that would work. But the thing that has changed is all the progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence. And there are actually services out there now they're very bleeding edge that you can give it a series of product images, or you can give it a video and it will make the it'll assume and create the 3d model for you. So, yes, that would work. There

Darin Newbold  15:16  
you go. So when such crazy idea, all right, well, I'm very glad Well, alright, we're wrapping it up. We're, we're putting a bow on this one. Last thoughts. Josh?

Joshua Warren  15:25  
Really just excited. You know, I I do want everybody to understand I was a little down on the metaverse in the previous episode. Personally, I love it. I think it's an amazing idea. And I can't wait till it happens unless, you know, some of the big evil tech companies are the ones that control it. How it turns out, is no matter what it's going to be exciting to watch this unfold. I just want to make sure that people like any new technology, I mean, right now, I think cryptocurrencies and blockchains are a great example. There's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of fraud. There's a lot of people that are going to sell you the snake oil and try to get your money. And I know that especially you're talking about e commerce and E commerce budgets, everybody wants a slice of that pie. So just be smart about it. Be smart about your Metaverse, investments and where and how and when you do that. All right,

Darin Newbold  16:15  
well, you heard it here. First be smart about it. Look at the metaverse, but be smart about it. All right. Thanks, as always for joining us on our journey through commerce today and we'll catch up with you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai