EP054 The 2024 Retail Frontier - Shifting Omnichannel Strategies
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[00:00:00] Darin Newbold: Well, good day and welcome to Commerce Today. It is, uh, great to have my regular co host back. Josh is back with us today. My name is Darren as always, and we're very excited to have you here. Uh, as you might've noticed, Josh made it a more dramatic. entrance to our, uh, Commerce Today podcast. We want to wish our, uh, wonderful broadcast engineer, Monica, well, she's not feeling at the top of her, uh, top of the game today.

[00:00:32] And so, uh, we had to do this on our own. So have grace may the force be with us. And with that, the, uh, the great excitement is the 2024 retail frontier. And I got to do the radio voice shifting omni channel strategy. So this is big time stuff. Josh, welcome back.

[00:00:49] Joshua Warren: Thanks. It's good to be back and good to start off the, my broadcast year, at least with a couple of interesting articles out of practical e commerce and Bloomberg for this uh, episode.

[00:01:00] Darin Newbold: Well, all right. So, as I mentioned to you pre pre show that I was told Omnichannel was old and you don't use the word and it's all, yeah, all that. However, comma, it appears that there are some new immersive and emergent technologies that are out there that really start to change the game. So with that, 

[00:01:24] as, uh, as once said in a movie, talk to me, Goose.

[00:01:27] Joshua Warren: Yeah. So it's funny. Omnichannel is one of those terms. It's like e commerce for years.

[00:01:32] People in the industry have been saying, well, We should drop the e. It's all just commerce, but it's one of those terms. It's convenient. It sticks around. Um, omni channels the same way. It's, it's basically just commerce at this point, but we still use that term because it is useful to kind of understand that we're talking about combining different channels all into one unified customer experience.

[00:01:53] And today, uh, it's interesting. We get to talk about some things like augmented reality that, yeah. For many, many years were talked about, but seemed like, oh, five years, 10 years. And now I think it's more like, well, how many days until the vision pro

[00:02:07] Darin Newbold: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:02:09] Joshua Warren: So yeah, nine days till I get my pre order in.

[00:02:11] Um, so yeah, 

[00:02:12] augmented reality fitting rooms are probably the biggest thing, that we're seeing for an omnichannel shift in 2024. 

[00:02:21] it's expected that the market for those will exceed 3 billion this year.

[00:02:26] Darin Newbold: are you telling the audience that, hey, they need to 

[00:02:28] get spooled up for a augmented reality fitting room?

[00:02:32] Joshua Warren: Definitely. either a fitting room or some type of AR experience. there's one brand, Rebecca Minkoff that they discovered customers are 65 more likely to place an order with them after interacting with a product in AR, so I've been talking for a while about how you need to get your assets ready for AR and VR.

[00:02:51] So if you have those 3d assets ready. Maybe you're going to be one of the first people to deploy them on a Vision Pro. You might see a nice little boost in sales.

[00:02:59] Darin Newbold: Interesting. And I have to tell you, just literally over the holidays, I got, approached with this, the brands that, uh, that are trying to sell you different clothes, but they just say, hey, use your iPhone and they'll size you and you get the perfect size, perfect fit.

[00:03:14] And I haven't done it yet, but I did, did look strongly at it. So these are hot. This is, uh, this is definitely something to, uh, to be aware of and if you're selling any kind of Clothing and merchandise like that, it's important. So, the next step on all of this is the pop up shops, brand collections, and those kind of things.

[00:03:33] Tell me a little bit more about those, Josh.

[00:03:35] Joshua Warren: Yeah. So, I joked a while back that the internet was opening up physical stores. Um, so you saw Amazon opening the stores. You saw, brands like Warby Parker that were online only opening stores. then the pandemic happened and people didn't focus so much on stores.

[00:03:53] Now it seems like online-only and online-first brands are, they're scaling back a bit. They're not opening tons of their own stores, but what they're doing is pop up shops, which I think we've joked before. mall kiosks. That's what we know them as. But, pop up shops, kiosks, also temporary inpermanent store-within-a-store concepts.

[00:04:13] I honestly think this is what's keeping Kohl's in business is Kohl's has Sephora and a few other brands that basically rent space from them in all of their stores. And, um, I don't know if you've been into a Kohl's lately. I went there just for an Amazon return, actually. And I realized that I was there for an Amazon return.

[00:04:30] There was a Sephora store there selling me things. I never actually really even interacted with the Kohl's brand at all.

[00:04:35] Darin Newbold: Interesting. That is, that is interesting. I was gonna, the one other piece that, uh, that you had, uh, talked to me earlier about was like experiences and events. And really those event branding, one of the things I know, at least I saw when we were, gosh, last year at the Adobe conference and everything was in the form of the One World Williams.

[00:04:55] And the Williams Racing Team really taking advantage of race events and being there and being there in force and just at those with those big pop ups and have those, you know, pop up shops and those kind of things. So, all right, with all of this fun strategy and new influence and everything that's going on, there's some new things that are happening around that.

[00:05:17] And how does the economy and how does the overall strategy, how does that affect? These things that we're talking about, especially the omni channel.

[00:05:24] Joshua Warren: Yeah, so Last year was a year of kind of muted investment in Omnichannel. lot of brands that were kind of looking at the economy, trying to decide what they wanted to do. there's a term that we joked about a bit before the show, but, I don't know if y'all out there have heard this before, but vibe session.

[00:05:39] Um, think recession, but vibe session. And that was a term that was coined last year to basically mean, hey, all the economic indicators say the economy is good. Even some of the consumer sentiment surveys look good, but a lot of consumers still had this feeling like, Hey, we might be in a recession, even when we weren't.

[00:05:58] And, um, Bloomberg report came back out, um, just a few weeks ago that that's finally ending that consumer sentiment is shifting. inflation continues to decrease. Uh, one survey showed 13 percent of Americans are worried their income will decrease in 2024, 19 percent expected their income to go up. And then 68 percent said, ah, it'll probably be about the same.

[00:06:22] So it's a lot better than the same survey a year before. However, there's still some of the really large brands that have. You know, major exposure to big macroeconomic shifts. They're still a little nervous. So, um, Walmart for one, they're closing down around 150 underperforming stores. They're going to shift all that investment into e commerce because they've basically said, Hey, different parts of the country, some are doing well.

[00:06:46] Some aren't doing as well. Ecommerce makes it easier to kind of reach consumers globally. So let's shift our investments in that direction as kind of the economy continues to recover.

[00:06:57] Darin Newbold: Okay. Well, kind of keeping going on the theme of shifts in a way. So we talked to shifting economy, but what about just consumer and shopping behaviors and those shifts?

[00:07:09] Joshua Warren: Yeah. So more than half of consumers, and this isn't e commerce consumers, this is all consumers in the U S more than half of consumers now use a search engine. To research all their purchase decisions, whether they're buying online or offline. So for those, uh, holdouts, I guess, you know, welcome to 2005 ish, whatever was around, but, um, yeah, so searching is becoming more and more common to influence purchasing, um, trend.

[00:07:35] I'm excited about 17 percent of consumers have used chat GPT specifically, not just generative AI, but chat GPT. To help them make a purchase decision and that's only increasing. I think that's

[00:07:47] Darin Newbold: it. I think that's so weird. But all right, keep going. Keep

[00:07:50] Joshua Warren: going. Um, also platforms. I want to say platforms. I, it, I'm really thinking social media, but even Google has been doing this.

[00:07:59] They're emphasizing zero click content, which basically means whether you're on their website or you're in their mobile app, you never click on anything to leave the app or leave the website. So think, 

[00:08:09] Darin Newbold: um, 

[00:08:10] Joshua Warren: Articles that are posted on linkedin instead of getting a link on linkedin that takes you to someone's blog

[00:08:17] Darin Newbold: Got

[00:08:17] Joshua Warren: it. So platforms basically platform.

[00:08:18] It's all about the eyeballs They want to keep the eyeballs in their site in their app not send them out to the retailer site and that is honestly Really changing your social media and seo strategies. So that's something that's gonna continue to shift this year 

[00:08:32] Darin Newbold: yeah, that's some neat stuff. I, I still, uh, struggle a little bit with the. Consumers using ChatGee, using the HAL 9000 for, uh, for, for finding their buying decisions. But, hey, you do what you gotta do, and it's probably crazy the recommendations it might give.

[00:08:49] So maybe I ought to give it a try. You

[00:08:51] Joshua Warren: should, you should. I actually, over the holidays.

[00:08:53] Darin Newbold: Oh my.

[00:08:54] Joshua Warren: We have a pull out trash can in our kitchen that never, we could never get, it was literally just a pull out drawer, didn't come with a trash can, we put our own trash can in it, we could never get one that would fit quite right, finally decided, hey, we want two, we want a trash and a recycle. And I just, I was having a hard time with the dimensions.

[00:09:11] I took a photo and I took a few measurements and I said, Hey, chat GPT, I need the perfect products, two different trash cans that will fit in here perfectly. Leave no extra room and meet these requirements. It took it about 30 seconds and it had me the exact thing to buy on Amazon.

[00:09:30] Darin Newbold: All right, that's awes It's awesome.

[00:09:32] Joshua Warren: That's been a problem for me for like 10 years that I just never took the time to solve. And then I was like, Oh, chat, GPT can do it. Interesting.

[00:09:38] Darin Newbold: Okay. All right. Well, you sold me. Well, next up here as we're as we're going through the whole omni channel discussion.

[00:09:45] So we've talked some shifts in the economy, the shifts in buyer behaviors, consumer behavior. So what about kind of the organizational changes overall in retail? What does that? What does that look and how is that affecting the whole process?

[00:09:57] Joshua Warren: process? So it's interesting, e commerce used to be very siloed. E commerce would be an IT function or a marketing function. Um, I worked with one brand where it was literally a, a guy that in the back room of one of the stores said, Hey, I'm going to put a server here and we're going to launch a e commerce website.

[00:10:13] And. I don't think his bosses even knew what that meant, but it led to what ended up being a hundred million dollar plus e commerce business. Um, then stand alone e commerce department started emerging. People realizing, hey, this isn't IT, this isn't marketing, it needs to work closely with both, but it's something separate.

[00:10:31] Um, but now the omni channel retailers are realizing, hey, we don't need a separate silo for e commerce. We want to build e commerce into everything we do, um, have that omni channel approach. So. Basically, they're breaking down those silos and you're seeing basically e commerce roles within just retail operations department.

[00:10:51] Darin Newbold: Okay. Well, that, that definitely adds some, add some touches and, and influence into that whole process. So now as we're kind of bringing it all together, and, and really, as you all have heard what we've shared, now it's kind of, all right, what's those strategies? What are some things that, that you, the e commerce directors and the merchants out there that are working with these things?

[00:11:15] What can you do? What are some strategies that you can do? And as I see the first one up here, I'm not sure that's necessarily

[00:11:24] Joshua Warren: top

[00:11:25] Darin Newbold: the line one, Josh. But, fire away, this one's all you.

[00:11:29] Joshua Warren: Alright, so consider the impact of AR or VR. So think about how your brand could leverage AR or VR. I think it's different for a store experience versus an in home experience or an online experience.

[00:11:42] Um, what Darren is joking about as I put in the show notes. Pre order the Vision Pro headsets. Apple's Vision Pro pre orders open January 19th. First ones will be delivered February 2nd. Um You know, jury's still out. How many consumers are actually going to buy this? It's like over 3, 000. Um, some people think it's going to become a niche enterprise product.

[00:12:03] Um, Apple's doing some interesting things around, um, spatial computing. So like video conferencing, even working with large spreadsheets, all sorts of interesting stuff. But I suspect even if it's a fairly niche market, um, we're going to see a lot of kind of bleeding edge consumers that tend to be the people that spend more money online buying vision pro headsets, checking them out, seeing what experiences you can offer.

[00:12:29] So I would encourage you, if it makes sense for your brand, especially if you already have an app, you really need to be looking at the, the, the development materials for Vision Pro are already out there. You need to already be looking at that.

[00:12:39] Darin Newbold: For those of you out there that are listening, that, that, this even even resonates with Josh is your target market.

[00:12:46] So just to have, just in case you're wondering, you already have a target market at least of one to go after. So, a couple other things that. I'm not sure if you hit on or not was about the, the content that in thinking about that zero click content and making sure that keeping people on those pages that, Hey, once they're there, don't let them go have the content there.

[00:13:08] Is that

[00:13:08] Joshua Warren: Well, and it's even thinking about make sure your marketing, whether it's in house or external, your SEO efforts, your content efforts, realize that used to you could post some really great product information in a blog article on your site. Google would send a lot of traffic to it. Well, now you actually need to package that up, put it on YouTube, put it on LinkedIn, put it in the Facebook, the different platforms where it makes the most sense.

[00:13:30] Um, a lot of B2C retailers. That's going to be looking at TOK. Make sure your products are there and make sure that people can fully interact with, get all the information they need to really get hooked on that product without having to click a link back to your website. That content is going to perform a lot better.

[00:13:46] And then those people, once they get excited enough, we'll say, well, I need to, you know, I need to click the link in their bio. I need to go to their site. I need to buy this product. Um, yeah. And the other stuff I was so excited about the vision pro, um, also look at where pop up shops or event based strategies make sense for your brand.

[00:14:03] I think sometimes some of the smaller brands that listen, think, Oh, that's out of our budget. We can't do that. But look at a local partnership. Look at a local retailer, kind of a mom and pop in your own area. Partner with them. Like start small. This doesn't have to be you're in every Kohl's in the United States.

[00:14:19] This could be something small.

[00:14:21] Darin Newbold: Well, and I remember, and this has worked, this has worked throughout. Time and eons is think of your product market. If you're selling something very, very targeted, but then think of all of the other things that maybe touch that you touch or can touch. And I think of something that, you know, you love the vision pro and are excited about that.

[00:14:40] There's all those things. I just recently got involved with pickleball and you want to talk about. just mentioning that. Anyway, social media goes crazy. So it's one of those where maybe you touch it and maybe you can find ways to then utilize that bigger market to then draw to your market from a, from that Omni channel and maybe have a pop up store or have a work, a partnership with someone that's.

[00:15:04] Joshua Warren: deeply involved in those areas. So you're saying go sponsor a local

[00:15:08] Darin Newbold: pickleball tournament. There you go. Could be a pop, could be an option. All right, well, hey, we're going to go ahead and land this plane. Want to definitely encourage you. Uh, we'd love to hear from you, especially about any and all of our topics. But this one on Omnichannel, it hits so many different things.

[00:15:24] And we know that, we know that you're having fun with it. We know that you're struggling with it. We want to hear about all of that and especially anything that we didn't have time to hit on or things that are just unique. We'd love to hear from that. And then, uh, last but not least, definitely like, click, ring the bell, whatever it is on the appropriate, uh You can

[00:15:44] Joshua Warren: tell how much Darren spends time watching YouTube videos.

[00:15:47] And yeah,

[00:15:47] Darin Newbold: Exactly. All of those groovy things, thumbs up all our, uh, our content. We definitely appreciate that. We appreciate all our listeners. Welcome to 2024 as we kick off. Great having Josh back, although he's going to leave us again, uh, briefly, but, uh, anyway, as always, we appreciate you appreciate all your time and thanks for listening to commerce today.