Step by Step continues with Episode 2! "Selling is Good Service" says Kate Showalter. She should know - Kate is the Senior Director for Customer Service at Crate and Barrel, overseeing global CX for the storied retailer. Since COVID under Kate's direction, Crate and Barrel has nimbly transitioned their once store-bound frontline sales operation to a fully-digital-capable organization. In this episode we'll learn how she did it, and how you can too, Step by Step.
Nov 17, 2020•43 min
Welcome to Step by Step Season 3 by Future Commerce, presented by Gladly. This season of Step by Step is all about customer experience. Consumers have reimagined the customer experience, and they expect far more from a service interaction than issue resolution. The service experience is now as important, if not more important, than the product experience. As customer expectations are evolving faster than ever, customers are rapidly moving toward brands that are engaging the way they want to enga...
Nov 16, 2020•40 min
Who is Michelle Grant? Michelle got her start studying the retail industry in 2015 with Euromonitor, focusing on overall global strategy. She started this year at Salesforce in their Strategy Insights group with a focus on technology in retail and consumer goods. Michelle just launched Becoming Retail with Rob Garth—a content series focusing on executive interviews to understand the digital transformations behind brands; how they’re enacting digital change, what they’re learning, what their barr...
Nov 13, 2020•45 min•Ep. 183
Shipping is extraordinarily complicated Shipium helps businesses by providing the tech behind the complicated processes of shipping to consumers. Jason says that shipping is a series of events that needs to be coordinated well to give customers the optimal experience: “Our belief is that coordination should happen with good technology.” - Jason Murray Jason had a long career at Amazon in which his career mostly focused on the merger between logistics and technology - eventually leading him to he...
Nov 06, 2020•53 min•Ep. 182
We discuss digital shopping experiences, their experimental evolution, Instacart, CARLY brands, and more. The New DIY DIY used to have a connotation of poor quality or poor craftsmanship but today, it’s more indicative of participation. Online marketplaces are booming with consumers and creators having more meaningful connections with items that could otherwise be more easily purchased. Partnering with Gladly, we’ve created a new report: The New DIY: Creators, Crafts and Commerce . “There is a c...
Oct 30, 2020•53 min•Ep. 181
Today we acquire skills online, and those skills shape our purchasing habits. Our newest report dives deep into the Passion Economy, and the era of "do it yourself". We explore what this means for brands, and what retail stands to gain. Get the report today: https://futurecommerce.fm/thenewdiy
Oct 26, 2020•3 min
Damian Soong, co-founder and CEO of Form Nutrition joins us to talk about Form and building a B-Corp brand that serves a wide audience. The New DIY DIY used to have a connotation of poor quality or poor craftsmanship but today, it’s more indicative of participation. Online marketplaces are booming with consumers and creators having more meaningful connections with items that could otherwise be more easily purchased. Partnering with Gladly, we’ve created a new report: The New DIY: Creators, Craft...
Oct 23, 2020•51 min•Ep. 180
In this episode, we talk about marketplaces, subscription services, the K-Shaped economy recovery, and more. “The Future of Every Brand is a Marketplace” In Future Commerce #041 , Sucharita Mulpuru said that marketplaces are where businesses are going to thrive. “Consumers want more in their online shopping experience and they want to be able to transact more often with the brands that they know and love in products that aren’t just the core.” - Phillip Jackson Moving towards a marketplace strat...
Oct 16, 2020•55 min•Ep. 179
Jack DeFuria, Chief Digital Officer and Co-Founder of Parade , joins the show as he talks about founding Parade while in college with his co-founder, Cami Téllez , how Parade approaches their brand, and the pursuit of building America’s next great underwear company. What is Parade? Parade is a women’s underwear brand focused on ages 18-30. They were able to connect with potential customers in their target market very early on digitally using Facebook groups, sorority group chats, etc. and used o...
Oct 09, 2020•29 min•Ep. 178
Human Centricity Sari is an early stage investor, a lead strategist at a startup studio, and a newsletter writer. “To me, being human-centered means you’re far more obsessed with the problem you’re solving than you are with a product that you’ve built. And what that gives you is the flexibility to evolve with your customer.” - Sari Azout “Being human-centered ultimately means that you don’t really sell your product. You sell your purpose.” - Sari Azout The brand ‘story’ is important for longevit...
Oct 02, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 177
The New Dadaism Dadaism was an intellectual movement post-WWI that focused on subverting the serious. In response to the popularity of minimalism, maximalism has been on the rise. Brands have been using absurdity to reach their markets - specifically with Gen Z and Millennial brands. An Exploration in Brands in this Moment “Topicals really is the Anti-Bland” - Phillip Topicals is a skin care brand founded by two women of color. They have continuously been selling out, even after retailing with N...
Sep 25, 2020•45 min•Ep. 176
Jackson Jeyanayagam, VP of DTC at Clorox, joins us today to talk about Clorox’s DTC strategy, launching a new brand for an underserved, generation segment in the marketplace, and how his past experiences have prepared him and brought a fresh perspective to his current role. What’s Jeyanayagam’s story? Jeyanayagam started at a PR agency working with T-Mobile. Whenever the Sidekick was launched and subsequently hacked, his world opened up to social media and digital marketing. This digital marketi...
Sep 18, 2020•58 min•Ep. 175
What is BEHAVE? BEHAVE makes candy that is better for you: low sugar, natural ingredients, no artificial ingredients, and good taste. Currently, BEHAVE offers two options of gummies, sweet and sour. BEHAVE started from a lack of alternative options in the candy department, which typically had people giving up candy altogether. Originally, BEHAVE planned to be a mix of DTC and retail. Due to COVID, they’re now only doing DTC. BEHAVE thrived throughout COVID by surrounding themselves with the righ...
Sep 04, 2020•44 min•Ep. 174
We chat with Ingrid Milman Cordy about business growth and decline in 2020 and Walmart’s new partnership. Our Economy The way our economy is set up, big businesses are bound to thrive, even during economic disruption like COVID-19. Small businesses seemed to be the ones to cope best with the disruption, but the distinction of “essential businesses” shifted from small business to big business. Businesses like Amazon and Shopify doing well also signifies that the small and medium businesses that s...
Aug 28, 2020•46 min•Ep. 173
Read the Retail Rebirth Report here . Read Insiders #045: The New Dada Here . Read Insiders #046: The New Formal Here . Find us at Futurecommerce.fm , or reach out to us on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , or LinkedIn . Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at Hello@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels; we love hearing from our listeners!...
Aug 21, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 172
We chat with Nilla Ali , the Senior Vice President of Commerce at BuzzFeed. Can content and commerce coexist within a platform? How does the shift into shopping digitally affect the way that retailers and advertisers reach to consumers? CONTENT AND COMMERCE There has been an Increase in traffic and consumption on BuzzFeed during COVID-19. BuzzFeed Shopping has been introduced, a native checkout feature on BuzzFeed which optimizes a consumer’s experience and increases revenue for featured product...
Aug 14, 2020•46 min•Ep. 171
We talk with Jeremy Cai, CEO of Italic . We discuss what Italic is and how it is different than other DTC brands today. ITALIC Italic offers subscription memberships with access to a thousand plus products at-cost - stepping away from mark-up retailing. Italic is moving less in a brand specific, single category product direction and more into a value driven lifestyle. Italic’s ‘secret’ lies in partnering with manufacturers instead of treating them as vendors. WHY IT WORKS Three primary reasons p...
Aug 07, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 170
What is NBC Universal Checkout NBC Universal Checkout is a native shopping experience embedding within any NBC content page. Whether it's a text based article, a static page, or even a video, it can be transformed into a native shopping experience. When the viewer encounters a product, they can click on the product to see more information about it, add it to a shopping cart, pay, and check out all without leaving the NBCU site. Context is really important during the experience - finding alignmen...
Aug 04, 2020•38 min•Ep. 169
What makes a brand meaningful? We sought to answer this question in our recent report, Nine by Nine: 81 Brands Changing Our World . In this episode, Part 2 of 2, we sit down and reflect on the report and the categories included. See Part 1: Episode 165: What Makes A Brand Meaningful? Purpose Driven Brands Purpose driven brands are focused on having alignment with their worldview. They state a purpose behind their brand and provide that to their customers. They make it clear what kind of world th...
Jul 31, 2020•49 min•Ep. 168
Listen to Part 1 of the Nine by Nine Retrospect here
Jul 31, 2020•49 min•Ep. 168
In this episode, we chat with Kyle Hoff, co-founder of Floyd Furniture. What is Floyd Furniture’s approach? Floyd started from looking at the amount of furniture consumed and thrown out after its use and the idea that furniture can be sustainable, adaptable, and kept for long periods of time. They began with a Kickstarter campaign based around their core idea and kept it simple with one product at a time. There are few DTC furniture brands. Floyd focuses on connection with their direct consumers...
Jul 24, 2020•54 min•Ep. 167
What is Profitero? Profitero is a platform for eCommerce performance, measurement, analytics, and optimization for brands primarily in Europe, North America, and Asia. Profitero isn’t an agency, though it has similarities. Profitero doesn’t actually perform the work for the brands, but does create data and create tech to make that data valuable. Agencies have seemed to be expendable or interchangeable in the past. Profitero comes in to perform the “know-how” of an agency, but allows the work to ...
Jul 17, 2020•52 min•Ep. 166
We all feel it: the rhythm of retail has been disrupted. Current events have changed the way consumers shop and Future Commerce has partnered with Gladly to bring you Retail Rebirth: a report that will inform retailers what this "new normal" is and how consumers plan to spend.
Jul 16, 2020•1 min
DAILYLOOK is a personal styling service that sends you a box of hand-picked fashion items right to your door every month. In this interview, Brian shares with us how he started his first business at 15 years old, created and then sold a newsletter with over 450k subscribers to a poker company, and then raised over $11M to build his company DAILYLOOK. Brian uncovers the challenges he faced from pivoting his business and shares some important red flags he looks out for when hiring. In This Episode...
Jul 14, 2020•1 hr 18 min
What makes a brand meaningful? We sought to answer this question in our recent report, Nine by Nine: 81 Brands Changing Our World . In this episode, we sit down and reflect on the report and the categories included, and even talk about what is coming up in Part Two . Nine by Nine: What Is It and How Was It Received? Nine by Nine is our report that asks the question “What makes a brand meaningful?” Spoiler alert: There are nine answers! Nine categories and nine brands that exemplify those nine an...
Jul 10, 2020•40 min•Ep. 165
Local commerce is making a comeback and the digital realm is crucial to its success. OfferUp strives to create a platform that enables anyone to buy and sell locally. Nick Huzar , CEO of OfferUp joins the show to discuss how they're evolving with local commerce. The Potential for Secondhand Commerce Nick loves to build and create things. While having a baby on the way, he needed to clear a room and was frustrated at the time and effort it would take to sell his belongings. The idea for OfferUp s...
Jul 03, 2020•32 min•Ep. 164
Joseph Ansanelli, CEO at Gladly and friend of Future Commerce, sits down with Phillip & Brian to talk about Gladly’s 2020 Consumer Expectations report. Now more than ever, consumers expect a much more personal experience than ever before, and Phillip, Brian, and Joseph discuss practical ways eCommerce brands can exceed those expectations.
Jun 26, 2020•54 min•Ep. 163
How was Sunday born? Lawns are the 3rd largest crop by land area: 40 million acres of land. “You can’t purport to have a deep care for carbon sequestration and soil and the way we treat land, runoff, and environmental issues and not think about [lawn care].” - Coulter Lewis A typical managed lawn gets 5x the amount of pesticides per acre than an industrial farm. In starting Sunday, Coulter saw these statistics as a hole in our ethos. We spend time being conscious about what we’re putting into ou...
Jun 19, 2020•31 min•Ep. 162
We have some big news here at Future Commerce! The Stairway to CEO podcast is joining Future Commerce. Every Tuesday, Lee Greene, host of Stairway to CEO will bring you fresh and insightful interviews with CEOs and Founders, highlighting their journey to leading a company. You don't want to miss it! Like & Subscribe to the Stairway to CEO podcast to catch the official relaunch on June 23.
Jun 17, 2020•6 min
Diversity and Transparency It’s important to instill trust into diverse founders. Transparency in businesses allows for a culture to be built that is proud to be shared. Instagram account Pull Up or Shut Up has held brands accountable for their diversity numbers and has had many brands go transparent in their diversity numbers. “The culture of your business is built in your first five hires.” A brand’s culture is naturally built through the employees and their diverse backgrounds and perspective...
Jun 12, 2020•47 min•Ep. 161
