Conventional wisdom is that ecommerce is no longer the growth engine of the business when percentage growth rates slumped after COVID. But is that really true? Wouldn’t some deep dive data be super helpful at this moment to help inform your forecasts and budgeting for 2024? Russ Dieringer, Founder and CEO of Stratably, thought so and so created an Etailer Index to help retailers and brands predict how much eCommerce will grow in the future and therefore what role it should play in their strategy...
Oct 23, 2023•34 min•Ep. 226
No matter how much we’d like them to stand still for just one freaking minute, consumers keep changing. And its really crucial for you to keep up with their moves, or better yet, anticipate them, in order to drive innovation on the digital shelf in the right direction. That’s why the smart folks from Wunderman Thompson Commerce & Technology have put out their 7th Annual Future Shopper report, and their Head of Innovation, Naji El-Arifi, and Hugh Fletcher, their Global Marketing Director and ...
Oct 16, 2023•34 min•Ep. 225
So Gartner has this thing called a Hype Cycle, where tech goes from a Peak Of Inflated Expectations, to the Trough of Disillusionment, to the Plateau of Productivity. And I feel like Social Commerce just keeps careening back and forth from the peak to the trough. Could TikTok’s new shopping investments represent a moment where over the next few years we break through to the plateau? Taylor Siegel, Associate Director of Commerce Client Services at MRM Commerce, leads the Social Commerce Practice ...
Oct 09, 2023•32 min•Ep. 224
Amazon is on an at-all-costs transformation to drive costs out of their business, squeeze the most out of marketplaces, and automate as much of their relationships with their suppliers as possible. According to Martin Heubel, founder of Amazon consultancy Consulterce, that means they are leaving the pesky details of growing your category and your top-line and bottom-lline growth to you. And that requires strategic shifts on your part over the next few years if you are to achieve profitable growt...
Oct 02, 2023•42 min•Ep. 223
How’s this for a book review: “A fast, easy read filling in my eCommerce gaps… IMO, a must-have for all busy CEOs, C-suite Leaders and anyone in the company (i.e. All) wishing to optimize eCommerce opportunities and anticipate potential issues.” Nice review for a great new book, and we had to have that author on. Dean McElwee is the Director of Global Ecommerce Collaboration at Stanley Black & Decker, and brings deep ecomm experience from other global brands such as Kellogg, Nestle, and Coca...
Sep 25, 2023•46 min•Ep. 222
We come bearing great news for the industry: the Wild West of Retail Media has just started on a path to get way less wild, and way more transparent, accurate, reliable, and secure. All thanks to the work of the IAB, the Media Rating Council and experts from across the industry. Yes, the IAB has released a landmark new set of guidelines for retail media and measurement, a significant step forward to help organizations quote “ensure compliance with privacy regulations, maintain transparency with ...
Sep 18, 2023•50 min•Ep. 221
There’s nothing more fun for us than bringing back an innovative guest two years later and seeing how their idea has blossomed to reality. The company Cooler Screens has spent more than five years setting the bar for creating human-centered digital experiences in physical stores. The combination of vision, strategy, and smart technology, along with innovative retailers and brand partners, is now bringing the ease, relevancy, and transparency of the digital world into a human’s shopping journey, ...
Sep 11, 2023•44 min•Ep. 220
With budgets tighter and pressure on profitability increasing, the decision on if, when, and how to execute a direct to consumer strategy is ever more challenging and fraught. We invited Carina McLeod, CEO and Founder of Ecommerce Nurse Limited, on the podcast to give us a health check on DTC, and how brands are adjusting their strategies in this next decade of the digital shelf.
Sep 04, 2023•42 min•Ep. 219
The digital shelf is a part of the business that can have tremendous impact on both the top and bottom line, but also an area that still requires considerable investment to realize the full value potential. That makes your relationship with your finance business partner intensely critical for you to get both the flexibility and the support you need to build for efficiency and performance, with agility. Mark Koster, Digital Shelf Strategist and Ilse Goverts-Van Kesteren, Lead Business Consultant,...
Aug 28, 2023•41 min•Ep. 218
When measuring Amazon DSP performance, if all you are looking at is ROAS, impressions, and views, you are not using the full range of metrics available to understand the impact of your spend across the full range of the consumer buying cycle. Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia, recently published a report outlining 23 Amazon DSP performance metrics to measure, optimize, and communicate the impact of your campaigns, both on- and off-Amazon. Kiri joined the podcast to give...
Aug 21, 2023•32 min•Ep. 217
AI, Machine learning, I know, I know, give it a rest, Crosby! Sorry, we can’t. There’s just too much freaking potential in it, so there’s value in spotlighting use cases that show potential for making your jobs easier and your performance better. One of those is how to make your investments in paid and organic search more predictive and strategic through better data and new metics. Aisha Khan, VP Strategy and Insights at Momentum Commerce, joins the podcast to share the crystal ball for Amazon s...
Aug 14, 2023•38 min•Ep. 216
Okay, yeah, so you need to pay attention to this AI thing. Steve Engelbrecht, Founder and CEO of Sitation, and his team have developed an AI tool that is capable of generating 15,000 product descriptions per hour for their enterprise customers, connected with their PIMs and the workflows to keep humans in the loop. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What does all this mean? Where is it going? What are the risks? Is this a job killer? Can it write my podcast intros? Steve provides some answe...
Aug 07, 2023•49 min•Ep. 215
More than ever, we are in an era of wanting to squeeze maximum omnichannel results out of every dollar spent and saved. That requires leaders in commerce to become a General Manager of the area they manage, driving incrementality across every level in the business. The team at CommerceIQ spends time with a lot of customers who are focused on the Great Squeeze, and Samir Bhavnani, VP of Sales, and Gopal Shah, Head of Product Marketing at CommerceIQ joined the podcast to share some valuable insigh...
Jul 31, 2023•29 min•Ep. 214
Anyone who has spent any time following the ecommerce industry and particularly Amazon and Walmart is familiar with the journalism of Jason Del Rey, who spent a decade at Recode documenting the transformation of retail, and also through his podcast Land of the Giants: The Rise of Amazon. He has now come out with a deeply researched and incisive book entitled Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets, and he joined the podcast to share some insights of this most consequent...
Jul 24, 2023•40 min•Ep. 213
Every quarter, the ecommerce education consultancy Allume Group consolidates the output of expert conversations, annual reports, and the latest data to create their Ecommerce Insider Quarterly report, or EIQ. It’s chock a block full of the most current insights into the present and future of ecommerce. Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO of Allume Group rejoins the podcast for her takeaways from their Q2 research.
Jul 17, 2023•41 min•Ep. 212
Omnichannel has always felt like an unsatisfying word, maybe slightly better than all the other bad options for describing what we are trying to achieve. Our guest today thinks of it from the consumer lens with the concept of seamless shopping. Michael Klein is a consultant who brings a wealth of experience as a retail buyer and merchandiser, and for the last 14 years at Adobe as Global Director, Industry Strategy & Marketing for Retail, Travel & Consumer Goods sectors. He joined us to t...
Jul 10, 2023•39 min•Ep. 211
Wringing the most out of your paid search, organic search, and content excellence programs must be a group activity across all the teams and agencies responsible, or brands risk wasting the investment in any one of them by underperformance in the others. Amanda Wolff, Head of Marketing at Flywheel Digital, joins the podcast with the innovations she has been seeing among leader brands to ensure that these functions are operating more as one, and less as three.
Jul 03, 2023•26 min•Ep. 210
Retailers all over the world are leaning into creating the next generation of store experiences that will drive increasing revenue. Global insight provider IGD recently published an in-depth study on the Stores of the Future that are happening today, centered on 5 themes of emerging trends in the grocery industry. Stewart Samuel, Director of Retail Futures at IGD, joined us on the podcast to lay out a few of the central themes and how the Future of Stores is coming to life today.
Jun 26, 2023•34 min•Ep. 209
In this environment, every brand is evaluating the channels they use and the investments they make to ensure they are getting the most out of their resources. This is certainly true for DTC, whether you are considering beginning a journey there, or for those brands who are in the journey and evaluating their strategy. This is an audio version of a webinar featuring of course Lauren Livak, Director of the Digital Shelf Institute, and Carter Jensen, Senior Manager Global eCommerce General Mills. C...
Jun 19, 2023•56 min•Ep. 208
As new customer acquisition becomes more challenging, more brands are looking for ways to increase each consumers’ lifetime value. Earning and keeping the privilege of SMS messaging your consumers is one of those high potential relationships that can drive loyalty, repeat purchases, and premiumization. Megan Trinidad, VP, Executive Creative Director at digital design and advertising agency R/GA, joined the podcast to provide insights on the new best practices that are driving meaningful results ...
Jun 12, 2023•23 min•Ep. 207
We are in an era where some of the tactics of the past around supply chain efficiency and promotions may be losing their ability to achieve growth and profitability on the digital shelf. Often, shifting focus on the digital shelf metrics you are trying to move can lead to creative strategies that create demand and greater profitability. But what metrics? Gregor Murray, VP of Strategy at Digital Commerce Global joined the podcast to present their CSMART Digital shelf Metric Framework that can hel...
Jun 05, 2023•41 min•Ep. 206
As everyone strives towards increasing profitability in ecommerce and omnichannel, exerting more control over pricing erosion is a key area of opportunity. Which brings us to the people, process and tech to pull that off, and that often means building out and enforcing a MAP policy. We invited Rae Guimond, Director of Digital Shelf Strategy at PriceSpider, to join the pod and lay out the why, whats and how of implementing and honing a MAP policy in this era of profitability.
May 29, 2023•34 min•Ep. 205
Hinkley is a family-owned, premium decorative lighting company being run by its 4th generation. To win in their category, they have invested not only in best in class product and lifestyle photography, but also in a super thoughtful and ambitious digital shelf presence paired with sterling consumer care. These investments help earn their premium, and Hinkley’s longer term north star is to build brand awareness in a category that feels often brandless. Mike Friedberg, Director Of Ecommerce at Hin...
May 22, 2023•31 min•Ep. 204
Fulfillment and supply chain have such a significant impact on both the consumer experience and achieving profitability in omnichannel. That’s why we wanted to dig into the relatively new area of microfulfillment. The ability to harness data about your consumers at a zip code level and turn that into the right product and assortments, manage inventory and availability close to the consumer, and get them their product fast is offering many companies reduced fees, improved inventory transparency, ...
May 15, 2023•36 min•Ep. 203
The annual CAGNY event, of New York, is a rich opportunity to get the pulse of CPG CEOs and CFOs, and identify business trends and areas of focus that will impact the industry up until the next CAGNY. There is no one better than Russ Dieringer, Founder and CEO of Stratably, to come on the podcast to summarize the shifts we can expect from some of the largest companies on earth, and the takeaways for you.
May 08, 2023•34 min•Ep. 202
We’ve been calling it Profitability Month on the podcast, but, here we are, spilling into May because there’s just so darn much important to say! This episode is an audio version of a recent DSI webinar featuring of course Lauren Livak, director of the DSI, and the brilliant Andrea Leigh, Founder & CEO, Allume Group. They discuss how to embed the best practices for achieving profitability into your strategy and some of the pitfalls to avoid with specific retailers that can be profit killers....
May 01, 2023•55 min•Ep. 201
As we bring Profitability Month to a close, we wanted to hear what was on your mind. Our DSI members threw a bunch of toughies our way! So we brought Chris Perry, Chief Learning Officer at firstmovr, back on the pod to dive into the mindshift and metrics shift required to achieve both efficiency and effectiveness across the entire business on the road to increased profitability.
Apr 24, 2023•46 min•Ep. 200
The complexity of driving maximum profitability as an omnichannel brand is stunning. Sales or channel managers today are not just taking orders, they are owning a P&L for their piece of the business, and they need help. For many organizations, that is a Revenue Growth Management function, or RGM. We brought back Jamie Dooley from The Partnering Group and his colleague Peter Leech, who is the Managing Director of Retail and Omnichannel Commerce at TPG, for Part 3 of Profitability Month to do ...
Apr 17, 2023•38 min•Ep. 199
Welcome to episode 2 of Profitability Month! Today we are taking a deep dive into the best practices to drive opportunistic innovation in the supply chain, as Dana Peirson, supply chain consultant at The Partnering Group, puts it. She and her colleague Jamie Dooley from the digital commerce practice at TPG joined forces on the podcast to outline some significant opportunities for realizing growth and profit through deep cross-team collaboration in supply chain optimization.
Apr 10, 2023•34 min•Ep. 198
As we begin the second decade of the digital shelf, focus has shifted from ecommerce and digital as a side experiment, to being a front and center part of the overall business. That means we must drive the process towards efficiency, cost control, and profitability for it to be sustainable. That’s why we have made April Profitability for the podcast, and Lauren Livak and I kick it off with analysis and insights from Jordan Jewell, former IDC commerce analyst and now analyst in residence at comme...
Apr 03, 2023•43 min•Ep. 197
