Latest / The Retail Podcast / Empowering Retail: The Evolving Landscape of E-commerce Platforms

Transcript

Empowering Retail: The Evolving Landscape of E-commerce Platforms · The Retail Podcast

0:09
Hello and welcome to the Retail Podcast.
0:12
Jay Topper, who we'll talk to in one second, the Chief Customer
0:16
Officer at Fabric. Jay, for those who don't know
0:19
Fabric or don't know yourself, if you don't mind just giving us
0:23
maybe a career background and then tell us a recap on what
0:26
Fabric does. Sure.
0:27
And Alex, thank you for having me as well.
0:29
I've been super looking forward to this.
0:31
I've listened to many of your podcasts, so thank you.
0:34
My career. I started out in the United
0:38
States military, so I served in our Army and our Coast Guard up
0:42
and through about 1997 and then from 1997 to 2024.
0:48
I primarily worked for retailers Rosetta Stone, Kroger, FTD, The
0:54
Flower Company, and most recently Chico's FAS in a
0:58
variety of roles from CIO to CTO to COO to Chief Digital Officer.
1:03
Most recently as my last two tours of duty, I put fabric in
1:08
when I was at Chico's FAS. I was a super early adopter and
1:11
it was a very, it was a partnership because the
1:14
heartbeat of the entire suite of products there is is the OMS,
1:17
the order management system. And we partnered together to
1:21
breathe life into something that would serve a multi billion
1:24
dollar multi channel Omni channel retailer that had a lot
1:28
of complexities, but that the rest of the market would
1:30
embrace. And it was wildly successful.
1:33
We were bought by Sycamore Partners.
1:36
We went from public to private and I exited the company along
1:40
with our other sea levels. I contracted for fabric for two
1:43
or three months. I did some blogs and some
1:45
content and just I've always fallen in love with the product
1:50
from both experience and spending years with them.
1:52
And then so now I work as a chief customer officer and in
1:55
short, Fabric is an ecommerce platform.
1:58
It's a composable headless. It cheques those boxes.
2:01
I think what makes it uniquely special from my standpoint is a
2:05
few things. Number one is it was, it was
2:08
built from the ground up as composable and cloud native and
2:11
it's very empowering to the end users.
2:14
So in the retail industry, time is super precious.
2:17
Margins are sometimes tight. So the faster you can speed up
2:22
and the smarter you can speed up the experience of the end users
2:25
to then serve in turn serve their customers, the better.
2:29
While certainly it has the the checkout and price and promotion
2:33
drop ship. And I think the two flagship
2:35
products are are the product catalogue and the order
2:39
management system, which a lot of people start with and then
2:42
and then go on to put the other aspects of the platform in
2:46
place. It can be very in a very
2:47
incremental approach. So what's keeping everyone awake
2:50
right now when you're meeting new or prospective or your
2:54
existing customers? What's top of mind right now in
2:57
in your world? Yeah, that's a great question.
2:59
I think there's a couple things that come to mind.
3:02
And again, I I speak from someone who was in the buyer's
3:05
chair for 27 years and, and had a lot, have a lot of peers and
3:09
friends in the industry. And so I, I left from 1:00 to
3:12
the next. And it's that empathy that that
3:14
drives me. And I think, I think there's a
3:16
few things. One is, it's, it's a bit of an
3:18
unknown market right now. And when we head into Q4
3:22
especially and with the election and yes, Covid's behind us, but
3:26
there's been a little bit of instability even since then with
3:30
inflation and all these other macro things, people are are
3:33
hunkered down a little bit. And so that leads to really
3:37
helping customers understand why, what problem are they
3:41
trying to solve and then how because a lot of companies are
3:45
are stuck in legacy monoliths or sometimes even composable
3:49
platforms that require an incredible amount of technology
3:52
to manage. And whatever their situation
3:54
might be in it could be anything from TCO to to to Omni channel.
3:59
I'm, I'm a, I'm a freak when it comes to what Omni channel
4:02
really is and what it really means.
4:05
They're trying to get out of some sort of box and, and how
4:09
become super complicated. Like how can I replace this big
4:12
thing with these little things that add up without putting huge
4:16
risk to my business? And I think there's pent up
4:20
demand actually. And and people want to be shown
4:23
the way I get more involved in how to architect the story to
4:27
their executives or their boards or their CEO's, which is what
4:31
I've done my entire career. And then lastly, they want
4:35
empathetic partners because I'm not a salesperson.
4:38
I'm never going to be a salesperson.
4:40
I'm 63 and that ship has long sailed.
4:42
But I can't empathise with people because I've sat in all
4:45
their chairs and I've replaced 100 platforms in my career.
4:50
I actually counted them not too long ago.
4:52
You have to 1st figure out why and is there actually a problem
4:55
to solve and then you have to figure out the how and then you
4:58
have to articulate it and, and then it gets to execution, which
5:01
is a whole nother can of worms. That's the the most exciting
5:04
part to me of a RE platform. So.
5:06
In terms of the things that you've mentioned, Omni channel
5:09
obviously is one element, cost is another element.
5:14
What am I missing in terms of the the the the things that are
5:17
top of mind for for your customers right now?
5:20
I think Omni channel cost and I think is companies are getting
5:25
more myopic on what the they, you know, it's like you know,
5:30
you have revenue and EBITDA and then under that you have
5:32
conversion traffic and AOV and gross margin and then down below
5:36
that the things that feed that. I think the concept of outcome
5:39
based technology investments which people have always talked
5:43
about, but it's becoming a lot more ingrained.
5:46
So I think business performance along along with the cost and
5:51
Omni channel are are real keys. They have to see the tie.
5:55
There's only so much discretionary spend a company
5:57
can make. Infrastructure costs are often
6:00
non ROI. So that makes the pool even
6:03
smaller. And so every dollar that you
6:06
spend there, you want to spend it where you're going to get the
6:08
most return. So that outcome based
6:11
implementations are, are are are much more, we're much more
6:15
focused now on outcomes and metrics than we ever have been
6:18
before. I got you and and most of your
6:20
customers like is it on site, off site, is it in the cloud or
6:26
is it a mix in terms of what that where their infrastructure
6:29
sits? It's it's a mix actually, I
6:32
think sometimes they're, they're cloud based monoliths.
6:36
I there are still a lot of home grown systems out there.
6:40
In fact, some, many of the customers I speak to, I think 10
6:43
or years ago, I built my own e-commerce platform a couple
6:46
companies ago because there really wasn't a micro service
6:49
based modular one that was prime time yet.
6:52
And, and I think at this point in time it, I don't want to use
6:56
the word commodity necessarily, but the e-commerce platform
7:00
itself is the way it's getting priced, the way it's getting
7:04
implemented has become a little bit more commoditized than it
7:07
has been in the past. And I think, I think we're
7:10
seeing that. And so I think you're going to
7:11
see pricing eventually become a little bit more commoditized and
7:15
then it gets down to, all right, what's the difference and how
7:17
you're going to impact my end users and my customers.
7:20
Yeah. Well, I mean, and let me ask you
7:23
the tough question that a lot, you know, obviously again, I'm
7:25
sure you've had this question a few times, but you know when I'm
7:29
looking at who I'm going to be placing my business with because
7:33
you are running the heart of the business, right.
7:35
For a lot of commerce, the e-commerce engine is the growth
7:38
engine. What do you think makes fabric
7:40
special or unique in that sense? Obviously the headless element,
7:43
I've got the flexibility, it's composable, but what's your
7:49
opinion? What?
7:50
What's the thing? Why do you win?
7:51
What's the reasons you win? Yeah.
7:53
I mean, I and we did win. We, we had remarkable results
7:58
putting fabric in end to end and we actually ran it head to head
8:01
against the legacy platform over peak at the direction of our
8:04
Chief Financial Officer because he wanted proof.
8:06
And so during the busiest season, we actually run a split.
8:10
And I think there's a couple things.
8:11
Number one is it was it it's it was definitely built from a
8:15
cloud native composable standpoint.
8:17
So there's a lot of companies that are trying to move to micro
8:20
services from monolith. I've been there done that.
8:22
It is incredibly hard. So it's native.
8:25
So you get all the things like active active where there's
8:28
where if one goes down immediately, another picks up.
8:31
You get the auto scaling over peak.
8:33
You don't have to add more servers.
8:35
You get all that stuff. I think two things make fabric
8:37
unique and why I pick them and why I now work for them.
8:40
One is the power to the end user.
8:43
So if you're a site merchant and you need to make regular sites,
8:46
pricing updates, product updates to your site price, product
8:49
promotion presentation, you're dialling those things every day
8:53
during peak, sometimes four and five war rooms a day where you
8:56
have to make changes. You can't go to development to
8:59
ask for changes. You need to have that power at
9:02
your fingertips and eventually AI giving you recommendations of
9:05
what to do. So you don't have to go run a
9:07
report 1st and then come back and then and then move those
9:10
dials So you have the the power with the end user.
9:13
So that's always top of mind for us because they're serving their
9:17
customers. So we not only have to be
9:19
empathetic to, to to them, but also to what they're trying to
9:23
do for their customers, which we're a step removed from.
9:26
And then the second thing is we listen and they listen to me as
9:30
a customer. And it's bringing that empathy
9:32
to the table where a lot of our customers that are are super
9:36
smart and the problems they're trying to solve, sometimes
9:39
they're the same problems we're trying to solve.
9:41
So there's a lot of Co innovation and Co design that
9:44
takes place. So we really harness our
9:46
customers well to help advance our product.
9:49
We do almost not. The voice of the customer is
9:51
very strong inside of our company and companies lose that
9:54
over time. And we're still relatively
9:56
small. We play big, but we're five
10:00
years old and, and, and I'm fiercely protective of keeping
10:04
that culture as, as we grow well.
10:06
What's in terms of going back to Omni Channel 1 of the things I,
10:10
I, I travelling the world and going to these conferences, some
10:14
of the executives at retailers, I, I hear them talk about their
10:17
frustrations with digital touchpoints expanding and
10:21
conversion expanding. Whereas in the past, maybe if
10:25
you were lucky, you would get a customer at 7 digital
10:28
touchpoints and then they would convert.
10:30
So conversion used to happen a lot faster.
10:32
And again, this is more of a question than a statement.
10:36
I'm just curious, have you seen that too in terms of is
10:40
conversion taking longer? And if it is, again, what are
10:44
some of the things from your perspective that you could sort
10:48
of bake into your e-commerce strategy that could help with
10:52
basically converting customers, I presume off the, the, the
10:56
plethora of platforms in social and the, the, the, the, the
11:00
multitude of digital touch points that exist out there?
11:04
Yeah, First I'll just ground, you know of what Omni channel is
11:08
to me. And so Omni channel is to me is
11:11
it's bringing the promise of the brand and the consistency of
11:15
that promise of the brand at every single step in the
11:18
process, whether it's physical or digital.
11:20
And there's huge opportunities to bring digital into the
11:23
physical into the store, amazing things that can happen there and
11:26
bringing the the physical to the digital like in clienteling.
11:31
And and so from from my standpoint, the it's not so much
11:37
there are more touches, but I think the art and the science is
11:41
in understanding the impact of one touch to another.
11:44
And that can be complex because it's multi touch attribution,
11:49
but and a lot of times you have marketing finance and data are
11:55
are presenting different ways to measure the effect of marketing
11:59
spend because marketing spend is the hugest variable cost above
12:02
the line that there is. You can dial it up and down all
12:06
day long. So the more accurate you can
12:08
understand the impact of that, not just to your site, but
12:11
people that are going into the store and people that go to
12:14
stores that are then going to the site because the vast
12:16
majority of multi channel customers start in the store and
12:18
then go online. Second, they don't start online
12:21
and go into the store. So figuring out a a model, it
12:25
can be simple that can measure that, that all three of those
12:28
groups agree on marketing, finance and technology.
12:32
So you can start to get a baseline of the impact of those
12:34
different channels let's you then invest more smartly in the
12:38
ones that are driving the most downstream ramifications.
12:42
You know, for example, you know, social may impact e-mail, but
12:46
PLA's may be the thing that actually drives more people into
12:50
the store or whatever the the formula happens to be.
12:53
So you have to measure them and you can't get caught up too far
12:56
because the data people will get to in the weeds.
12:58
The marketing people want to validate their spend and the
13:01
finance people just want to see results.
13:03
So if you can come together on a super simple model, then you can
13:08
start to, to dial that, that variable marketing a little more
13:11
efficiently than in the past. And I think that's absolutely
13:13
critical. I'm I'm a big fan of of of
13:16
optimising variable marketing. You, you mentioned data in, in
13:20
terms of the data teams. Do you have a preference in
13:23
which data platforms you work with or play with or are you
13:27
agnostic to that? How, how?
13:28
How does the platform manage? Yeah.
13:31
So I'm a little bit jaded in this regard.
13:34
So where I've I've built and bought a lot of things in my
13:37
career. I'm not a hands on technologist.
13:39
So I'm unemotional about it. Most of the successes I've had a
13:43
a lot of the things like when you think about a customer data
13:46
platform, building that ourselves what and then layering
13:50
tools that are third party tools on top of that was generally
13:54
speaking the the smart way to go.
13:56
So we, we were, I was for two, the last three, the last three
14:01
assignments. I was a big fan of GCP putting
14:04
my data in there and then and then layering some other tools
14:07
on top of that to help with the segmentation, the audience
14:11
building, the, the, the, the MTA analysis, things like that to
14:15
help drive it. But there's a lot of products
14:18
out there, but you have to be careful because they, they're
14:21
also, I mean, all products, they all have their own PNLS.
14:24
They're all trying to drive their businesses and getting
14:27
what they're doing in line with what you're trying to do.
14:30
And being confident that that's going to March down a certain
14:32
way over the next two or three years is critical because if
14:37
they start to diverge, then you start to lose that power.
14:40
And data to me is like the last bastion of what is absolutely
14:45
special to an organisation. So where I would buy almost
14:48
everything else around that, I like to fiercely protect and own
14:52
as much as reasonable as I can of that part of the ecosystem.
14:56
What's your? Spidey sense telling you in
14:59
terms of the future of E com and where the market is going?
15:03
Yeah, I think there's two things and I'll save the obvious one
15:07
for a second. So I'm when I think of stores,
15:10
this is very anecdotal, but it'll put a highlight on it.
15:14
If you think about a website first you come into a website
15:17
and you know exactly where a person is on that website.
15:20
You know when they went into the cart, you know if they left the
15:23
cart, you know how many images they looked at.
15:25
You know if they bought. The way the cameras are set up
15:28
in stores now, there's no reason why you can't have that same
15:32
instantaneous type of reporting in a store.
15:34
You know what clothes they went and looked at.
15:36
You know when they went in the backroom to try something on.
15:39
You know when you're in line, how long they stayed in line,
15:41
Did they leave the store without buying?
15:43
So bringing that digital mindset into the store where you're
15:47
rapidly looking at information and data, moving product around
15:51
the store, looking at demographics, they're right
15:54
there on, on the camera that you can really start to bring the,
15:58
the speed and the, and the quickness of what's going on in
16:01
the digital world into the store.
16:03
And it works the opposite way as well with clienteling, bringing
16:06
the charm of the store into the digital world.
16:08
But I, I am a believer and it sounds trite because I'm a, I'm
16:12
a cautious believer, but an absolute believer.
16:15
And what I mean by that in AI and, and, and I think it's
16:19
broader than the sexy things we hear about personalization every
16:22
day and things like that. I think there's, I think it's
16:25
real. I think it's going to dwarf like
16:27
the concept of cloud, you know, was a concept a long time ago.
16:30
But I think AI is, is here to stay.
16:32
And I think the, the complex part is picking how and where it
16:35
fits your business. I think 2 places being
16:38
overlooked a little bit or or not as maybe out front in the,
16:42
in the, in the realm of the sexy AI is 1 is, is back to the
16:46
example I gave is what's happening inside of these
16:48
platforms for the employees that when I think about running an
16:52
e-commerce site, you know, you, you run a report, you say, hey,
16:55
what sold? What was my gross margin on
16:57
that? What was my this OK, I see that,
16:59
oh, I got too much inventory here.
17:00
Let's go back and move these instead of really putting all
17:03
this intelligence at the power inside the power of the platform
17:07
to enable the ND. Just like you want stores to go
17:10
faster, you need digital to go faster because to me, speed is
17:13
king. And then you have the back
17:15
office, not back office, but in house functions like planning
17:18
and allocation, how much product to buy, where to deploy it, what
17:22
you should be paying for it, what you should be charging for
17:25
it. You know, long before it even
17:27
gets in front of the customer, let alone what should I be
17:30
designing for the customer In fashion, you get a lot of things
17:34
that are are starting to be more and more intelligent to help you
17:36
design buying clothing and accessories and what type of
17:40
beauty products are next. So I think there's going to be a
17:42
lot of trial and error. And I think if you have a super
17:45
nimble platform, you can try more things more frequently.
17:47
Getting back to what we said, but there's no question that if
17:50
you're not spending 20% of your time think as a executive
17:55
thinking and, and analysing and even testing and trying, you
18:00
know, AI based things that can help move the business of the
18:05
problems you're trying to solve. I think you're missing out here.
18:07
I, I think this is going to be a wave that is, is rote within the
18:12
next, you know, 5 or 10 years or even two to three years in some
18:15
cases. 111 question that does come to mind and it's like
18:19
inertia, right? People specifically with
18:22
platforms such as their e-commerce, they're so scared to
18:26
look at re platforming or moving away.
18:28
And so therefore they know it sucks, but they sort of like is
18:31
it does it suck enough, right? Or is it or is it less sucky
18:35
this year than it was that year because everything's tied in a
18:38
monolith central mainframe somewhere because it's too big
18:42
to to change. What do you say to those
18:44
customers that come to you like, you know where they're like
18:47
they're Yeah, what do you say? I got to tell you, I, I, I've
18:53
done a lot of re platforms and, and usually I, I'm not the guy
18:56
they bring in to maintain things.
18:58
I'm the guy they bring in when a material transformation is
19:02
needed. Every company I've been to,
19:03
massive transformations have taken place and I think it's
19:08
thrilling. And, and I, I'm not, I'm not
19:11
pitching this. I have a ten part blog series I
19:13
did on re platforming from end to end that we're going to put
19:17
into an e-book here pretty soon. But I think it's thrilling.
19:21
I think figuring the problems you're trying to solve, figuring
19:25
out the ecosystem and the platforms and the Sis and then
19:28
de risking the implementation and having metrics and data as
19:32
your sort of foundation. I, I think it's thrilling and,
19:36
and there's always risk. And every day you wake up,
19:39
what's the biggest risk today? Knock that risk down.
19:41
And then you got another bigger risk.
19:43
Knock that one down. It's, I don't know, it's what
19:45
our job is. I mean, we have to evolve and we
19:48
have to evolve quickly in this world.
19:51
So to me, I, I, there is a lot because retail still has a lot
19:55
of old school in it, a lot of people that are very brick and
19:58
mortar focused to this day. And getting that digital first
20:01
mentality is it's a thrilling, you know, it's a thrilling
20:05
transfer, personal transformation for a human to go
20:08
through. And I went through it long ago
20:11
at Rosetta Stone and got wrapped around the customer.
20:15
And, and the concept of digital and I just think it's thrilling.
20:19
So I try to help them, you know, be able to be comfortable that
20:23
you can de risk this. It is a if there's art, but it's
20:26
a science. You succeed or fail, you know,
20:29
based on the prep work you do upfront and then you execute
20:32
like crazy, pivot when you need to and you'll get there.
20:37
I don't know. It's I do hear it on an awful
20:39
lot, though. There is trepidation, but I just
20:43
get excited about the whole thing.
20:45
I mean, and that's good because that's what people will want,
20:48
you know, when they're going through the process.
20:50
I've just, I've seen it from both sides and I think it's a
20:53
double whammy coming back from China in terms of this post
20:57
digital world where they are, everything has transformed.
21:00
Everything is E enabled or e-commerce enabled.
21:04
I think retailers in Europe and in the US will get a double
21:07
whammy of, you know, the competitors can go faster and
21:10
their physical stores are not engaging or entertaining and
21:15
they can't convert as much as they need to convert.
21:18
And so then they're left in, in some of the horror stories that
21:21
we, we hear in, in, in the news about retail.
21:25
Jay, thank you so much. I, I want to be sensitive to the
21:29
time that we agreed for the podcast.
21:31
It's been an absolute blast. Are you, are you guys doing any
21:35
of the, I know you are NRF, are you doing NRF this year as well?
21:38
Or we are, we're doing NRF. We have some special things
21:40
planned for NRF. We're doing Shop Talk Chicago.
21:46
We could have, I'll be at shop talk.
21:47
We could have done it in person. Yeah, that'd be great.
21:49
Alex. It was a pleasure.
21:50
Thank you for having me. Thanks a lot, Jake.