Latest / Talk Commerce / E-commerce Strategies with Bemeir's Maier Bianchi: A Shopware Shoptoberfest Special
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:41.234) This is Brent Peterson with Talk Commerce and Scott Ohsmon with Always Off Brand. Holy shit you cruel mother. I'm sorry, Always Off Brand. This is Scott Ohsmon, Scottio with Always Off Brand but that's his new coming soon to a podcast near you is Always On Brand. That's not, that's not ever been used. That's why you shouldn't let me do the intros. Seriously, that's like a 17 time. We're live at Shoptoberfest brought to you by Shopware. Wait, that's my line. We're live, take two, three, two, we're live at Shoptoberfest brought to you by Shopware. Fresh. God, we are in the beer hall. It's getting late. I'm 17 beers in. Not really. We've got Rick Watson, the great Rick Watson podcasting next to us. Of course, there's banging tables. We've got the longest podcast table. have the longest podcast table in the world, and everybody's going to bang on the table. And we have... do we have a guest? Yeah, I'm just sitting here. I'm here, Bianchi, from the e-commerce hotline. E-commerce hotline. Hey, can you redo the jingle right now? Could you just acapella to give a jingle? You do jingles, which I'm here for. If you need help with e-commerce, the J ain't got time. Call the e-commerce hotline. I like it! If you need help to make your store shine. Call the e-commerce hotline. Damn! Your store needs improving, don't deny. Gotta call e-commerce hotline. Call 888-499-3266. Make your store shine. E-commerce hotline. Brent Peterson (02:21.386) Can I seriously call that and call into the show? Yes, I might have permanently sent it to voicemail lately because there's so much spam calls But I want to do a live radio call-in show it has a whole I do too whole inception And I want it to be like if you actually need help and you're in a jam yes wrong And you need to call someone just to you know fix the situation. Yes I don't know if that was like a general question. It's a show and they have a commercial you say call IT crowd or whatever and it's going well so far man. Christ. Why don't you just... I just want to make it taller so I don't have to lean in Well that's not as tall. Now you've lowered it. Listener, he's strong with the thing. I'm sorry, I thought I knew what I was doing. That's okay man, you're alright. We're all good. I'm just giving you a hard time. Here, this seems to be a problem I don't understand. There you go. It did not get much taller. Just leave it alone. You know what I have a saying? If I was Tuala, I could have been a Buala. Wow, that's very Seattle-ish. Thank you very much. Mayor. Mayor. May-ear. May-ear. May-ear. Son of a biscuit chip. And I asked and I still screwed it up. That's okay. That's my bad. You wouldn't be the first. May-ear. I love, actually it's such a badass name to be honest. I like that name, it's cool. It's a great name. So first of all you got the jingles. What else is going on over there with you? You got a lot going on? Yeah, I run an agency called B. Meyer. I'm a dad, got a lot of kids. living life, know. So you know, got a business, leader of the household. hold on, hold on. Leader of an agency. on, hold on. I need a teal! I need to have a teal, baby! Sorry, I'm very loud. Rick Watson's guest is like, Jesus Christ, can you hold it down over there? Who's this guest? Why can't we get this guest? You didn't get it. Goddamn Booker. me stuck with me. Call the Booker. It's me. Call Conley. Call Conley and tell him to reject people. Let's back up a second. OK, we're backing up. You said agency and then my dad and a whole bunch of kids. Yeah. What are we talking? How many? I got a good number. These are your brothers and We may not state that publicly on the air, you know. OK. You've got to find out. OK. you five kids, right? Yes. I was just trying not to say the number, but I five kids, yes. Brent Peterson (04:47.744) That's amazing, I'm exhausted already. That's phenomenal. age is, range of ages? I don't really like to discuss that on media. I'm so sorry. It's okay, it's just more out of respect for my family, but I'm No, no, don't do that. You're a dad with five kids, that's incredible. Okay, let's move on. God Brent, why'd But they're my pride and joy, it's okay. Keep Why'd you have to make that a thing? I don't know about kids. Actually, it's my fault. I kid, Brent, because I love, and I'm 18 beers in. Anyway. So you've got an agency. Yep. All what do they do? What does the agency do? Be Myer. We help businesses solve their problems using technology. I know that's not the best answer I can give them, working on that for like weeks. But yeah, we're an SI, Solutions Integrator. We build websites for businesses focused on e-commerce on platforms like Shopware here at Shoptoberfest. Sponsored by Shopware. know, so we basically help people from their operations to revenue. We help them achieve their goals. I kind of had a moment today where I was like, why do I do what I do? And it's the passion of helping people achieve something that they're trying to do to achieve that goal. I know it's not very well spoken, but imagine. It is well spoken. You're trying to build your, you need your e-commerce platform so you can sell more something. You're not doing it for the sake of doing it. You're doing it to help your company propel itself to the next goal. That's what motivates me. I don't know how to turn that into an action verb, but I realized distilled down, that's what we do. a jingle first. Yeah. Because you're doing a great job. I love the jingle. And then an action verb. Can I do a little self-promotion? Yes, you can. So I did a jingle because I'm in the Amazon space a lot and that's where I've kind of been for 18 years along with retail. Awesome. So there's vendor central. Okay. is the portal. It's the first party and then there's seller central, right? You know what I'm talking about? So there's an old, old song called Hello Mada, Hello Fada. Brent Peterson (06:49.08) Here I am at Camp Granada. So I did Hello Venda, Hello Cella. And you can go to Always Off Fran and look back during the holidays. There's a holidays tune that I did. And I did an entire jingle. It was hard, Brent. Brent's looking at me like. I'm so impressed. I love gotta shout you out because you remind me of the good radio that I used to listen to growing up. You know your Howard Stern original content. Exactly. Back when there was an actual art to it. is. you for keeping that alive. That's what he's He's saying you're really old. No, it's just the linkages. would, you could say what, I might be old for remembering that. But I just meant you appreciate it. Always off brand, different from Talk Commerce. Both are amazing. is it's always on brand. Yeah, that's new coming out sometimes. I'm sometimes on brand. The point is, our show is a radio show. It's born out of radio. It is segments, we do a game show. It is basically what I'm trying to recreate is an old time radio show which I enjoy. I'm with you so much on that. the vibe I was picking up. that's what I'm trying to keep going. Exactly. No, that's okay. you help, technology, shopware, we're here at Shoptober. But you can help anybody with anything, right? Pretty much, yeah. Major e-commerce platforms is what we're focused on. Is it a lot of B2B, D2C you don't care? Yeah, I would say it's more about the type of company, the type of composition, what challenges they're trying to solve. I would say that we're not as best equipped to help the really small businesses, though we understand their challenges. It's more like a company that either has an in-house team, but needs a specialized group of individuals to help them succeed with that implementation. That's really where we excel. Or you know where we can build the design and develop a full platform, but I would just wow you like Coders the whole dev teams and a whole nine yards. Yeah and design. Yeah, you know, wait, I have a a sound effect What do you think is gonna be different this year than it was last year in the year 2024 I think going into 25 we're gonna have a different president no matter what not to get political but we Brent Peterson (08:57.047) are gonna have a different way of no, let's leave it there. I don't wanna go there. You brought that up, so that's a great question. There's a whole bunch of apprehension to do anything because of this that's one of the reasons, one of the excuses. I think it's BS, Well, no, but it actually is interesting because there's a lot of, you talk about e-commerce, right? I it or should I zag? Exactly, and today there's a lot of big things that are impacting e-commerce, social commerce. A big ruling today, the whole TikTok thing. Is it banned? Is it gonna be banned? The judge basically said you got a weak argument is what I read but I didn't read too argument for keeping it or weak argument for Weak argument for banning it. you know it's hard yet commerce well i i i have a here jaded i'd crusty opinion on this yeah come on it's america we've got a little run on money and the reason it's not going to be is because it's too much now we have a little bit of the band is going to go to another party that's going to run it the same way said They did. They did. And... came out overnight. I know. Now, I'm not... I don't have a passionate opinion, by the way, for or against it. I really don't. I hate to be in the middle on the fence. I don't really... I don't have a reason for or against. Three billion people reminds me when Facebook came out. All of a sudden it was like, huh, interesting. 100 million, 200 million. And all of sudden there's a billion people on it. You're like, we should pay attention. Well, that's a good... What you said what's going to be different or not different this year, video, right? So we could just go into video and social commerce, like you said. I would just say you're seeing more and more of that, right? Like video... becoming a centralized component of how people consume. TikTok being that, now YouTube with the YouTube shops. I would say there's a lot of copycat models out there, but I think that's speaking to the maturity of the American market, finding that in its own way. Whereas in China, that type of selling has been the predominant, or one of the predominant ways of selling for years. And they've tried to force it on the American consumer the same way with like the live stream commerce. And I'd say it's taking its own form where it's more to our attention span. Snip it, buy this. Brent Peterson (10:57.327) impulse. If you can resist the impulse and hold the table, you just didn't buy something you didn't need, but now it's a different format of that. Yes, and I I'm gonna admit I just met you earlier before we recorded and I'm gonna admit something very vulnerable and deep to you. This is really touching. are looking each other in listener. I was wrong about live commerce. I was wrong. I was wrong. How were you wrong about live commerce? Because when we started this I thought the two biggest things in the next three to five years was augmented reality and live commerce because I just thought the bandwidth and QVC, all those things were set up and the technology and I was, again, I admit my bias to being in the Amazon zone. They had Amazon Live and it just, it hasn't hit the mass adoption I thought it was going to hit. I was wrong, okay? I was wrong. Why do you gotta beat me up about it? I was wrong. if you're I don't think you're wrong because I don't see anyone tuning in to live shopping every night that I know. I know it's not like it's a generational issue. No, it's not that it's not like You know like okay name insert in YouTube streamer I show speed or these people people are watching them do things They're not watching them sell things because their whole act is selling things or they're selling their brand and it's different where it's not like you're becoming famous for becoming a live stream seller whereas in China maybe someone is or there's people in remote villages making fortunes doing that and I think that's not what you're seeing here, it's And why someone who's one of the greatest live stream consultants told me is that people here try to overproduce it there It's someone with an iPhone. Yeah, it's more about the personality and knowing how to talk to your customer I don't know again. I'm gonna be an idiot in the room Brent, you know a lot more about this. I defer to you Thank you very much and what's the Yiddish word for that your putz Brent Peterson (13:01.087) I'm saying is where you make a great point actually make a great point. One of the challenges I think of live stream and live shopping right social commerce is some somewhat is the shopping cart is what I mean when tick tock shop came out and nobody told me how they're going to actually fulfill the product I'm sitting here going hey guys they won't divulge how they're actually going to get you the product there to try to. ramp that up from Walmart doing now whatever the competitive said, that's going to be a problem. So the shopping cart aspect of live commerce is an issue. Is it not? I don't think it is. OK. You know why? Yeah. Tell me. Because you're either going to build your own, in which case you might use Stripes APIs or build your own product or build one of those cart centric technologies that are meant to do that for your. Because think about how much of e-commerce is just those funnel marketers. You know how we're more trad e-com like trad wives. know we're trad e-com, add to cart, that mentality. There's a whole people making billions just go through this funnel, buy the product, and upsell. that could be a model of building the checkout for that. But then also you have partnerships with major SaaS platforms that are doing integrations with TikTok shops, with YouTube shops. like, you know, we just turned on that sales channel. One click in your store and you go live instantly. So I would say what TikTok and what YouTube and these people are doing well is they're not trying to invent the they're just tapping into the most ubiquitous e-commerce platforms. The API's already there, you add to cart, it's just another headless commerce. Yeah, we talked earlier with January Digital and she talked about friction. Sarah Angle, I think it's Sarah Angle from January Digital. she had a good one. Mayor brought up the perfect scenario of reducing the friction. Brent Peterson (14:55.309) You're gonna push a button like some kind of... I... You're doing like, you're looking for your beer. We're... We're just... We need a sound effect for reduce the friction. Yeah, reduce the friction. Yeah. Nah, it's getting there. Get lubricated. general, reducing... No, that's not a... That's opposite That's not reduce the friction. Geez! Just cash register. There you go. There we go. So get people in and out. Alright, man. Alright. Enough of the sound boys. get some Metal Gear sound effects. Okay. Brett, you had a really intelligent articulate thought and I screwed it up. We're talking about reducing the friction. Yeah. TikTok shops gets us out of one less click. And I just had this conversation with a consulting client that said, I told them, don't have another click to get somewhere else because it's just one more point that somebody can drop out of the funnel. The fewer the clicks, the better. Yeah. Here's the truth, people. In the bigger, broader scale, TikTok Shop isn't doing dick. In GMV, I'm pulling for them, by the way. I'm pulling for them, but it's just not hitting the meter so far. In a very specific, beauty's doing well, low AOV, low average retail value. There's a lot of that going on. Just like Tmoo. Tmoo is blowing up. Did you know that's why that... Later, Hosam. Yeah, yeah, he but Rick Wilson and ocean did you know that's why the you know how like people complain about the cost of their Google and Meta ads going up the last two to three years I do right I do who's buying all the inventory team yep, and she and all of them It's the second largest Amazon's the first biggest Google customer of all they sold 13 billion dollars and team who now is bigger. Yeah Brent Peterson (16:47.597) So funny if you actually consider that. It's not like, it's some magic thing. It's because some other person is buying on the internet. Right. like if somebody were to buy a long-sleeved Hawaiian shirt off of T-MU, who would do that? I don't know who that guy is. A reference video right now, Brent. That's where you got to put the video. I bought mine from Amazon. Did you? Yes, not T-MU. Okay. But Rick Watson did get his later hosun from Tmoo and he talked about the he's very excited about it. Okay. Have we bored you? No. Myer, you're No, I'm good. Seriously, you're looking up, you're looking at your I saw my logo, I saw my face, saw my logo on the screen. I just got hyped, man. Are you next? Are you talking next? No, I'm not talking at all. okay. Well, you're talking Don't worry, I'm not under pressure. I'm good. Okay. What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest things that people come to you and they're like, God dang it, man. solve this for us because we are running up against it. Yeah. Is there a commonality? Is there a consensus of things that people... Bad decision-making. That's the commonality. Bad decision making. Bad decision. Isn't that a song? And you know, it's not like a finger pointing exercise. would just say there's... How did we get here? Yeah. The how did we get here question. Because so many people are like, okay, well, you have these restrictive conditions or here's why we have to do it this way. But you really place those restrictions on yourself or you force yourself down a path, which then leads the next decision to the next decision. And then you find yourself off track with your goals. So you have to look at how we got here in order to determine then where you're going. So I say that's the number one problem. And then two, it's a lot of failed implementations, which once again, I categorize as bad decisions, where then platforms get a bad name, but it's not the platform. It's the people misleading people with their bad solutions or their bad decisions or enabling bad decisions. And you know, that's what frustrates me because then it's like, you get people who already in a wounded state or already in a skeptical state or already, hey, we've been burned. Brent Peterson (18:52.311) for and it's like hey so have I. Does that mean anything? Once again client-vendor relationship respected but that's what I think is the number one thing and I think that's what we solve well. don't like for example I forgot it was like a rescue service but it's like you can't hence ecommerce hotline right call me when you're in a jam. I love that. But I would say like that's where I don't know, I just see that too much and that's a problem that I see really common. Or people make short-sighted decisions, which could be a bad decision. I just think there's so many orbits around that. That's my sense. That's good. We have three minutes left, so I do want to comment on what he said about making bad decisions. Because not always the agency, it is sometimes the merchant. And especially if it's a merchant who hasn't worked with a professional agency like B. Meyer, that don't know any better. Maybe their first time they go through it and they don't know any better and then they end up like, my gosh, what have I done? I've tried to save $20,000 and now this vendor promised me something in four weeks and it's been six months. they go to you and they say, help me. And I'm not even talking about agency vendors, for example, like Jason Nias from Shopware. guy. He's an Oracle of e-commerce wisdom. And Jason gave me the meaning behind the e-commerce hotline because it's been something that I've had for like four years, but he was like, listen, people have been led wrong by technology vendors. And I'm even talking about solutions integrators, over-promising, under-delivering. 100%. And I've seen this with other platforms where they're like, hey, we have this. we can do multi-store, no problem. when you get into it, you really can't do the use case, but they're happy to force you into a $30,000 a year contract, and I just come in and I'm like, what the heck is going on? And so, yeah, that's really, to me, a huge problem. it's, once again, yeah. getting you out of here on this, what is your big advice? If you had to say something overall to some of the listeners who are mid-market brands, we don't know who they really are, Brent. Mid-market merchants. Yeah. What's your big advice to them? Brent Peterson (21:09.495) kind of, I don't know, elude the trap door so to speak. Don't be afraid to take risks because it's all going to happen anyway. If you do nothing, sometimes it's almost as bad as doing something. and you have to do something. You don't always have to do something, but don't be afraid to take risks. That's what I would say. Because if you're standing still in a world that's evolving, your competitors are evolving, and you're just saying, hey, this problem doesn't exist, that strategy might reward you, but more often than not, it doesn't. And so I would just say, ask questions and dare to uncover things, and you might find answers in the strangest of places. Well, you're gentleman and a scholar. your grub with us, your vittles, you shared your vittles. We needed that energy. It's not like everyone's eating full plates, but we were here when there was no food. And you know what? You got a plate before anybody in this hall got a plate. And you know what? I don't know. I'm not saying yes, but call this guy because he has some secret magic tool. Tell us the number again. This guy got a freaking plate of food when nobody was served. Your e-commerce store is going to get that plate of when it needs it. We advocate for you. If that's not a reason to call this guy, I'm telling you I don't know what it could tell you without the food it would have been a much different episode. I needed that for my happiness. Yeah, it's the e-commerce hotline is 888-499-ECOM, aka 3266. The brand is B-Meyer, B-Meyer.com, B-E-M-E-I-R.com. I'm here, Bianchi. That's Brent Peterson. That's my man Scott, whose name I don't know, but I'm last Scottie O. Just call me Scottie O. Scottie O. He's Irish. Yeah. It's got here. right. Thank you guys for having me on. This was a blast. Shout again. It always goes by faster than you think, especially when spend the first 10 minutes using does. He's the mayor of e-commerce. He kind is, actually. mayor of He kind of is. I'm just happy we had this conversation. know what? I hope, listener, you're hearing through this episode just the Brent Peterson (23:08.717) vibes you're just good vibes my man good vibes this is a great reset all right we are live again we're concluding this particular portion of the program I was off brand and to commerce from shoptoberfest sponsored by shopware fresh and be mine