Latest / The Retail Podcast / Shopify + ChatGPT Checkout, Walmart’s Bold Food Shift, Amazon’s New Grocery Play | Live Retail Recap

Transcript

Shopify + ChatGPT Checkout, Walmart’s Bold Food Shift, Amazon’s New Grocery Play | Live Retail Recap · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, great to. See you, Alex.
• 0:03
  Lovely to see you Jill. Hello to our wonderful audience
• 0:07
  out there. We are doing our first live
• 0:09
  transmission to you across Twitch, YouTube and LinkedIn.
• 0:14
  So welcome, welcome. But we're going to be super
• 0:29
  respectful to your time and the wonderful Jill and I are going
• 0:32
  to get straight into we can't. Not start with AI mean what kind
• 0:36
  of what kind of retailers would we be?
• 0:39
  Yeah. This is this was really, really
• 0:42
  big news and I have to say I didn't think it was going to
• 0:44
  come so soon, but Shopify announced earlier this week that
• 0:49
  there are 1,000,000 merchants will now have access to be able
• 0:53
  to essentially turn live their check out through ChatGPT.
• 1:00
  Now they're launching with one item in a basket at a time.
• 1:02
  Etsy was their first launch is already live this week.
• 1:05
  Etsy's stock shot up. It was already doing well.
• 1:08
  I think it was around 70. Now it's closer to 80.
• 1:12
  But now this is unleashed really.
• 1:15
  I mean, it's crazy. You're bifurcating going to the
• 1:19
  website now, right? You don't even have to go to the
• 1:22
  website to buy something anymore.
• 1:23
  It's it's kind of bananas when you think about it.
• 1:26
  So anyway, there's 1,000,000 merchants and there are some
• 1:29
  huge merchants on Shopify and Harley did a whole Instagram and
• 1:35
  you know, X and all sorts of platforms to announce it.
• 1:38
  And it's gotten a tonne of buzz and it's going to be pretty
• 1:41
  cool. Yeah, I think Perplexity
• 1:43
  obviously were the first AI platform to do it.
• 1:45
  And so it's, it's fantastic and it's obviously what customers
• 1:49
  want to be able to shop from their feed rather than have to
• 1:53
  go out. So it'll be interesting to
• 1:55
  watch. And specifically from a data
• 1:56
  perspective, I'd be curious how much data the the retailer gets.
• 1:59
  Obviously you end up on the retailer's page, right?
• 2:03
  Are they doing their product pages OK coming into prime
• 2:06
  season, the prime days back? And I think the statistically
• 2:09
  this has shown that Christmas shopping the golden quarter has
• 2:13
  moved. And so following Amazon you as
• 2:17
  you would expect, Target has its big deal circle week full of
• 2:21
  deals and offers as does Walmart all roughly around the same.
• 2:25
  I think has it got the I don't understand.
• 2:27
  They're all like October 7th and 8th.
• 2:29
  Yeah. They're coming up this next
• 2:31
  week, yeah. Yeah, OK, so there you go.
• 2:33
  So next week people are going to be, you know, hunkering down and
• 2:36
  getting their holidays. And I think it's a good litmus
• 2:38
  test to see how will this have an impact on Black Friday, how
• 2:42
  will this have an impact on Cyber Monday.
• 2:44
  And as a lot of initial data shows that potentially we're
• 2:49
  going to we're in for a flat golden quarter rather than an
• 2:52
  increase, hey, flat is better than a decrease.
• 2:55
  So if, if we maintain what we've got, I think that that's great.
• 2:58
  But it's great to see that the big brands have come in align
• 3:02
  themselves to help the modern shopper.
• 3:05
  Right, to bring, you know, and I think a lot of it and especially
• 3:08
  this year, it's just been such a it's almost like a ping pong
• 3:11
  match of like, do you bring things in earlier to help try to
• 3:14
  mitigate tariffs? Do you wait?
• 3:16
  Do you, you know, it's just this constant battle of when, when,
• 3:20
  when and you know, by bringing some of the demand forward even
• 3:24
  more because a lot of the items are already on shore and they're
• 3:28
  already here, You know, does that then decrease the Q4
• 3:32
  numbers because the deals are now.
• 3:35
  I mean, every year I for better or worse, I've been doing this
• 3:38
  more than 20 years. Every year the holiday starts
• 3:40
  earlier and earlier with the big three kind of coming out.
• 3:45
  And you know, that's why has some great sales.
• 3:47
  Like there's obviously a lot of a lot of people trying to price
• 3:51
  match and create and capture that demand, but what are they
• 3:54
  going to do if this is all the demand that they have?
• 3:56
  You know, I was looking at a bunch of articles this week and
• 4:00
  consumer demand really hasn't dipped yet.
• 4:03
  What it has done is people are trying to trade down a little
• 4:07
  bit. They're trying to trade into
• 4:09
  value and they're trying to trade into, you know, deals.
• 4:13
  So I think by bringing the deals earlier, we will bring some of
• 4:16
  the demand earlier. But at the end of the day, I
• 4:18
  think the overall pie, it's not going to get any smaller.
• 4:22
  I think it was Doug McMillan who said this like Christmas doesn't
• 4:25
  go away. You know, you might, you might
• 4:27
  be spending a little bit less per person, but Christmas
• 4:30
  doesn't go away. The Jewish holidays don't go
• 4:32
  away. All of the family celebrations
• 4:34
  we do, they are all still there. People will still spend.
• 4:37
  It's a matter of what and how are they buying.
• 4:41
  And again, you know, e-commerce will jump.
• 4:44
  So is the question is, is the total number going to jump or
• 4:48
  our forecast I think comes out around November 5th or 6th from
• 4:52
  the NRS? Yeah.
• 4:54
  We haven't had a flat perspective ever so.
• 4:57
  We'll see. All right, OK.
• 4:58
  I think it was MasterCard that signed and one of them said it
• 5:01
  was flat. Yeah, well, and look, they, they
• 5:05
  have a, they have a very broad swath, but you know, they don't
• 5:08
  have the debits, right? They don't have all the debits
• 5:10
  at least. Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 5:12
  And staying with you. We got it.
• 5:14
  We got to throw some fun in here, all right?
• 5:16
  Those La Boo Boo dolls. If you haven't heard of it, you
• 5:19
  probably aren't on this podcast. Those little tiny cute gremlins.
• 5:23
  They are now launching Pop Mart. The owner.
• 5:26
  They are launching a Times Square.
• 5:29
  Nowhere better to do this. Times Square store coming in
• 5:32
  2026 where you can buy the physical items in store.
• 5:37
  I mean it's insanely popular. I think I saw in that article it
• 5:41
  was a 10 year lease. So let's hope they have a follow
• 5:45
  up product because I don't know if Liboos are going to be a
• 5:47
  thing 10 years from now. Maybe, maybe they will.
• 5:51
  They're expanding in the UK, so Popmart have have expanded.
• 5:54
  There's like 4 flagship products, Liboubou one of them.
• 5:57
  So they go and maybe I don't know if it will be in time for
• 6:01
  NRF, right. If they're opening in 2026, we
• 6:04
  can all go and have a look. I know we should.
• 6:06
  We should talk about a collab like an NRF labooboo.
• 6:09
  You know, like a special, a specialty.
• 6:11
  Product yeah, OK, so sticking with some positive news on what
• 6:16
  Walmart is doing on its own brands.
• 6:19
  And I think again, when Walmart tends to to do these things, we
• 6:22
  see a shift in not only consumer behaviour, but people start to
• 6:27
  follow and then eliminated synthetic dyes across all
• 6:30
  private brand food products, which is such a welcome move by
• 6:35
  all parents or all shoppers who shop throughout the the US
• 6:40
  because we're all aware of these sort of ingredients that are in
• 6:43
  our products. But Walmart have sort of taken
• 6:45
  that a step further and they have decided to to eliminate
• 6:50
  thirty ingredients that you know from sweeteners, fat substitutes
• 6:55
  in it and I have to stress in its own private brand foods, but
• 6:59
  I think this is a great sign of things to come.
• 7:02
  Yeah, it's what they can control, right.
• 7:03
  So they're kind of putting, moving the marker forward and
• 7:07
  putting, putting the stake in the ground.
• 7:10
  I'm really interested to see if the colours change of any of the
• 7:13
  products like it. Are those bright red, yellow and
• 7:16
  blue drinks? Are they all going to be white
• 7:17
  now? Like I'm, I'm not interested to
• 7:20
  see, are they going to use beet dye?
• 7:22
  Like are they substituting it? Is it so I can't wait, so I'm,
• 7:26
  you know, I'm a big grocery member at Walmart so we can
• 7:30
  report back when it happens. Yeah, I mean, it looks like from
• 7:33
  I just reading the article, as you can see, like there's a
• 7:35
  little bit of a colour change, but not much.
• 7:37
  Yeah, but anyway, and maybe they go from synthetic dyes to
• 7:39
  natural dyes as well. And I think that's the big shift
• 7:42
  that allows you to still have a a blue or red or a yellow drink,
• 7:46
  but it's more from natural ingredients as opposed.
• 7:49
  To blueberry. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:51
  Yeah, which is a fantastic one. And closing with you.
• 7:55
  So Amazon, you know, got to got to go back to them this week
• 7:59
  they announced that they are launching a new private label
• 8:02
  grocery brand. So they have a few out there
• 8:05
  that happy, happy belly when they had Amazon Fresh.
• 8:11
  And then there's others, you know, the 365 whole food brands,
• 8:13
  etcetera. They're launching one called
• 8:15
  Amazon grocery. It's private label, of course,
• 8:18
  and it's aimed at price conscious consumers.
• 8:21
  So most of the products are under $5.
• 8:24
  From from a quick look, it didn't seem like the typical oh,
• 8:29
  it's cheaper, but it's smaller portions.
• 8:30
  It didn't seem like a shrink flation right out-of-the-box.
• 8:34
  So under $5 is a pretty great deal.
• 8:37
  They have a lot of these stores now in cities, but of course,
• 8:41
  you know, they they always push the online grocery delivery.
• 8:45
  You get free delivery if it's over a certain amount and you're
• 8:48
  a prime member. So again, just the flywheel of
• 8:51
  their ecosystem is is big. Yeah, I mean, we've got 2
• 8:55
  minutes left. What was interesting in, in, in
• 8:57
  the, in the UK, they closed their Amazon Go stores and some
• 9:02
  of them are changing to Whole Foods.
• 9:04
  But in my mind, Amazon have been the masters of being able to
• 9:08
  both of our phones have gone off during the show.
• 9:10
  We're only on a live right go off and only on a live will the
• 9:16
  phone go off. But anyway, what was interesting
• 9:18
  is they said, and it was and I, I think they are the masters of
• 9:23
  experimentation. And so nothing happens with
• 9:26
  that. So in my mind, they've they've
• 9:28
  been trying and trying the different shopping missions for
• 9:31
  Amazon go. They've noticed that food
• 9:34
  potentially doesn't lean itself, but you know, in airports, in
• 9:37
  other convenience place, it lends itself, but they are still
• 9:42
  in grocery. There are still things to come.
• 9:44
  I feel, and I feel what you're describing in the US is a great
• 9:48
  example of that. I don't think they've nailed it.
• 9:50
  I mean, last September they launched 1.
• 9:53
  I think it was called Amazon Saver.
• 9:54
  It's focused on value again, but it didn't really I I just didn't
• 9:59
  see a lot of selection. So, you know, the groceries
• 10:02
  business for Amazon has been a little bit of a trial and error,
• 10:06
  but look, they, they can try, they can fail and they, as long
• 10:10
  as they fail fast and come up with something, you know, the
• 10:14
  replace that let's you know, it's, it's a great, it's a great
• 10:18
  test to kind of watch and see. But that was the big
• 10:21
  announcement this week from them.
• 10:22
  And it's, it's not just food. I should have said it's all
• 10:25
  their private labels. So paper towels, toilet bowl,
• 10:28
  all household goods, detergent, things like that.
• 10:31
  So big, Really. Both big announcements from the
• 10:35
  two giants in the US this week. Yeah, look, listen.
• 10:38
  And I think as the press release said, I think on Walmart's press
• 10:40
  release, they're listening to their customers, which is
• 10:43
  exactly what the customer wants. And they're adapting to the new
• 10:46
  pressures from the market, which again, I think, you know,
• 10:49
  sensible, they're setting the standard and hopefully the
• 10:54
  industry will listen. And then so follow, follow pace.
• 10:57
  Jill, thank you so much. We've done it in record time,
• 11:01
  it's been really good and it's our first life, so apologies for
• 11:04
  the first hiccup, but we'll be back.
• 11:06
  No fun. Thank you Alex, and to all of
• 11:08
  you who tuned in, thank you. We appreciate you and let us
• 11:11
  know if you have ideas for topics or things you want to see
• 11:14
  covered. That's brilliant.
• 11:17
  Until next week or until in a couple of weeks time.
• 11:20
  We need a bro.