Latest / Talk Commerce / Agentic Commerce Transforms Shopping While Preserving Brand Identity with Scott Hendrickson at Shoptalk 2025
Transcript
- All right, welcome to this Shop Talk edition of Talk Commerce. Today I have Scott Hendrickson with Firmly. Scott, go ahead, do an introduction, tell us your day-to-day role, one of your passions in life. Okay, cool, great. Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Great to be here in Chicago. So, Scott Hendrickson, I'm Chief Revenue Officer at the company. two year journey with this organization. Passions for life, mean give me a beach or a tropical destination somewhere with my family is always top of my list man. Beyond that, Big Eagles fans, so go Birds. Yeah, so I was there you go Yeah. Speaker 2 (05:24.558) I was running the day of the Super Bowl in Minneapolis. I saw tons of Eagle fans. It was like minus 10. It was like 2018, I think, when the Eagles were in the Super Bowl. Actually, they were all very nice. was a great event. Minneapolis did a great show for the Super Bowl. They had snowmobiles in the downtown with jumps. It was crazy. So anyways. Minneapolis is a lovely, lovely destination. I prefer it in the summer. Yeah, ditto. Yeah. Not in the winter. Yes, yeah, absolutely. We had this conversation in our green room, So, firmly, just tell, give us the elevator pitch about firmly. Yeah, so it's interesting that what the company is set out to build about five years ago was well ahead of its time. And they took several years to build out a technology that enables a consumer to check out with a merchant, irregardless of where they might be. And if look five years ago, was very different environment. But the idea is that if the consumer is on a publisher site, if they are in an AI search engine, if they see an ad unit, that rather than redirecting to the merchant site, the idea is that you could actually pull the merchant site into that native environment to make it easier for the consumer to transact. And in doing that, so long as the merchant is the merchant record. Speaker 1 (06:58.542) which is at the very core premise of what our technology enables, then it's a win for absolutely everybody in that ecosystem, whether it be the merchant, whether it be the consumer or... Speaker 1 (07:13.806) And so if you fast forward to where we are here today at Shop Talk and with all the conversations around Agenda Commerce. exciting space and we are very fortunate that the timing is working out pretty well for us because there's a lot of opportunity and lot of interest for us to help the... . Speaker 2 (07:34.914) Yeah, think agentic hit hard at eTale in February. Everybody was the buzzword. mean, it's around before that, but the buzz in the industry really happened this spring. And I was at eTale Boston, and I did ask, I posted a panel, and I asked, is anybody doing it yet? There's a whole bunch of merchants in the room, and nobody's actually deployed an agent. So there's agentic in the terms of having a chatbot on your site, but there's not anybody. deploying agents out to buy things. But I just saw Google now has created a standard for payments for agent at commerce, right? Yeah, I mean, let's unpack that all a little bit because I think that this is a, it's a transformational moment for the ecosystem at large and everybody sees what's coming, right? And in that, everyone is talking about the same over-simplified use cases of what this utopian experience might be. which is that there's gonna be an agent who's gonna go and buy absolutely everything for you and there's gonna be no human involvement. And it's just not real, right? Like if we think about the... that it's not real. It's that consumer behavior and consumer shopping is built on a multitude of different shopping journeys, right? It is not just me. And everybody talks about in the Google announcement that he gets straight, which we're very supportive of, by the way. The idea that, agent, I want to travel to Tampa, Florida with my family. Speaker 1 (09:23.462) and hotel for me for under $700. Okay? Like, if you think through that, if this agent can understand what my wife enjoys, please, I am all for it. Not real. The number of choices that go into that specific action, right, I think go far beyond what an agent might be capable of actually. Yeah. Speaker 1 (09:48.13) doing to make consumers satisfied and right, and I emphasize on that, because I think a lot of the conversations arriving are technology first, they're not consumer. So if you think about the consumer, and you think about the advent of what AI commerce can enable, it can come to life in a lot of different shopping journeys, and a lot of different places. So as an example. Yeah, Yes. Speaker 2 (09:58.734) Yes, I agree. Speaker 1 (10:13.912) The example that I just referenced, which is an autonomous purchase, might work really well if it's in an environment and with a merchant that the consumer already knows, trusts, and uses on a regular basis. So if it's using DoorDash, it's Wegmans, right, to place your grocery order. like agent, please go to like, please have Wegmans place my grocery order from last week. However, add a pound of bananas and I don't need the rice. Okay. And then the agent goes and does that. That's, that's a lot of the purchase consideration has already been done in that the trust is established, right? It's they know what they're getting. Another journey would be in AI, I think in an AI search engine where A consumer might be looking for a gift idea for a daughter's birthday party, and looking to buy a gift for an eight-year-old girl. And so in that scenario, please give me product recommendations of what an eight-year-old girl might like who enjoys unicorns, ballet, and blue. Yeah. Right, okay? And so then product recommendations come that are being sourced from different likely publishers or other inputs, right? And in that scenario, being able to understand what the product recommendations are so the consumer can visually see and explore, right, at the top of the funnel and start working their way down. Speaker 1 (11:50.574) I think it's something that is important and something that an agent independently probably isn't gonna go do. You need the content, you need the context, you need the visuals in order to do that. So then when the consumer says yes, and maybe the qualifier would be, and make sure they are in stock for delivery by tomorrow at 12 p.m. So now all those recommendations are there. They pick what they want. right, because they see the product, they understand the price, like it all works based on the specific moment, they hit. transaction happens. And so if we think through that experience, right? And that experience is closer to happening now. happening now and that can happen inside a search engine, it could happen inside of a publisher, right? You think about all the product recommendations that are being produced, right? How does a publisher leverage that content in a way and then allow the consumer to buy then and there versus a redirect which creates 10 to 15 clicks? And then you lose the consumer versus just being able to buy now instantly? That's the user experience that firmly is powering today. Speaker 2 (13:06.38) Okay. something that we believe serves a multitude of different consumer journeys in a lot of different consumer touch points. And we think as a consumer first. Yeah, no, that's yeah, that's a great way to that's a great way to look at it I've heard a lot of people say in the last six months that the the D2C website is gonna go away It's gonna get replaced by this the AI tools and like you said there's gonna be sort of this general area where Not a general, but it's just gonna be the the experience is gonna be through your chat GPT To purchase something and there's there's no need for a website. It's all going to be headless. They're going to go to your API and they're not going to scrape anything. What do you think about that? Good, we're on the same page. disagree. Speaker 1 (13:59.214) If you think about the world that we're all in today, you still have dominance with, let's say, Google and a couple search engines. And they dominate a lot. there's still a plethora of, let's call it, vertical solutions that deliver on consumer needs. And today, they come in the formal websites and different, and a lot of websites still have a search function that's in there. lot of people don't use them to the way that you might. I think what's gonna happen is that you're gonna see the continuation of verticalized experiences that are No. Speaker 1 (14:42.636) consumer needs and so that could be as an example Vogue right if you're looking for fashion tips right and trying to stay on top of fashion trends trusting a brand and an experience that is like a Vogue is going to serve certain considerations. If you're looking for an outdoor enthusiast, an outdoor enthusiast and looking for different outdoor gear and things like that, you might go to a more niche experience because you know that the content and the data that's surfacing and the humans that are surfacing that content and you're helping to... Yeah. Speaker 1 (15:25.198) to your specific personalized needs is what's going to deliver for that consumer. so if you're, then fast forward to the brands, I look at a world where Nespresso, I'm a loyal Nespresso, I'm a very loyal Nike consumer, right? And so in those experiences, I'm still going to go to, or want to buy from those different TTCs. Now, how am I? could evolve a little. Right, there'll be multiple channels. Yeah, exactly. But photographs and videos? We as consumers still need to explore, still need to understand. The idea that the most loyal customers, yes, might transact in different ways with a brand, but that doesn't mean that all, like, what defines the brand and how you explore and understand the brand still needs to exist. That's not gonna happen through an agent. Right, I think the brands aren't going to want to give up that customer experience to Chet GPT and say, just do everything through our little portal. one interesting thing that I heard at the other event I was at was the merchant, the SI said, show me your Amazon homepage. Speaker 2 (16:45.974) and are you proud of it? Well, you can't do a lot with your Amazon homepage, right? You can do a little bit to customize it if you're a brand. Think North Face or something they're selling on Amazon. Their experience on Northface.com is much different than experience on Amazon forward slash Northface or whatever. And I don't think that anybody's gonna wanna give up that experience that you have. The opportunity, and also just like you said content of Vogue or something like that, you're gonna want people to come to your site eventually, because you have more of an opportunity to capture and keep that client. Well, so I guess a few things to unpack there. One, I don't think that every consumer journey requires that the consumer go to the merchants website. I think brands need to open up and expand the horizon. It's kind of the same way as when e-commerce hit, you had a lot of merchants back in the day saying, I need them to go to my store. I need them to go to my store. Great. Digital is not real. not I can't that can't make any money there. It's like, okay We are in that same moment today and so but what's critically important, right? Is that as that happens being able to? remain the merchant of record is Should be a non-negotiable, right? Right. And so at least that's our belief and that's why we built the technology that we did because you know Speaker 2 (17:50.124) Yes. Speaker 1 (18:13.41) should not be giving up the lifetime value of that consumer to the tech giants. We've all learned, we love tech giants, right, across the board, tech giants create a huge value and... However, they also can create some issues over the course of time with their dominance. so I think that you have a, just as there's multitudes of different consumer journeys, there's going to be a multitude of channel strategies that brands need to deploy. One of those channels will be working with the likes of an Amazon in the future. It's also going to be direct to consumer relationships has never been more important than it is today and will be critically important going into the future. so how you build that, your brand, like consumers love brands and brands want to be, have to love to be brands. That's value creation. Yes, that's a fun part of a brand. The brands that we consume define who we are. Sometimes that's on purpose and sometimes it's not. But so you can't create brand value just through an agent, right? I don't believe that. think that sight, sound, motion of it all. And so how you create that and how that comes to life, consumers are going to want to experience it. They're going to want you to showcase that. And so that comes through the life of different... Speaker 1 (19:48.737) different experiences that you're going to control. And your best customers, I believe, if you use AI technology properly, will continue to go to you direct, and they will find you in different ways. That could be using agents in the future. But that's not holistically the only, it's not going be the only place in which consumers are going to buy. Yep, absolutely. Alright Scott, have a few minutes left. What are you hoping to get out of Shop Talk this year? Shop Talk fall? Is there anything besides, is there anything new right now besides agentic? Honestly, because of the moment that we're in right now, there's a lot of merchants and there's platforms, publishers, et cetera, who are all at different levels of, they're at different stages of understanding of agentic commerce. I think, and I'm, Speaker 1 (20:46.478) people who are figuring it out and there's people who are scared shitless, right? And so the journey that we're on, there are no clear answers here, but we're at a transformational moment. So to be able to spend time with the different cohorts here to help to both learn and also educate on the journey that we're on is... is the purpose because where we were three months ago, six months ago, is very different than where we are today and where we're gonna be in three months. it's moving at a blistering pace. so I think that's the value. shop talk to bring everybody together to you know kind of create these exchanges and to create the actions to move forward. You know that's you know it's all-encompassing for me right now to keep tabs and you know help this ecosystem evolve which we're super excited to do. Yeah. Speaker 2 (21:48.01) Alright, perfect. Scott, it's been such a great conversation. Scott Hendrickson with Firmly, how do they find you? Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, scottatfirmly.ai. Send up a smoke signal. All right, perfect. Thank you so much.