In this episode I welcome back to the podcast one of the savviest and experienced operators in the eCommerce world, Rob Schmults from MidOcean Partners private equity who shares his quick “two starts, one stop” based on his observations of year one of the COVID era, and Veronika Sonsev and Scott Silverman, co-founders of CommerceNext on how their powerful community lead the way to their action-packed agenda.
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this episode I welcome back to the podcast one of the savviest and experienced operators in the eCommerce world, Rob Schmults from Mid Ocean Partners who shares his quick “two starts, one stop” based on his observations of year one of the COVID era, and Veronika Sonsev and Scott Silverman, co-founders of CommerceNext on how their powerful community lead the way to their action-packed agenda.
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Thanks to Rob, Veronika and Scott for being on this episode. Today’s podcast is the first in a series of CommerceNext episodes that will feature some the fantastic speakers taking the virtual stage January 20, 27th and February 3rd with snapshot insights into how they dealt with online /eCommerce in the first year of the COVID era and lessons learned for the future.
You can learn more and register for CommerceNext here.
Get in touch with Scott and Veronika
If you liked this podcast please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon podcasts or your favourite podcast platform, rate and review, and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the retail industry.
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, Founder and President of M.E. LeBlanc and Company Inc. and you can learn more about me on www.meleblanc.co or of course on LinkedIn
Until next time, have a safe week!
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Retail Council of Canada. In this episode, I welcome back to the podcast one of the savviest and experienced operators in the eCommerce world, Rob Schmults, from MidOcean Partners, who shares his quick 'two starts, one stop' based on his observations of year one of the COVID era, and Veronika Sonsev and Scott Silverman, co-founders of CommerceNext, on how their powerful community led the way to their action packed agenda.
Rob, welcome back to The Voice to Retail podcast, how you doing this morning?
Rob Schmults
I am great, Michael. Thank you. Thanks for asking. I couldn't help thinking that this is my third time with you. But, two of them have been during COVID. So, I'll be excited to get back to the kind of conversation you and I had in the first one where we're actually we're facing each other in person. So, hopefully that months away, and we'll, we'll get back to that format, but we'll see.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, it's as I like, as I often say, it's great to hear your voice but better to see you in person. But for now, this is, this is the next best thing. So, as you said, this is your three peat. This is your third time actually in the same year. First time was on the streets in New York City during the NRF show. And, you were a participant in CommerceNext in the summer, and you're back. So, I wanted to talk to you about a couple things. First of all, for the listeners who may not have heard, the first, or the even the second, give us a quick snapshot of who you are and what you do.
Rob Schmults
Great, so, I work with a private equity firm called MidOcean Partners, and I'm there in an operating role. MidOcean focuses on middle market companies, you know, think bigger than startups but, but smaller than, you know, giant globe spanning enterprises.Most of my time is spent helping the portfolio companies with kind of all things digital, you know, eCommerce, online marketing, data analytics, etc. And then, I also spent some time on diligence and new perspective acquisitions.
Prior to that have had a variety of leadership roles, both as a retailer, most recently was part of the leadership team at Talbots, doing all things digital there. But also, have been on, you know, put an air quotes 'on the vendor side' solution provider, selling technology solutions into the retail community. So, so have been lucky enough to work with some great teams on both sides of that equation.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, and I've described you as a triple threat, because you both been a retailer, you've been on the vendor side, and now you're on the private equity kind of side from an investment and the clear-eyed look at an opportunity. So, you bring such insight.
So, again, it's not your first time on the podcast, it's not your first time in this format. And I remember last time, you had some great insights around the, the two starts and one stop. Now, that was six months ago, six months in these days is a long time ago. So, I'm kind of keen, given what you've just experienced, what we've all just experienced over the past six months or so, or even four months, how are you now thinking about what retailers should do, start doing and what they might want to stop doing for 2021?
Rob Schmults
I guess for the first start, you know, I think and you and I in our, in our pre interview conversation, which went to a lot of interesting topics, maybe we should have recorded that one, but one of the things we talked about was just you know, how companies have been managing through the pandemic. And frankly, I think, you know, a lot of credit goes out to all those leaders in those teams and all the work they've done to drive, I think what for many companies, was pretty not startling, but, but impressive spike in team productivity and the ability to get things done.
I think on the start front, you know, we're, we're, you know, hopefully in the homestretch around the pandemic. We're coming to the end of the year, the holidays. These are natural drivers of people maybe needing and wanting to catch their breath a little bit. And I think, what got you here may not get you there. So, I'd encourage leaders and teams to start thinking about what they're going to need to do to keep their team and their colleagues engaged and energized in 2021. If you think about it, everyone's really been through the ringer, whether they show it or not. And, you know, we've had this incredible response from teams, you know, across companies, across industries, in terms of bringing the effort to the table, and productivity, and adapting, and commitment, and doing everything they can to help their businesses survive, and in some cases thrive, in this very challenging time.
There's obviously what comes with that is there's a toll. And so, I think, particularly post holiday, team members, you know, this is often a time where teams get to exhale. Particularly in retail, right, you've sort of passed that final shift window. You, you get to, you know, the 25th. They're not going to have their normal holiday. They're not going to have quite the downtime they got. A lot of them aren't going anywhere, they're probably just going to keep working. And so, you know, how are you going to re energize that team? What are you gonna do to help them recharge? And you know, I think we can all expect that poaching of talent is probably going to go up a lot after this holiday, that's always been a persistent problem, in eCommerce and retail. But I think it's going to reach new heights as so many companies saw their entire business shift to digital and realize they're going to need to either deepen or broaden their team. So, anyway, start thinking maybe, maybe hopefully you already have started, if you haven't, you better start thinking about that. So, that's one start.
For second start, maybe it's, it's kind of analogous is, what are your contingency plans for a post COVID world? You know, how much business do you think is likely to flow back to offline? And, how might that shift your spending and prioritization? How are you thinking about that comp problem? If you had a good pandemic, in terms of you know, if you were in home improvement, or some of the categories that have done,
Michael LeBlanc
Furniture or whatever it sure, sure.
Rob Schmults
You've got a comp problem coming up, and what are you going to do to, you know, compensate for that COVID bounce maybe not being there for you In 2021?
Alternatively, if you had a really tough 2020, maybe you're in apparel, when do you, what are the triggers? What are the milestones that you need to watch for and act on? So, you know, like, now's the time to amp up, back up that marketing spend. We, you know, we need to go deeper on inventory buys. We need to have, you know, manage our promotional cadence accordingly to capture demand that may exceed, you know, knock on wood may exceed, supply. So, I think,
Michael LeBlanc
Your point about, about when to cut the purchase orders is very germane, because it's, you know, it's it will be unusual, because everyone will be thinking the same thing at the same time. We're already in the place where it's hard to get on a boat from China to North America, any of your goods. It's sold out, for months, because of, you know, everybody's doing the same thing all at the same time. So, I think that, that, you know, that's been facing the furniture folks and the home improvement. I think it's going to, you know, it'll be an interesting 'who bets first', from the apparel side, because, you know, they, there's also I've been hearing consolidation of factories in China as they've lost customers, of course, and lost volumes. So, there's less factories, who will all be suddenly all asked to make more stuff. You know, like, it'll be another bottleneck, you know, better bottleneck than we have today, so to speak. But you raise a really interesting point there.
Rob Schmults
Yeah, no, I think, I think that color you added is exactly the right color. And so, thinking through your contingencies, your triggers, what is going to be the sign that says, 'Okay, do x or stop doing y'?
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah,
Rob Schmults
Getting that sorted out. So, just,
Michael LeBlanc
When do you put your chips down? When do you, when you make that bet, right? When you know, when do you think people are going to start traveling again, and then they're gonna need luggage? Or they're gonna need, you know, all those great things that we used to need.
Rob Schmults
That's right. So, it's so it's just like what we did in COVID. Except now we've got a little more luxury to know this is coming, right. There will be another side, and that's predictable. Whereas, what we experienced in the beginning part of 2020, we had to scramble. Take what you did when you scrambled and think about how you can apply it and leverage it now under a more predictable set of occurrences. So, yeah, very much agree with the examples you gave.
Michael LeBlanc
Right on, right on. All right, well, well, again. So, let's, those are the two great things that retailers should be thinking about. What should they, what should they consider not doing for 2019? Maybe have seen other people do.
Rob Schmults
I think my stop may be a bit of a, if not a blatant plagiarization of my, my earlier stop or start. I think it's on a similar theme, which is stop under sourcing your digital, under resourcing your digital efforts. But, if I am repeating myself, and I should have checked, but if I am, it's just that this is such a common problem. And if COVID did nothing it hopefully gave you, if you're a digital leader or team in the digital space, the credibility you need to go back to your, you know, management team, your board, your CFO, and really make the compelling case that you know, digital roles and talent are critical, even outside of a pandemic.
And I think one of the things I think the digital is so blessed with, but, but the digital managers don't always take advantage of, is that talent and bringing in headcount in the space, it so uniquely lends itself to a clear payback window, right. Because we have so many closed loops, if I did x and I got y, think about things like (inaudble) as etc., right. And, you can use that same data that you use to evaluate and project forward what a new marketing program, or an overhaul might look like, or an investment. You can use that same methodology to think about what a person, or additional talent might look like, and then articulate that outcome, and you can report back on it. So, use that, use the credibility you've gotten in COVID. And the, in the heightened awareness that companies now have how critical this space is, use the fact that you have the metrics to show I did x and I got a return of y, to make a clear payback. And go out and get that talent, and get those new roles you need to help you to keep driving forward in in 2021. So that, that that's, that's how I would frame up stop under resourcing your digital efforts.
Michael LeBlanc
And I guess nested in that stop is your belief that this great acceleration, you know, this, this big shift, you know, whatever, pick a number, how many years ahead, that we're not going backwards, to where we were pre COVID, in terms of the amount of retail done online? Is that your assessment is that, is that you know, the waterline is permanently moved up? And that when stores are open, and you know, we're in a post vaccine world that things don't return to the way it was in, you know, January 2020, is that is that your assessment of your, and your observation?
Rob Schmults
Yeah, I definitely agree with you there. I think, you know, that the high tide mark may, may come back a little bit. You know, maybe in some cases even more than a little bit. But, I mean, so many new behaviors have been learned. So, many people that hadn't maybe previously been leveraging digital, are now over the hump, and it's become habit. I heard someone talking the other day about how habits form after about a month or so. And so we've had what? It's been 9, 10. So, we've got new habits formed that are going to have to be frankly broken for it to really go back to where things were, and I just don't think they will be. And they'll be,
Michael LeBlanc
I interviewed Roger Martin, a global thinker, my Dean from, from Rotman, he called habits, 'Decaying assets on the balance sheet'. And, I don't think we figured out a time when those, those habits break, or are formed, but they certainly decay. And, I think to your point, you know, you know, by the time the COVID era is over it, you know, could be the fall, right. So that's a long span of time, that's 18, call that 18 months, whether it's two months, or 60 days, or whatever it takes to form a new habit.
Rob Schmults
And you know what, I think, too, I would encourage people to think, more broadly than just say conversion rates or the demand, right. And again, you and I were talking about this pre-recording a little bit. I absolutely think there's pent up demand, like people are just going to want to go back into stores and experience stores again, I think the first time,
Michael LeBlanc
You feel normal again, right. I mean, as you and I know, retail isn't just about a transaction. If that was the case, we just all go online. It's, it's an experience, it's cultural, it's social, you know, it's all those things put together. I mean, it's hard to be inspired, really online for impulse buying. I mean, that's one of the things that people have been telling me right is like, you know, I've been married for a long time. So, I like to, I like to go to the store and just wander around and have inspiration hit me. So, this time, you know, you know, the inspiration is it's harder to come by online.
Rob Schmults
Yeah, no, you're, you said it really well. And so, I think looking past just your conversion rates, which I'm sure will bounce around as places come, come out from under the shadow of COVID. But, you know, what does this mean for say content creation? Right. I think one of the things you and I talked about when we last spoke is the notion that the psychological barrier so many brands had to doing more with video content, where they set this artificially high barrier of Superbowl quality,
Michael LeBlanc
Right, right.
Rob Schmults
You know, ad production values and now realize that 'Oh my gosh, people, people, you know, TikTok is actually, can be a really valuable communications vehicle' That all the 'How to content' that people are tapping into on YouTube, etc., etc. They're both going to be differences in how our consumers are interacting with us and what they're willing to engage in, and at what level etc. But also, recognizing that your organization and your own internal stakeholders may also move to a new place. And so, that's going to drive I think, lasting change for us as well as retailers and brands, you know, as we as we go through 2021 and beyond.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, last, last quick question for you. What are you doing at CommerceNext? Are you, are you moderating panel? or tell us what, what you're doing at the event?
Rob Schmults
Yeah, always a bridesmaid never a bride. So yes, I'm a moderator. But it's great. And I got to give a little shout out to the CommerceNext team. I think they've, they've created so much valuable content and created space for that content to be disseminated. I know I personally have learned a lot from their sessions and so I'm looking forward and I'm honored to be able to participate in the event that's coming up in the early part of 2021.
And, my panel's on, what I call an evergreen topic, which is, you know, what should the marketing organization look like? The exact title is the, 'Marketing Award Building a Team for Today's Growth Challenges'. And so, I've got great, great panelists, some, some old friends, some new faces. Billy May, the Chief Customer Officer at J. Crew, Jennifer Olson is the CMO at UNTUCKit, and Shawna Hausman, the CMO at Health-E Commerce. And, they bring not just the experiences that they have at their current roles, but also having, you know, all held a series of roles, and seen a lot of different things, and a lot of different marketing organizations. And so, I'm really excited about that. And then, just as importantly, they've seen how broader organizations interact with the marketing organization, right? Because, it's not like your marketing org sits in a vacuum. It's, it's a piece in a puzzle. So, that's a thing we're going to get into as well. So, I'm really looking forward to it.
Michael LeBlanc
No, that sounds great. I mean, I've always thought as a marketer, the intersection, interaction with the merchants, for example, not just the store operators, is so crucial. That, to have that, that interaction and not be an island of, out on your own. So, I'm really looking forward to that such a great, you're, you're an amazing emcee, bring insights to that and a great panel.
So, Rob, thanks, again for being on The Voice of Retail podcast and this CommerceNext preview edition. I look forward to catching up with you again for the podcast next year. And then, and then if all goes well, seeing you in person, I look forward to that.
Rob Schmults
Yeah, no, I share that and wish all your listeners a healthy and happy and safe holidays.
Michael LeBlanc
Veronica and Scott, welcome back to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you both doing?
Veronika Sonsev
Great. Thank you for having us.
Scott Silverman
Yes, doing well. Nice to talk to you again, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, it's great to have you back on. We're talking about CommerceNext. And, and we, you had the opportunity to introduce yourselves, and your great backgrounds in more detail on a prior episode. So, I'll put that in the show notes so folks can go listen. But just for the folks who maybe didn't hear about that. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And then we'll start talking about CommercNext, Veronica, why don't we start with you?
Veronika Sonsev
Sure, Michael. So the quick intro, I am one of the co-founders of CommerceNext. We're a community event series and conference for marketers at retail and direct to consumer brands.
Scott Silverman
And, I'm also one of the co-founders of CommerceNext along with Veronika and Allan Dick. I have been in the retail eCommerce digital retail space for more than 20 years. I didn't have gray hair when I got started.
Michael LeBlanc
And Scott, you and I, you know, you and I have known each other for many of those years, actually. Veronika, you and I have met just recently. Veronika, I want to congratulate you, and let's start with you. I want to congratulate, well the whole team, on transforming CommerceNext into what I think is one of the leading digital conferences online. You know, moving with the COVID era, from in person to online video conferences. What did you learn along the way? Like, how did you successfully bring the community along, so that you just kept the same kind of vitality of thought leadership?
Veronika Sonsev
Michael, it's been, it's definitely been a journey for us. I have to say, you know, before COVID, we were primarily known for a large in person event that would take place over the summer and have about 1000 people come to New York for a conference. And so obviously, you know, the moment that COVID hit, that was no longer possible. But we were really quick to jump into virtual events. We started our weekly webinar series in, I think it was March, early April. We've held 26 webinars.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow.
Veronika Sonsev
Since the start of COVID. Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
20, 26 wow.
Veronika Sonsev
Yes. We also held our annual summit virtually, and we did a holiday summit virtually. And Scott and I used to host dinners all over the country. And we've moved to doing virtual lunches. So, think of those like roundtable discussions on zoom. And we've also done virtual happy hours. So, we've gone from a company that did over 50 live events a year, to one that has done over 50 virtual events this year.
And we've learned a lot along the way. You know, we it's definitely been a walk, crawl, run approach. Our first webinars, were slides and audio. And now we're doing video with lower thirds and all kinds of fun stuff. So, we are grateful that we have such a generous community that has come to us as a resource for information and also just shared with us everything that they're learning so that we can be that resource for the community. You know, Really kind of worked with us along the way while we were learning through all of this.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, I mean, congratulations. I mean, one of the things I want to talk about quickly just hang on that for a minute is, is the format. You know, I think initially, when people initially, like March, April, May, or whatever, it was like, 'Okay, I'm going to take a conference, it's an all-day conference. So, I'm going to do an all-day video conference'. And, I think it quickly became apparent to many that that was just not going to work exactly in the same way. So, you know, how do you how did you flex the main CommerceNext event, so that you kind of flex to, to what folks were looking for and wanted to participate in and watch?
Veronika Sonsev
Yeah, so that, that definitely was an evolution for us. So, one of the things that we learned really early on, is with virtual events, people are a lot more fluid. So, when you go to a conference, you dedicate that time, more or less to that conference. You're there for a couple days, and you go to the sessions, you go to the exhibit hall, you spend your time in that location, and you're mostly there.
When you're going to a virtual conference, it's much more integrated into your day. You may have a conference call in between. You may be only going for one session. You may be going through several sessions. So, kind of taking that learning that this is a much more fluid experience.
For our Marketing Summit Series, we're actually doing it over the course of three weeks. It is three Wednesday afternoons. And then we're doing bonus tracks on Fridays with some interactive sessions. And, that's because we know that, you know, people are not going to be there with us for the whole half a day, each day. They're going to come in and out for the content that they want. And, we wanted to really kind of spread it out and have it be as undisruptive to their week as possible, and still kind of keep a rhythm that they could follow and kind of put in their schedule.
Michael LeBlanc
Scott, from format best practices to the event itself. Give me a sense for how you program a conference to reflect the lessons of the first year of retailing in the, in the COVID era. How did you think about putting the, the cast of characters together and the content?
Scott Silverman
Well, I'll take your, the first part of your question first. Just to be clear, it's January 20th, 27th, and February 3rd. Those are all Wednesdays. And then, the Fridays between the, on January 29th and January 22nd, we're doing the bonus tracks that Veronika was talking about. The Wednesday's, well, all of them are half day length sessions. We have a, you know, number of speakers lined up for all of these.
In terms of how we went about building out the agenda. We have a, I think a combination, there's a number of themes, I won't go into all of that now. But, I think it kind of breaks down into, there are new things happening, that are driven by consumer trends and technology. Things like video and podcasting and new, you know, AI and so on. So, there's a big theme of sessions that dig into that a little bit. There's a number of sessions that are focused more on the social involvement of retailers. Kind of purpose driven brands and brands that are marketing around, you know, social challenges and that type of thing. And then, there are kind of also, within all of this, is recognizing the impact that our business is having on due to COVID and due to the economy that is been caused by COVID. I encourage folks to go and look at the agenda, you'll see kind of one of those three major kind of threads throughout just about every session in the agenda.
Michael LeBlanc
Veronika, so, we've heard about the content strategy, so to speak, as you've, that called together as a team, how did you go about finding the right people to reflect that and to and to talk about that?
Veronika Sonsev
I want to just kind of first add to what Scott said, the way that we figure out what we want to cover, and it's also how we find the right types of speakers that we want to add to the agenda, is we work really closely with our advisory board. Our advisory board includes a combination of traditional large-scale retailers, more digital first direct to consumer brands, as well as some kind of industry consultants and thought leaders. And we survey them and we ask them, you know, what are topics that they think are really relevant to them? And it's through that survey that we collect information, put together an agenda and then get their feedback on the agenda. Out of all of that work kind of came the themes that Scott mentioned.
Our speakers for this year are really amazing. You know, we have Deborah Yeh, the CMO of Sephora, RJ Cilley, who's the CDO of HBC, Bob Sherwin, the VP of Marketing at Wayfair, Billy May, the Chief Customer Officer of J. Crew, Jenny Olson, the CMO of UNTUCKit, Robert Tas, the Chief Growth Officer of 800 Flowers. You can go on, because it's really a great, probably one of our best speaker rosters yet. And we try to accomplish a few things when we recruit speakers. We want both traditional and direct to consumer brands. We think there's magic when those perspectives can be shared, exchanged, compared, contrasted. So, we look for, you know, you have these big established companies like Sephora speaking on the same agenda as smaller companies like UNTUCKit, or Food52. And then, we also looked for diverse speakers, you'll see that we, we probably have almost as many women as men. I would, I like, we really strive to have 50/50 gender equality. And then we look for, we try as much as possible to be able to incorporate minority point of views as well. So, I'm very proud of kind of the speakers that we have on the agenda and the different points of view that they bring to the audience.
Michael LeBlanc
Where should people go to learn more about CommerceNext, and to register? And then how much is it? And give me some, give me some 411 about that.
Scott Silverman
So, very simply, you can go to commercenext.com. It'll be very evident where to find more information on the Marketing Summit Series. And, we'll include an URL to go specifically to the, all the details for it in the show notes. The pricing is free for retail, retail executives, direct to consumer brand executives. And, also we know a lot of folks in our community are between positions. There's a lot of churn, in terms of people moving in and out. Some people, there's been layoffs, and we want to keep the conversation and the education going for those folks. So, we have a special free ticket for them. For solution providers that are not sponsors of ours, we have a modest fee of $49 for folks to attend.
Michael LeBlanc
No, that's great. And, then just the last part, are you looking, is the door still open for sponsors? You kind of done? I mean, we're pretty close to the event, actually, in the world of conferences, what's your, what's your,
Scott Silverman
We're always happy to have conversations with potential sponsors. We, fortunately, are just about sold out. But, there's still a few openings. And, you know, if there's a good fit, we would love to have some of those folks involved.
Michael LeBlanc
Fantastic. So, I'll put your, your connection, and LinkedIn and all that for both of you there as well, just to round that out. Well listen, I'm looking forward to it. This series, I'm going to be talking to some of the great speakers that you've got and just ask them a couple of quick questions just to give it a hint of the great content that is to come up and I think we'll all be looking forward to. So, so great to hear your voice. Thank you both for joining me on The Voice of Retail and, and I look forward to all those sessions in January and February and learning, learning from the best and brightest. So, thanks for bringing that to the industry.
Scott Silverman
Well thank you for your partnership and inviting us to talk about this today.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, thanks to Rob, Veronika and Scott for being my guest on this episode. Today's podcast is the first in a series of CommerceNext episodes that will feature some of the fantastic speakers taking the virtual stage January 20th, 27th and February 3rd, with snapshot insights into how they dealt with online and eCommerce in the first year of the COVID era, and lessons learned for the future. Learn more and register for CommerceNext on commercenext.com.
Michael LeBlanc
If you like this podcast, please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Rate and review, be sure to recommend to a friend or colleague in the retail industry. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, Founder and President of M.E. LeBlanc and Company Inc. You can learn more about me on www. meleblanc.co or of course on LinkedIn. Until next time, have a safe week.