The one and only Rob Garf, Vice President and GM for retail at global powerhouse Salesforce, is back on the pod sharing exclusive insights and strategies for retailers on how to win Holiday and helping us get ready with predictions for an unpredictable 2024
The one and only Rob Garf, Vice President and GM for retail at global powerhouse Salesforce, is back on the pod sharing exclusive insights and strategies for retailers on how to win Holiday and helping us get ready with predictions for an unpredictable 2024
Find all your holiday Salesforce stats at https://www.salesforce.com/resources/shopping-insights/
About Rob
Rob Garf is VP and GM for Retail at Salesforce. With 25 years of global retail experience as a practitioner (Lids, Marshalls, Hit or Miss), an industry analyst (AMR Research), a strategy consultant (IBM), and a software leader (Demandware/Salesforce), he is no stranger to the industry and the challenges retailers face. He currently leads industry research, drives solution strategy, and advises senior executives globally on digital transformation. Rob is also a frequent industry speaker, a member of NRF’s Digital Council, and Chair of the Retail Customer Advisory Board.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.
Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2023 for the third year in a row.
Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Canada's top retail industry podcast_,_ The Voice of Retail. He produces and co-hosts Remarkable Retail with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world.
Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers.
Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
The one and only Rob Garf, Vice President and GM for Retail at global powerhouse Salesforce, is back on the pod sharing exclusive insights and strategies for retailers on how to win Holiday and helping us get ready with predictions for an unpredictable 2024.
Let's listen in now.
Michael LeBlanc 00:30
Rob, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast, or should I say welcome back, you've been a frequent guest, and you've been really generous with your time. How-, how are you?
Rob Garf 00:39
Life is good, Michael, it's really good to hear your voice and be back on the show.
Michael LeBlanc 00:43
Well, I was thrilled to summer at Retail Council's Store, you and I, and it's funny because we've known each other for years, but we'd never met in person, it felt like we had, but we had the great opportunity this summer to meet in person. You're a bit taller than I thought, but you're very handsome, so there you go.
Rob Garf 01:01
I appreciate that. It was a highlight by the way, and it was a great show too. I really enjoyed it, Toronto that time of year was perfect and again it was a huge bonus to see you in person.
Michael LeBlanc 01:11
You know, anybody in the industry is going to at least know your name. But maybe they heard our interviews before or maybe not give us a little bit about who you are, what you do for a living and what's your background?
Rob Garf 01:21
Yeah, absolutely. So here I am Rob Garf, calling in from just outside Boston, Massachusetts, in the States, and I am GM for Retail at Salesforce. So, I oversee our product and solution strategy and I also see our industry insights team. So it's a group of-, think about them as analysts who look out in the industry understand where the market is going and we do that through a lot of data and most of that data is coming off our platform, we aggregate that up, we create a benchmark called the shopping index, we don't have any access to personally identifiable information, but allows us to really have a bird's eye view of what's happening in the industry and we publish that quarterly for our shopping index on salesforce.com, built on Tableau by the way, and it really gives us an opportunity to have conversations like this and the all too critical moment of the holiday season.
Michael LeBlanc 02:16
I can't imagine anybody listening to this would not know the name Salesforce, more than familiar. Let's talk about the scope a little bit and talk about what powers your insights. You just gave us a little bit of a hint, but you are global and specifically you do have Canadian data, so tell us a bit about what that looks like.
Rob Garf 02:32
For sure. Yeah. So number one CRM with of course, a huge lean into AI and if you think about in the context of retail, we are in many cases, the platform that drives the consumer experience for retailers and brands across the entire journey these days, consumers traverse nine different touchpoints in any given shopping journey, according to our research, and we are really the platform, the unified platform to provide that across inspiration and discovery, purchase and buy service and delivery and really being able to drive long term loyalty and it's built on our data cloud, which allows our customers to have a single view. So, if you think about all of that data flowing through the platform, all the taps, all the clicks, all the swipes across all the different touchpoints.
Rob Garf 03:21
We bubble that up and given the size and the scale at this point, Michael billions and billions of shoppers were able to slice and dice that we can look at it by geography, as you said, the Canadian market is one of our larger markets and also by vertical as well and to be really clear to because I think this is an important distinction is we're looking at it from the industry back. So, while it's based on data on our platform, we've modeled this out over the last 10 years to be the view of the entire industry, which becomes really helpful when retail executives are sitting in there during cyber week wondering how they're doing vis-à-vis their competition.
Michael LeBlanc 03:58
Yeah, I mean, it's the magic question, right, is-, is-, I see the numbers, is that good, how is it going for everybody else, I mean, it is-, whether it keeps you up at night or wakes you up in the morning. It's what, it's what we all think about. Now, we're gathered here, as you said, primarily to talking about the upcoming holiday, but I want to start with your take on the state of retail you and I were on the mic last year around this time, and we were kind of our people going to hold off buying or they're going to wait for deals, I mean, if we-, if we looked at the kind of the big events this year, we see, as my friend a partner Steve Dennis calls bifurcation, you know, the digital native vertical brands, they're struggling certainly on a valuation perspective, but also for growth. You see, like Walmart last week, just invest $9 billion investment in stores and e-commerce is kind of flatlining a little bit in terms of its-, of its growth, if any, any of this stuff familiar, anything take you by surprise and if I asked you, if we had an elevator ride up to your office, or the Salesforce offices what how would you sum up so far the year from retail perspective.
Rob Garf 05:01
Yeah, so the elevator pitch, can I use the Salesforce tower in San Francisco because I need a little bit more time than normal if that's okay. It's actually a really common question I get, and it's more towards what does this mean for the holiday and beyond and I think it's important to actually look back a couple of years and going back to the digital search in 2020. What that showed us is, we saw a 40% increase in net new digital shoppers. So, with the growth that was driven, in large part because of people actually buying online for the first time, and also buying and holding categories, think about grocery, food and beverages, which ordinarily anybody would go into the physical store to not only discover, but to actually purchase.
Michael LeBlanc 05:47
And that category alone probably had one of the biggest leaps, right, because it was hovering in the 1, 2% and then, you know, then just for all the reasons we know, it had a huge leap forward. Some other categories didn't really leap forward. They were already pretty, pretty heavily online and omni, yeah?
Rob Garf 06:04
That's right, yeah, we saw, you know, strong triple digit growth through 2020 and it really held up through-, through 2021, as well and so what we saw on this time is obviously a balancing that was happening where digital saw a lot of growth, and people couldn't go into the store. I mean, they were literally shut down and so we saw, obviously a decrease in offline shopping and what the narrative has been, and you just hit upon it, Michael, is there's been a trailing off of digital growth over the last year or two and yeah, that's kind of true, but it's not the full picture. First of all, what we look at as a CAGR over the last couple of years, going back to 2019. As we finish up this year, we're looking, still, at a 20 to 25%. growth online. So that would be really strong in any given year.
Michael LeBlanc 06:57
That's a big number, that's a bigger number than I had in mind. I have low teens, but you're right and from a CAGR perspective. That's super interesting.
Rob Garf 07:07
Yeah, and low teens, by the way, we would be happy with that usually, right? Though the other piece, and I know you and our friend Steven are-, bought into this, and probably the leaders in making sure executives don't forget about this thing called the physical store is, a lot of the rebalancing is happening because people are doing discovery research online, like they have for so long and they're going into the physical store to purchase and so we're seeing again, a rebalancing happening there. You know, last click attribution really is a tough metric at this point because where you click last might not necessarily where you buy next and also the point here is there's this interesting interplay we're seeing, not only for online influencing in store, but what's happening in the store, and how that's influencing online and let me give you some big numbers here, you know, this holiday season, were actually predicting, you know, $1.19 trillion of global online sales, and we define the holiday season as November and December. Well,
Michael LeBlanc 08:17
Now, you define-, just one, one quick question. You define those sales as what you and I might call core retail, right? We're and so we're not talking, Taylor Swift tickets would probably add another billion to that. So, we're really, really talking-
Rob Garf 08:29
That is a really good point.
Michael LeBlanc 08:30
So, we're really talking merchandise in that number, yeah, or, or helping out with that.
Rob Garf 08:33
You've got that right, Michael, thank you for that caveat. That's 100% correct. It's more of the merchandising category. Somatic experience is not entertainment, not travel, not automotive, but of that amount, I don't want to hop too quickly to the holiday, but I want to put a finer point on the point around digital and physical in the interplay is of that 1.19 trillion, just over 700 billion of that around 60%, 700 billion of that will be influenced by the physical store. So that's whether the store associate is drumming up demand, because their service agents or stylists, or they're driving up demand because they're doing social media and becoming influencers, or they're doing endless aisle and offering product that's not physically in the store, but they're also fulfilling that demand, right?
You know, if a product is bought online, but picked up in and around the store or delivered from the store to the doorstep, that's also the demand that's being influenced by the store. So, there's this, again, narrative in the market that digital is dead. It's not, it's really leveled off, but it's more importantly, how do you create this seamless experience removing the friction between online and offline going back to the nine different touchpoints in any given shopping journey?
Michael LeBlanc 09:51
Well, to be fair, I'm asking you the wrong question, right. You know, really looking at e-commerce versus store sales is more and more a distinction without a difference, so to be fair, I'm asking you the wrong question, because you're answering me the right question was, it's all about customer sales, not which channel, you know, customers don't care about channel, right?
Rob Garf 10:10
Yeah, and it's still a shift by the way, Michael, as you know in and out, that we're all making and I think there's some that are stronger than others, this bifurcation that we talked about.
Michael LeBlanc 10:18
Yep. All right, well, let's talk holiday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, for here, of course, we also include, we include boxing day now, in Canada, PwC and RCC, Léger paint a more optimistic picture and just for way of background, they don't do the data the same way you do. We just ask lots and lots and lots of people about their intentions, spending intentions. Deloitte asked a few less people about their spending intentions. You know, the RCC, Léger said, people were gonna spend more money and in fact more money than they'd spent per person in five years. Deloitte said it was going to drop a double digit. Where do you guys sit, how-, what's your-, what's your thinking-, best thinking from what you see in the data and the trends that you've gotten all those powerful tools of yours?
Rob Garf 11:02
Yeah, absolutely. So again, we define the holiday season as November and December and what we're seeing online, we're forecasting a global growth of 4%. When we break that out, we're thinking the Canadian market won't be as bullish as that and we've looked at particularly Q3 and the beginning part of this holiday season, Q4, October in the first week of November, and we're seeing a high single digit decline across those time periods and so, though, again, we're not overly concerned about that, there's no retail executive that I'm talking to anyways, who's overly bullish about their online growth, they want to get through the holiday, they want to move the product at as high of a margin as possible, try to reduce returns and price changes, but then really come out of this year feeling a lot better about the foundation they've created going into next year.
Rob Garf 12:07
But again, why I'm not overly concerned about the Canadian performance is, again, you have to take all the factors into account in terms of the growth that we've seen so far, over the last couple of years, the reemergence and the importance of the store, as well. So we're as much looking at and Tom talking personally with retail executives in Canada about the margin, but also loyalty, obviously, you're buying a lot of gifts for the holiday season, but how do you learn more about not only the purchasing person, but the purchases, where they're going to for the gifts in creating that stickiness, finding ways to increase the share of wallet by providing new services, new products, and so forth to really increase that share of wallet and that stickiness?
Michael LeBlanc 12:57
So, I mean, you're sounding basically a note of-, of, I don't know if you can call it a note of caution, but you're actually sending more a note of optimism and I've heard the same thing. It's like, listen, it's probably not going to be the best holiday we've ever had for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which is a lot of people bought a lot of stuff during COVID and right now they're maybe going to, you know, get three new Taylor Swift concerts announced in Vancouver that's going to pull some money, who is it the Best Buy's CEO called it fun-flation, which made me laugh?
Rob Garf 13:25
Whoo, I like that, I'm going to use that.
Michael LeBlanc 13:26
Fun-. There you go fun-flation, people shift in their priorities and you and I actually talked about this last year. We knew this was going to happen, that people were going to shift after buying a lot of stuff into buying or enjoying experiences. The one thing I wonder, you know, you guys also have vendors and you as you said, you're here in market talking to retails retailers are telling me, you need to see more innovation in the product to get people to buy it, because you know, if I bought a computer a couple of years ago, and pretty much now it's the same computer it was two years ago. I'm not going to substitute yet, right? So this is an interesting mix of, of the industry catching up with innovation and, and that kind of core consumer demand, are you hearing kind of similar things that you know, the good news is, eventually this will pass stuff oil start to wear out, but there's a lot of stuff we all bought, right?
Rob Garf 14:12
Yeah, no, I really like your perspective here, Michael and it is an important thing to call out in that not everyone is created equal as it relates to the categories and the price points and the geographies. So, again, it's almost unfair to just give this broad base forecast just by the way we do and a lot of others.
Michael LeBlanc 14:32
But you gotta start somewhere, right?
Rob Garf 14:34
You gotta start somewhere, but the point you're making is really valid in that yeah, consumers are looking for innovative products that are looking for, you know, a need, not necessarily a want and so what are more of the needs that you can cater towards. I think another important point is that we are feeling some economic headwinds, and I was listening to some on the road financial analysts on one of the financial stations talk about the idea of the household in the household economy and, you know, people having their household balance sheets and what they're doing and our data shows this, is people are taking more control over their balance sheets and so that doesn't necessarily mean they're buying less, they're just being a lot more thoughtful about what they're buying when they're buying and so what does that mean, in plain English, well, people are looking for value, they're looking for feeling good and comfort as well, in economic or uncertainty in general, people kind of migrate to comfort, right, whether that's comfort food or what you're putting on your body, on your skin.
Rob Garf 15:39
And so, we are certainly seeing people a lot more discerning. That's why, by the way, traffic in Canada and globally has still been really strong, online traffic, people are still going online, they're picking, they're choosing, they're being a lot more discerning around what they're going to buy and so they're looking for good discounts, meaning value, and they're looking for the products. That's why private labels are going to be hot this year, where you can show some value and by the way, it's a great margin for the retailers. They're also looking for comfort that's why we're anticipating active apparel, active footwear being stronger categories, people looking for comfort, both in their daily lives, both in business and pleasure and so it's again, important to peel this back a little bit, you brought up innovation, I think that's a really good point.
Rob Garf 16:33
I think it's also this idea of comfort and value and I think those that are able to cater to that, you know, a great brand that I like up in Canada, Deciem, which owns The Ordinary, I really actually like their view of the holiday season, they have Slow-vember, which let's not try to create some urgency, but let's actually create some balance then people can take the whole month of November, excuse me to decide when they want to buy knowing they're going to get the best price at any point, not on a particular day. So that's my long soapbox to say, yeah, you kind of gotta peel it back a little bit and look, understand where the winners and losers are going to be this holiday season.
Michael LeBlanc 17:16
I want to shift gears a little bit and just talk about the evolution and this idea that we see happening. The China factory direct model most likely does put a name to it, Shein and Temu now we're really struggling in Canada too, to understand the scale because of the way Stats Canada measures them. They're not in the retail number than on the e-commerce number. Neither is Amazon, by the way, which is a real quirk to our data. It's called-, they're called imports. Wayfair. Same thing they're. So our data is really I'm really worried that our retail data here from our official Stats Canada measurement is really not telling us the full story and I think you got a better handle on it in the US in general and from your experience any, in Canada, any insights you can add, I see it as a real, what is it, I read some stat that-, that Shein was now the biggest apparel retailer in the US I got to think, you know, our markets are vastly more similar, the different I gotta think they're, they're pretty big here to any, any sense for the audience about how these, this model is affecting retailers this year.
Rob Garf 18:19
Yeah, I mean, you look at app downloads right there at the top all the time.
Michael LeBlanc 18:24
Right. It was like McDonald's is only number, no, McDonald's, I looked last week, the only one that was bigger is McDonald's, for God's sake.
Rob Garf 18:31
There you go. There you go. So, you know, it's interesting. I was in Europe for the last couple of weeks, went to a couple different countries and I had the fortunate opportunity to speak with one of the largest retailers, apparel companies in Europe and with their CEO, his direct reports and board and one of the people in the meeting talked about tech intermediary. So I told him, I was going to borrow that term and there you go, so I'll give him full credit, but tech intermediaries, and the reason why he brought that up and why it stuck with me is these companies you're talking about, by and large, okay, maybe Shein is a little different, are essentially platforms that have created traffic and excitement and they've been able to now monetize it with very little inventory, capital carrying costs, which is quite amazing equation that any retailer would drool over in terms of not having to take on all the capital in order to ultimately sell something.
Rob Garf 19:34
And so, I encourage retailers, I talk about to-, think about these platforms as the next generation of the shopping mall. You know, the shopping mall was really put into practice because of access, access was the highway system and what it brought was a destination for not only shopping but eating and socializing and hanging out with your friends and family and not dissimilar to the mall where, you know, now the malls were able to lease to tenants because of all the traffic they were bringing these platforms are doing something very similar and so we see it as a movement, you know, whether you call it embedded commerce or what we call shopping at the edge because it's beyond the retailer's, physical and virtual four walls. It's an important media. It's a very important media to play and it's certainly taking market share, as we look, because we've been following this space for nearly a decade, it continues to take market share from branded sites from brick and mortar sites and so it's something to look out for, at the end of the day, you know, shopping used to be where retailers would pull the consumer through the funnel to their property and now it's as much about pushing the brand to wherever the consumers are and guess what the consumers are hanging out in these destinations that you're bringing up?
Michael LeBlanc 21:01
Well, it's never-, never a dull day. All right, last question for your advice time, and you've been given lots of great advice during the conversation, but let's hone in to essential things retailers should focus on to win holiday 2023. and then one thing about thinking ahead to next year, what should be their overarching focus.
Rob Garf 21:19
Now, of course, holiday 2023 is in, basically, full motion. So, I'm not going to put, I'm not going to say the two things that might take a bit of time to implement.
Michael LeBlanc 21:30
Get ready for peak.
Rob Garf 21:32
Exactly. I will mention two things. One is social media don't sleep on social media, we're actually predicting that social media will have a 10 times higher rate of performance than traditional media as it relates to traffic and so that is some money that can be pushed around and moved around in these last days, especially as you're seeing the performance over the first couple of weeks.
Michael LeBlanc 21:56
Do you include just a quick footnote on that you include influencers, like creating and fueling the social media, like their social media is into a post into being very creative on Instagram, but do you do wrap into that thinking, you know, an influencer strategy for as a successful strategy?
Rob Garf 22:12
Yeah, so influencer strategy is extremely important. What-, what I would say is, your associates, your frontline workers are becoming the more genuine influencer, that number I just provided was primarily through social media, because we've actually seen a little bit of a pushback on influencers, because consumers are getting pretty smart around it in terms of the economic model and not being as genuine. So yes, it should be part of it, but-
Michael LeBlanc 22:40
Be careful and use your associates. That's such a great point.
Rob Garf 22:44
Because that actually brings me to the second broad point, which is, the stores being such a critical point of your online strategy. You know, we're seeing that after the shipping cutoff date, those retailers that have the ability for a consumer to buy online and then pick it up in and around the store, or have it delivered to the doorstep, we'll see a seven times higher growth rate, excuse me, online and so that's essentially saying, You're not confined by that shipping cutoff date anymore, you can extend the online window beyond in the past. So, it's pretty exciting to see the store cementing itself as a critical portion of your online strategy. So social, one piece, which I think you can still have an impact on now, the store just last minute, like make sure you're scheduling your associates properly, make sure you've given them the right tools, and given them the right incentives because if they're picking and packing and shipping, that's certainly be on the dashboard and in the spiffs that you're providing to them.
Michael LeBlanc 23:45
That's-, it's a great point. Now before I ask you about 2024 having a bit of a lottery about, what do you think the biggest retail day of the of the Q4 is going to be, so Christmas this year on the 25th, that's an old joke, but it's on-, it's on a Monday, I'm thinking it's gonna be the Thursday before Christmas. Others are saying it could be Black Friday. Do you have a different opinion? Maybe it's a Saturday because you know, people are buying groceries and just, just for fun. If you had to pick a day, what would it be?
Rob Garf 24:16
Yeah, well, for online, we're gonna pick Black Friday, believe it or not. So I know there's obviously a big spike for Cyber Monday for historical reasons, but Black Friday has really bubbled up and one of the highest growth and the highest online, but I do see, you know, a couple of days before Christmas, being an overall spike as well because again, retailers aren't as confined by the delivery consumer could buy something two days before Christmas online and as long as they know it's available for pick up the day before Christmas. They're in business.
Michael LeBlanc 24:49
I did it myself last year and not-, not because listeners I was, you know, procrastinating. It's just because that's the way that, kidding. Alright. 2024-, 2024, what should retailers be thinking about as I'm sure you guys are looking forward and your, your product teams are looking for 2024, one thing people should be keeping in mind.
Rob Garf 25:10
Yeah, so I'm gonna say two things. I know you said one, but I'm gonna give it to you.
Michael LeBlanc 25:15
I like that, like, we're retailers, we like bonus things. It's a bonus.
Rob Garf 25:18
Exactly. There you go, we'll do a BOGO. How about that, I'll give you the second one for free and not only half off, but free, we'll see. So first of all, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty that was, you know, really what we see as the theme for holiday and beyond, because it's so expensive for customer acquisition these days. So it's how do you create in this stickiness, how are you better understanding who that consumers are, how are you turning that data about the consumers over to themselves, so they can make more informed decisions anywhere and so there's been a big thrust and it's not just loyalty by itself, but there's this actually interesting trifecta that I was just talking to a customer about earlier today, which is loyalty plus data plus AI creates this really amazing-ness around personalization. So that's one, the second one, and I'm showing my bias because I already talked about the store once or twice before and as you know, I grew up in retail, I grew up in the store, store operations, retail operations are going to really come up to the forefront in terms of what's required to rethink about your operational model for the store in light of the demand that is generated and the demand that is fulfilled online for and from the physical store and the implications on operations.
Michael LeBlanc 26:40
Well, this great discussion now you, what's the best way-, two questions. Last kind of question, what's the best way to get in touch with you if listeners want to learn more about what you do about Salesforce, I think you're a LinkedIn person and you guys publish just a bonanza of great insights. Where do we go to find all that stuff?
Rob Garf 26:57
Yeah, so for me personally, sure, certainly, you can find me on LinkedIn, I definitely like to create that as a platform for knowledge and interaction and community. @RetailRobGarf, as well on Twitter, but I'd say more broadly, with Salesforce, go on salesforce.com. Like I said, our benchmarks are available for anyone built on Tableau. So, they scale and particularly during cyber week, check it out daily, because we're updating that at least by nine o'clock Eastern time with real time data. So, you can slice and dice it by geography by vertical, see how you're doing vis-à-vis the entire industry, and look out for are all wrapped up coming out right after the new year, right before NRF to really get a great sense of what we saw for the entire holiday and what we anticipate moving forward.
Michael LeBlanc 27:48
Nice. A quick question on, on Salesforce. Big website lots going on, is there a specific link to go find your content, is it on learning or-,
Rob Garf 27:56
Yeah. Good call.
Michael LeBlanc 27:57
Is that the best place in the nav to click?
Rob Garf 27:59
Good call, good call. Yeah. So go to salesforce.com/resources/shopping-insights.
Michael LeBlanc 28:08
All right, we'll put that link in the show notes as well. Listen, you mentioned NRF. I'll be there. I'm sure you'll be there. It's a big event. So, I look forward to it. Hopefully, they come across you in the vastness of the Javits Center, but until then, thanks so much for joining me on the mic yet again, providing your-, your insights and continued success for you and the company and thanks for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast.
Rob Garf 28:30
It's always a pleasure, my friend. I only hope when I see you next, we can have some barbecue together.
Michael LeBlanc 28:36
Right on.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, follow on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically each week and be sure to check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global E-Commerce Leaders podcast.
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, senior retail advisor, keynote speaker, Rethink Retail 2023 Global Top Retail Influencer. If you want more content or to chat, follow me on LinkedIn.
Safe travels everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
retail, retailers, online, consumers, store, salesforce, big, data, holiday, holiday season, influencer, people, platform, growth, shopping, great, Canada, listen, insights, industry