How Fanatics Creates Lasting Connections Between Fans and the Teams they Love | Salesforce

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Let's come together for the Dreamforce Trailblazer Experience. A space dedicated to demos, luminary sessions and a whole lot of Trailblazer love. There'll be something for everyone. For every line of business and every industry, you'll see the power of Customer 360 share stories of working in a pandemic, hang out with other trailblazers and be entertained by some surprise guests. Join us starting on December 14th for DreamTX. Good morning, I'm Monica Roberts and welcome to this very special Leading Through Change Dreamforce edition episode. A chance for you to hear from leaders who are doing their very best to get through these challenging times and support their communities. Now, before I hand it over to my colleague Lynn Zaldonis, I want to preview the next hour. Lynn will be interviewing Jonathan Wilbur to discuss how Fanatics has become one of the most forward thinking brands in the industry. With the power of Salesforce Customer360, the number one CRM. We'll then dive into a very special demo by Kimberly Gong to highlight two newcomers innovations that allow retailers to see product inventory across their entire network, offer flexible fulfillment options for shoppers, and fulfill more efficiently. After that, we'll be treated to a very special conversation and musical performance by Chris Stapleton. But before we begin, we want to make sure you go to dreamforest.com to stay up to date with all of our free, publicly available DreamForce to you 2020 content. For more information on our Leading Through Change trailblazers, thought leaders and customers, and to see which Salesforce tools they're using, how they're using them, and the benefits they're seeing, visit Leading Through Change on the360blog. As we do every week on Leading Through Change, we want to help those who need it most. We're committed to doing everything we can to step up to the urgent challenge of slowing climate change and creating a sustainable, low carbon future for all. As such, we're proud to support American Forest, a nonprofit conservation organization building a reforestation movement in America and we'd love for you to join us. Donate online at salesforce.com trees again donate that's salesforce.com trees now it's my pleasure to kick over the conversation that Lynn hosted the other day with Jonathan. Hope you enjoy it.

Thank you Monica. Well, I am certainly in the holiday spirit these days, really excited about the upcoming holidays and while they might not be celebrated how we used to celebrate them in the past, it's certainly not dampening my spirit. I'm hearing from my friends that they're doing virtual menorah lightings for Hanukkah later this week and I' put up my tree and decorations this weekend, so I'm certainly in the spirit. Something that has been really different for me though is shopping. This year I masked up on Small Business Friday and got out there and made sure I was supporting those retailers, but I would say the majority of my shopping has been online. The other day I told my husband I was going to go shopping and that meant I was going to go take my computer into the guest bedroom and take care of all my nieces and nephews. Salesforce has really been helping to power these holidays and helping retailers by providing real time data and insights. This is the biggest season for them and our Holiday Insights Hub is helping retailers with a playbook and a live tableau, real time data dashboards and insights. We're sharing information with retailers in real time on holiday spend device usage, order value conversion rates, all this important information in this really unprecedented time. While all the hard work I did must have paid off because Cyber Week actually saw over $270 billion in sales this year. That's an incredible growth. It's 36% growth year over year for retailers. These kind of insights and more are available to you in the Holiday Insight Hub. But it's clear that one thing has risen to the top and that's digital commerce is the name of the game and that's what we're going to be talking about in today's leading through change episode. Now if you have any sports fans on your nice list, the leading global retailer in apparel and jerseys for sports fans. Whether they're fans or casual spectators like me, my San Francisco Giants love, you know, the brand fanatics. It's the one stop shop for all of your holiday sporting needs. But they're also known for being an innovator and being a forward thinking brand. In this space and in this really difficult year for retail. They've done an incredible job of adjusting, pivoting and evolving their business. And that's why we brought them in today to share their inspiration and their story of evolution to help others as well as I'm really excited that today we have Jonathan Wilbur with us. Jonathan Wilbur is a trailblazer. He is also the Senior Director of Global B2C CRM Tech and Operations for Fanatics. Welcome Jonathan.

Thank you for having me. Lynn. Excited to be here.

We're really excited to have you here today too. Now Jonathan, this has been an unprecedented time. 2020 has impacted all industries around the world. But in particular, retail has been most talked about this holiday season and it's been impacted hard. What are the trends that you're seeing today?

Sure, I think two of the biggest I'm seeing are innovation and adaption. You have a lot of brands who don't often have the ability to quickly ship to customers wherever they are or offer the customers the ability to buy online and pick up in store. I think the amazing transformation we've seen with retailers outside of the normal space being able to quickly adapt, offer, buy online, pickup in store, shipping options is quite phenomenal. I think the reality of the world is Covid hit world shut down, life shut down and for us sports shut down overnight. In fact, it's quite funny. The last podcast I did for marketing cloud or for excuse me, Salesforce was right before the pandemic hit and the big talk track at that point was the NCAA tournament and less than a week later the NCAA tournament didn't exist. Life came to a halt. So ironically, it was really just an opportunity for the world to just kind of shift and readapt to what the new normal was. And I think it's taking space in the retail in waves. Right. I can now have my groceries picked up and delivered to me at the drop of a dime. I can track my order, I can track my delivery driver, and I can even shop now for something for my car and have it picked up at the curb. So I think the ability for retailers to really adapt to the new normal is really what's going to set them apart this year and next year, regardless of what year may bring.

Yeah. You know, you bring up a good point. You were hit with a double whammy, Right. It's not just that you're a retailer at an e commerce, but sports. Sports just shut down overnight. The main driver of your business. I was part of that sort of last man out too. I went to one of the last Warrior games or the last Warrior game at the Coliseum before things shut down. It's been crazy. But that pivot's hard, right? We were talking about how the winners have managed to pivot and survive and change with detailed curbside pickup. But that's a hard transition. You've been with us for 10 years. Thank you. You've been a Salesforce customer for 10 years. That makes you KOA Club. Jonathan.

Thank you.

I know you love that. Well, we thank you for being such a great partner and customer for us over the years, but that's been an evolution. Right? You've used the customer360 from marketing, sales, commerce, service. Been able to transform your business over time? How have you leveraged those investments and how did that help you during these troubling times? Let's talk about some tactical things that people might be able to take advantage of.

So this year has been all about data. It's been really important for us to understand as the pandemic hit how this was really going to affect our business. We saw Covid hit different communities, different demographics in different cities, differently as city mandates and local mandates hit local establishments. And I think it was really important for us to get a solid footing as to understand who our customer was and how that behavior was really going to change over the next few months. And it paid big gains, not only beginning of the pandemic, but also as things changed over the next three, four, six months. It really helped us really predict how things were going to change our business. And I think we'll see that continue into next year. We're going to spend a a lot of time and effort in getting a solid footing as to the 360 degree view of our customer. And this is going to help make us smarter as a business, but it's also going to accelerate our development within customer experience. If we do it right, we can shift from optimizing for the transaction to optimizing for the customer relationship which will have a long term game on our business. I think secondary to that which we started to invest in this year, that will pay off next year and really for the coming years is the importance of first party data. As more regulation comes at the state level, we're going to see the value of first party data become more and more important and our ability to build up our database of first party data will become a very valuable tool for us down the line.

Really understanding who your customer is. I can imagine that. Yep, I see you nodding your head. And it's also interesting you talked about data because we're needing to change all the time. Right. What we did in March is not what we did in July, which is not what we're doing now and probably will be different again in February as things to evolve and sounds like data. Would you attribute data to being what puts you in the right frame of mind to be able to react?

Absolutely.

That's interesting. Well, I'm part of that change too. We talked about the boom in Cyber Week. Traffic was up 30% overall and interestingly, phone sales were up 31%. A different way of purchasing and buying. How did fanatics react to the holiday season and how did Cyber Week Go for you?

Sure. So fanatics does over 50% of our annual revenue in the last three months of the year and we really spend the first nine months of the year getting ready for the last few weeks here. And holiday turned out to be just as unpredictable as the rest of the year. We saw a really, really strong start to the holiday for us, which for us starts in late September, which is typically attributed to sports on the field. But it really kind of carried over just into e commerce sales. Messages to shop early started much earlier this year than usual with retailers and customers really not knowing what shipping was going to hold in November and December. Cyber Week was no different. Just as unpredictable. If anything, it seems like the idea of the appointment shopping days is becoming less and less important and customers are really finding the ability to shop anytime, anywhere. And you talk about mobile. Mobile traffic is certainly increasing for us as it is everywhere else. And whether it's shopping, Black Friday for many folks looked very different this year. Instead of walking around malls, it was shopping at the dinner table the morning after. So I think we saw no difference there. As we think about how we're going to wrap up holiday season, we have an opportunity to finish our year strong but also be responsible. So we're going to do our best to deliver a great experience for fans and keep them coming back next year.

I love that, I love that focus on the customer relationship. Well, I wish you guys well in that but I love that long term view of the customer and I want to dig into that a little bit more. I think that's interesting. You talked about personalization. You talked about evolving your relationship, using the customer 360 to really get that single source of truth of who your customer is and enriching that first party data. I love that and I think that's helpful to others. Let's talk about how that impacts the way you engage with your shopper today. Right. The personalization that you have.

Sure. So for us again it goes all back to data. Right. Fanatics has a unique challenge in that we sell merchandise that brings out emotion in people. Sports is about tradition and that tradition is tribal in nature. If we don't get personalization correct, we risk ruining our relationship with a customer. I'm certainly unlikely to abandon a brand if I get targeted with a cut of jeans I don't like. But if you send me a message celebrating the win of a rival team, I'm less likely to continue to engage with a brand. And I think what this means is we have to get personalization correct. It's about knowing the fans favorite teams and the favorite teams of the person people they shop for. Fanatics has seen a fair amount of business come out of the idea of a displaced fan. Or said differently, fans that live outside of the geography that you do. So you once could assume that if you lived in New York City, you were a Yankees, Giants and Rangers fans. Now we really need to rely on the data to tell us who we should be marketing to. I think not only that, it's about knowing what kind of merchandise a fan likes and how they express their fandom. Whether they're expressing it on the weekends by attending a game and the favorite jersey they just bought or whether they're in the office and they're accessorizing with gear from their favorite team. I think it's all about making sure we get that right. And we're doing all of this by evaluating interactions by customers in the millions. When we combine that with data, science and modeling, we really use it to ensure that we do the best for our customers.

Yeah, I love that and I love that example of you getting the fan wrong. You're right. Somebody serves up a sweatshirt to me, I'm like, well, that doesn't look like me. You serve up the wrong sports team to the wrong fan, you might have lost a customer for life.

Absolutely.

It's good that you know your customer as well and I see how that relationship is going to help you extend in weather and really survive and thrive in these times. So good for you. Yeah. So what are these trends are going to stick? Am I going to always be shopping for my dining room table for the rest of my life or am I going back next year to some holiday cheer in the stores? What do you see sticking around?

Personally, I would love to see it stick. Being in E commerce for over 20 years, I'd love to see the trends. I love the ability to analyze customer data and really see how this transforms into not only just transaction, but how it defines manufacturing and marketing. I think the challenge that retailers have is speed to door and I think it's still a major factor in a customer's decision to buy online versus traveling to their local store. Instant gratification, the ability to see and touch a product will always rule. And that's a primary reason to shop in store versus online. And I think as the pandemic hit, many retailers have focused on making returns easy. And certainly what Amazon has started to do years ago with shipping is starting to change customer expectation. And I feel like retailers are starting to catch up. I feel like we're going to see some compression happen in the brick and mortar space. While E commerce certainly accelerates at a pace faster than I think most expected. And I do think this continues to evolve as customers look to exceed. Excuse me, customer expectation.

Yeah, absolutely. So is shipaged in this panic of getting packages is not a real thing, Jonathan?

It seems like it, that's for sure.

Everybody shop now, shop early. It's not too late. Yeah, that's great. So we talked about trends in the industry. Thank you for sharing that. It's part of the purpose of lead through change is to really help people evolve their business and find that guiding light through these times. But what about your business? Can you share how this is changing your business?

Sure. So for us, sports on field is obviously the biggest thing that we're keeping an eye on. The return to field for sports has certainly had a noticeable impact on our business. And what's most interesting is we can actually track that down to the team level. So you think about college sports. Different college conferences were coming back on field at different times and we could certainly see that reflected in our business. And I think what was really interesting is it was a good gauge to really help us understand what is the impact of sports on field to our business. So I think that was number one for us. I think whether we have fans in a stadium or not will also make a big impact. And we've yet to see that really, you know, we do have I think over 40 in venue locations. So as sports and stadiums become safe and for fans to attend those games become safe, that will have returns for us in our in venue locations, which I think will accelerate some of our initiatives around identification from a brick and mortar presence which I think will be very huge for us in the E commerce space and certainly not just the fanatics. I think the other trends that I mentioned earlier just how customer privacy is going to really shape this industry over the next six months. I talked about first party data, but I think as state regulations come down, coupled with the changes that are happening, whether the Apple, iPhone or Google to protect customer privacy, it will really help drive drive our efforts in the coming years and I think will really shape this industry.

That's great. Well, we wish you well for that. Thank you. One of the things we also have in common as companies and has made us really great partners is we share a lot of core values. We always believe in trying to make a difference in the community and you certainly do too. I actually saw a quote from Michael Rubin, your founder, that said businesses have the opportunity and the obligation to make a difference in this world that you guys really walk the walk. I'd love to dig into the All In Challenge. It's such a fun thing. And if you don't know what it is, I'm going to ask Jonathan here in a minute to share some great stories with you. But you, as a company and led by your founder, Michael Rubin, wanted to make a difference in eliminating hunger or food insecurity here in America. There's lots of great organizations like Meals on Wheels, no Kid Hungry, Feeding America, World Central Kitchen. These are nonprofits that I personally believe in and feel very strongly about and make personal donations to. And you decided to take that up a notch and have raised tens of millions of dollars through your All In Challenge to try and help eliminate hunger. Now, fundraising is not uncommon this time of year, but you certainly took a different approach to it. Can you share a little bit about how you created this viral movement that got everybody competitive and generated tens of millions of dollars to help others?

Absolutely. I have to start by saying we have an amazing leadership team at Fanatics who has really built a culture and a model that really can weather any storm. And we have a founder in Michael Rubin who is wicked smart. He is playing 3D chess while the rest of us are playing checkers for sure. And I think when this pandemic hit, he really saw an immediate opportunity to jump into action. It started with shutting down our facility that produces MLB jerseys so that all of that labor and all of those materials could be used to develop PPE and be distributed to the frontline workers in the northeast area. I think at the end of the day, we produced over 1 million units that were distributed in record time. And I think at the end of the day, that wasn't enough. He developed the idea for the All In Challenge. Our founder has a lot of friends in the sports and entertainment industry, and he saw an amazing opportunity to use their platforms to jump into immediate action. There was so much going on at the time with unemployment skyrocketing, the economy tumbling, schools and businesses shutting down. You know, the question was, where do you contribute to really have an immediate effect? And I think hunger was the one that was the most obvious and the realized or the area that Michael realized, we can make the biggest difference. Ensuring as much as possible that families have a hot meal on their table, will feed their souls. Excuse me. And have big gains in just kind of the general morale of the United States. So what happened? It seems like overnight about 100 of us were asked to drop everything that we were doing during a time that was extremely uncertain for the country and for the world really. And a lot of us focused well over 100% of our time on making this happen. It really grew from nothing to something and launched in a matter of weeks. We didn't have a non for profit before we started this and that's something that we, we started all right away. I think few folks had some experience doing this previously, but nothing this big had been tried like this at fanatics before. It certainly started with a few of Michael's close friends who offered up experiences to give away items or auction off. It came with a call to action, which was really to continue. So those folks joined and donated, then further challenged their friends. So it was much like the Ice Bucket challenge from a few years ago, so on and so forth. I think we had no idea what to expect at the end of the day. There was only so much that 100 or so of us at fanatics could really do to make this thing go viral. It needed to and we had no idea that it was going to go viral. I think within days it was trending on Twitter. It was all over morning talk shows. And at the end of the day, over two months we had over 300 athletes, celebrities and musicians give more of the cause. We saw everything from meetings with a cast of friends to the ultimate sports experience going for sweepstakes and auctions. I think at the end of the day it was just about $60 million that was raised in the end and I think it was about 300 million meals that were put out there for it. So it was a great experience for all of us to participate in. And I think it's something if, God forbid, we get the opportunity to do so again. I think I know fanatics would be right at the front line to do it again.

Well, you should be very proud of your involvement in that. It's incredible and so inspiring how in the time when you're trying to figure out how you're going to get your business to move forward, how you're going to engage with your fans and your customers and help serve them, that you also take the time out to help others, from producing PPE to fundraising and I mean, I saw stories of extra in a Martin Scorsese movie to buying a Super bowl ring. I mean, lots of people were really stepping up with creative ideas and out of the box thinking to really do good for others. So thank you for your help on that.

Absolutely. Yeah. It was interesting to see golf lessons with Tiger woods and golf with Peyton Manning. I mean, to see this really kind of resonate beyond just the arena of sports, it was so great to see, and I think all of us felt a great level of satisfaction by being able to contribute to this.

Yeah. I have to ask, did you bid on anything? Am I going to see you in a movie coming up?

No. Employees were not allowed to, unfortunately. But I know a lot of great experiences were out there and a lot of lucky folks will get extra roles in movies, and some great items were out there as well. I think the one I'm most envious of is the ultimate sports experience, where one lucky fan and a bunch of friends will get tickets to every major sporting event, including the Olympics, over the next couple years. So I think we were all jealous as employees for that one.

Yeah, that's pretty incredible. You all certainly contributed in your own ways, especially, I'm sure, the long hours you kept to try and get things going. So congratulations on that.

Thank you.

We're very proud of that. And it's actually very well timed because this last week in the retail industry was Giving Tuesday. And so out on social media, a lot of push for getting people to donate. And Salesforce made a $50,000 donation to the American Red Cross, which was incredible. But we'd like to contribute to All In Challenge and do our part as well. So today we're going to be giving you a $25,000 donation to the All In Challenge. And, Jonathan, we can't thank you enough for that.

Well, thank you to you and Salesforce for that generous donation. I know it's going to be used very well at this time of year during the holidays and go to feed a lot of families. So we very much appreciate all that you guys do and this donation, for.

Sure, of course, it's the least we could do. I wish it was a little bit more creative, like maybe climbing the top of the tower or something next year. Next year. But we are inspired by you and I know others are, too. Thank you so much for your time today. The inspiration, innovation you guys have seen was great. And I also loved you sharing your story because some of the things came out from your story that weren't just about the technology and investment and your plans, but the flexibility and the mindset that your company had to take a look at the data and keep an open mind, keep that beginner's mind to be able to pivot your business, keeping that customer in the center of it. We're really proud to be your partner on this journey. So thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Lynn. Thank you for the time.

You're welcome, Jonathan. You truly are a trailblazer. Happy holidays to you and yours and also happy holidays to the whole Fanatics team.

Appreciate it. Happy holidays.

Monica, I'm going to turn this back over to you.

Wow, what a great conversation with a husband, two boys and a brother who are all sports friends. I certainly value the ease of online shopping that Fanatics is offering to support their fanatical behavior. That's remained a constant during this pandemic. Now I'm excited to hand it over to Kimberly for more on the power of Commerce cloud. Over to you, Kimberly.

Thanks, Monica. You know, it goes without saying this year has impacted all of us in so many different ways. And in the commerce space, it's no different. Companies have been pushed to transform their digital businesses and reinvent the way they serve their customers. Which is why I'm so excited to be here today to show you how companies can grow their business and serve their companies better with Customer First E Commerce and our newest product, Salesforce Order Management, which is built on the world's number one CRM. So let's take a look. Today we're going to start off with a demo of our two latest innovations, Distributed order Management and our Omni Channel inventory. In this scenario, our shopper Carl is ready to restock his home office coffee supply from his favorite brand, Alpine. Because Alpine site is built on Commerce cloud, they're able to provide him with a personalized journey from the moment he arrives on the site. From here, Carl drills into his favorite coffee and he can see a variety of delivery options available to him from next day delivery to in store pickup. And he can also see the available inventory in his local stores. By leveraging Salesforce Order Management and our new Omnichannel inventory service, Alpine is able to offer an accurate view of store inventory along with these fast and flexible options and with intelligent product recommendations powered by Einstein AI, Carl can also see the French press that he's been eyeing which can also be delivered next day. So he decides to add them both to his cart and with just a few clicks, he completes his order. Now this is where the magic happens. This is where distributed order management kicks in to ensure Carl's items arrive tomorrow. Here we are in the Flow builder which provides admins with a flexible and visual way to build their fulfillment flows with clicks and not code. And now using our distributed order management capabilities and Omnichannel Inventory Alp, Alpine can build their flows to optimize routing for speed, cost and other factors. In the case of Carl's order, this flow is going to optimize for shipping cost. Now let's take a look at what happens behind the scenes when Carl's order runs through this flow. Carl is located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Alpine has several locations across the country, including stores and warehouses that could potentially ship his order. But since we want to optimize for cost, our flow will automatically narrow down and select the best location to achieve this goal. Starting with identifying all locations that have inventory for the items in Carl's order and then filtering out all the locations that don't have inventory for both the coffee and the French press. This prevents sending Carl multiple shipments. And finally, from the remaining locations, we select the one that's closest to Carl, which is the Boca raton store just 15 miles from his house. Saving time and money. Now that we saw the magic behind our distributed order management engine, let's take a look at the order management console. From here, users have a 360 degree view of all orders running through the system and full visibility into all inventory across all of Alpine's locations. Now let's check back in with Carl. Great news. Carl just got a push notification that his order is on its way to being delivered. And with last mile options like Shipt or Uber, he can see his order being delivered in real time, ensuring a seamless and flexible customer experience. So that is how you can provide authentic connected experiences on any channel beyond the website with Commerce Cloud. Back to you, Monica.

Thanks, Kimberly. That was incredible. And therapeutic in our retail sort of way. Now you all know the drill. If you want to see today's musical performance and interview with the one and only Chris Stapleton, please go to Salesforce Live right now. That's salesforce.com live. So if you're watching us on Twitter, head over to Salesforce live right now. Salesforce.com live.