In this episode of the Product Boss Podcast, host Jacqueline Snyder explains how recent data shows Gen Z shoppers are returning to malls, with open‑air mall foot traffic up 3.5% and indoor malls up 2.2%. She highlights that despite the rise of e‑commerce, five‑sixths of consumer spending still occurs in person, making offline channels a critical growth engine for product‑based businesses. Snyder outlines a “hub‑and‑spoke” strategy where the brand’s website (preferably on Shopify) serves as the central hub that the owner controls, while email lists act as the spokes that connect offline interactions back to the online store. She advises creators to capture email addresses at markets, pop‑ups, wholesale trade shows, and other physical venues, then drive those contacts to a well‑optimized site—using the “grandpa test” to ensure usability. The episode details various offline sales avenues (mall shelf space, pop‑ups, trunk shows, craft fairs, wholesale to retailers) and shares client examples, such as a wholesale market that generated half a million dollars. Snyder urges listeners to seize the holiday season’s increased foot traffic, emphasizing that people still crave real‑world experiences even as AI and digital media expand. The episode closes with a call to leave a review, a promotion for a free 90‑minute workshop, and a link to a Systems Playbook for building a million‑dollar brand.
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You guys, exciting news, especially if you were born in the '80s and '90s, but Gen Z just brought the mall back. Let's dive into it. Hey everyone, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and I am the host of the Product Boss Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. We've helped over 100,000 people through our programs grow their brands and the businesses behind them, and every single week we dive into tips, tricks, strategies, and news pieces to talk Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder, and this is the Product Boss Podcast.
I've helped launch and grow thousands of product-based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses, I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into a successful business, and what mistakes they made along the way. I'm excited to be here with Jacqueline Snyder. And what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers? And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million-dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams, no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy, and support, and you too can be the next million-dollar product boss.
Let's do this. All right, everybody. So to get into some stats, open-air malls have gone up by about over 3%. It's at 3.5%, and internal malls have gone up by 2.2% in terms of foot traffic. But here's the deal. Younger shoppers, Gen Z, are back at the mall. So if you have a mall locally to you, you might look around and say, wow, there's a lot of younger shops popping up. And that's because younger shoppers are starting to go back to the mall. And this is really, really exciting data. And I think that it's exciting because a couple, couple of reasons. One, did you guys know that out of all the e-com that we've talked about, all of the online sales, whether it's Amazon, Etsy, e-commerce, all of it, did you know that 5 out of $6 are still spent in person? 5 out of $6 are still spent in person. This is crazy, right? Online has never replaced the in-person experience. So, you know, if you've been a student of mine or you've been around on this podcast for a long time, you know that I teach about using other people's audiences. I think one of the hardest places, now listen, we help our clients grow their traffic sources and their e-com sites. That's one of the sales channels we help you with, but it is also one of the hardest places to drive traffic. Think about it. We need to get strangers from the world to click on an ad, to follow you on social, and somehow click off of an addictive channel like social and go over to your e-com site. Anything, somebody to trust you enough to go to your website. Once you get the traffic to your site, then your website has to be set up beautifully. Beautifully enough with a good user experience that a customer actually knows what to do? Now if you're one of my students, you know we teach the grandpa test inside of my program, right? So in the collective, we talk about this all the time. Does my grandma know what you make and sell in 30 seconds or less? So not only do we get the traffic to your site, but does the website convert? Okay, so good news, $5 out of $6 are being spent in physical world. So a lot of my clients sell in person. They might be at in-person markets, they might be at wholesale trade shows, they might be selling on shelves when they're selling wholesale. Some of them have brick and mortars. And so I want you to hear me say this because a lot of times we keep thinking online, online, online. And in a time right now with AI and this digital world creeping in, people are leaving their houses. They are leaving. They want experience, they want to be around humans. So they're going to go to more markets and craft fairs. They're going to travel more and go to hotels and gift shops, they're going to walk around Main Street or a mall. And so this is really, really, really good news. Okay, so as AI starts to dominate, humans are still going to find humans. We've seen this repeated over the last few years when once upon a time we thought we'd never breathe each other's air again. And now it's like concerts and experiences and all these things are massively blowing up, because people will always need people and people are always going to want something real. Okay, so you've got to ask yourself, where am I taking up shelf space? Where am I taking up shelf space in front of real people where they can interact with my product and they can smell it, taste it, try it on, touch it, look at it, hold it, whatever it is? This is so, so, so important. So let's talk about how this works for you. Okay, now I will always believe— so if you imagine like a hub and a wheel with spokes off of it, the hub will always be your website. Okay, because you own it, right? You can't build on borrowed land. By building your own website, whatever platform you use— we recommend Shopify— but you build that, that is your website, that's your online virtual store. More than social, more than a TikTok shop, more than Etsy, Amazon listings, wherever you're selling, a fair listing— that all can be taken away. So the hub is your website. The other way to reach people, okay, you're like, like to call them is your list, right? To message them, be like, hey, remember me? Here's my website, come buy from me. So if you're in an in-person market, be growing and building your email list. If you are selling on Etsy or online platforms, figure out a way to grow the email list. We've got some workarounds, but they're not always so kosher, so you can think about it. Or if you're in our programs, we talk about ways to grab your list or grow your list. People do this with ads, they're growing an email list. So no matter what, you guys, the most important thing is that you have an email list to reach customers so when they interact with you, you can then reach 'em. They're not going to save your business card and call you back. If they follow you on Instagram, they will lose you in the algorithm. There's no way to keep it unless they save you and remember to go back to you. So you get to collect their information and email them, and you get to have a website that's the hub. But, but, but, but the beautiful thing about this, and like Gen Z bringing back the mall, is the idea that people are going out to shop. So this is the time that you want to take up shelf space. We get to sell wholesale and sell to more retailers. And as I work with my clients, we talk about also like alternative places to sell more than what we expect. Okay, so retail— if you've got the ability to do in-person markets, or even some of my clients in the collective are doing the markets they've always done and then training people to do markets in other locations so that they're in multiple places on a weekend, right? They're doubling their revenue in that way. If you've got the ability to take meetings with stores, retailers, if you're doing markets, I have a client who does half a million dollars when she does a wholesale market. So there's all these different places where you get to go out and get in front of people. I would say pop-ups, trunk shows, all sorts of ways where you're in front of the people, you collect their information, you collect their email addresses, and then you will be able to drive them back to your website when your website converts, okay? Again, I have million-dollar business owners that have websites that don't really convert because they're selling in other sales channels. So that's for another time and another day. But here's what I want you to know. The trend is people are going out of their houses to shop. The more you get to be in front of people, what's old is new, right? So the more you get to be in front of people, the better it is. Malls are popping up. Think about ways, especially this holiday season, how you can get in front of people because they are leaving their houses and they are shopping in real life. I hope this was supportive and leave a review if this was helpful to you. Please leave a review. It really supports. Me and reaching other people. And every single week I host a free workshop. It's about 90 minutes. There is a freebie on how to build a million-dollar business in our Systems Playbook when you show up. And in that, we're going to talk about how you are not the only system, you're not the bottleneck in your business, and the ways that you can grow this business to a million-dollar, multi-million-dollar brand without it overwhelming you, right? And the gaps and, and the ways to get there. So I'll drop the link in the show notes It's theproductbossworkshops.com. I hope to see you there, and I'll see you in the next episode.
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