The new normal in retail - virtual buying/supplying - Live Webinar (5-7-20)

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and get started. So welcome everyone, thank you for attending another webinar by SureFront. For those of you that this is your first time, I am Dylan, the Director of Marketing at SureFront. We do one of these every Thursday at 11 AM Pacific Standard, and we're doing one this Tuesday as well, a special webinar this Tuesday. You're going to want to tune into this. I'm going to send a link to register to that. After this webinar, and that's going to be sponsored by the Economic Development Center. So those are the business centers that are sponsored by the SBA and the CARES Act, and they're going to be talking about SBA loans. So we did a few webinars on that about a month ago and posted some videos about that on YouTube about how to apply for the EIDL loan, the PPP loans. You can find those in our YouTube channels. So this is going to be a follow-up to those A lot of people have been approved for funds already, so we want to make sure that everybody's spending those funds correctly so that they can get loan forgiveness for those. And for those that have not been approved yet, we'll talk to you as well about the final stages of approval. So that's going to be this Tuesday at 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern. And again, we're going to have representatives from the Economic Development Center on on that. We're also going to, in that same invitation, send out a YouTube video that we posted yesterday about the PPP loan process. So we were just approved for the PPP loan on May 3rd, and it was a month-long process for us that we posted several videos on YouTube about that I just mentioned. And so you can find that video on our YouTube channel just by going to YouTube, go to Sure Front, and you can find that video on the PPP loan. So we go through the entire process with Bank of America from the original application through about 10 emails all the way to approval so you can know what to expect. Finally, we're gonna have a Q&A at the end of this webinar. So make sure that you have that Q&A button there right at the bottom of your screen. So put any questions you have in there. You can start putting them in now or throughout the entire webinar. And we're gonna be going through those at the end. So we'll give about 15 minutes for that. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our two panelists. We're gonna start with Doug Heckman, who is the Director of Product at SureFront. He's gonna talk about the virtual showroom in the middle of this webinar, which a lot of people have been asking about because we mentioned at our last webinar. So some people are asking, you know, how do I put up my product catalog on SureFront's virtual showroom? Asking some questions about the free trial. So he's gonna go about 2 to 5 minutes in that and show you how to get on there. You can also send us an email afterwards if you have any issues at support@surefront.com to get your catalog up on our virtual showroom. And, and then finally, I'd like to introduce our featured panelist today, Mark Tobino. Mark has over 30 years of experience as a retail executive, so this is Gonna be a fantastic webinar. He has a great presentation put together. He's been executive at Ross, at Eileen Fisher, New York Company, Destination Maternity. So he's got a broad view of the landscape of what we can expect in the next 6 months, you know, in the next years going out. And I can tell you firsthand, he's great at predicting future trends in retail. And so without further ado, Mark, I'm going to hand it off to you.

Thanks, Dawn. I appreciate that. So a couple of quick housekeeping things. First of all, thank you, Shorefront, for allowing us to all get together to talk about the new normal in retail and what it's going to mean for everyone. Everyone who's watching, thank you for taking time out of your day to, to make this a point of participation. And if any of those of you who are watching have family or friends who are first responders or are out on the front lines fighting this virus, please know I truly appreciate your efforts and their efforts. COVID has hit close to home. We've lost a family member to this virus, so I know firsthand this is no joke, and what we're doing is the right thing. So, you know, thank you to everyone who's fighting on the front lines. So I'm sure you're wondering, you know, who am I? Why do I— why do you want to listen to me? And what are we going to talk about? And why am I here? So just a quick introduction for myself, then we'll get into the reality of where we are with this retail landscape. We'll talk about the virtual showroom because life as you know it has dramatically changed and you're going to have to do more with less, basically. We're also going to then, from a buyer's side, talk about how are we going to buy with incomplete information, with not being able to have, you know, 30 people in a room with 200 samples and everyone touching the product and, you know, sitting 6 inches from each other. If any of your buy meetings are like my buy meetings, that's what it was like. And then what's the impact of all of this and what's going to be the results go forward for the next 6 to 12 months? What should you expect? And then as Dylan mentioned, we'll certainly open it up to a Q&A. So first order of business, who am I? I've been involved, as Dylan said, for at least 30 years in retail, specifically in inventory management. And that means from the moment the concept of a style is, uh, imagined to the consolidation of that style when we mark it down, um, or liquidate it or sell it off or whatever. Um, so every touch point, whether it's planning it, allocating it, uh, reporting on it, analyzing it, uh, you name it, uh, whether it's hard lines like patio furniture, to soft lines, apparel, to accessories, jewelry, outerwear. If it's being sold to the public, chances are I've been involved with that product at some point in some capacity, whether it's an actual planner or an allocator or part of an executive committee or a vice president, even a principal in consulting. So You know, I've had a lot of exposure and I've spent my life basically figuring out ways to move inventory profitably. And I think now more than ever you're going to need some help if you're a buyer or a supplier navigating the retail world. So let's get into the reality of where we are today, right? Travel almost non-existent, down 93% over this time last year, and the airlines have lost you know, an exorbitant amount of money in the last 2 months. Um, you couple that with the fact that as of yesterday, 33 million people have applied for unemployment, uh, over the last 7 weeks, which is 19% of the U.S. workforce. Now, what does that mean? Well, in February, we were at 3.5% unemployment. And if you go way back to the Great Depression back in the 1920s, it was almost 25% of the U.S. workforce was unemployed. So we are certainly much closer to worst-case scenario right now than we are to best-case scenario. Couple that with the fact that stores and malls have been closed for almost 2 months. I mean, these are unheard of. Situations and circumstances. You've got inventory that's literally been trapped in a time capsule. A store and a mall closed on March 15th, and here we are the middle of May, and we're talking about reopening that store, and literally no one's been there for 2 months. The inventory levels are, you know, reflective of a seasonality that has since passed. So it's kind of important to understand some of these obstacles and challenges that everyone's facing. I threw in a chart here because everybody likes to look at a chart once in a while. And this is year-over-year production and manufacturing in China. And as you can see, we've pretty much fallen off a cliff in 2020 here. And this chart doesn't even have April reflected into it, which I think was even worse than the March data. So you look at this and you go, wow, this is unprecedented, right? And now some of you who spend time, especially buyers, looking at data, you're going to look at the, the financial meltdown in 2008 and 2009 and say, hey, Mark, you know, there was a really rapid recovery. You know, like, yeah, it was bad, but it got better really quickly. And for those of you that are looking at that chart and hoping that we're going to see the same thing in 2020, I just have two callouts for you. One is, we didn't need a vaccine to fight a virus in the financial meltdown, and we didn't have 33 million people unemployed. During that. This was really a bank-driven and a financial-driven situation, which is completely different than what we're facing today. This is a health pandemic that's impacting the way we interact, not the way our money interacts. So I think it's a very important difference. I don't think you're going to see a V-shaped recovery here anytime soon. you're much more likely to see a U-shaped recovery where it takes 6 to 12 months for the economy to completely rebound and we all get used to the new normal and what that means. And so that impact is going to change how we interact with each other. You know, travel, if you've been watching the news, the airlines are now requiring everyone to wear a face mask. If you're on the plane, if you're in the waiting area at the gate, if you're going through the airport for security. They're not selling the middle row seats. So airfare almost undoubtedly is going to increase in price because they've already lost $350 billion, and they need to recoup the money they're going to be losing on every flight since they can only be roughly 60% at capacity. So, you know, do you want to wear a face mask for 8 to 10 hours while you're traveling all over the place? Do you want to spend that much more on the cost of travel? I think a lot of companies, whether they're suppliers or retailers, are going to pass on that, and they're going to embrace what's been happening now, which is the virtual meetings. So one of those meetings that's going to be critical for the interaction between buyers and suppliers is what I'm calling a virtual showroom. And it's basically all about how to build an assortment without risking your life, right? I mean, it's, it's only toasters, or it's only clothes, or it's only garden hoses. I mean, we don't really need to be getting crazy out there. You know, we need to make smart, informed decisions, but we also need to have a process in place and tools in place to allow us to do that. And so what, what should you expect over the next 6 months as it relates to being able to look at product? So I honestly believe the days of visiting showrooms or having your vendor drag suitcases full of samples to the corporate buying office, I don't see it happening, you know, in the next 3 to 6 months at all. And I think the fact that we've had 2 months to build new ways of working, we're basically building new models for how to interact. And so what's much more likely to happen is you're going to have virtual meetings just like you are today, whether it's a webinar or a Zoom conference meeting or Google Hangouts or even just conference calls and not— actually seeing people, but all getting together on the phone. I've noticed that those meetings tend to be a lot more productive, and I'll go into why in a little while. But I think we're also going to get to the point of these virtual photo shoots, which, as you can see in this picture, this is what Walmart is doing. You know, it's one woman who's a lead stylist shooting on a green screen with a green screen mannequin. That rotates 360 degrees. She captures the product and then we put people into the product later in a separate process. It's not us shooting with 3 or 4 or 5 models and having people, you know, 20, 30 people on a set. I just don't think that's gonna be realistic anytime soon. And if we can accomplish this virtually, I think that's going to be becoming the new norm. You're gonna probably be requested from a supplier point of view, you're probably gonna be asked for more fabric swatches because it has to go to more people, right? It has to go not just to the corporate office anymore. It's gonna go to the buyer. It's gonna go to the GMM. It's gonna go to the VPs and potentially the CEO. So fabric swatches, lots of them. Heading our way. As a buyer, I think we're going to have to work a little bit more creatively. It's going to be more about, imagine this style in this fabric, and you're going to have to have a really great picture of that item and then having the fabric in your hand. And it's actually not so different from the way your consumer is probably shopping today. She doesn't have the benefit today with only being able to shop online of touching and feeling. She looks at a picture, she sees it's a poly-cotton blend. She goes, "I think that would look great on me," and she buys it. And I think our buyers, our retail buyers are gonna have to do something similar. You're gonna have to work with incomplete information. You're gonna have to say, "I think this style would be great in a poly-blend." And you're gonna have to make some decisions about how to move forward with that assortment without having all of the information that you typically have had. The bottom line is samples are cheaper to send than people. And so, you know, we're going to be probably sending a lot of product around the world rather than sending people to view that product. And what that does is it puts everyone in a situation where you're really going to be making virtual choices using digital tools. And if you have had any experience or if you have been on the path of doing more virtually, you are going to win the race to the recovery. And I think that's where, you know, in this particular situation Shorefront has actually a little bit of an advantage over a lot of other tools out there.

So, Mark, those are terrific points. I appreciate that. And I do want to remind everybody at this point too, for those— I think some people came in a little bit late— we're going to have a Q&A at the end of this. So there's a little Q&A button at the bottom. So please enter in any questions that you may have. We'll make sure that we get them all answered at the end of this webinar. So it's that Q&A button, just tap on that, not the chat button. I know they put— Zoom puts them both up there. And I'd like to hand this over to Doug Heckman, who is our Director of Product at SureFront. We recently made our virtual showroom an extended free trial during this time. So Doug is amazing at presenting this, and he's going to just briefly walk us through what it's like setting up your catalog. Again, this is all free product right now, so you could get a virtual showroom going on right now. I'll pass over to you, Doug. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Dylan, and thank you, Mark. So I want to highlight some of what Mark was saying. You know, we're at the point now where we're not going to have the opportunity to have buyers come visit our showroom, to meet in people— to meet in person, to touch and feel the products that we're interacting with, that we're trying to get in front of our customers. What SureFront does here is it allows you to digitize your catalog and create virtual showrooms and engage your customers and get your products in front of your customers' eyeballs in the best fashion that you can. Um, what we're looking at right in here is a catalog of your products, which is also a really great way to help align your teams and have your sales teams who might be remote at this point be able to access your catalog. And all you have to do is come in here and find the products that you're interested in presenting to your buyers. You have a lot of great options for that, whether it's by searching or filtering or tagging. And once you've found the, the items that you want to show to your buyers, you have a couple of opportunities to do that. What we call Showcase is really your virtual showroom. If you want to send out a blast, you know, here's our new summer two styles that we want to share across our different customer lines, you can come in here and select which of your customers you want to share that with. And all you have to do is enter in their email address and it's going to send them an email, um, And the really cool thing is, you know, we have buyers that are on the platform, but even if you're engaging buyers that haven't yet joined the Shorefront platform, they're going to get an email saying, oh, it looks like my vendor or my brand has shared these new items with me. And even for those buyers that have never joined the Shorefront platform yet, all they have to do is click on this email. I'm going to open this in an incognito window since I was signed in the other one. And it will immediately drop them into this platform. So right away, your buyer is getting a better customer experience than what your competitors might have to offer, which is, you know, a printed out Excel sheet or a line sheet with thumbnail images. You can come in here, you can get really great item details, you can toggle through the images, and then your buyers can select the items that they're interested in following up in more detail. And request a quote. At the point that your buyer is requesting quotes for you too, you do have some really great opportunities to really engage your buyers using an in-platform chat, which allows you the ability and the agility to respond to their requests as soon as possible. Which really, your, your whole goal is to make this experience as good and as least disruptive to your customers as possible. And like Dylan mentioned, we're trying to be here as your partner in this time, providing these tools for free so that you're able to engage your customer with the best customer experience that you can. And I do wanna take just a moment 'cause I know that we do have some participants on the retail side of the equation here. So there's plenty of stuff to help keep your teams engaged within Shorefront as well. What I've done is I've popped in here for a buying department or category, you know, women's, Fashion, where we can create individual projects that we're working on. We can start new styles, and we can kind of keep our team on track here as well, where we're tracking the progress of these styles between finalizing specifications, receiving price quotes from vendors, reviewing samples, and marking off samples. So in addition to the sellers being able to really engage your buyers with a great customer experience. For all of those on the retail side of the equation, again, this tool is completely free, um, so that you can help keep your team in contact and executing while everyone's remote. Um, there's some really nice tools in here for you as well. Um, I do want to make sure that I'm not running on too long, so if anyone has any questions about that, we can follow up via the Q&A session or maybe even after the demo. But I'd like to hit it back over to Mark to pick back up there.

Doug, just two questions on that. If I'm a supplier, how do I upload my catalog to SureFront?

Great, great question, Dylan. So within the catalog here, you do have a couple of options. If you have just a couple of new styles you're putting in here, it's really easy to do that via this form field. But let's say that you have hundreds or even thousands of styles that you're working with, we have a bulk upload feature that allows you to import CSV and Excel so that you can get hundreds or even thousands of styles in there at once.

Great, and this is not just clothing, this is anything I'm selling, right?

Anything you're selling, whether it's clothing, whether it's furniture, whether it's handbags, SureFront has the flexibility to be able to handle any of those products. And we have a great customer success team standing by if you have any questions about how it best fits your business, they're happy to help.

Great. One of the attendees asked about, is this webinar just about clothing? So I just wanna— we'll get to all the questions at the end, but no, this webinar is Not just about clothing. Mark, I'm gonna pass it over to you, but yes, this is about everything in retail. This is for all retailers, all suppliers right now. Doug, thank you very much. I really appreciate that. And again, you can contact SureFront at support@surefront.com. We're gonna be sending up a follow-up email at the end of this as well later today. But Mark, pass it back over to you. And Mark, I love this presentation, so thank you very much.

Thank you, guys. Uh, you know, I, you know, I think, um, you know, one of the synergies of why I agreed to do it is because I think, you know, having right now a free tool out there that can make your lives easier and help you work smarter instead of harder— because I've witnessed firsthand how hard everyone works— I just thought it was a great, uh, a great opportunity. So, um, as it relates to the buy side and the buyers, um, you Obviously, we have to reinvent the way we're going to buy product. How do we craft an assortment? How do we sign off on it? And what are some of the challenges and obstacles you're going to be facing in the next 3 to 6 months? I think the most important thing is buyers are going to need to pause and assess the mess. And it is a mess. And it's just the reality. Whether you like it or not, you're sitting with a full assortment that was bought for potentially thousands of stores in your physical locations right now. And this could have been 3/4 sleeve shirts, it could have been denim, long leg denim, it could be coats, lightweight sweaters. Here we are 2 months later and, you know, you might have bought 10,000 units because you had 1,000 stores and a website and now all you've had is a website. Well, what happens with all of this inventory and how do you get through it? So I think step number 1 is you're going to have to come up with a strategic plan as to what does this inventory in terms of value still have. And one of the options might be that you have to shop from your closet. And what do I mean by that? We use this term in a couple of companies that I've worked for, but basically, you know, in retail, we set a floor every 4 to 6 weeks. So you basically have 2 concepts or more of product that never got to see the light of day. This is product that might have been set for, you know, the April time period and for the May time period, and you never got to put it out on the floor. And yes, it might have gotten some limited exposure on your website, but the amount of inventory that you bought was way more than what you needed for your website. So, um, and this can be, you know, I'm using apparel because that's what I'm, uh, most recently been involved with. But, you know, you think about things that you bought for outside your house or furniture or carpeting or any any of those things. The, the real question you need to understand and ask is, does this stuff still work a year from now? Um, are the colors neutral enough? And are the, um, styles trend— would they still be trend right a year from now? And if so, you might actually already have a jump start on 2021. And it's less about coming up with a brand new assortment for spring 2021 and more about just coming up with some key items or key styles or key trend, uh, worthy product that makes the most sense. So I think that, you know, what's going to be most important for buyers is to buy less. Buy less because you have more right now. Figure out how you can repurpose what you have figure out how many stores you really think you're going to have go forward. I certainly wouldn't buy for 1,000 stores next year because you had 1,000 stores this year. I think this whole re-rollout of the economy and re-rollout of opening up stores is really going to impact, um, how much you truly need. It's not up to the retailer, it's going to be up to each individual state, so you really need to buy less. And if you ever forget that, always go back to that. What's most likely going to happen for retailers is in the next 6 months, you're gonna see these stores be more like mini fulfillment centers. Chico's this week just announced 3-phase process of reopening their business. Phase 1 is gonna be fill online orders from stores. That's exactly what a mini fulfillment center is. They're gonna see what someone bought, they're gonna direct that order to the closest store, and the store associates are gonna be in a closed store filling the order and shipping it to the customer. If the customer wants it more quickly than 3 to 5 days or 2 days, they will buy online and then pick it up curbside. So you place an order in the morning or last night and you pick it up today or later in this afternoon, and the associate with a mask on will bring it out to your car, put it in your trunk, the receipt will be in the bag, she'll close the door, and you're on your way. These are the new normals. These are the way people are operating. And the phase 3 that they're gonna be shooting for is shop by appointment. So if you really wanna go to the store and shop in the store, you're actually gonna need to make an appointment. This will allow them to control how many people are in the store, how many people are using fitting rooms. It protects their associates and it also protects you as a consumer. So a lot of stuff is going to be happening and every single retailer is going to be doing this and every single state is going to be determining certain rules as to how you are allowed to interact with a customer. Now, That's what's going to happen on the retailer, retailer side. What does that mean for suppliers? For me, it goes back to you've got to let people know what you have and how it's available. And the best way to do that is to create a virtual showroom and make that a priority. Make it simple with critical information that buyers need to make decisions and make it user-friendly, not just for you and for your customer, so that you can have that seamless interaction. More importantly for suppliers, you need to assess your supply line. And what I mean by that is how much of your product is in raw materials? How much of your product is in piece goods? I mean, you know, we've cut some stuff, but we haven't sewn everything. How much of your stuff is in finished product? What are you sitting on that's ready to go? I think organizing that information and knowing as a supplier what options you have. So if you've got some denim fabric sitting around, you had planned to make denim jeans with it, but you can make crops or shorts with it and get it to a retailer by, you know, Fourth of July, you have a real shot to capitalize on moving some inventory. And I think retailers are going to be looking for those type of opportunities. So the better you have a handle on what your supply chain looks like, the better opportunity you're going to have to help maximize the reaction for your retail customers and make your business pandemic-proof.

Sorry, quick question, Mark. This is fantastic. If I'm a supplier, what are some ways that I can get ahead of this? I mean, you mentioned that a lot of these stores, clothing and what have you, are going to be maybe a season or two seasons old in the inventory that they have. So lots of old stock, an abundance of this old stock. But I would imagine that the retailers that can get some new styles in and get ahead of the curve are probably going to be the ones that customers want to shop at. So as a supplier, or maybe I'm wrong on that, you let me know, but as a supplier, how can I take advantage of that in the sense that a lot of these retailers have old stock?

It really goes back to the collaborative partnerships that you've built with your suppliers. If you are, if you are comfortable working in that digital domain and working virtually and you guys have been communicating communicating back and forth, you're going to be able to react quickly, you're going to be able to make decisions faster, and you're going to be able to fulfill the needs of those specific retailers. As a supplier, even if your retailers are saying, "Hey, we don't need that," that's not the end of the road for a supplier. I think what suppliers are really going to need to do is start thinking outside the box in terms of how can they liquidate the inventory that they have as well. So they may not have ever considered working with a Walmart or a Target, but those guys have been open and business has been booming for them. And so they may have demands that are unusual for them, and you're— as a supplier, I should be considering working with them. If you're in apparel, you might never have thought to work with a Ross or Burlington or a TJ Maxx, but now might be a time. I can assure you that some of the retailers are going to be looking to work with them because they have this older inventory that they need to move through. Retailers may also take a percentage of their stores and turn them into outlets to sort of be able to promote and price sensitive this inventory in a way that helps move it through the demand channel. Some suppliers may want to consider, you know, going direct to consumer, whether it's creating an Amazon storefront or an eBay storefront. Or they may want to consider partnering with other suppliers. For example, if I'm a supplier of bath fixtures and bath vanity product, I might want to partner with a towel supplier and create some type of sets or, You know, it's the new normal is there's nothing normal about what you do anymore. It's who's gonna get creative and who's gonna think outside the box and get there first to win the race to recovery. So no idea is a bad idea at this point. Does that answer your question, Dylan?

That's great, yeah, no, that's perfect. Thank you so much.

Okay, so what does all of that mean? What are the, what can you expect in terms of results over the next 6 months? I think, you know, the most important thing is what we've been talking about. Be flexible, be creative, be open to change, be inspired, but most importantly, be patient. You've got 33 million people who are unemployed right now and can barely pay the rent or mortgage. It's going to take time for them to want to spend money on the things they want versus the things they need. They are very narrow-focused right now. It's all about, I've got all these bills, how do I get done? How do I get everything built? So it's going to take time for them to understand, do I have a little extra money this month to treat myself to something, whether it's a home improvement, whether it's a piece of apparel, or whether it's something else. And in some cases, my guess is people will most likely spend money first on dining out, just a chance to get out and have a moment outside the house. And then hopefully that transitions to other things like shopping. But it's going to take time. You're going to have to embrace the unexpected because what I'm telling you today is valid short term. If we have a fall resurgence of the virus, if we don't get a vaccine quickly, then what I'm talking about could completely change. And then you'll want to tune in 3 months from now or 6 months from now to the new, new normal and what that's going to mean. You know, here's what I do know. You're going to have to make decisions with incomplete information more so than you've ever had to do before, and that's, that's okay. You just have to admit that to yourself because I'm kind of a perfectionist. I, you know, I like to get things right and do it once and have it be perfect, and someone once told me, don't let perfection get in the way of being really good. And so I think, you know, if you feel good about the decision you're making, then you have to run with it. What I will say is I feel like we're getting much more productive. I know last month I had meetings scheduled for an hour and a half, and in 20, 30 minutes we were done. And I think it's because I was able to prepare for that meeting without having, you know, 10 interruptions or having 3 or 4 meetings before that meeting. And so I think this work from home has allowed people to really work smarter and come to these meetings better prepared. We're not debating the minutiae and getting into the weeds as much. We're taking strategic, high-level decisions and executing them, and letting the people who know what to do do what they know. And if you haven't noticed, companies across America and the world are rewriting all the rules here, and the tools that are needed to get the job done. So, you know, we absolutely will recover. From this. It's going to take some time. Yes, there may be some businesses that don't recover, but, you know, I think you're going to find businesses allowing people to work more from home. You're going to have fewer meetings. There are going to be fewer people in those meetings. We've already witnessed how customer shopping habits have changed, and it's very possible that shopping in a store is not a priority for a lot of people in the short term. I think we all need to think differently about how we interact with everyone and how everyone interacts with us. I think it's insane that this week a security guard at Family Dollar was shot and killed because he didn't allow someone to enter the store because they didn't have a mask on. I mean, this is— I never in my lifetime would have thought we would be getting to this. And so, you know, when these things are happening, you know, people are reassessing what's truly important. And if I can shop online and I can, as a buyer, I can look at an entire assortment and create an entire assortment online, it might be the way to go. So I don't have all the answers. I'm happy to take any questions. Hopefully the things I've shared with you today can better prepare you for what's to expect tomorrow. But, you know, let's open it up. It looks like we've got quite a few questions there, so I'm happy to open it up.

Thank you, Mark. That is, that's fantastic. Very, very informative. And thank you for taking both the retailer and supplier view on that. You know, one immediate question I had, and I'll I can tell everybody right now we have a bunch of questions coming in through the Q&A section, but we do have that Q&A section, so please ask any questions you have in that Q&A button, and we're going to be answering them all, all very shortly here. Is, do you think that retailers will be much more willing to buy products from suppliers without seeing samples physically, with just seeing them virtually? So buying them right off of a virtual showroom. You know, maybe not even getting any fabric swatches or a sample of that toaster or whatever it might be?

I think it's more likely that they will still want to physically have a sample. The difference will be you won't all be in a room looking at that sample together collectively. I could see a situation where a buyer collects all the samples or has all the samples shipped to the home office. She goes into the home office and then conducts a buy assortment meeting either with her team virtually or with a larger executive group virtually where she's showing each sample to that group and making decisions on it, but there's only one person that's touching and holding that sample. I don't know if we're at the point yet where I would just buy something, you know, off of one picture, but it really gets to the core question of how desperate am I for that specific inventory? And from a supplier point of view, how quickly can I have this in your distribution center ready for you to sell? And so I think those questions will drives some of that decision-making process. Got it.

And do you think there's gonna— I want to just get to the questions right now. There's a lot of good ones coming in. Do you think that there's gonna be, this is a question from someone, a fire sale, you know, with retailers losing 2 months of sales? So is the market gonna get flooded for a little while? And how long do you think, you know, anticipating some stability, it'll take for things to get back to normal?

Yes and yes. I think the short answer is, you know, we've never had a situation where the entire economy has been shut down for 2 months like this. So, you know, there are liquidators out there who specialize in selling fire sale product. And so you might not have considered working with them in the past, but you may need to if you don't want to sell it in your own store. If you want to send it to a third party. You've got the, the Rosses and the, and the Burlingtons and the TJ Maxxes of the world where, you know, they're basically going to be in the driver's seat for the next 3 months. You know, there will be no shortage of what they can choose and pick from. I also think there may be a drive for cash because of the loss of income in the retail space. I'd rather sell my leftovers at 50% or 60% off than to consider them completely worthless and get nothing for them. So I think retailers, when they do open, yes, there are going to be some pockets of opportunity in terms of, from a customer point of view, getting some things at a really great discount. The key is, do I have the money to buy it? And do I need it? And am I willing to buy it at any price? So, got it.

And, you know, seasonally, do you think that retailers are going to be looking for the spring/summer versus fall? Or what season do you think they're going to be looking for now, if they're even looking at that, or they're just looking at getting rid of their inventory in general?

Honestly, you know, and again, I apologize to to the audience if apparel is not really your specialty. But in apparel right now, you would be looking at literally summer of next year because summer of this year would have already been bought 9 to 10 months ago and has already been made and is on its way, if not already in your store, setting in your store for Memorial Day. So the question the retailers have to ask themselves is, how disrupted was my pipeline with the COVID virus, especially if my product was made in China and I wasn't able to have workers come back after Chinese New Year at the end of January and February? Do I— am I going to get any of the summer product that I ordered? And If I am, has it been delayed and when's it actually going to arrive? And if I'm not going to get any of it, you— we use this term called speed to market. How quickly can I get shorts or tanks or tees from somebody? And so if suppliers domestically have that and can turn it around, um, they might have an advantage and be able to, you know, help these retailers recoup some of that lost income.

Got it, understood. And Doug, got some questions to you too. How do stores find SureFront to view the catalog? So maybe even a more high-level question, how do suppliers and retailers connect on SureFront?

Yeah, that's a great question. So all you need is any of your existing customers who might not already be on SureFront, like the demonstration that we walked through, all you need is an email of whatever contacts you've already been dealing with there. And we do have a community of buyers that are on Shorefront as well. So whether they're already on Shorefront or whether you're using Shorefront as your digital showroom to connect with your customers, all you, you need is their email. They don't even have to sign up at that point. All they have to do is click on the email and then they're immediately dropped into your showroom. So it's Couldn't be easier or less disruptive.

Got it, great.

And then some people are asking about the cost of SureFront as well. Again, it's an extended free trial that's going on right now. I know that's a bit vague, but so is our situation in this country. So it's, it's while the country is, you know, going through what we're going through, while it's shut down, we've made SureFront free during that time to help everybody get on. And then after that, we'll reassess at that point. Normally before It was about $99 per user, but for right now, again, it's free during this time, and this is a great way to get your entire catalog up and shared with everybody immediately. I know some people are also asking how to get a hold of us. So Doug, I believe they can send us email to support@surefront.com, but even easier, you can go to the SureFront website, surefront.com, top right corner, and there's a couple other buttons throughout, that just says sign up. You can sign up immediately and upload your catalog. And Doug, can you just remind us again? So uploading the catalog is a few different ways. I can upload one item at a time. I can upload the entire catalog too. Can you just briefly touch upon that?

Yeah, so you do have a couple of opportunities. If you have just brand new items, a handful that you want to put on there, you can upload those via a form field on the catalog. When you walk in, you just say create a new product. And then enter in whatever information you have. I would really encourage— it's easier to enter as much information as you have up front, but all that's really required is some sort of item number or identifier. But what you want to make sure that you do as well is upload the pictures, since that's going to be really important for both your team and your customers to interact with your product. Now, if you're taking items out of an existing system, out of a large spreadsheet, You also have the ability to do a bulk upload. We have a lot of tutorials and stuff on how that works and also able to help if you have any questions on that. But that's a really great option to get hundreds or even 1,000+ products in there with a little bit more scalability than entering in products one at a time. And I did want to piggyback just off of one thing about the pricing as well, Dylan. You know, we are offering it for free at the current time, but even going forward after our situation starts to normalize, There are free accounts that are always going to be available in SureFront. There are some premium features that are available for purchase, but you will have the ability— if you're going in there and you're uploading products right now because it's a free trial, you do still have the ability to utilize SureFront in the free plan even after things go back to normal. It's only if you're taking advantage of some of those premium features that there would be a cost.

Awesome, thanks for the clarification. And then Mark, you know, one thing that I want to ask you and maybe also point out too is, you know, suppliers may not have retailers reaching out to them right now. So, you know, they might not have the normal course of action of having these meetings as well. So they've switched over to, you know, virtual platform, whether that be SureFront or anything else. Do you recommend that they actively reach out to all of their past buyers right now and not be timid, or do you think that, you know, buyers are getting inundated by other suppliers? Or what do you recommend that they can ensure that they conduct business going forward and they're, you know, doing everything they can to sell their wares?

I think you summed it up. Do everything you can to sell your wares. You know, right now, uh, everybody's at home. Their only method of communication is through these social platforms or through email. So I'm only as smart as what I know. If I don't know you have something that I could use, um, that's not on me. That's on you to tell me, hey, I've got something that I think could help you. If I don't take the time to follow up on that, or if I don't, uh, if I follow up on it and I don't like it, that's on me. But if I never knew about it you know, shame on you for not reaching out to me because I honestly believe at this point, um, you know, the, the— it's, it's time to be proactive, not reactive. Reactive is I'm gonna wait, let things settle down, see how the lay of the land, uh, falls out, and then I'll, you know, react accordingly. The people that are going to win the race to recovery and the people that are going to build pandemic-proof processes are going to be the people that are proactive and are asking the right questions and figuring out how best can I take advantage of the situation today, but take advantage in a positive way in terms of getting my team more exposure, getting my products into more people's hands. And that's the new normal for them. You've gotta be proactive.

And on that note too, SureFront is looking to host a virtual trade show. So, I mean, because a lot of the trade shows have been canceled, we're looking at hosting one in around July or August when a lot of the trade shows were supposed to be happening. So this would be a version of a trade show where you could potentially meet other retailers and retailers can meet suppliers suppliers, and we're going to try to connect everybody together in a way to ensure that all of our partners are able to continue to conduct business. So if anyone has— we're planning that now, so if anyone has any suggestions, you know, please send those over. You can send those directly to me, dylan@surefront.com, and we're looking to plan that right now. So any features you're looking at having for that virtual trade show, you know, please let us know. Mark, I want to thank you, you know, so much for that presentation. It was extremely well thought out. I know personally you spent a lot of time on that. So thank you for your time. It's valuable time. So I know that everybody on this call appreciates it, and all of our retailers and suppliers are able to hopefully get some great information out of that and help them, you know, conduct some business going forward. With all the uncertainty going forward. So thank you, Mark, and thank you, Doug, also for presenting everything on SureFront. I want to reiterate to everybody that came in later that we're going to have— we do these webinars every Thursday at 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern. We're going to have a special webinar this Tuesday with representatives from the Economic Development Center, which is the business centers that are sponsored by the SBA and the CARES Act. And they're going to be talking again about the PPP loans. So if you are applying for a PPP loan, if you've been approved for a PPP loan, we're going to be talking about both of those— how to properly utilize your funds so you get debt forgiveness on those loans, and then also the process going forward if you have yet to be approved. We made a video that we posted up this morning on our whole PPP process. SureFront applied for it, and got a PPP loan. So go to our YouTube channel, uh, we were just approved on May 3rd. It took us a month to get through the process, and you'll see a video that just posted, uh, actually I think it was last night, and it says approved for PPP loan, and it goes through our 10-step process of getting approved for that loan. So I'm going to send out, uh, later today an invitation to that special webinar on Tuesday with the representatives from the Economic Development Center talking about those loans, and then also that video. So again, that's Tuesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern. And subsequently, in another email, we're going to send you a signup link for SureFront. You can contact Doug and talk to him and his team at support@surefront.com. I'll put that in that as well in that follow-up email. Again, SureFront is free to use during this time.

Time.

So if I have any other cleanup items after that, that's everything, guys. Thank you very much for attending. Thank you much, so much to our panelists, and looking forward to seeing you Tuesday and then Thursday after that. Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Doug. Thanks, guys.