Your personal shopping center. The Kelly Slessor Story.

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Welcome to E Commerce Growth Stories. This is your hostess with the mostest, Juliana Jackson, aka the CLV lady. And also I am the Chief Evangelist for OmniConvert.

And this is Valentin Radu, CEO of OmniConvert. Thank you for tuning in today for a new episode of E Commerce Growth Stories.

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Yeah, so I, I left uni and went into a company called British Telecom, which is a big telco in the uk and, and I was a technical product manager and we used to build big pipes. I wanted to go off traveling, but my dad being a traditional Nigerian man, you have to go to work. There's no, there's no fun to be had after school. You've got to be a doctor or a lawyer. That's it. So. But actually in some ways he was non traditional because he allowed me to go off into technology, but then he, I had to be a computer scientist. So anyway, I started my first job in British Telecom. The idea was I was going to save up some money and I was going to get the hell out of there. Five years later, I was still there and I was a technical product manager. So we used to build big pipes into buildings. We, you know, I could, we had all the acronyms. I could, I could give you all of the, you know, really boring terminology that we, on technology we built back then we started, we started out with voiceover IP and we had, you know, mobile connectivity and all of that stuff before mobile really had kind of blossomed. And I got to work on a project called Sainsbury's, the store of the future. So Sainsbury's is one of the biggest grocery retailers in the uk.

And I.

Think it's where I found my love and passion for all things retail. Because all of a sudden I had this epiphany and I didn't realize it until years later that at the end of those big pipes we were developing and at the end of that kind of little Internet connection at the end of that mobile and the voiceover IP was a real customer that had needs and was emotional and didn't make linear decisions like our technology was forcing them to do. And I think, you know, at that point we were building out the future of, of retail. So we were looking at, I mean, we, we looked at scanners that were probably bigger than trolleys now that you could walk around and, you know, scan things in. And that was, you know, over, oh, I'm going to give away my age. Over 20 years ago that we were looking at that. And then how do we connect the things on shelf in a digital world before we really had Internet Technology that was accessible to everyone. We were still dialing up, you know, everyone was pedaling in their, in their dial up room, in their big server rooms. So that's where I found my passion for all things customer and all things E commerce and all things retail. And then throughout my career, I think I've just come back to that. I came to Australia, I ran a mobile, one of the first mobile agencies here. So back then we were using WAP technology and you know, ringtones was the thing of the future and we were doing SMS campaigns, we did the first Big Brother and it was all very exciting but very campaign driven and very campaign led. So a lot of the stuff we did then, although exciting and interesting. Yes, Elise, ringtones.

I know.

Can you remember especially Crazy Frog. Do you remember Crazy Frog?

Yeah, it's like one billion plays on YouTube.

I had the next episode by Snoop Dogg and it was the best thing ever.

That's what I brought to Australia. It was like they like, they're still trying to get rid of me now.

So.

So we kind of, we got to test a lot of things out but I kept coming back to in the agency kind of model, a lot of it wasn't sustainable. So, so we weren't creating relationships with customers, we were doing one off campaigns. And yes, we got to do some amazing technology around kind of, you know, we did the first massive multiplayer kind of gaming technology that connected to a retail environment and all of that great stuff. But I lost that connection to customer for a while. So then when I had my first child, I went in search of work life balance, which I've realized is a mythical character that does not exist. I wish I'd realized that earlier. And I set up my own company. So I started advising and working with retailers on how to build out their platforms. And one of the projects I worked on, I think which probably changed my thinking about everything was again I worked on a brand called Woolworths and at the same time I was working with a fashion brand here called Glue Store. So for Glue Store we were building out their mobile application and for Woolworths we were looking at their loyalty platform and how that connected to ecommerce commerce. And I just had this moment where we had analyzed some data and back then we didn't have. I was looking for an off the shelf kind of machine learning platform and there wasn't one. So I found a data scientist in Russia and I asked him to analyze, you know, Amazon and ebay and scrape all of the data out of the app store and, and because it took so long and there was, there was. You know, I basically read through about 5,000 reviews myself and basically looked at them from. I did an analysis on sentiment, blah blah, blah, blah blah. And I came up with three things that were consistent through those 4,000 reviews, which was save me time, save me money, and you should know me. And those were the three things that kind of, I suppose then became really something I think about every day when I'm thinking about E commerce, probably less so about saving money because I think we will pay for convenience, especially in this Covid world. I think we're moving more and more towards that. But save me time because we all have a finite time on this planet and I think we're realizing that more and more. And then you should know me and actually giving me things based on the information you have about me rather than just serving me a billion results is where kind of shop you came from.

I have so many questions. So my first question is this. I love your history. First of all, I started in telecom too. I know voiceover ip, I know terminations and cli. I worked for a knock center for some time. I know that struggle and the best part of it was indeed the customer and the fact that it's not something so tangible that you can say one plus one equals two. It's always some noise and a gray area that excites you if you are cut for this. So I definitely relate to that. I'm very curious. I mean I have a lot of questions. I actually wrote some down and I see that they don't make sense anymore. So I will go back to them once we get there to that point because I want to talk about the retail versus online thing but question, question, question. So you have seen the beginning of this, you know, trend with E commerce and you have looked at Amazon and it's always this question where there's a comparison between Amazon, which is a marketplace and direct to consumer brands and it's something totally different. And I like the fact that you said that we pay for convenience and in your opinion, because Australia and New Zealand are one of the biggest markets for E commerce right now, from my point of view, from the sense of how ev of the markets are and how amazing and understanding they are, you know, you know, things like retention, customer lifetime value versus the US and Europe. And no, you know, I'm not sending any shots to my friends from the US right now. I just want to ask you, like when it comes to E commerce brands, do you think that they take into consideration the amount of convenience that a marketplace like Amazon offers to consumers and they reproduce that or they take from Amazon just the sales type of mentality.

I think they take the sales mentality definitely. I think they, they focus heavily on that. It's, it's another channel for them to sell through and it's a channel that you know, gives them brand awareness, gives them exposure. I think the convenience thing they are trying to replicate, replicate but from a cost perspective for a lot of them doesn't make sense. And I think that's the struggle, the push and pull struggle at the moment for retailers is that they know they need to offer faster, better, you know, more convenient service but they're just not equipped to do it. And they're spending a lot of money in their digital channels at the moment on things that aren't performing and aren't effective and wasting a lot of money doing that and not spending it on the convenience. We were having a conversation the other day and you know I work, we've been doing some stuff with Australia Post here and you know that, that ability. So if you, if you go back pre Covid, you know, the logistics piece of getting that last mile piece to you was kind of an add on to a retailer. Now it's seen as part of the experience. You don't disassociate the retailer from the man or the woman that delivers the parcel at the door and you sign off. They are all part of the service that you have paid for. And if the person that drops your parcel at the door drops it and it's broken or it's, that's, that's part of the experience. So retailers have to get closer to that convenience, the logistics piece and making sure that, and they know Amazon can provide that. So although they're investing in sales at the moment, I think they're becoming aware of the benefits that having that full end to end experience is, has on a, on a customer's perspective and their likelihood to re repurchase or to, to buy again from them.

Yeah, I agree. I think we associate everything with a brand that goes wrong after we order because somehow everyone has buyer remorse. So if something goes bad it's the brands, is the brand's, you know, fault. Yeah, that's, I like that point and I'm, I like it, it sounds, it's awesome but like that's something that happens for. I'm sorry Valentine. I know, no worries. I just, I'm just happy because she, what she said is like music to my very tired ears. But so from A retail perspective. We see right now that there's a very big interest in, you know, that comes from retailers to going online. But the problem is that a lot of people that sold for years offline and they have retail stores are clueless when it comes to the online world. And like, from what, from my experience is this, you either work with people that really get it and they have someone in their team, they really understand the value of online and direct to consumer. But then there are the other brands. And this is actually the question that I wrote down and I'm just going to make sure I put it right. So what do you think are the main issues? Because I know this is your background and this is your, you know, this is what you do. What are some main issues that retailers face when they are trying to go digital and they don't know exactly what this channel can provide to them? And also because I see in the audience a lot of people are digital companies. What are your best advices on how to approach the direct to consumer channel?

So so many issues, they don't know what they don't know. I think that's the, that's the hard thing. It's like. And they reach out to people to try and answer the questions. But invariably there's not a lot of people like you, Juliana, who have this wealth of knowledge, who know a cross channel, who know the kind of know how to get a product to market online and know all of the levers you've got to pull to make sure it is financially viable. So I think one of the issues they have is firstly understanding where to invest their money. So I think a lot of them historically have overpaid for digital implementation, say for websites. I know retailers that have spent 100 grand on a website and it's no better than the retailer down the road that spent three grand on a website. The experience isn't better, they're not converting higher, the cost per acquisition isn't lower. And so they invest all that money and then wonder why they don't come, you know, why the customers don't come. I think that's the first thing. I think the second thing is they don't invest enough time in their Google presence. So for me, Google's the shop front for them. And I fundamentally believe, especially for physical retail, they need to. And I always, I always kind of liken this to if you had a physical store and the windows were broken, there was no signage in the window, the merchandising was all kind of slap dash all over the place. It was like, you know, shelves were falling down, no one would come into your store. But yet we do that every day with our Google presence. You know, retailers don't look at their Google presence. They spend on average, two hours a week looking at their front store and redesigning it, putting signage up, cleaning it up, making it look pretty, because people are walking by. Reality is, people aren't walking by at the moment. So what they're doing is they're searching on Google and you've got this windows broken and you've got bad imagery and you've got your call to actions are like 10 years out of date. And there's just no kind of. There's no impetus, there's nothing drawing the customer into your store. So that's the first problem I see. The second problem I see is they pay a lot of SEO agencies a lot of money to do a lot of nothing. And I think that's a massive problem in the industry that we need to kind of really resolve. And I think that's because they're not educated on what SEO is. So one of the things I do on the courses I run is really look at and try and educate people on the importance of SEO and how they do it. Not that they need to do it themselves. Because if they're retailers and they got into the business because they love retailers, they don't want to be doing bloody SEO. It's boring as batshit. Sorry, any SEO experts? It's boring if you're not a retailer. Sorry, Juliana. But what they do need to do is to understand it so they can make informed decisions. So when someone comes back and I've got an example of a retailer working on last week, who's spending two and a half grand a month on SEO, it's not a great deal, but for a small business, that's a lot of money. So they're spending two and a half grand. The keywords they came back with and said, look, these are the keywords that we're ranking on. And I looked at them and I said, yeah, but there's no traffic to those keywords. So your agency are doing a great job on getting you ranking to the top of Google on something that no one is searching for. But they don't know this information. They just see that their agency is saying that they're ranking on Google for number one and they're like, hallelujah. Oh, but by the way, we're still not making any sales. So I think there's a massive education piece. Sorry, I waffled on Then I don't even know if I answered your question.

No, go ahead. I'm, I'm here taking notes and I like what you're saying. And I, I think you're like the second person that I met besides Valentin and myself, so the third person that speaks with so much passion about this. So I'm, I'm very happy right now. So go on, please.

As well.

Right, sorry.

And you're also fresh. It's 7am or something.

8Am8Am oh, I've done gym. I've got kids off. I've, you know, this is my prime time. Really.

I know, I know. That's what I do to, like, in the morning until 12 and then I'm done. So you said the storefront, the Google presence, the SEO, what's another one?

What else do they struggle with? I think, again, one of the biggest issues I see is they don't measure cost per acquisition. So I, I just don't. I can't compute that. I'm like, you're just going to throw money down a funnel and hope that it's pays for something or you get a customer back. So I, again, I had a conversation with, a really tough conversation with the retailer the other day where, where they said we spent, you know, I can't remember how, a few thousand dollars on some ads. And they got something like a hundred people to their website. And I said, hold on, let me just give me that few thousand. I'll ring all my friends and get them to jump on your website because that's how bloody stupid that is. And I don't, I don't mean to be rude, but it's just not. It just doesn't make business sense. Again, you would not spend money on doing your retail store up and then not track the people that are coming into your store and making sure that they're the right people and that you're making money off them and you're upselling them. So, again, I think not measuring that cost per customer, acquisition cost, and making sure what you're doing stacks up is another massive gap I see in the market at the moment.

And we agree with that a lot. Valentina, I know you have your thoughts around the acquisition cost. I don't want to take the scene and steal them from you.

What are you seeing? So what are your major, you know, what do you see as the gaps in, in people making that, Retailers making that transition?

I think they don't know how to calculate acquisition cost. I'm gonna let Valentin go more on that. I just Think for me, it's what baffles me. It's like they confuse acquisition cost with ad spend and that's it. This is where they stop.

Yeah, actually I saw you've got a spreadsheet that allows you to do the cost on your LinkedIn page. So, yeah, I will, don't mind. I will use that and send it out to people.

Feel free to. Yeah, so what I think it's, it's happening, Kelly, and I think you've, you've outlined it quite, quite completely is that unfortunately there is a shortage of people which are at the right place at the right time. And they are, I think the underlying reason is that they are freaking afraid to make a move and to do what's their mission and passion and calling to do. And that's why they end up doing the job they hate and they just tweak some sliders and they are just pushing some ad campaigns and they are doing these social media things so that they can pay the rent. So eventually I think the underlying cause is that if you're passionate about something, you will end up being quite good at it. But the problem is that companies are afraid to pay extra for talented people or to hire consultants. Companies are having top managers which are getting those freaking bonuses for nothing. And they are not using the right providers, the right vendors and they are too afraid to acknowledge the fact and to recognize the fact that they are outdated already by this game. And I've been in a lot of boardrooms with huge retailers with thousands of employees and I've been, let's say, drying my mouth, trying to let them know how stupid it is to think that digital transformation means you're not going to, you don't have to tweak your mindset first. And instead of looking at things like what our customers, how our customers behaving because pandemic, because competition, because whatever they think about what can we transform with technology in our company. And they are so completely disconnected. I mean, the customers have their thing and they have this immense power to switch from them to any other company and they have those freaking heritage of 20, 30, 60 years in the business business thinking that they are too big to fall and they will, I think in the future we will see some huge collapses in, in just a few years from now. I mean, this wave of direct to consumer, this wave of Amazon, let's say, dominating the the market and on the, on the other hand, the middleman being completely smashed by the likes of brands which are, for God's sake, Nike has just opened the path and now o' Neill is doing. There are a lot of brands which are having their communities and they don't need those superstores to sell their stuff. And I think that the reason that people, E commerce people are not handling customer acquisition, customer lifetime value, is that they are not at the right place. And they are not at the right place because, I don't know, there are few people which are passionate about what they do. And that's because we are afraid. I mean, the underlying cause, the root cause of everything is that we're too afraid to make the leap and to jump and to go out there and to take what is ours and we end up playing the piano, even though maybe we like the drums.

Yeah, totally agree. And I think that fear creates. I see it create two things, actually. One is paralysis. So they just don't do anything and they just try and tweak little things. And the other one is they try and do everything without getting the fundamentals right. And going back to what you said about customer, I just, I again, it blows my mind about how little retailers and actually I do a lot of work in property groups, so shopping centers and shopping malls, how little they understand and know about the customer. And again, one of the analogies I always use is that, you know, you've got. You've got. When someone walks into a store, you've got, you know, you've got your target market probably about 50, 60% of the time because they've seen your store, they know what, what it is, and they've walked in. So you kind of know. And at that point you'll convert about 20 to 30% of them. When someone comes online, we convert around about 2%, which shows us how wrong we are still getting online. Like how big that gap is and how much opportunity there is also to grow. But I think fundamentally that one of the biggest reasons for that is not only because we don't personalize the journey, but on top of that, we don't know who the customer is and we're not driving the right customers. So I'm always saying to retailers in Australia, for instance, that the average cost per acquisition is between 25 and $30, which is just not sustainable for a small retailer. It doesn't stack up, you know, when their average price point of their product is $60, it makes no sense whatsoever. So in which they have to get that down is by understanding the customer. And I'll sit in like, you know, I'll sit in boardrooms where I'll say to people, when was the last time you talked to one of your customers. And everyone looks at me like I've just sworn at them. They'll do the kind of. Wow. Well, we've got a team of researchers who do that. But actually have you had a conversation with them to understand what it is they want or need from your digital channels?

Yeah.

Not the team of research says the survey you did a year ago pre Covid says this and you're not implementing that in five years time. Brilliant. I'm just gonna get.

And I'm gonna leave on your point regarding the. Regarding the fact that we don't convert on our website as we convert on the retail stores. I have a nice story about a huge brand publicly traded from Southeast Asia. We were working with them. They had this amazing website, but you couldn't do anything on it. It was a luxury brand. They were all doing this huge investment. And I jumped in over there with my team and we needed to analyze what's going on with them. I mean, at some point they haven't sold anything on the website. And the first thing that we. We done was this freaking survey on the online. We asked a simple question. Have you found what you were looking for on our website? And it was like 91% of them said no. And they were surprised. Why people are not buying their purses and whatever.

That's so true, isn't it? We just don't ask the questions. We just. I think there's a. Let's just do what they did because what they did looks like it's working. But we can't see the. Under the bonnet of what they. The retailer next door actually did. We can't see what their acquisition strategy is, what their cost per click is. We can't see any of that. So we're just literally replicating stuff blind. You're right. Like we need. I think we need to ask more questions or.

And then I'm going to let Juliana ask the next. Next question or. There is this habit that the marketing people are doing completely disconnected with the product teams, with the customer experience. There are in their silos. Right. And they. At some point they realize we need to understand our customers and what they do. They end up in a meeting room. 612 people building the fictional buyer Persona. Is it Jane or is it Joan or is she 41 or is she 46? And. Yeah. And does she has kids? Yeah, I think she does. And that's it. That's their buyer Persona. That's how they know their customers.

Because if we have six, then we've created some more work for the next 12 months. No, you're totally right. So again, one of the things I do in the very first session on the course I run is I go, right, okay, what does your customer look like? And they will come up with their customer, and they're normally 18 to 65, male and female, you know, and there's 20 million of them. And I'm like, let's narrow that down a bit. Let's understand who's your best customer, who spends the most money, who's the one that recommends you in the most. And then let's go and back that up by data. Let's pull your Facebook stats and your Google Analytics and your, you know, and your Instagram and let's see what age group they are, who's interacting with you the most, who's then going through to purchase. And then there's a bit of an epiphany moment where they go, ah, there's actually data about this stuff. I don't need to actually make this stuff up. Which is. And then, you know, and then you start to see the cost per acquisition going down because you're targeting based on those attributes as opposed to just 20 million people in the ages of 16 and 85 or whatever it might be.

The guessing game, where some people call it. I get, I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn lately and some people are asking me about how we hypothesize the data. And I was like, we don't, we just, we just look at it. And I was like, no, but we use significant probability and we can find out what's going to happen. And I'm saying, like, why don't you talk to your customers? We don't need to talk to them. We're just looking at the data that happens with the purchase. We have Google Analytics, we have a team of data people. We all need to see what happens post purchase. And then you see that their year over year growth is down and they just feed that revenue in. But in the back it's, it's bad. Which, which, which, which takes me to my, my next question. So I am a big fan of retail dive. I think everyone is, because I think all of us are reading retail dive. So I think I read somewhere there that, and I wrote this down that the online sales in Australia currently are around 12 to 15% as of overall. Right. And they are gonna rise to 20 to 25% in the next 12 months. So in your opinion, what are some things that the industry should be focusing on? Right now, given this situation.

So I think some of the big gaps are education. So I think we need to educate retailers. I think there's been a lot of calls to just throw money at this. You know, here we've had things like jobkeepers, which has been great and helped the industry, and now there's a body here that's calling for money to go into retailers to help them digitally enable. I'm worried about that because I think that what will happen is they will spend their money in the wrong areas. So, again, going back to what we talked about earlier, one of the things I see with retailers is they'll say to me, I've spent this much on ads, and I'm like, okay, why are you driving traffic if it's not converting? Why are you spending all that money on ads if when they get to the experience, it's a bad one? The windows are broken, basically? So I think there's got to be some money spent on education, not necessarily on digital ads and things like that. I think it's actually lifting the industry. The second piece is around logistics, so. Yep, I'm with you totally. We just need to just get this. Get everyone on this, on this gravy train. The second one is the logistics piece. So that's a huge issue for Australia because of the scale and, you know, the way that the country is distributed in terms of, you know, rural, urban, residential. So that's something that really needs to be addressed because for a lot of retailers, that logistics piece doesn't stack up at the moment. And I think there are ways in which we can address that, but it means things like the property groups or the shopping centers actually investing in digital. And there's been a big fight here and a fight that I've been having for years with property groups in that they. They don't or didn't historically believe that digital was something that they should be invested in because their foot traffic, they're physical for me, they are customer and they are traffic, and that's what they do for their retailers. And whatever channel that comes in, they need to be part of the channel. So there's been a journey of education and they're getting there. And there's much more talk around investing in digital channels, but I think they can help solve that problem of convenience for customers. And actually, I think redefine a shopping center from a physical experience to a digital experience with a.

Sorry.

From a physical store to a digital experience and a physical experience, which are connected together. So I think they're probably two of the main things, the education piece and then working out the logistics.

We are so with you on the educational piece. We just got so tired of the know how problem in the market that we started an academy, an e commerce academy. And we believe in the education piece so much because there's no data problem. It's just a know how problem. It's just a mindset problem as Valentin calls it. And we're just like, I guess I'm happy, I'm really happy that we're talking to you because I was very tired but now that you're like, you have such a great energy that you woke me up which tries me up completely right now. And yeah, like I have beets juice that I have right now. I think it's extremely important right now the education. We're dealing with a lot of changes in the market but it's a very slow burn and the only way we can push that change forward is through this education is through helping people achieve that sort of mentality that stops, you know, stops them from blocking all the blessings that are around them. Because when your mind is so stuck on, you know, one thing, you are dealing with that status quo a lot. And the only way you can address the status quo and to fix the status quo is if you challenge it. But if you surround yourself with what I call an echo chamber, then you cannot grow. And you. And a lot of the issues that I've seen happening because I work with, we, we work with a lot of companies that are, you know, phygital is the problem that some founders have such a stock mindset that they hire people to do the job for E commerce, for direct to consumer but they don't allow them to do the job. They don't allow them to do, you know, all of the things that they could do and then they just disconsider a lot this, this channel. So yeah, just another dimension because I just feel like we jumped and we didn't just you know, had time to talk about shop you the last one. What is shopu and what are you doing with it?

So going back to that research piece I did around personalization. Sorry, around answering the question that the customers have got which is, you know me, why are you. I use that information to give me a better experience and I think we, we have a real issue with that in, in, in retail in that if I go to Google now and I search for a black dress, I'm going to get something like 1.27 billion results. None of them are targeted at me. None of them are for my body shape. None of them are, you know, know who I am. But Google's got all this data on me, so actually it does know who I am, it knows what my children are, who my children are, it knows what age I have, but yet it gives me 1.2 billion irrelevant results. So on that concept we launched about four or five years ago, we launched an app which was a personalization app. And essentially what happens is it was, it was fashion. Essentially what happens is you put in things like your body shape, you put in things like your, you know, your preferences around color and things like that, which bits of your body you hate, which bits you love and then you get recommendations and your favorite brands. Because actually the algorithm we built when we were doing the research with the customer, we realized that brand was actually one of the most important decision makers. So anyway, we built out an app, we went direct to consumer and we tested a lot of things and we saw huge growth really, really quickly and then quite quickly realized that direct to consumer, that is actually really hard. And we needed investment to scale. So at the same time we started talking to the property groups and being that I'd worked in property for a long time, the property groups wanted to look at whether they could use something like that in their shopping centres. Fast forward to Covid and shopping centres shut down and they had no technology in the shopping centres to be able to connect retailers to, to the customer. So we use the shop you engine to basically do that. So we provided a click and collect service in one of the shopping centers in Australia and we also built out a personalization connection. So essentially what virtual mall is, is it connects straight into the shopping center, you go into the virtual mall. So let's say what's your local shopping mall?

San Plaza. Mine is called San Plaza. Valentino is probably because he's living in. I'm in the different region. Yeah, and I'm in the south.

So basically you jump onto the Sound Plaza website and you have an opportunity to either browse or personalize your journey. So when you go into personalize, you pick your brands, you pick things like you might pick, you know that you like health and beauty, you like wellness, you might pick that you know things about your, you can go on a style journey and answer questions around that. Once you've done that, you then go into your own personal shopping center and it's filled with things that are relative to you. So if you search for a red dress for a party, it knows your age, it knows what your body shape is. And it knows what type of red dress you might like based on the brands that you've chosen. If you search a gift, for instance, it knows you know. Or you might search for electronics, it will give you information based on your data. So we've built an algorithm of you, essentially. And that's kind of. That's my philosophy. Like, the algorithm needs to be based on you. Not on Facebook, Facebook, not on Google, not on. It needs to be based on what your attributes are. So in the virtual shopping mall, you can then talk to concierge and ask questions. You can connect with a personal stylist via video. You can. You can basically put in your events. So if you've got a wedding coming up or you've got a business meeting coming up, you can put that in and then recommendations will be made on that. So what we do is we ingest tags into the product using a variety of different technology. And then. So when you then search for a product, we use natural language search. And when you search for a product, you're then given the product that is most relevant to your algorithm, not what we're trying to sell you. That's it.

You'Re speaking about. Like, it's nothing. That's it. Like, I think it's amazing we don't have that here in our region. I mean, I think there were some attempts to it right now what the most have is just. I know, I just. They just showcase the shops and whatever. The closest thing we got to that is that we have this app called Glovo, which is like Postmates, I think, in the UK or the US or I don't know what's in Australia, but it's mostly the same stuff. So you can go. And they have this mall option and you can see a few shops or Ikea or whatever, and you can. It's. It doesn't use an algorithm, unfortunately. There's no personality. They just show you what are all the. Right now it's dead. Probably my. The global, because it's late. But basically you can see all the products that they have in the. In the mall. But to be honest, there's no personalization. So unfortunately you have to go through the same. Sorry, Valentin. You have to go through this. Through the same stuff all over. There you go. So you have a global mall. There you go.

Yeah.

And you go through it. And let's say, whatever, you know, I have a baby, so I'm just gonna look at baby clothes. So instead of, you know, showing what I need and, you know, what is the Type of stuff that I like. They just show me the same stuff. So it's no personalization. So I guess it's a big friction that every time you have to go and look for the same stuff that you, let's say you purchased or you want to purchase. So I see the value of having, you know, everything about you in a spot and then allowing, you know, that I'll go to work for you and not based on other people's preferences. I really think that's really cool. And sorry, Valentin, again, I'm just.

Kelly. We have a question from Nelson and the question is how to convince especially the big corporations that they need to invest in education.

I think it's a. It's a painful and slow journey that I have been on for some time now. And I think you just, I think if I, if I think to some of the property groups, especially where you've got. You've got some big egos in the room and you've also got. This is the way we've always done it. So there's always a fear around kind of change. I think it's really, you know, taking them back to the basics and then connecting them to what the customer needs and wants. So for me, I show many examples of what's going on around the world and innovation pieces, but then I bring them back to. But this is what we actually need to implement. There's some great stuff going on around the world and this is where the world is moving. One of the stats I constantly use is something you picked up on earlier on Juliana, which is the move to online is happening so fast. And if you look at Ray Kowitz, who is that futurist technologist, he talks about this kind of acceleration of change and the fact that what we are seeing now is nothing compared to what we're going to see in two to three years time. Like we're scratching the surface. And I think putting that fear in people almost that, that actually, you know, I've had. I've had property groups who will say to me, oh, look, you know, we're not, we're not investing in online. And I would say, but we make. We're at 15 now. And then they'll say, yeah, we won't get to 25 to 30%. And I say, but one of the biggest retailers here is a retailer called Shaver Shop. They're already at 30%. So they're a physical store, Traditionally physical. They've launched an online store and 30% of their sales now come from online. So we are moving that way. And the big, the bigger retailers have moved there quicker and now we've got to educate the smaller retailers. And it's not that I think physical is always going to be important. We're humans, we need connection. And I think, you know, having that human interaction and being able to touch and feel products and connect with things is never going away. But it's just how do we make the digital journey more seamless to make it easier for people to connect and have an experience in the physical world? Because we're only going to go there if there's an experience in the future.

Yeah, totally.

Did I answer?

Sorry?

Or did I just ramble?

No, no, no, you're. You're right. What I wanted to, to, to add to, to, to Nelson is that if they don't learn, I mean, if the big corporations will not learn, they will eventually go outside of the arena and pretty much that. That's it. If it's like we were in school, right? If you don't learn, you will repeat the class or you will be expelled. And that's it. That's what's going on with these retailers. And if we remember Thomas Cook from the travel industry, pre pandemic, right? So they haven't been hit by the pandemic to go out of the scene. It was before the pandemic. And that, that was because their customer centricity was just a notion that they were putting in the charts or something like that. But if you look@booking.com or the Google Trends, people were actually not buying travel packages and trips and whatever by going to their freaking stores. And that's it. And Blockbuster and there are a lot of stories about it. And in order to offer, of course, if you are, let's say fighting within, if you are an innovator in a big corporation, in a big company, you should surround. I think what you should be doing is you should go all the way up and see if the mentality of the leader of that company deserves you over there. Maybe it doesn't. And there's no use to live your life like Don Quixote because the time is limited. You have no return policy on your time. Nobody's returning your, your wasted time and that's it. You, you should pay attention to how you, you invest your most precious asset, which is your time.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I love your analogies of donkeys.

It's brilliant.

Brilliant. I'm not working with donkeys anymore. I've decided that's it. No. And it's, it's you're right. It's about making sure the person at the top is actually invested in this and they have a real impetus for change as opposed to just a lip service. We need to transform the organization and then indoctrinating them as well. I think one of the issues we've got at the moment is go back to what you said, Juliana, around that. And I talk about a lot about kind of diverse, and I don't just mean diversity in, you know, diversity in thinking. And that can be, you know, culture, color, gender, it doesn't really matter. It's just diversity in thinking. And I think in our bubbles of COVID I think what it's actually done is diversity of thinking. So you're sat around the table with people who think, sound and behave like you and are going to echo and tell you exactly, exactly the same thing that they told you six months ago. Yeah. And with that, with that restrictive thinking, we're never going to move forward. So for me, one of the first things I kind of try and introduce when I'm talking to big corporates is that you need diverse thinking around you. You need more. And I try and pull in retailers I know from all different areas, and I try and pull in customers. And you need more people to tell you their story so that you can put your story together based on that.

Yeah, and I agree with it. I think right now we are just in a very shallow face of understanding diversity in its own meaning, where we, everyone, it's all these corporations are doing everything to show sensibility to the cause without actually hiring people or giving chances to people from all the, you know, diverse areas possible. So everyone is trying to show sensibility, but without paying. So it's the biggest bullshit possible.

Yeah, I think it's not about paying, Juliana. At the end of the day, it's not about they don't want to pay. They simply don't know what they should be doing. I mean, imagine that you don't know. You suddenly end up trying to speak Chinese and that's it. And it's hard. I mean, the learning curve is so hard because imagine if you've been productive, centric for the last 50 years and your company is, let's say, that's. That's the way they are going. I mean, they. They simply have suppliers, they put things on the shelf and they expect magically for those things to go out, and that's it. And they've been playing this game and they are, in order to be in a position over there, to really radically move the Destiny of such a big company. You should be in your, I don't know, 50s. I mean it's not that easy to be in your 30s or in your 40s to, to be at such a level. And usually you're, you are in your 50s or even 60s and you need to let's say think about your retirement and you don't want to place these high bets on something and at the end of the day you, you end up having your company in some, some mediocrity and that's it. And people are attracted by the ones that are like them. I mean that's the Newton's law of attraction at the end.

Yes. And you know what?

It's the reason I developed Shop you and I think back to it is because E Commerce is built for one person. It's built for the same person. So any E Commerce store you go to gives you exactly the same experience as everyone else in the world. And we are not everyone else in the world. We're all very unique individual. So the reason I developed Shopu was so that you could have a store for people like you or people like me that it didn't have to be this one linear journey. It took into account weather, emotional state, you know, whether I have kids or don't have kids, whether I love pets or don't love pets. You know, it takes all of that information into, into account and then gives me what is right for me as opposed to what is right for you. So yeah, anyway, I love that.

Kelly, I wanted to ask you something. So if you look back in your whole experience you've, you've been working with more than 100 retailers. What's your favorite experience? What was the, the, the, the, the best outcome? Not in the sense of the, the, the biggest money maker but, but the thing that you've influenced and you can say good girl, good job.

Oh wow, it sounds really big headed but there's so many. So I think some great brands I've worked with. One of my favorite brands I've worked with here in Australia is a brand called Respects who do sunglasses and when in they had some of the similar problems that we talked about earlier and they're an amazing brand. So just being able to kind of educate them on all things digital and get them because the brand and the product was second to none. I think that was, that was. And to see their cost for acquisition going down, to see their traffic going up and to see their average order value going up was, was amazing. Even just overnight like some little tweaks that we made that changed that overnight. That's one of them for me at the moment. Working with the really small retailers. I love when they will send me a WhatsApp message saying I just sold my first product through a chatbot and I'm like, boom. And the empowerment and. Or I just wrote my first blog that had call to actions that I SEO'd the hell out of and I'm getting traffic to it or I'm number, you know, five in Google for it. It when people search, I'm like that, that stuff fills my soul. You know, I just. That kind of piece of. I feel empowered to make decisions now. I feel empowered to make the right decisions in digital is the stuff that, that gets me. Anyway, we've gone through an hour already.

We have one more question. I have, I had so many questions. Just that. But this went way better than my question. My questions were boring. So I have one more question because it's something that it's unrelated to business or whatever. So I met you because I was frustrated that I don't know that many women in E commerce, if you remember. And Jason Greenwood somehow introduced me to you. So you are a female founder in a male dominated industry. And I know a lot of powerful women like me as well fight a lot with the imposter syndrome. Is that something that you are battling with right now or have you battled with in the past? And how did you shut that, that, that feeling out? So I don't say no more, no more, no more. Yeah, yeah.

And you know, it is hard. It's so hard. I mean, I've been in meetings where people have said, can you bring your technology guy in? You know, just blatantly. So many, so many situations I could recall where I am just not respected as someone in technology because I am female or for whatever reason it might be. So yes, you do. I do feel imposter syndrome. And even this morning I was chatting, I was at the gym and I was chatting away and I said, I've got to get on this, on this thing this morning. I don't know what I'm going to talk about. I said, I just don't. You know, you, you always. It's always there. I think a couple of things that have happened for me recently that have kind of changed that a little bit is Covid. I think all of a sudden people are listening, you know, as opposed to before where I was kind of brought into the room and they were like, yeah, no, that's great, that's great. Thanks. Thanks for Coming. But now it's like, actually, we need to do this. So I think the world has changed, which has made me feel a little bit more empowered. And actually I maybe do sometimes know what I'm talking about, as opposed to just making it up. I think just being around people that. That make you feel good. I did a. It sounds awful. Not cold. But I took out the people that were constantly challenging me for the sake of challenge. Challenge is great, but when they're pulling you down as opposed to trying to give you really constructive feedback on how you build and grow, I think those people are not of value to your life, you know, And I think you've got to surround yourself with people like minded people like you guys, where you know that you're on a mission, you know what you're doing, what you're passionate about. You know, we're always learning and none of us have got the answer of the future, you know, but we've got probably a lot more answers than most people out there at the moment. And I think it's just reiterating that message is kind of getting me through that imposter syndrome. But I still have it all the time.

I relate and I think, yeah, eliminating a lot of toxicity from your life. It's a lot. And it's not only people. It's just things that you gather. And I. I'm in the same spot right now. That's why I wanted to get your. Your opinion, because you have more experience than me. So this was a personal question for me. I'm gonna. You should invoice me for the psychotherapy. But thank you so much, Kelly, for being here today. I think this. This was by far one of the coolest episodes. You revived me. I thought I was dead. I'm not. I'm okay. I'm actually ready right now, so I'm.

In a good spot you guys are doing. And I would love to just keep connected and, you know, pick your brains. And I think there's a global piece that we could have more impact with more people if we did it together. So I would love.

Trust me. I'm gonna count your word on that. And I will be in your inbox. You already got my wheels running, so. Thank you for being here today. Thank you, everyone for watching. Thank you, Nelson, for the question and for being here for the second time in my podcast. Thank you. And I will see you. Yeah, Valentin. Sorry, I was.

I just wanted to ask you, Kelly, if you can share with our audience where they can reach out to you.

Yes. Sorry.

So LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably one of my main channels. Shop you website. Kelly Slesser website. I've got too many channels going on and I'm on Instagram as the retail edge as well. So yeah, any of those channels, but LinkedIn is probably my main one.

Excellent. So Kelly, it was amazing having you today. You, you've been great. I mean you've revived us. We were in, let's say at the end of our, of our day, but you've been amazing and fast. Thanks a lot for being today with us and hopefully we will do more stuff together in our endeavor to help companies and retailers and e commerce people focusing on the customer lifetime value. We have this customer value optimization academy and we'd love to have you as one of our instructors as well. We have already I think 11 on the pipeline, so I think the world needs more people like you. I think you're truly authentic and full of energy and you're straightforward and it's been a great episode and thanks a lot for being today with us.

Thanks guys. I really appreciate it. It's so lovely to meet you. Thanks for your time.

Thank you so much and see you guys next week. Week. This podcast was brought to you by Vitex. Vitex is the first and only fully integrated e commerce marketplace and OMS solution that offers fastest time to revenue and no upgrades ever. So go ahead, check them out. Vtex.com.