S1E7 – SPECIAL: ShopTalk 2022 Recap – Retail’s Great Reunion

Welcome to Season 1, Episode 7, a special episode of The Retail Razor Show!

For episode 7 we’ve changed things up a bit and Ricardo and Casey bring you a recap of the ShopTalk 2022 event in Las Vegas, which has come to be known as Retail’s Great Reunion! Sure, you’ve probably heard plenty of recap shows on this year’s ShopTalk, but this show doesn’t just tell you “what” happened, we also explain “why” it matters and what that means for retail’s future.

I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks!

Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, we’ll help you cut through the clutter!

And big news! Our podcast is holding strong on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list! We’re sitting strong at #21, so please do give us a 5-star review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts if you like the show! With your help, we’ll be on our way to a Top 10 spot! 

Check it out here: https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar

Co-host → Casey Golden,

Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey

Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey

Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey

TRANSCRIPT

S1E7 ShopTalk 2022 Recap - Retail's Great Reunion

[00:00:00] Show Introduction

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: hello Retail Razor show listeners! Welcome to a special season one bonus episode. Our 2 Part Shop Talk 2022 recap episode. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar a RETHINK Retail, top retail influencer and lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft. 

[00:00:38] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden CEO of Luxlock obsessed with the relationship between a brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion side of the business and moved over to supply chain technology slaying Frankenstacks!

[00:00:53] Ricardo Belmar: So once again, we have changed things up a bit and interrupted our regularly scheduled episode to bring you our thoughts on what we saw, what we learned and what surprised us about last week's shop talk event in Las Vegas. 

[00:01:06] Casey Golden: Everyone is reinvigorated to be working in retail. So let's head to the floor.

[00:01:11] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Let's give a listen to part one, which we recorded live about a day and a half into the show. 

[00:01:22] Live from ShopTalk, Part 1

[00:01:22] Ricardo Belmar: Hey everybody welcome to retail razor show live from Shoptalk 2022. This is a special live version on Callin. I'm here with my cohost Casey Golden. 

[00:01:32] Casey Golden: Hello everyone. 

[00:01:35] Ricardo Belmar: And it is a pleasure to be coming to you live from the show. This is a new thing for us on the Retail Razor Show. Isn't it? Casey. 

[00:01:42] Casey Golden: It is. And it's a new thing for the record attendance increase at shop talk as well. It's standing room only at retail's biggest reunion. 

[00:01:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I've heard everybody calling it that- retail's biggest reunion. I think the, numbers I've heard of, up to 10,000 people maybe. 

[00:01:58] It's pretty incredible. 

[00:02:00] Casey Golden: It's pretty incredible. I mean, I think we actually got New York together again.

[00:02:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:02:08] It's like I can't go down a hallway. . Every time I take 10 steps down the hallway and suddenly there's somebody looking back at me thinking, Hey wait, do we know each other? We haven't met in the last two years, but it feels like we know each other, 

[00:02:19] Casey Golden: you know, I have to say , I'm really glad that, we got our LinkedIn pictures that we're just trying to place, but then when everyone started switching their, their Twitter photos to NFTs, I'm like, I don't remember what you look like. 

[00:02:31] Ricardo Belmar: what do you look like? You don't look at all like your NFT on Twitter. 

[00:02:35] Casey Golden: No, not at all. I've been like glancing at badges, but - you know, I, this is a first for me. This is my first shop talk.

[00:02:41] So I guess I'm starting at the top here

[00:02:44] it's, it's really great. So many brands, so many people everybody just really pulling. It's going to be a big year this year. Like everyone's excited. 

[00:02:55] Ricardo Belmar: There's a huge amount of energy here. It's like everybody has been dying to get back together. See everybody they haven't seen for two years in this industry.

[00:03:03] And it shows, it shows that they're, I don't think there's been another show yet for retail. That's been able to do that. 

[00:03:09] Casey Golden: No, I mean, we started off in day one. The vibe was electric. We literally with electric bands and presentations, and we've got Flo Rida here, which is exciting. 

[00:03:22] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:03:22] Casey Golden: I know Fabric's doing a big party tonight.

[00:03:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. There's that too. There's that too, lots of I think every night there's so many things you can't keep track of how many different activities there are? 

[00:03:31] Casey Golden: No, I mean, I'm, I'm pretty impressed so far. 

[00:03:34] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So let's talk about some of the sessions so far. I'm going to call it day one. Maybe we should call it day one and a half. It was like a half day yesterday, I guess. 

[00:03:42] Casey Golden: Unknowingly. It was a half day. I arrived quite early. 

[00:03:47] Ricardo Belmar: I arrived late. So I missed part of yesterday. That was kind of unfortunate. 

[00:03:51] Casey Golden: You missed a lot of waiting.

[00:03:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. How many people did you say there were two, 

[00:03:57] Casey Golden: a couple of breakfasts. A couple of lunches. It's like, oh my bad. 

[00:04:01] Ricardo Belmar: Right? Exactly. 

[00:04:02] Casey Golden: It starts in what time? 

[00:04:05] Ricardo Belmar: So I did, I did manage to hit a couple of the keynote sessions yesterday. There was some good, good experiences given out by Kath McLay, the CEO at Sam's Club on their pandemic experience and how they started changing how they think about customers.

[00:04:20] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, that, that was like, it was nice to see the opening with just like three amazing women opening up that stage for conversation.

[00:04:27] I spent my, my morning over at the shark reef, 

[00:04:32] Ricardo Belmar: of course. 

[00:04:32] Casey Golden: Yeah. Lot of great startups, you know, it was just, it's so nice to actually just be around a pitch competition where everybody's a retail tech startup. 

[00:04:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. 

[00:04:42] Casey Golden: It's so exciting. There's so much going on. There's so much innovation happening and.

[00:04:48] All of the pitches were really well. 

[00:04:49] Ricardo Belmar: Very cool. And then I think just finishing now, by the time we're recording, I think there was a whole series of metaverse related keynotes going on, right? 

[00:04:59] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I think maybe everybody will know what an NFT is and what the metaverse might do by the end, by what?

[00:05:06] Tomorrow by the end of the week. 

[00:05:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:05:07] Casey Golden: I think brands and techies might just have been able to cross the chasm here. 

[00:05:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, definitely. 

[00:05:13] Casey Golden: The Superbowl, ahh QR code was not lost. He's alive and well here. 

[00:05:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. Yeah.

[00:05:22] Casey Golden: So some of the tracks we've got, developing tomorrow's retail, innovating growth opportunities, global shopping experiences, love hearing that global shopping experience. And the shark reef startup pitch. So, I mean, these are the way that they're kind of running the day based off the theme and then going down with new speakers, I think it's really great.

[00:05:42] Just being able to really dive into these themes because all the brands seem to be aligned on key initiatives. 

[00:05:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:05:49] Casey Golden: You know, 

[00:05:49] Ricardo Belmar: everybody seems really focused. 

[00:05:50] Casey Golden: It's really focused. And. Just all about the technologies and customer experience, and everybody's really just ready to go outside of their box and learn.

[00:06:01] I think that's the biggest thing is so many meetings about, tell me about what you do, how do you want 

[00:06:07] to do it? Right. It's a, 

[00:06:10] Ricardo Belmar: everybody's genuinely interested and there's a lot of focus. Everybody wants to learn more. And everyone's just so excited to see each other. It's just, 

[00:06:19] I know that's right. That's right.

[00:06:21] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's a good, if you're at this show, then you're coming away thinking it's a good time to be in retail tech

[00:06:30] Casey Golden: by golly. It took long enough Katia Walsh from Levi's they had a great talk yesterday. On attracting and developing and retaining top digital talent. Where's Ron, when you need him. 

[00:06:40] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Shout out to Ron. 

[00:06:42] Casey Golden: Yeah. There was a lot of people that were coming out of that just feeling really invigorated and excited.

[00:06:47] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. What else, what other cool sessions have you been to so far?

[00:06:49] Casey Golden: You know what I've gotten pulled out of a lot of sessions for meetings. Today is really gonna be focused on sessions and tomorrow the first day I was just so excited to leave my apartment. 

[00:07:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I've been hearing that a lot from everybody, everyone I run into. It's so good to be away. 

[00:07:06] Casey Golden: Yeah. I wanted to meet as many people as I could.

[00:07:09] I made so many new friends on Twitter over the last two years from clubhouse where these conversations started. Yeah. I've got a whole crew of like new BFFs 

[00:07:22] Ricardo Belmar: and they're all here. 

[00:07:23] Everybody's here. That's amazing. 

[00:07:24] Casey Golden: Being able to spend time to actually talk to people and socialize rather than I got 30 minutes for zoom.

[00:07:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:07:35] Casey Golden: There's nothing like real life. 

[00:07:37] Ricardo Belmar: And it's like standing and it's like standing room only. Like you want to meet with someone around here. There's no space. So you gotta find like where where's the empty space that you can kind of huddle around to meet with whoever you want to meet. Yeah. In the next minute.

[00:07:49] Casey Golden: Yes. 

[00:07:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:07:50] Casey Golden: It's like, I'll meet you in the corner of here and there. We'll just sit on the floor. It's good. 

[00:07:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then I got to say about half the people that I've met with, every conversation starts with , I feel like I don't remember how to do a conference any more and , I'm so lost.

[00:08:07] I had a dozen people say to me, I forgot how far away everything is in Las Vegas. You think it's right across the street and that's not a five minute walk. I was like, oh, we want to meet in which room? In the convention center. Oh, that's just down the hall, except that the hall is, you know, a thousand feet long.

[00:08:22] Casey Golden: Yeah. oh, I'll be right there. And it's like 10, 15 minutes. It's my bad. 

[00:08:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, exactly. So let's see 

[00:08:28] Casey Golden: oxygen this way.

[00:08:33] Ricardo Belmar: Let's see what other, what other trends I'm hearing people talk about sustainability again, I'm hearing more and more talk on retail media, which was one of our predictions for the year, understand there's that there was Instacart session. They talked a lot about retail media advertising on their platform, and that makes sense. You'd expect that 

[00:08:50] Casey Golden: Yeah, getting much more targeted. A lot of people want to diversify from the Facebook, Instagram ad models and find some new channels to really reach their customers and build on a lot is getting lost in those customer acquisition costs and really being able to actually acquire those customers.

[00:09:08] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:09:09] Casey Golden: Everybody's on the same platform. So people are getting really creative. Super creative.

[00:09:13] I am super impressed too, to see there's a lot of Silicon valley here. 

[00:09:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:09:18] Casey Golden: I was, I was blown away. I'm walking by, I'm like, wait, what Andresseen Horiwitz just took the whole sec. Okay. They're there on almost every panel. There's somebody almost on every panel from Silicon valley, which is, we're just pretty easily.

[00:09:34] That means, you know, everybody knows that this is going to be the next 24 months in retail is going to be a big deal. Yeah. And we'll get to see how all of this kind of shakes out what the customers think right in what, 2024.

[00:09:51] So this is all for 2025 right now. It's all for 2025.

[00:09:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then as usual for a shoptalk, right. A lot of big brands on stage , besides Sam's club and the opening, I think there was Macy's and Target today. A lot of big names talking about what their vision of the future of commerce. I haven't walked the show floor yet 

[00:10:11] Casey Golden: across the gamut. I mean, going from Ralph Lauren to Albertsons. 

[00:10:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And everything in between.

[00:10:16] And if there's one phrase that almost every single session repeats, it has to be meeting our customer where they are being able to let them transact any way they want anywhere they want that. That's, there's like one theme that's hitting every single session.

[00:10:31] Everybody's got 

[00:10:31] that talk, track that enablement. 

[00:10:34] Casey Golden: A lot more about enablement rather than necessarily building the solution. It's all about how you connect with other solutions. 

[00:10:39] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Right. 

[00:10:40] Casey Golden: So a lot of API builds here coming up, 

[00:10:43] and just a really big rise and a headless. I mean, you can't really walk through here with, without the entire, all the walls talking about headless commerce, but I think there's going to be a lot of interesting changes here going in with.

[00:10:55] Some, some replatforming to be able to have that flexibility to connect to all of these new emerging technologies.

[00:11:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yep, absolutely. That is a big, big theme. And I've just even, yeah, I can looking forward to walking through the show floor and checking out all of these different companies that are doing just that if I gauge, just by what I see, all the photos I see from the show floor being posted on social. It's like every other one is something related to headless commerce.

[00:11:22] Casey Golden: I mean Fabric's doing some killer job right now. Yeah. Commerce tools. It's getting really interesting. I mean, I know a lot of brands right now that have a lot of headless commerce projects in the works which is just opens up so much flexibility for being able to deploy new innovation. 

[00:11:39] Getting off of some of these. Proprietary systems.

[00:11:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then I'll have to come back to metaverse again, because there's so many sessions today on that. I have a feeling that as soon as we leave this recording, all we're going to hear people talking about in the hallways is which brand did what? In a metaverse experiment so far this year.

[00:11:56] Casey Golden: Yeah. There you either see a smile or like some eyes rolling, 

[00:11:59] Ricardo Belmar: right? Yeah. It's like one extreme or the other, right? There's no one between, everybody's either on the one extreme of, I gotta try more. Or are there on the other side and rolling their eyes, thinking, why are you even doing that? What, where do you hope to get from that?

[00:12:11] How are you making money from that? 

[00:12:13] Casey Golden: But this is where we find the utility, right. Is being able to get to experiment. 

[00:12:17] Ricardo Belmar: It's just like when we did our predictions episode, right? If they're not experimenting, you're not learning. And if you're not learning, you're not going to get anywhere. 

[00:12:24] Casey Golden: If you're not experimenting, the learning process is not fun. 

[00:12:29] it's a lot of complicated reading. You just learn as you go and experiment. It's much more fun to learn, by trying and just, you know, go buy an NFT. Go get some Oculus goggles, join discord, 

[00:12:42] Ricardo Belmar: sign on to Roblox. 

[00:12:44] Casey Golden: Right. But it is, it's definitely the theme. I just, I just hope that it doesn't turn. You're just this marketing puff. Right. You know, where we do things everybody's talking about it. But then at the end of the day, nobody executes against the plan

[00:12:58] Ricardo Belmar: and it all falls apart.

[00:12:59] Casey Golden: And we talked about it, but nobody did anything. So I'm really hoping that this really fuels that conversation into the future and really looking at all the priorities that these companies have. Cause I mean, I think.

[00:13:12] We're coming into the beginning of April and a lot of projects have already been tested out for the entire rest of the year.

[00:13:19] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. 

[00:13:20] Casey Golden: So if you're trying to get into a company to implement technology, you're trying to get a new piece of software approved. A lot's already been allocated.

[00:13:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:13:30] Casey Golden: A lot's already been allocated. So if anything, if there's a big takeaway here, hopefully there's some slush funds that are created just for innovation on the fly because everything's changing so fast. 

[00:13:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right. That's right. The key is to keep experimenting and trying it. The other thing that I've noticed too, more people talking about that this wasn't true.

[00:13:51] Not, not even just a few years ago is the idea of sharing the knowledge and collaborating with others that you might've thought, oh, I don't want anybody to know what I'm doing because it's my competitive advantage, to a shift where, well, that's not your competitive advantage, right? The fact that you're thinking about doing these things and experimenting, that's not your advantage, your advantage is going to come when you actually get it done and how you do it and how well you execute it.

[00:14:14] That's going to give you your advantage. But if somebody else learns along the way, it's one of those rising tides lift all boats, right? So if everybody in the industry starts doing it correctly in a meaningful way, then more and more consumers get interested in this. And then everybody wins. 

[00:14:28] Casey Golden: But this is one of those things,

[00:14:29] Ricardo Belmar: it's not a zero sum game.

[00:14:30] Casey Golden: No, this is the, the more, the more people that kind of come together and start doing the same thing, the stronger the whole entire initiative is going to be rather than keeping things so tight, 

[00:14:40] Ricardo Belmar: right, . Yeah. . I think that that's something we have, I don't remember seeing in past shows, pre pandemic. So I'm wondering if 

[00:14:47] Casey Golden: there's not even in a culture period. 

[00:14:50] Ricardo Belmar: No, it wasn't. So I think that's a new takeaway. That's coming from this. And I kind of feel like a lot of it has to do with everybody. You know, everyone in this industry has been around in so many ways, people know people , which sounds silly to say, but it's so true.

[00:15:04] Right. That's why everybody, you see this happening right. In every hallway at the show, people just running into each other. I haven't seen you in two years. And I think that's just caused everybody to want to share. 

[00:15:13] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, what have you been up to?

[00:15:15] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly, exactly. 

[00:15:16] Casey Golden: Being able to take those conversations into just not what the agenda was for a call. Yeah. You know, and just kind of speak freely and things that you're excited about or things that you've been learning about or what you've been doing on the side, a lot of the stuff , we've had a lot of extra time to pick up new hobbies and new interest in a lot of that.

[00:15:32] Right. I don't know any retail person that really has a life outside of retail, you know, what is it? Eat, sleep. Like we breathe retail. The drift, the brand right. Brand DNA. Right. So I mean, there's just so much that there's been so many new books that have been written during the pandemic.

[00:15:51] There's been so many perspectives that have been shared. Yeah. And just kind of going down rabbit holes. So I'm super excited for the rest of the week on this. I think we'll probably have some good takeaway notes to kind of add on here. 

[00:16:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have to do a followup show on how the rest of shop talk went after this one, 

[00:16:10] Casey Golden: because the big thing are we coming back?

[00:16:12] Well, I know you are, but this is a show that I would not have normally have come to. Yeah. I wasn't planning at all. I bought a ticket on Thursday and flew out Saturday because there's just so many people that are going to 

[00:16:26] be here. No. I'm like the opportunity. 

[00:16:29] Right. All right. Let's go check out 

[00:16:31] this Shoptalk.

[00:16:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well that was my first one too. It was, but I, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it definitely, definitely is well worth the vibe. 

[00:16:39] Casey Golden: Yeah. They really brought the energy here knowing that it was going to be every, a lot of people's first time back out and like, yeah, there's some good entertainment.

[00:16:49] There's some good design. They put a lot of effort into keeping the energy level high, especially in such a big space. 

[00:16:55] Ricardo Belmar: That's a good point. That's a good point. Although I think the one, if my one suggested tip for them. So any of the, anybody listening from the event, because I'm sure they're all listening to every single word we're saying, but my big tip is more meeting spaces for just impromptu, nice little seating areas.

[00:17:11] You're just for when you have those moments. When you run into somebody in the hallway, you don't have to just stand around in the middle of the floor and chatting. You don't have some place to sit somewhere. I mean, come on. 

[00:17:20] Casey Golden: Yeah, because it has, okay, let's meet all the way on the other side.

[00:17:25] Ricardo Belmar: It takes 10 minutes to walk down. It takes time. 

[00:17:27] Casey Golden: We'll meet there in a half an hour. Because it is that I forgot like a guy here and I was just like, oh yeah, this is like bigger than a New York avenue. A Las Vegas block is bigger than a New York avenue.

[00:17:41] So what is on your schedule for the rest of today? 

[00:17:44] Ricardo Belmar: I had to try to check out some, I got some sessions I'm gonna try to check out. I've got fun things going on, doing some other interesting video recordings with some other, other fellow friends haven't seen in two years. So that'll be cool.

[00:17:58] And how we'll see, we'll see what comes from that. I'm looking forward to Sessions. Cause there are a lot of different topics once we get past the the metaverse that's going on now. There's some things on just on like data. There, there is interesting to see if there's, few sessions on future of work and how frontline worker conditions are changing.

[00:18:17] I think those would be interesting and I think there's some really cool keynote ones left. With some interesting brands. 

[00:18:24] Casey Golden: Yeah, I'm going to head over to cultivating customer relationships have got the chief data officer over at Poshmark and the information officer over at, from Maui, Jim, and then experienced design with best buy, which I just find completely foreign for cultivating customer relationships.

[00:18:41] So Annie A's going to be there as the interviewer. So this is going to be. Really interesting. Because when you think of Poshmark, I don't think of customers service or relationship, or I fall in love with my poshers, right. That they gift wrap my purchase and they send me these beautiful little handwritten notes.

[00:19:00] I'm like, come on. Like frankly, shopping on Poshmark is, so much sweeter and kinder than ordering online. You can put little confetti in my box.

[00:19:12] So I'm really excited to kind of dig into that because I only look at it from such a tight perspective. So this for me is really about opening up my mind to kind of see what everybody else is doing. Since I have such tunnel vision in general,

[00:19:26] Ricardo Belmar: it's called focus. We call that focus, Casey. 

[00:19:29] Casey Golden: That's right. Focus. 

[00:19:31] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, bring the marketing speak.

[00:19:33] Casey Golden: I, I was focused on until I saw this. I'm like, wow, you guys are all over the place. 

[00:19:36] Ricardo Belmar: Exactly, exactly. You, and then I think there's a couple of looking forward to on some interesting new innovative tech to do so hope to get through those. 

[00:19:44] Casey Golden: A lot with check out.

[00:19:46] There's a lot of stuff happening with checkout. 

[00:19:48] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:19:48] Casey Golden: You get to pick where, how you want to check out five different ways. 

[00:19:52] Ricardo Belmar: A lot of focus on that, yep. 

[00:19:53] Casey Golden: It's kind of interesting 

[00:19:54] Ricardo Belmar: all about making it a frictionless experience. 

[00:19:57] Casey Golden: So let's get back out on the floor. 

[00:19:59] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Then we'll wrap up here and we're going to plan on circling back after the show at some point.

[00:20:04] See what the, rest of the week plays out for us. 

[00:20:06] Casey Golden: Yeah. We'll have a full, good recap of what you missed.

[00:20:09] Ricardo Belmar: Everything we liked, anything we didn't. 

[00:20:10] Casey Golden: what you need to google 

[00:20:12] Ricardo Belmar: exactly. Yeah. What to look up? Who to talk to all that good stuff. All right. Cool. So we will call this one a wrap! 

[00:20:18] Intermission

[00:20:18] Ricardo Belmar: And we're back. That was the first part of our special Shop talk recap episode, which we recorded live on the Callin app about halfway through the event. Hopefully, you are ready to jump straight into the second half of the Great Retail Reunion so we can give you the rest of the juicy story. Let's listen to part two of our shop talk 2022 recap also recorded in the Callin app. 

[00:20:50] ShopTalk Recap on Callin, Part 2

[00:20:50] Ricardo Belmar: Casey. 

[00:20:52] Casey Golden: Good morning. Good morning. 

[00:20:53] Good morning. 

[00:20:54] Ricardo Belmar: Good morning. We are back on Callin. How cool is that? 

[00:20:58] Casey Golden: I like it. 

[00:20:59] Ricardo Belmar: All right. So when we were last on here, We did our live day, one and a half. I think I called it session from shop talk, where we talked about what we saw on the first day and on like the, what we about halfway through the second day, the first day was only a half day, right?.

[00:21:14] Casey Golden: Unexpectedly, yes

[00:21:16] Ricardo Belmar: unexpectedly, yeah, unexpectedly, but we did both note that it was unexpectedly a half day. So now we're back to do our whole recap summary of the entire events and kind of run through some, all the big themes that we saw there. And there were quite a few, I think I'm gonna say like the biggest one that sorta surprised me, but maybe shouldn't have, is this whole idea that everybody, it seemed like every session couldn't stop talking about how stores are quote back.

[00:21:41] Or, as I like to say as if they ever really went away, because they never really did go away, but, but everybody seems to act like, oh, brick and mortar is coming back. 

[00:21:49] Casey Golden: Yeah.

[00:21:49] Stores weren't closed in a lot of locations for, for too long. So it is a little bit surprising to hear stores are back. Maybe there has been this, this huge focus for e-commerce. 

[00:22:00] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And I guess maybe for shop talk that's especially true, right? 

[00:22:03] With a lot of digitally native vertical brands starting out online.

[00:22:07] A lot of founders, always presenting at shop. Talk about the cool new new products they're bringing to the market. So I guess if I think about it in those terms, yeah, might be a little strange to see people talking about stores coming back, but there were more and more founders and DTC is getting up on stage, talking about how, you just can't grow past a certain point.

[00:22:26] Like I heard, at least one mentioned how you, if you want to get past a hundred million, you got to start opening stores. You just can't do it. Cause like customer acquisition costs are too high. 

[00:22:35] Casey Golden: Yeah. I've seen a lot of people putting plans open to open up stores, more pop-up shops. We did lose some stores.

[00:22:42] But I think, you know, we're still working on that right set of what's the right amount of stores and where should they be? 

[00:22:47] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's true. 

[00:22:48] Casey Golden: With a lot of underperforming locations in general. 

[00:22:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It is all about the location and getting the right spot. 

[00:22:55] Casey Golden: Yeah. Got to know where that customer is.

[00:22:57] Ricardo Belmar: And I think we've seen it proven out time after time, that time one of these direct to consumer brands opens a store, their e-commerce sales actually go up in the surrounding zip codes. 

[00:23:07] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, a lot of that online browsing, it drives that, that in store experience I found more opportunity in looking online so that I can go into the store and see what inventory is there. But I do have to say it's been increasingly difficult because that's not a, that's not an option that I personally even used to use, but now it seems to be that I need to check to see what's in the store because so much inventory is light.

[00:23:34] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. Yeah. Right. 

[00:23:36] Casey Golden: And I'm like, well, if I go there, Are you going to have that? What I just saw online. So I think there's going to be a lot of tech going back into brick and mortar, new budgets. Let's hope that brick and mortar stores are back means that they also have budgets. 

[00:23:52] Ricardo Belmar: I, you know, if I judged from the general sense I got at the show, it's a hundred percent true. 

[00:23:58] Casey Golden: Yeah.

[00:23:59] Ricardo Belmar: And we talked about that right. In our prediction to show at the beginning of the year that there was going to be more investment in stores, that stores were going to go strong and that were, that investment level was going up. The IT spend was going up.

[00:24:11] I think if anything, I come away from shop talk thinking that our predictions are going to hold true. 

[00:24:15] Casey Golden: I agree. I've never seen so many people happy and reinvigorated about their careers. And like, we do have an opportunity in, in this, the best industry right now. I feel there's going to be so much change so much excitement and everybody is just really excited to talk with each other to collaborate and to learn.

[00:24:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I when you had sessions, like Sam's club CEO, Kath McLay, when she talked about all the interesting convenience shopping features that they introduced over the last two years. And the impact of that had not just on their shopping experience, but just with what business impact that had and how people started to spend more, how they serve customers and the things that everybody has talked about this for a while, right.

[00:24:59] Things like scanning, go checkout. They had an interesting concept of scan and ship from the store for things when they're out of stock and you can just scan it and have it shipped to you, on the spot. It really kind of reaffirmed that I heard this, not just in that session, but in other ones that , if you're not embracing everyone's favorite word to hate in retail, and that's omni-channel, if you're not a brand that's doing that then you're completely missing out, right? You're not going to grow your relationship with those customers. And that's why so many of those digitally native brands kept getting onstage, talking about how many stores they were going to open up. 

[00:25:30] Casey Golden: Yeah. And, and it's very interesting when you take the DNV B and...

[00:25:36] The information they're looking at when they're opening up a store compared to a traditional retailer. When they're looking at where where's my customer, who's going to engage in store versus an online DNVB's have a very much broader detail on, on their customer base. Just because they've collected so much more of that direct to consumer data and had those relationships online.

[00:26:01] So it will be interesting, when, some of these locations open up it'll be interesting to see where everybody puts themselves in what communities what towns, because it's not going to necessarily be the largest. 

[00:26:14] Ricardo Belmar: You're right. There are going to be super smart about where they put these just based on the data they've got about their existing customer base.

[00:26:23] And I think this, this whole expansion of them into more. Omni-channel mode, just kind of, for me, reaffirms that whether you love or hate the term, the idea around it, it really is just a synonym for how consumers want to shop period. End of statement. Right. It's just that everybody now realizes, that there's almost, wasn't a point. Thinking about individual sales channels, because that's not how people shop or people have completely adopted this mode of whether I'm in a digital channel or I'm in a store. I'm blending them every single moment. I'm shopping with a brand I'm blending all of these channels and that's how I expect to shop period. 

[00:27:01] Casey Golden: Yeah..

[00:27:01] Ricardo Belmar: Then that's what every brand has to accept and embrace now.

[00:27:04] Casey Golden: So ricardo, are we saying that. Omni-channel is coming back into conversation and we might just figure it out this year? 

[00:27:10] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think anybody who hasn't figured it out yet is definitely going to figure it out whether or not they want to call it omni channel.

[00:27:17] I think there's still plenty of people that hate calling it omni-channel as a term. And I'll admit that I go back and forth on that one. I would almost prefer to just think of it as pure commerce. Right. It's just, it's the normal mode of operation. It's not a special thing anymore. It's just the way we all shop.

[00:27:33] Casey Golden: Yeah, no, 

[00:27:33] I think that's great. Ikea also put a lot of new tech into their digitization strategy for stores with click and collect and, doing that customer journey using a lot more technology tools inside of their locations. 

[00:27:46] Ricardo Belmar: Let's expand a little on that because there were, as much as we just said, it's not about the channel. It's about the customer but let's for a moment, think about channels. There were a lot of interesting new channels being talked about at Shoptalk. One was live streaming which again was another one of our top 10 predictions. 

[00:28:01] Casey Golden: Favorite!

[00:28:02] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. That's right. I saw , a cool demonstration one session on started giving you a way to integrate live streaming in all of your other channels.

[00:28:10] So for example, whether it's your mobile app or your website, and so you have some live streams going when someone gets to a product page on a product that's tied to a live stream, you can insert the live stream right then and there, right? So you don't have to add an extra step for the consumer to pop into that live stream and see what's going on.

[00:28:26] So I thought that was an, an interesting approach. Now, there was a lot of talk that live streaming is huge in China and throughout Asia. The big question is, is it going to work the same in Western countries? I I'm, I'm thinking that it's, it's not, I'm not going to say that it isn't going to work. I absolutely think it will, but I think it's going to be different. 

[00:28:45] Casey Golden: It's going to have to be different. 

[00:28:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:28:47] Because, because people shop differently, people look at this technology differently in Western countries and the, in that sense, and it's not that one is better or more right. Or more wrong. It's just, it's just different.

[00:28:57] And everybody has to adapt to. The one thing I heard that I was most excited for live streaming. I think you and I talked about this in our predictions episode was the idea of using your store associates to run your live streams. And I think you and I've talked about that with our friend, Ron .

[00:29:12] And I actually heard that mentioned on stage about how there is an expectation that maybe that's going to be the way it goes, which for me is a little different than what we see happening in Asia. I like this term that we've talked about before the sort of the, the engineered influencer, when a retail brand creates their own influencer by using their store associates for that.

[00:29:31] Casey Golden: Yeah. I'm obviously a big fan of that. I also do though see the value in having the studios. I see a lot more studios popping up. I see more people, more brands creating a dedicated space for live streaming and setting up that area specifically for live streaming and getting that personality.

[00:29:50] That is kind of like the base of the brand that they're pulling in for those. I do think it's a different talent than being a salesperson on the floor. But I like the direction either way. 

[00:30:01] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And it wouldn't surprise me if we see a mix of the two, right. More, depending on the, maybe the size of the retailer, whether you build out these studios or whether you do something else, it's more smaller scale.

[00:30:11] But but I think we're gonna see both of those happening from large and small retailers, 

[00:30:16] Casey Golden: I agree. And just kind of taking control on bringing that to their own website rather than relying on the. Tik TOK or the Instagram live, or even some of these Amazon lives, right? There's a lot of third parties where they've already built quite an audience, but most of the tech that I saw was about bringing that live stream conversation and event onto the brands' website and owning that engagement on the site where they can convert. 

[00:30:45] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's big. That's big 

[00:30:49] Casey Golden: still not, not saying that they're going to stop using other channels, but I just saw a lot of an emphasis of bringing these e-commerce stores to life. 

[00:30:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. And. On that note, one of my other favorite topics that kept coming up or retail media networks and a lot of shop talk sessions, especially any session that had one of the local delivery guys, whether it was the Uber CEO or Instacart CEO or somebody from door dash.

[00:31:12] I mean, they were all talking about converting their delivery service into more of a marketplace where, you know, some of them even admitted, right. That the delivery part of the business is probably no better than a breakeven business, but where they're really going to get their revenue in the future is from advertising.

[00:31:29] Because like any other marketplace, you've got to sell advertising on it. So the brands to get customers to notice. So again, another one of our predictions from the beginning of the year, right? This was another popular one. Obviously, you know, Amazon's killing it. Walmart and target. Aren't doing too bad on that.

[00:31:46] Kroger is crushing it with their media network. Everybody wants to get in on this. I dunno, what are you, what do you think on that one, Casey? 

[00:31:52] Casey Golden: Well, it's not a space where you're printing cash. You're burning it. And so these last mile and these delivery services, like they have been wonderful over the last two years.

[00:32:03] It's it's exposed customer bases that have never even thought that they would ever order their groceries online or have something delivered. Those services are getting pushed back because it just hasn't been as profitable. It's not a big money maker, but they got the customers and they got, they built their brands.

[00:32:22] They've made it onto the front of an, of hundreds of thousands of consumers phones. Their app is now on the front because we have relied on it for the last couple of years. And so they're gonna, they're finding new ways to be able to monetize and move with those customers and hopefully something that just makes them a little bit more profit because some of the, a lot of these services are pushing back in, in certain areas.

[00:32:46] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Totally true. So that one to me is an interesting one. Looking forward to watching how that one, how that develops across the board with a media networks and with all of these delivery, guys are already starting to see some shake out of that, which again, another topic we had in our top 10, right, was that there was going to be some consolidation or some sort of shake out in that space.

[00:33:04] And we see that happening. 

[00:33:05] Casey Golden: Forgive me. I don't re I don't recall. But some of these multi-brand retailers are launching retail media networks and focusing on media, which I found very interesting that rather than being that distribution point and that stock point for the customers to be able to come in and shop across multiple brands in our traditional retail model.

[00:33:28] They've launched their own retail media network. And charging brands for the content. 

[00:33:33] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. So I can't wait to see what some of these DNVB brands that have come up right. Who are used to spending all of their marketing and customer acquisition on all like Facebook and Instagram, places like that.

[00:33:45] And now suddenly if they start going into wholesale agreements with other retailers who have their own marketplace, guess what? They're going to be buying advertising space from the retailers. 

[00:33:53] Casey Golden: Yeah.

[00:33:54] Ricardo Belmar: So that's going to be an interesting one to see what that does to their to their cost model. 

[00:33:57] Casey Golden: I, a hundred percent agree.

[00:33:59] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. So we have to talk about the metaverse because it kind of felt like on the second day, it's like every other session at shop talk was about metaverse and, and I, and it's, it's funny to me because there are, at least I can think of at least one, but there were a bunch of our, friendly retail expert friends who were kind of getting tired of hearing so much about the metaverse that they felt.

[00:34:19] You know, metaverse, doesn't seem to exist outside of retail conferences. 

[00:34:23] Casey Golden: Oh, you got that, too?

[00:34:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I heard that too. Yeah, I know. 

[00:34:26] Casey Golden: But something thing about the metaverse and like, "if I hear that word one more time" or

[00:34:31] " I'm not, he's like, I'm going to be done with the word by the time I leave." 

[00:34:34] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. 

[00:34:35] Casey Golden: I mean, just rolling of eyes. I mean, you could really see , who was, kind of rolling their eyes and then at the same time, whose eyes wanted to pop out because they were so excited. 

[00:34:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It's like you had two extremes of the show. You had every. Could not wait to jump up on stage and show off what they're want to do in the metaverse. And you had the other half of the people rolling their eyes saying, oh no, not another metaverse session. Come on. It's not real. 

[00:35:01] Casey Golden: Exactly. I'm like, it's like, well, we know who's on Twitter.

[00:35:04] Don't we? 

[00:35:06] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. And I had my, one of my favorite, one of my favorite comments on that is, and I can't remember now who said it first, but it was said a bunch of times as you know, for as much. People are getting up on stage, talking about how stores are back. If they weren't talking about how stores are back, they were talking about the metaverse and it's like, you've got these two extremes, .

[00:35:24] Either everybody's going back to the stores or everybody's going to jump into the metaverse and do their shopping there. 

[00:35:28] Casey Golden: Yeah. It just, I think at the end of the day, people want to be together again. 

[00:35:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I agree. I agree. But I'm still gonna say though. If you're a brand that's not a reason to stop doing whatever your experiment you're doing on the metaverse that this is still the year where you should be trying things out, testing the waters, see what your customers are going to accept what they like, what they don't like, and just figure out what, what you might do in the future.

[00:35:52] This isn't the year where you're gonna make a lot of top line revenue out of the metaverse and whatever presence you have. It's the year where you're just going to experiment and try things and see what you, what you're going to invest in later. 

[00:36:02] Casey Golden: Exactly exactly. I mean, we haven't had something this fun and creative to talk about for, I mean, probably most of the history.

[00:36:11] I mean, it's, since we had e-commerce the metaverse brings a new, a new life and a new, energy to the space in general. So, it has to be exciting to talk about. We have traditionally, it's been very much supply chain. Supply chain is not the sexiest industry and conversation. There's not a lot of creativity on there's definitely no fluorescent green or neon lights when we're dealing with the supply chain.

[00:36:36] We've got a lot of barcodes. So I think it's going to be. Really interesting how this kind of merges into these conversations into these budgets to be a fly on the wall in 2022 at a brand I'm slightly missing that opportunity to be able to hear these conversations as they happen. 

[00:36:54] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right.

[00:36:55] Yeah. And you know, one of the interesting supply chain conversations, I heard a lot of, which I was pleased to see is this a sort of acceptance that you can't look at your supply chain as a cost center anymore, but it's really more of a, of a differentiated asset for your business. Just given all the challenges that are still out there in the supply chain, around the world, 

[00:37:15] that we haven't solved all those problems in the last couple of years. There's still issues there. And, and that, to me, kind of led to some more discussions around just profitability in general, right. We used to go to these shows and, and just listened to a speaker after speaker talk about this new disruptive thing they were doing and all of this VC money that was pouring in to help prop everybody up and, fund them to try to get growth really fast, but nobody ever worried about profitability.

[00:37:40] And now it seems like. Maybe it's because there are people or something to worry about and inflation and some of these other supply chain issues. But now there's a little bit more of a thought as to, well, when are these things going to turn profitable? 

[00:37:51] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, just for the presence of venture capitalists at Shoptalk it was big and so.

[00:37:58] Really seeing how, they've made a lot of investments in direct to consumer. So I find it very intriguing of their attendance. And then also getting so much on supply chain and physical stores, because traditionally that's just not really been where their money has been spent. But I think that they, everybody kind of realizes that that's where that's where the budgets are going to go.

[00:38:20] That's where the investment's going to go. And that's, what's going to set apart winners from losers over the next few years.

[00:38:26] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and I guess it, you almost kinda have to say after, after watching all the VCs that were there, but it turns out that shockingly, these VCs actually want to make a return on their money.

[00:38:37] They don't just want to give it to everybody. 

[00:38:39] Casey Golden: I think there's been some hard lessons in the space. And then also with the pandemic, you know, digital is definitely risen, but it's about next steps. 

[00:38:47] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. And what are those next steps? 

[00:38:49] Yeah. Yeah. Just be more of the same Sam's club. Right, exactly.

[00:38:52] Casey Golden: Yeah. You know, opening up more stores. 

[00:38:54] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. That's right. And. Yeah. And then another topic that kind of related to that, that I started hearing more about that I think is sort of taking a back seat the last couple of years, and that was sustainability. You know, consumers still care about sustainability. I've seen some numbers lately, one study said 84% of consumers still say that sustainability is important to them when they're making a purchase decision. I saw another report that 60% of consumers are willing to change their shopping behavior. If they believe that change will reduce environmental impact.

[00:39:24] And this one kind of surprised me, I'd say that I saw had a number of like 66, 67% people say they were willing to pay more for a brand that demonstrates real sustainable practices. And that's the, big fact right there at conferences, pre pandemic people were talking about sustainability.

[00:39:41] You couldn't find a brand or a retailer that was going to say, oh no, I'm not worried about that. Everybody was worried about everybody said they were doing something, but at the end of the day, how many were really doing something tangible? 

[00:39:52] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot more going into packaging.

[00:39:56] The marketing content is much more focused in that area. It's really gonna come down to like proof in the pudding, you know, in the coming year of how much you've actually executed against. But I find it very interesting. As the economy shifts, sustainability conversations go up and down. We tried to do this in 2007, with organic lines, more sustainability.

[00:40:19] We tried to do it. And the economy went down. And the sustainability companies and the organic apparel companies closed their doors. So I hope that this time it's, it's here to stay and I think it's here to stay. Consumers are ready for it, and they're willing to change their behavior to take hold of it.

[00:40:39] We've also had a lot of negative press over the last two years about the impact of our industry, because I do have to say like the fashion industry is, is part of the problem. 

[00:40:51] Ricardo Belmar: You're absolutely right. Absolutely. Right. So that, probably could have gotten even more attention at shop talk.

[00:40:56] I think I heard more hallway discussion around that maybe then than actual speaking sessions, but it did come up. The last thing, I guess, worth mentioning, you just touched on it the economy that we've had these essentially for, a lot of retailers two booming years of sales and revenue and profitability.

[00:41:11] So the, the retailers that went into the pandemic with the right technology investments and the right operational structures, they won, they came out as winners, everybody else? Maybe not so much and that they hopefully learned some lessons over the last couple of years on where they need to improve and what they need to do.

[00:41:27] But so now that leaves, for me two big questions, but just sort of heard rumblings about at the show, one being, how do you comp against those last few years, if you were one of those spectacular retailers, can you still eat out another year of spectacular growth or do you expect it to level off?

[00:41:41] And if you were not one of those winners, do you recover now? What are you going to do? How are you catching up to the winners and recover from that. And in both of those cases, is, the economy and is inflation going to be something that challenges you, you've got, some other unknown factors with consumer spending around people wanting to buy less stuff now, because we can all go out again.

[00:42:01] So people want more experiences. Travel is probably going to come back more. People are going back to restaurants and it's all the same pile of money at the end of the day, so to speak. So what if, if consumers over the last two years shifted their spend to stuff and now it goes back to services and experiences, then we'll, if you're one of those brands selling stuff, you might not sell as much. 

[00:42:20] Casey Golden: Yeah that's going to be, it's going to be really interesting on consumer behavior coming out of the pandemic. I mean, I myself have made some dramatic differences in my shopping behavior and even how I want to spend my money. And I'm not a typical consumer we know too much, don't we?

[00:42:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, we do too, but we're dangerous that way as consumers, but, you know, 

[00:42:41] Casey Golden: So I think it's going to be interesting because what are you copying? Because so much happened during the pandemic with consumer behavior and some of it was forced. Some of it was a natural progression. Some of it was. Introspect.

[00:42:55] So when it comes down to comp-ing, we're looking at 2019, we're looking at 2021, but we're really going to be building these projections kind of fresh. And there's going to be a little bit of instability on meeting those goals because we're going to be learning. They're going to be learning so much every quarter, this year of what's real.

[00:43:15] And , what stuck. And what is the future look like? 

[00:43:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. So that's going to be really interesting to see when all of these brands and retailers start doing their quarterly reports with their forward-looking statements are going to be, I think that's going to be the most, the most telling thing of, of what we learned from them.

[00:43:33] So any, last thoughts that stood out to you Casey? Before we close this out? 

[00:43:37] Casey Golden: Well, you know, I have some last thoughts. I found that the convention hall was buzzing which I find rare at trade shows. It's not used the energy. Isn't typically. Convention hall. But I found it to be very different. It's my first experience at Shoptalk. I had a great one and everybody had, I mean, everything was buzzing. Everybody wanted to talk and learn and, I heard some great questions and people just really digging in and open to the idea of selecting new vendors.

[00:44:07] So I'm pretty excited. 

[00:44:09] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, you're right, the excitement level was high and everybody came away from the show feeling just as excited about their retail and retail tech future. 

[00:44:16] Casey Golden: I mean, how lucky are we? 

[00:44:18] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, if anything, shop talk, convinced anybody that went, this is a great industry to be in. And for most people that reaffirmed that Not only is it a great industry to be in, but that you're probably really happy to be in it. 

[00:44:29] Casey Golden: Yep. I agree. 

[00:44:33] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Well with that, I think we going to wrap up our great retail reunion. Shoptalk recap on Callin 

[00:44:39] Casey Golden: bye everyone.

[00:44:40] Ricardo Belmar: Bye everybody. 

[00:44:46] Show Summary

[00:44:46] Casey Golden: Welcome back everyone. We hope that you enjoyed our fun recap of retail's big reunion.

[00:44:52] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I know I did. I hope we captured the energy from the show last week, Casey. I know it's been what, like two years, since most people in retail had been to a major conference, but it really did feel like a reunion! 

[00:45:02] Casey Golden: New friends, old, Shoptalk was the place to be. And the hottest industry for doers, retails driving change with the most unsuspected players.

[00:45:15] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, you are absolutely right about that. I think that will pretty much close this out for a special episode of the show and we hope to see all of our listeners again next time! 

[00:45:25] Show Closing

[00:45:25] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review on apple podcast. Remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. So you don't miss a minute. Want to know more about what we talked about? Take a look at our show notes for handy links and more deets.

[00:45:42] I'm your cohost Casey Golden. 

[00:45:44] Ricardo Belmar: If you'd like to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at Casey C golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar, or find us on LinkedIn. Be sure and follow the show on Twitter at RetailRazor, on LinkedIn, and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and bonus content. 

[00:45:59] I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:46:01] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us.

[00:46:04] Ricardo Belmar: And remember, there's never been a better time to be in retail. If you cut through the clutter . Until next time, this is the retail razor show.