Future Commerce

Headless CheckoutDomm gives the story behind the creation of Fast, how a family member forgetting a password sparked an idea for easier checkouts across all platforms.“Our goal is to build a consumer network” -DommThe challenges faced as a leader and facing polarizing feedback.“It’s our job to protect consumer data, and consumer payments. This is typically the default relationship that consumers have with businesses, it’s a default trust.” “It's the logical place where those three need states and those three very broken things about the sort of stateless being of the web converge.” - Phillip Associated Links:Learn more about Fast here: https://www.fast.co/Get our latest report here: Service is the New StorefrontListen to more episodes of Future Commerce!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“It’s like shipping inception”Are we in a Shipping Inception or are 3PLs and 4PLs really that complicated? Identifying where your customers are is key in choosing the right 3PL solution for warehousing and shipping. “Despite the Amazon narrative, not everyone needs everything in 30 seconds… I think it's critically important for brands to manage customer expectations, meaning if you don't have the infrastructure to do two day delivery, then don't promise to do delivery.” - NimaHaving a 3PL like Whiplash can help smaller businesses scale and keep shipping costs lower.“I really am confident that retail is going to see a rebirth... We're getting a lot more brands asking how can you support these smaller shops, maybe two or three per quarter over the next year?” - RyanAssociated Links:Get connected with Shippo!Check out Whiplash.Listen to our other Step by Step seasonsFind our Future Commerce episodes on our website.Have any questions or comments about the show? Contact us at Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Post-Purchase ExperienceConsumer expectations are almost unfair for smaller businesses. But that doesn’t mean brands can’t continue to provide a great post-purchase experience. Many brands have turned to 3PLs to help meet the demand of fast shipping and to keep shipping costs lower. “Brands have to be more transparent with customers. They need to give customers a choice around what services they offer and the price. A lot of brands are starting to use 3PLs to meet the customer demand, which means they're storing inventory somewhere else throughout the country to get shorter deliveries. Brands need to communicate with shoppers after the purchase in a way that conveys the brand message differently than just an email saying your order has been shipped.” - Matt CrawfordIt’s more than just shipping, it’s about creating a memorable post-purchase experience. It’s about connecting the “front office” with the “back of house.” “I think of the post purchase because I try to make it a marketer's problem, not a person in the warehouse problem.” - Matt“When you improve shipping and you offer different options around shipping, it's almost like having additional products on your site.” - BrianAssociated Links:Get connected with Shippo!Listen to our other Step by Step seasonsFind our Future Commerce episodes here: https://futurecommerce.fm/future-commerce-podcastHave any questions or comments about the show? Contact us at Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Different Innovation “Shipping is a growth engine. The entire web is possible, all eCommerce is possible because you could ship stuff. The question is, how do you master that in a way that is intentional as a brand or as a marketplace?” - James As the largest resale marketplace, the mechanics of Flyp are run differently. Flyp works to connect owners with sellers, creating a different experience. In the process they use bulk shipping to diversify the engagement in the marketplace. “We have an entire matching system that is designed to essentially incentivize pro sellers to behave and to perform better with their customers. A lot of our analytics are done around the efficiency of distribution that our resellers are offering to their customers on Flyp.” - JamesShipping is constantly changing and Shippo is changing with it, providing new ways to execute and build fast. “One of the benefits of having Shippo is they've got this really cool feature where you give the information that you need and then you can pick the one that works for you, and we are able to leverage that in different ways.” - DaniAssociated Links:Get connected with Shippo!Find Flyp here: https://www.joinflyp.com/Listen to our other Step by Step seasonsFind our Future Commerce episodes on our website.Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Not a Cookie Cutter MethodWith the rise of shipageddon, shipping has become about getting products to the customer as safe and quickly as possible.Due to the different mentalities and thought processes of shopping during COVID, many customers choose different methods causing businesses to shift their concerns of shipping.“It's not just a cookie cutter thing where you're doing clothes or a hat or a shirt where you just throw it in a box. What we found is with the batch function on Shippo, we’re able to copy a certain order numbers into the search bar up top, search those and batch print those out, saving us a tremendous amount of time.” -Keith Austria “So many of us buy things online and really don't think about what the business challenges are around operations that make it all work.” -Phillip JacksonAssociated Links:Get connected with Shippo!Check out Decorware. Listen to our other Step by Step seasons.Find our Future Commerce episodes on our website. Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s All About the MindsetMichelle McNamara joins the show to talk about the common pain points of shipping among merchants, and how the pandemic has impacted e-commerce with the shifts of consumer behavior. Shipping is not one size fits all, it's unique to every business. Shipping should be thought of as a key differentiator to add value to your business.  “Think of ways you can increase your order value without increasing the weight of the box by too much.” -Michelle Associated Links:Get connected with Shippo!Listen to our other Step by Step seasonsFind our Future Commerce episodes on our website. Have any questions or comments about the show? Contact us at Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The 16-Year Old CPG StartupKevin shares his incredible work at Nuun Energy and their growth of being acquired by Nestlé Health Science.Sustainability and ESG are at the forefront of product innovation for Nuun, but category innovation and form factor are top of mind in fast moving consumer goods and CPG, as well.When it comes to health and creating new connections, information is right at our fingertips. Having information right when we want it is evolving our purchasing behaviors. This evolution means that we can make better decisions around health.“I'm less worried about competitors coming in at this moment because I think it's going to continue to expand functional hydration — because it's a universal need that is bigger than the plant based revolution that's happening within food. I truly believe that.” -Kevin“Think about plant based milk alternatives, where it started. It was soy milk and a tetra pack in the center of a store. Commerce wasn't even really a factor then. Today, it's sold and surging within eCommerce, but also now positioned in the dairy case right beside the milk alternatives. What I foresee happening is it's going to be looked at less as functional hydration as an alternative; [instead] it's going to be toe to toe, side by side with the way people look at beverages now... It's going to be a substitute, much like you're seeing in dairy alternatives [versus] dairy itself.” - Kevin“We have the toolset to capture new data points that we can optimize for our personal bodies.” - Brian “Innovation is renovation. It's innovation for new need states” - Kevin Associated Links:Check out Nuun Energy here: https://nuunlife.com/Get our latest report here: Service is the New StorefrontFind our other episodes here: https://futurecommerce.fm/future-commerce-podcastIf you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at hello@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fair Trade, Fair Labor, and Sustainable Chocolate is PossibleShipping chocolate is challenging enough, but sourcing and housing craft chocolate from global suppliers, and creating a marketplace for consumers who have very specific expectations around buying and consuming chocolate is harder still.The challenges of creating a great customer experience with shipping delays in the midst of COVID created issues in the logistics industry, and those had massive impacts on the quality of the product at the time of delivery. Some chocolate only arrived a month post-purchase, at which point it wasn’t consumable. This represents a problem in a luxury chocolate perishable category, when you’re at mercy of carriers and covid-related delays.“I don't think the mission makes us grow slower, but I think my focus and laser focus on becoming a profitable company, you know, kind of meters our growth. And because we're not funded, because it's like something that has been bootstrapped, we don't have the luxury of throwing thousands of dollars into ads or marketing and having that long cycle of seeing a return on our investment with customer acquisition.” —PashminaThe connection formed to chocolate as a kid reflects the outcome adults make in wanting to take the leap towards craft chocolate.“You have recipes and a whole ecosystem built around chocolate and the brands with those...so you're not just unseating a single experience, you're unseating experiences across multiple food ecosystems, which is another challenge and also an opportunity.” -BrianBar and Cocoa are MBE-certified as a minority-owned business, and supports minority and BIPOC growers and founders. Their focus on doubling their Made at Origin chocolates have allowed them to support more people who are growing cacao at the source. As Pashmina says, “rather than just for these countries importing beans, the chocolate is staying there and being sourced locally, made locally by local manufacturers, whether they own the farms, whether they're working directly with the farms there.” Associated Links:Check out Bar & Cocoa here: https://barandcocoa.com/Get our latest report here: Service is the New Storefront Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Content Creation and Open-Ended ConversationsFor the Love is a DTC newsletter covering mission-driven companies and aims to provide meaningful content for entrepreneurs and founders.The trio shares the joys and pains of producing weekly content and how that informs their own understanding of the market.Creating content is a means of learning and growing, and developing a cadence that requires you to get better over time.“I don't think of myself as the authority on all of these topics. I am trying to learn about them. And so I'm having these conversations and trying to convey that as best I can.” - AjaThere is a lot of good conversation and community building happening in the DTC media world, but there is still so much room to grow in providing spaces for diverse voices to provide their perspectives. For The Love seeks to have conversations with founders about the things that help to build a more charitable and equitable brand community.Aja aims to invite open-ended conversations from those she interviews to make deeper, more tactical information more readily available.“Something needs to be meaningfully different to be relevant” - AjaOn innovation in DTC companies: “Can we provide premium product to people without a premium price tag? And I think that was the original intention of direct to consumer.” - AjaAssociated Links:Subscribe to Aja’s newsletter, For the Love!Find Aja on Twitter here. Sign up to receive our newest report, Service is the New Storefront, dropping next week! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nostalgia and MonocultureRob shares the story of how Rally acquired a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and their plan to make it accessible to the publicGen Z is growing up to be a completely different wealth creation cycle then the one that currently existsRob breaks down how Rally operates, the legal system that makes their IPOs possible, and how the system they created is both an online and in-person museum“We tried to create an ecosystem that is built around access but has a little bit for everybody involved, people that care about these assets individually.” - Rob “It's more important to have one of those sort of the Genesis moment of a franchise that I truly do believe has staying power and will live forever, then it is to have stock in a company where I'm beholden to, you know, a car manufacturer and something that's a little bit disconnected from the CEO of that company right now.” - Rob By keying in on nostalgia, Rally is unlocking the interest of a new type of investor. Nintendo’s mark on the culture has a strong nostalgia with a current generation experiencing new liquidity, looking to invest into new asset classes.“Anything that has that huge enthusiast group, the people who really care about it, has gotten out of reach because of access or price, that's a space that we want to be in.” - RobSpeculative future assets may be absurdist in nature. An example Rob gives is a Theranos centrifuge. It may not be worth much now, but acquiring it now for its potential future value is something that Rally thinks a lot about as they build for the future.You cannot buy spent Chernobyl fuel rods on Rally (yet).Associated Links:https://rallyrd.com/https://www.instagram.com/rally/?hl=en Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.