In the last episode of season one, Jay speaks with Eric Eichmann, CEO of ESW, and long time friend. They talk about Eric's illustrious career in technology, the art of seizing opportunities, creating the best teams, and the critical elements of driving business value and innovation.

Eric:

“What's also interesting about the CEO job that I thought of is, you know, you have to be quote unquote decisive or provide a strong direction that everybody understands and everybody is sort of going towards, but at the same time, you have to be humble enough to listen to everybody. And know that you don't have all the answers, you coming up with your best answer at the time that you're doing it. But if you're humble enough to listen to others, even though you're setting a direction, you're willing to consider, hey, maybe this direction that we took on now based on these new facts and the thoughts that Jay brought to the table or whoever else. Might not be the best. Maybe we should be sort of recalibrating and going to another area. And I think, you know, that's, you mentally, you have to be strong and provide direction and feel pretty, you know, sure of yourself. But you you also have to know that you don't really know often, and you have to be willing to change and be flexible.”

Top(pers) Take: 

1. Be decisive but humble.
2. Don’t take yourself too seriously; take the business seriously.
3. Raise your hand first and figure out logistics later.

Links & Resources:

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In this episode, Jay sits down with Karen Beebe, CTO at Bealls, Inc. They talk about Karen’s vast experience in retail, the power of learning something new every day, and how relationships are vital no matter your role or years of experience.

Karen:

“ Relationships are key. You need to establish trust and you need to be trustworthy and you need to build those relationships at all different levels and throughout your career…So being around people that can help you make things happen, and being inspired by those around you, and exposing yourself to new things that you may be fearful of, but just going out there again and taking that risk. And, if you can do those things, I think that it rises you up to a method of leadership that you really start to appreciate.”

Top(pers) Take:

1. Speed-to-market: In a connected commerce world, thinking of how to go faster is critical.

2. The right foundation: Get your basics right before adding new technology.

3. Configuration over customization: Give power to your end users.

Links & Resources:

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Learn more about Bealls, Inc.

In this episode, Jay has an enlightening and unique conversation with Rich Lyons, CEO and Founder of Life is Sales. They have an insightful conversation about leadership, emotional intelligence, and the importance of customer centricity and what it truly means. They discuss how personal development, trust, kindness, and self-care play pivotal roles in creating a successful business and fostering meaningful human connections. Rich also shares stories and lessons learned from his extensive career, emphasizing the power of awareness and the impact of bringing one's best self to work each day.

Rich:

“All the customer wants is to hear you to say, as I hear you. I'm going to look into it and I will get back to you as soon as I can…They could be losing their job. They could be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every minute that website is down during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is real-life stuff…so, I think the important part was, for me, and it gave me an opportunity to get in front of my company, to train people, to share what I had learned. It created a really great culture for us. I mean, we were real, I don't know how else to put it.” 

Top(pers) Take:

1. Awareness: The more aware you are, the more choices you have.
2. Continuous learning: Learn from everyone around you.
3. Openness: Let people know who you are and let people in.

Links & Resources:

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Connect with Rich

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Learn more about Life is Sales

In this episode, Jay speaks with none other than fabric CEO, Mike Micucci, to explore the future of commerce and the transformative role of AI in order orchestration. They dive into the impactful repositioning of fabric, the significance of the Order Cloud platform, and the innovative application of AI to enhance customer experiences and operational excellence. 

Mike:

“I always like to say as a consumer, I think all of us can relate to this is, commerce does not stop after checkout…And orchestrating that journey is more and more important. And again, this is orchestration I view as managing that flow, effectively, both operationally so that you can deliver on the costs that you need to do as well as deliver the customer experience no matter where they show up. So, this is not yesterday's order management system…Yesterday was about OMS. It was about control, financial control. Today is about servicing all these channels and doing it with the most impact to your customers, but also giving back to the bottom line of your company.”

Links & Resources:

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In this episode, Jay speaks with Brent Peterson, Founder of ContentBasis & Podcast Host of Talk Commerce. They discuss the role of AI in E-commerce and the need for better analytics programs, the shifting trends in Headless commerce, and the future of personalized shopping experiences. They also talk about trends Brent has seen for selling channels in 2024 and what might be coming next. 

Brent:

“I think the biggest thing that we talked about in the green room is the idea that everybody is using AI but not using AI. So a lot of merchants are using AI as generative, but they're not looking at it in terms of  analytical and really diving in and using it for those numbers. I'm not saying everybody, but the majority of the people that I talked to last year were not employing the analyticals, and the predictive analytics that you would want to use in AI for your marketing, for your numbers, for your KPI, for all those fun data points that you could be getting out of your E-commerce world.”

Top(pers) Take

What’s Coming in 2025: 

1. AI around analytics and predictive analytics.

2. Hyperpersonalization

3. Selling at the point of intent.

Links & Resources:

Connect with Jay

Connect with Brent 

Learn more about fabric

Learn more about ContentBasis

Tune into Talk Commerce

This episode, Jay sits down with Rachel Frederick, VP & GM of Digital at Sur La Table. Rachel shares her journey from starting her career at Sony Music to leading digital strategies at major companies like The Gap, Oracle, and now Sur La Table. The conversation dives deep into the world of ERP systems, e-commerce, and the unique culinary program at Sur La Table. 

Rachel: 

“When I think of my conversion rate online versus a store's conversion rate, I'm always trying to learn from them…the way they're talking about their product, and the chefs. It's a big focus for me for the next really three-year road map, is I'm always thinking about how can I bring more of that chef authoritative voice into my online channels just to drive that conversion, but really that understanding, get questions answered preemptively. So that's definitely what I'm trying to bring through to my channels as well.”

Links & Resources:

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Learn more about Sur La Table

This episode, Jay chats with Stephanie Urban, former head of E-commerce and marketing at the Vince Camuto Group, currently leading her own consulting group and working on a stealth startup. Stephanie shares her career journey from starting a fashion blog to leading digital marketing teams in well-known retail brands, discussing key learnings, strategies for handling marketing and E-commerce dynamics, the impact of influencer marketing, and the role of data and AI in retail. 

Stephanie:

“ I think it comes down to sharing, working towards, and celebrating goals together. Having really clear expectations about who does what and making sure those lines are clear. I also think it requires leadership alignment from the top down as well. Making sure that if it's not one singular leader, then those two leaders are working really closely together on how are we going to develop the best experiences for our customers and make sure that we're meeting the expectations of both marketing and products, et cetera…And kind of walk through kind of what is every single step that a customer is seeing coming from every single different channel. And what are those silos and issues that we can kind of break down and improve? And what are the biggest issues that we can tackle most quickly to enhance the experience for our customers?”

Links & Resources:

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Learn more about Steph’s work

In this episode, Jay sits down with Prashant Agrawal, Founder & CEO at Impact Analytics, about the work he’s doing to transform retail forecasting with AI. Prashant shares about his career journey, including his time at McKinsey, his entrepreneurial ventures, and the founding of Impact Analytics. They discuss the role of AI and machine learning in retail, particularly in improving forecasting, pricing, and product allocation, the quick ROI retailers can expect from implementing AI-driven solutions, and insights into the evolving role of AI in business.

Prashant:

“We are always forecasting. As people, we're always trying to see what's going to happen tomorrow. And we use yesterday, right? That is the basis generally of what you do and what's the data out there. Now in retail before COVID, we were basically just using some kind of time series. Last year was X and we're going to go up a little or down a little. Now the challenge with that is that there is so many SKUs, so many stores potentially, you kind of just peanut butter spread it, right? What AI ML forecasting can do is give you a better first draft. So instead of actually having to manipulate this in Excel in any way, you can actually get a good first draft that is at a SKU level and then hone your intuition, your experience around that.”

Links & Resources:

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In this episode, Jay sits down with Jenna Flateman Posner, the Founder & CEO of Chief Digital Agency, former retail executive, and 2x CDO. They discuss Jenna’s extensive career in retail and technology, the evolving role of Chief Digital Officer, and the transformative potential of AI in retail. They also dive into Jenna’s insights on cutting through the noise in leveraging AI and what the future of AI integration looks like in retail. 

Jenna:

“I think every CDO in any organization, a big part of the responsibility is understanding what's coming. And the more forward-looking and innovative you can be the better. And so a big part of my self-prescribed responsibilities was making sure that I stayed very close to technology that can help drive value back to the business. And so as we found,  and experienced, the democratization of AI through leveraging ChatGPT, I think we all kind of got to play with it and realized that there were some real efficiencies and value to generate.”

Links & Resources:

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In this episode, Jay chats with Su Li Rivera, Sr. VP of Marketing at Rakuten. They discuss Su Li's career journey, the intricacies of Rakuten's business model, and the pivotal role of data in retail. Su Li also shares about the awesome work she’s doing with Women at Rakuten and her advice for ladies entering the technology space. 

Su Li:

“So before we can even take advantage of data and utilize it for things like insights or personalization, we really need to make sure that the level of data we have in house is readily available, but also clean enough to use, right? Like many organizations, I think the past probably four or five years in terms of transformation data and its core of being able to have one single source of truth, making sure that everybody agrees on it, no matter what team, and then being able to access that in a fluid way has been a core area of development."

Links & Resources:

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Learn more about Rakuten

Learn more about Women at Rakuten