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eCommerce UnderCover
By Michael Waitze MediaBusiness
eCommerce UnderCover episodes
- EP 14 - It's all About Choices - Radha Mesova - eCommerce Entrepreneur
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media were joined by Radha Mesova, an actor, singer and eCommerce entrepreneur. Radha has had an incredible journey into entrepreneurship. This is not your normal entrepreneur story about a well-off kid dropping out of Harvard, pretending to eat ramen noodles, and moving to California as a silicon valley darling. Radha was born in Ingushetia (Yes. You have never heard of it...), moved to Germany with her family, and then settled in Canada as a 12-year-old. You should listen to her story..
Some of the topics we discussed:
- Overcoming an abusive childhood and homelessness
- Studying entrepreneurship at University
- Selected from her university class to participate in an entrepreneurship program in Germany just prior to the COVID-19 outbreak
- Her first foray into eCommerce and dropshipping and the source for her first product idea
- Radha's extremely insightful views on using Facebook, Google, Tik Tok, and other platforms for marketing and customer acquisition
- Why building killer product pages is so important
- Why she publishes so often on YouTube and what she hopes to achieve via her channel
- How eCommerce was her onramp to entrepreneurship and enables Radha to pursue her other passions as well
56 min - EP 13 - My Thesis Was Different - Eugene Tham - co-Founder and CEO of Shopform
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media were joined by Eugene Tham, a co-Founder and the CEO of Shopform. Shopform is a social platform to review and shop digital native fashion brands. Shopform is creating a community of trust and users who share authentic reviews with each other. Every review helps people make more informed decisions, and helps to grow small businesses around the region.
Some of the topics that we discussed...and there were many:
- The lack of innovation in eCommerce during the last 10 years (We agree!)
- Eugene's definition of Social Commerce
- Social Media platforms and eCommerce platforms do not work well together yet
- The discovery issues for digital-native brands on the large marketplaces
- Some of the potential new Social Commerce models
- Brands leaving marketplaces and joining Shopform
- Gen Z is looking for more authentic and more social online shopping experiences
1 hr 2 min - EP 12 - Augmented Reality and Commerce Conversions - Did We Change Our Minds? - Martin Ronfort and Michael Waitze
This week, Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media recorded remotely, just to be a little extra safe in the face of rising COVID cases in Thailand. Martin did some incredible work to get the recording to look awesome for our first remote recording!
Some of the topics we explored:
- Augmented Reality and online commerce conversions
- Is the technology really ready yet?
- Even if the tech is ready, will anybody use it for commerce, and if so, how and for which categories?
- Technology-enhanced glasses were very unpopular
- Does anybody really want to try on fashion with AR?
- Will Apple Glasses or similar products be better used for product information in physical stores and for post-purchase customer service?
- We only touched briefly on data and privacy considerations with the knowledge that this is significant to be covered separately
Martin Ronfort can be reached at [email protected].
Michael can be reached at [email protected]
1 hr - EP 11 - Direct To Consumer eCommerce - The Models We Want To See - Martin Ronfort and Michael Waitze
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media took the studio on the road and recorded at Seven Peaks Software's amazing office at The Parq. We look forward to recording there more often!
Some of the angles we covered:
- eCommerce's Direct To Consumer Model
- What had to change to make Direct To Consumer possible
- Besides cavemen, is now the greatest time in human history to create a new brand?
- How access to production, capital, distribution, marketing, and logistics makes Direct To Consumer easier than ever.
- What sectors are best suited for Direct To Consumer
- Who is doing this now?
- What are the models that we think will work and would like to see developed?
1 hr 2 min - EP 10 - A Customized Shopping Experience and Consultancy - Andre Buerger - CP Group
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media were joined by Andre Buerger, a senior executive at the CP Group, and one of the earliest employees at Lazada in Southeast Asia.
Some of the topics we discussed with Andre:
- Shogun's recent capital raise and why it is significant
- Marketplaces versus individual online brand shops
- Food and grocery delivery
- Is there a market for someone to build a better way for restaurants to sell online?
- My online purchase experiences with El Mercado (amazing) and Millionhead (also great)
- The online experience is as important as the product
1 hr 2 min - EP 09 - I Feel Like I'm the Only One that Knows the Secret - David Jou, Martin Ronfort and Michael Waitze
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media were joined by David Jou, a co-founder and the CEO of Pomelo Fashion, an eCommerce pioneer in Southeast Asia and a former co-founder of Lazada.
Some of the topics we discussed with David:
- The impact of COVID on Fashion eCommerce
- Data Science and the use of data in eCommerce
- Omni-channel selling and how happy Pomelo customers were when the physical stores were opened
- Physical stores create brand awareness, add to bottom-line growth, and a place where clients can try things on
- Building internal products and the birth of Prism, enabling digital commerce for fashion brand builders
- Tap, Try, Buy
- How some of the things you think you know for sure may not be correct
1 hr 4 min - EP 08 - Conversational Commerce - We Barely Scratched the Surface - Irzan Raditya, Martin Ronfort, and Michael Waitze
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media were joined by Irzan Raditya, a co-founder and the CEO of Kata.ai to talk to us about artificial intelligence and conversational commerce.
Some of the topics we discussed included:
- Why Irzan went to German y to get his BSc in Computer Science
- How he became fluent in German
- Working for Rocket Internet and Zalando
- Pitching Khailee Ng on a startup idea from Germany and getting funded
- The history and growth of Kata.ai out of the original YesBoss
- Augmenting humans with AI as opposed to replacing them
- A cold-turkey start for building AI
- Recording a billion conversations
- How conversational commerce drives conversions
- So much more...
1 hr 7 min - EP 07 - Are eCommerce Marketplaces Poised To Die? - Martin Ronfort and Michael Waitze
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media switched it up this week and moved the studio to a new location to talk about the viability of eCommerce marketplaces.
Some of the topics we covered:
- Is buying growth the right idea?
- Is Etsy buying Depop a sign of strength or weakness (Hint: We thought it was a sign of weakness.)
- Is Etsy even really about crafts anymore?
- Are boutiques and bespoke brands the future of eCommerce?
- Are marketplaces and their aggregated traffic really worth it?
- Is there too much noise and not enough signals?
- Will Volkswagen dilute Porsche's brand identity and what does that have to do with eCommerce marketplaces?
- General Motors and the tunnel underneath Tokyo Bay
- If YOU had $1.62 BN in cash would you spend it all on Depop?
1 hr 6 min - EP 06 - Social Commerce - Connecting Brands & Customers - Martin Ronfort and Michael Waitze
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media continued a discussion on Social Commerce.
Some of the topics we covered:
- Social Commerce is not the same as eCommerce
- Social Commerce is not new...Facebook and Instagram (and others) tried this years ago
- We decided pretty early in the conversation that people do not go to Facebook or Instagram to shop
- Brands that tried this may have been damaged by trying to sell without friction on Facebook
- Sellers DO use Facebook and Instagram but simply to drive buyers to their websites
- Do we have offline equivalents to the bad experience of trying to shop on Facebook
- Sellers know that if they sell exclusively on Facebook, they have no access to their underlying sales data, and brand building is almost impossible
- Where do chatbots fit into eCommerce sites
1 hr 3 min - EP 05 - Martin Ronfort, Michael Waitze and Florian Tep - It's So Easy To Expose Product Ideas To the Market
Martin Ronfort, the founder of DrTech, and Michael Waitze, the founder of Michael Waitze Media welcomed Florian Tep an eCommerce expert who is originally from Paris, France, and is currently living in Bali, Indonesia.
Some of the topics we discussed:
- There is a large cohort of online shop owners that sell a lot but no one has ever heard of them
- eCommerce under the radar
- Florian's original attempt to sell dance classes online
- How Florian promised his mother that if he could not grow his eCommerce business in 3 months, that he would look for a job
- How setting that 3-month deadline made him laser-focused and made his Mom happy
- Marketplaces can be great for a certain kind of seller, but Florian prefers to work off-platform
- How he determines which products and which markets work - sometimes pivoting in 4 to 5 days
- Building an online community and teaching eCommerce to 6,500 followers
1 hr 10 min
About eCommerce UnderCover
From the publisher's feed
Martin Ronfort and Michael Waitze discuss the future of eCommerce...because we are definitely not there yet.