S1E6 – The Retail Avengers vs The Trials of Digital Transformation & Innovation, Part 1

Welcome to Season 1, Episode 6, the sixth episode of The Retail Razor Show!

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!

For episode 6 we’re letting the Retail Avengers fly solo, sans guests, and dive into understanding the tailwinds of digital transformation and innovation in retail. Why is this so important for retailers, and how can retailers best develop a culture that supports digital transformation and innovation? Plus, we dig into how retailers can introduce outside ideas into that culture in a positive manner. This is the first of a two-part series on digital transformation and innovation!

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/

The Retail Razor Show

Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor

Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor

Join our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClub

Listen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallin

Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow

Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod

Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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

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

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

S1E6 The Retail Avengers vs The Trials of Digital Transformation & Innovation, Part 1

[00:00:20] Show Introduction

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. No matter what time of day you're listening , welcome, welcome to season one episode six of the Retail Razor Show. your host, Ricardo Belmar a RETHINK Retail, top retail influencer partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft.

[00:00:36] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock, obsessed with the relationship between a brand and a consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business slaying franken-stacks. 

[00:00:49] Ricardo Belmar: So for this week, we're changing the pace a bit. This episode and the Retail Avengers fly solo, so to speak, sans guests, and specifically Jeff Roster joined me for the first part of the discussion. And then you can joined us Casey, talk about the future of digital transformation and innovation in retail.

[00:01:05] is part one of a two-part discussion. And for this week we focused on understanding the challenges in corporate culture for retailers.

[00:01:13] Casey Golden: The pandemic really changed the situation for retailers around innovation and digital transformation, Ricardo. Corporate cultures have changed down to the DNA of their organization. 

[00:01:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's so true. Casey, and one area that's really introduced a massive change in that DNA and culture is in the IT budget. And we're not talking. How much retailers spend on infrastructure or the lights on with all their legacy systems. Now we're talking about the amount of budget spend on just pure innovation and transformation.

[00:01:41] Successful retailers have really turned the corner on how much they spend on this . 

[00:01:45] Casey Golden: And even more importantly, they've overcome their fear t o experiment And you and Jeff really get into that a bit more. 

[00:01:52] Ricardo Belmar: Definitely. Definitely. So let's jump into the Clubhouse discussion and then we'll come back here and recap a bit. Plus talk about what really stands out to us from the whole discussion

[00:02:00] Casey Golden: Sounds good. So before we get caught up in one of my favorite conversations, money, let's listen to the Retail Avengers versus the Trials of Digital Transformation and Innovation. 

[00:02:15] Clubhouse Session

[00:02:15] Ricardo Belmar: welcome everybody into the retail razor room. I'm here with my fellow Retail Avenger, Jeff Roster. Jeff, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. 

[00:02:23] Jeff Roster: So Jeff Roster former Gartner and IHL retail sector analyst now on a bunch of advisory boards and doing a podcast, this week in innovation, and rolling with Ricardo at retail tech predictions, 2025. 

[00:02:36] Ricardo Belmar: All right, thanks Jeff. And for anybody that doesn't know in the audience, I'm Ricardo Belmar. 

[00:02:40] I've been a long time retail tech guy at different technology providers and service providers to the retail industry. Now currently with Microsoft as a Partner Marketing Advisor in the U S so let's get rolling into our topic for today. We are going to talk about the future of digital transformation and innovation in retail and retail tech out towards 2025.

[00:03:04] And if you're wondering why we picked this topic well, for one as you might guess from the title of Jeff's podcast This Week In Innovation, it's a topic near and dear to our hearts that we often find ourselves in conversations. If you've been to our rooms in the past, and you've heard from the other members of our team, you know, we all have a relationship with retail tech in some way.

[00:03:23] And we're always interested in the future of innovation in this industry, which it's probably safe to say doesn't have the greatest history of being innovative in the past, but I would argue that in recent years that's been dramatically changing. 

[00:03:37] Would you agree, Jeff?, 

[00:03:38] Jeff Roster: Well, given, I started in 2000 when I'm literally, little to talk about. I mean, every, every day now there's something new. If you look at what's happened with, with artificial intelligence blockchain, all that edge every single day that, you know, there's 5, 6, 10, 15 articles to go through. Just an amazing, amazing amount of uptake.

[00:03:56] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I forget where I seen this, but and I'm sure if you've seen it too, , if you just look at the sheer number of retail tech startups that are popping up now, this is a really hot market. There are retail tech startups, and just about every conceivable space of technology that's relevant to a retailer, including ones that maybe weren't thought of as little as a year or two ago I'll just give one example that I find myself talking about a lot lately and that's in the whole area of returns management.

[00:04:20] And in some cases, even what I'll call return prevention analysis you could say that the rise of e-commerce has perhaps inflated the whole returns processing challenge for retailers. But I think that's an really interesting area now where there's a lot of new technology coming up in a lot of new retail tech startups, trying to address this problem and make it easier and therefore lower cost to handle returns.

[00:04:42] Jeff Roster: You know, my podcast partner, Brian, and I think there's probably well over multiple thousands of retail sector startups. We're counting them in the thousands. 

[00:04:51] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. In the thousands. I'm actually not surprised by that number. 

[00:04:54] Jeff Roster: I am a lot. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of people, but you know, if you just look at anybody that touches AI and they, and they put retail in their title, I mean, that sort of explains it.

[00:05:06] How many are really hardcore will be successful. 

[00:05:09] Ricardo Belmar: That's a different question, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a different question. You, you know, an interesting aspect to that, that I'd like to look at is where all of these new tech startups regardless of what aspect of retail technology they're addressing, there's a difference in who they're targeting, right.

[00:05:26] Are we looking at thousands of startups that are targeting tier one retailers, or are we looking at thousands of startups that are distributed across targeting tier one retailers down to, you know, small business retail owners? 

[00:05:40] Jeff Roster: So typically. I don't know that I, I mean, no one's ever really asked that question or surveyed that group.

[00:05:46] It's a pretty hard group to even survey since we're not even sure how many there are in just, you know, it's going to be a great question. I'm going to ask that going forward, but in the conversations I'm having more and more. It's usually when I ask what's segmentation, it's usually they say retail and you know, of course being an analyst, it drives me insane.

[00:06:01] So tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four is not a whole lot of startups just saying, I want to go up during out tier four, tier five, it's all almost exclusively tier one, tier two. Right. And depending on your definition, I don't know Ricardo, if you have a different definition than I, but tier one's greater than a billion tier twos, nine 99 million to two 50 million in tier three, it's two 50 to 50.

[00:06:21] And that's, that's the segmentation I've used for 20 years. So you could probably make the case. I need to bump up tier one to like a super tier one whatever, but it's, it's still a massive number. And literally, I can't think of a startup that's really going after tier four tier five. That would be a pretty tough.

[00:06:35] For a startup, they're all, they're all trying to fill out, trying to go for the sweet 

[00:06:38] Ricardo Belmar: spot. Yeah. It, it, it's a scaling issue, right. For, for a startup is you want to maximize the size of my first few customers, right. To keep the business going and scaling to that was the small business set. Right. Where you're talking about, you know, you're going to spend just as much time working to sell that two store retailer as you are that tier one retailer.

[00:06:59] Jeff Roster: Yeah. And so what you see with startups, just getting started as you see founders really being elite salespeople. Right. And if you're trying to establish a business and try to be your lead sales person, that is a really tough call to call on, you know, hundreds of tier two and three far, far better to work with tier one, tier two.

[00:07:17] You're seeing retailers that are, are investing in startups, so you can look what Ulta cosmetics is doing. It's just, obviously Walmart's been, it's been doing that forever and Amazon and Target, so you're seeing, you can see probably, five or six. Yeah, probably probably 20 retailers that are aggressively investing in, start the start up community, let alone just, just find service, but literally investment now. And that trend we expect to see really continue and probably accelerate.

[00:07:41] Ricardo Belmar: And that's, that's an interesting one to me because one of the things I hear most often from retail tech startups I've talked to is, the difficulty in finding that early investment and the right amount of investment for them to really fulfill the vision they have for the technology and the solution that they're developing. So I find it fascinating to see these larger retailers, like, the Ulta example you gave , for example, because sure Walmart, Amazon, those guys have been doing this for awhile. But we're branching down now into other retailers who are realizing, my best bet may be to invest in these retail tech startups, rather than looking for that clean, polished solution that's been in market for five years, that I'm going to hope that I can talk to at least three other retailer friends of mine who have already implemented this. I'm going to take the chance and invest in this one because I think their vision matches and aligns with what we need. And we'll be the ones to help them bring that solution forward.

[00:08:32] Jeff Roster: Well, there's several incubators that are, that clearly that's their strategy. And I fall in love with the idea. I think, literally don't care. what some of my friends at some of the larger software providers, but it would probably argue with me, but I am telling you, there is a lot of innovation happening and we're seeing more and more and more with retailers letting somebody startups get in.

[00:08:52] And, and they're literally building tech to spec. So I, you know, I think it's, I think it's really interesting. And then I think we'll see more and more retailers actually acquiring, a startup bringing that tech inside. 

[00:09:03] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:09:03] We've seen that happen too. Yeah, I agree. . So here's what I think is really interesting and kind of going back to when I asked earlier about the segmenting of this and the targeting of this, because I often see many of these technology solutions as sort of an equalizer in a sense that if I'm that small retailer.

[00:09:21] If I have the resources to adopt some of these solution, it may have the effect of putting me on more equal footing to my bigger retail competitors, because it's going to give me capabilities that by virtue of my being small, I can probably get them up and running faster than some of my larger counterparts that have too big an organization to move quickly enough.

[00:09:41] And that might give me an advantage. At least even if I'm a local retailer, for example, it gives me an advantage in my local community competing to those big national brands, because I can deploy these things faster and get moving on them faster and reap the benefits of those technologies at a much quicker pace.

[00:09:56] Jeff Roster: Yeah. So I wouldn't disagree with that, but you also have the right DNA in the retailer. You have to have a senior leadership team that says I'm okay with this experimentation and the ones that are successful, Walmart certainly, Target absolutely, Ulta absolutely, probably Sephora. I don't know them quite as well.

[00:10:14] There there's just a different. They, they are very senior leadership now, not the technology people, but senior leadership are very, very acceptable of our accepting of experimentation risk. Let's throw the dice to a certain degree. We think we can get a big bang for it. And that's what I've been screaming about for 20 years, that we're an industry that needs to embrace that. It's completely unacceptable to say, every technology project has to be successful, you cannot do it.

[00:10:40] And I think we're finally getting to that point and we're seeing, clear examples of retailers that are aggressive with tech are winning at the cash register and that's only going to accelerate. And I do think we're going to see a massive split off of retailers that are trying to play too safe and too comfortable.

[00:10:57] I'm not going to use the the, a word I'm going to use the apocalypse word, but I mean, they're, self-selecting, you know, they're abroad on the on the. 

[00:11:06] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think if there's anything that that all of these retailers should have come away from the pandemic with, is this understanding that I can't just let things happen to me, right.

[00:11:16] I need to be more proactive. And when it comes to the technology, I need to always be searching and looking to understand what's out there. What can I use to solve a challenge? And what can I use? That's going to make my customer experience better. 

[00:11:28] Jeff Roster: Yep. A hundred percent. And I think that's just going to accelerate it because if you look at the technologies that really were game-changing for retail, BOPIS and we've been talking about BOPIS for what, at least, I dunno, Ricardo five, six years now, right just exploded contactless payments.

[00:11:44] Every everything that we were around, we talked a little bit about, we made noise. I mean, they were on, hype cycles and all that good stuff. And all of a sudden we have literally a catastrophic event and acknowledge that we all sort of whisper, whisper, but talked about 

[00:11:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Well, and I think that 

[00:12:00] Jeff Roster: we're not going back.

[00:12:00] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely. And I think maybe the point there was you're right. We've been talking about it. Retailers were talking about it, that there just wasn't the sense of urgency to move quickly. And I think one of the positive things to come from that is that now where projects like this would have in the past would have been looked at as, oh, this is going to be, take at least six to nine months to deploy across all our stores.

[00:12:22] Right. And now you have people saying, well, let's see, in 2020, we got that done in six weeks, not six months. So maybe that means we can do these things quickly. We don't have to take six months to get something done. And, and even more so now we can say, well, we got 80% of it done in six weeks. We knew we still had another 20% to go, but we put it out there.

[00:12:43] We saw it had impact. It was all positive impact. And by iterating on it, we learned that we can improve it incrementally and eventually get to the a hundred percent we wanted to originally, but we didn't have to wait six months to do it. We spent the six months incrementally improving it and customers were getting the benefit from it upfront and right away.

[00:12:59] Jeff Roster: And you'll probably be too polite to say it. But I think to two words really had a big thing to say with that clearly the cloud the fact that we were so, you know, had, have moved so far down the cloud road allowed that rapid rapid acceleration in other words, low code. I think, you know, I think we saw some really interesting examples of retailers being able to do something in six weeks that 10 years ago would have been six months, maybe five years, 

[00:13:23] Ricardo Belmar: right? Exactly. 

[00:13:25] Jeff Roster: And Ricardo, the final thing. And I've got to be careful cause I'm on the wrong side of this age curve, but we've always talked about, at least I've talked about for the last 15 years that there has to be a certain point where CIOs have to become very, very comfortable what used to be,

[00:13:40] we used to call consumer technology and not expect everything to be dialed. And I think we're, I think if you're looking at, you know, the CIOs that are successful, they're sort of fitting a demographic that says we're more comfortable experimenting with technology. We don't need to have it dialed the way, the way I came up in, you're you're a young guy, so you didn't have that.

[00:13:57] But certainly, you know, guys that have been around a while, weren't comfortable with that risk. So you just had, you had probably six variables that all came together to see this acceleration. 

[00:14:07] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think, I think survivability. Survivability. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think you're right. And I absolutely, there's no doubt that the maturity of the cloud. I'll put it that way, right. As sort of a nice way of saying it. It's not just that cloud's been available for awhile. Right. And we've had there have been retailers leveraging the cloud for, for many years now, but I think the cloud maturity level is finally recognized in, in retail that it's at the point where I don't have to treat that as consumer technology and think the worst of it, or think that it's not ready for prime time, I can look at it now and say, yes, we can build enterprise grade solutions and we can deploy things that are reliable enough and consistent enough that I can do it quickly and get the same result of what used to take me six months to build that infrastructure.

[00:14:51] Jeff Roster: Yeah, absolutely. I'm kind of hoping that's what a NRF 2022 is going to be. It's just a celebration of all the crazy cool products. I mean, 

[00:14:59] hopefully, hopefully we can... 

[00:15:01] Ricardo Belmar: hopefully, highlighting what's possible right . Let's talk about, what's possible that we used to think wasn't possible. And what technologies are enabling those possibilities.

[00:15:08] And, one, one side effect I see to this, and I think you've talked about this before, too. Once you embrace that, the digital transformation, the innovation in retail takes you to the cloud, we see a shift in spend, right? So the amount of spend that you needed to sustain big infrastructure, big internal infrastructure that you used to require to do these kinds of big projects and, and transformational technologies by shifting them to the cloud,

[00:15:34] it's also shifted the spend level, which means now I don't have to ask for the same amount of dollars I needed before I can now spend those dollars on more projects, because I freed up some of that spend that would have gone just to, keeping the lights on, on really heavy grade, big iron infrastructure that now it's all gone in the cloud.

[00:15:51] So I don't need to spend that anymore. I can put it on more directly experiential things that I couldn't do before. 

[00:15:59] Jeff Roster: That's always been my. That whole innovation question's always been my I dunno, my Achilles heel. When I had to drive forecast at Gartner, we had our models, we had our, our IT spend and I kept wondering, gosh, how are we ever going to transform this industry?

[00:16:14] When you know, transformational spend was probably five, six, 7% at max of an IT budget, 50% was infrastructure, all of that, you know, 50% non-differentiating infrastructure. And I just wondered how in the heck is this going to happen? And then, then, you know, then the cloud came along and all of a sudden, if I can take 20 or 30% of that 50% spend and just free that up my gosh, that's a lot, that's a lot of mobile point of sale and that's a lot of you know, in-store technology.

[00:16:41] And I think that's exactly what we're seeing now. I haven't dug. I don't have to dig into those kinds of numbers anymore, but it'll be interesting to see if we can , if some of the other analyst firms they're still serving that can sort of document that, that transportation out of infrastructure and into transformational spend.

[00:16:55] We know it intuitively we can see it. I mean, you can see the evidence of it. Right. And then we'll see if it's, if it's long lasting and I think it is. 

[00:17:02] Ricardo Belmar: I think so. I think we're going to see this as a trend now that, that, that shift in the spend, I think we'll see two things. One, I think the shift will be longer lasting, but I think we'll see increase in spend.

[00:17:13] I think we've seen so far this year, there's been an overall IT spend increase. If I were to predict, , is that going to sustain between now 2025 is every year going to show the same level of increase in IT spend, I think each year will increase. I want to say I forget what the number is, where I've seen on what was being expected for this year, but will it be as much next year?

[00:17:31] Maybe, maybe not. I don't think that matters as much, necessarily as the fact that it is going to keep increasing, but I think more important is the shift in spend, you know, to your point where it used to be 50% infrastructure and it won't need to be 50% anymore that frees up more spend that came in applied innovation and new things that can be done.

[00:17:48] New iterations it, even if it's of existing things that have been done, those new iterations and the spend on that is going to incrementally improve things all around. 

[00:17:57] Jeff Roster: Yeah. all the numbers I've seen so far that survey work that's public you know IHL saying I think it's five or 6%. 

[00:18:03] Ricardo Belmar: I'm going to say 5 to 7% is what I remember.

[00:18:05] Jeff Roster: The RIS News study, I think it was, four to 6%. So that's, that's one component. And the other thing too, though, is we moved to the cloud. If we can, and this isn't not going to help my make my services buddies happy, but, for every dollar of software license, it's four to $5 of implementation.

[00:18:21] we can move out of that. Low code is a great opportunity to cut some of that integration spend down. I mean, there's, just, there's 15, 20% of an IT budget that , just ripe for transforming from, just really just core non-differentiating into, into transformation.

[00:18:38] And I think that's, that's probably going to be the big story of 2022 and 23. 

[00:18:43] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I, I agree. I think that that's very true and it's going to be about what technologies that shift in spend is going to enable. And I know we've, we've been making a lot of store level examples, but even if I think of digital areas, whether it's just in plain e-commerce right.

[00:18:59] And what things you can improve on your website. I'm sure this will come as no shock to you. Jeff, when I say that retailers highlighting the fact that, all of the digital investments they've been making and how that's paying off for them and how they're all going to be a digital first omni-channel retailer going forward driven by data and analytics.

[00:19:15] And I chose those words specifically because I can say that there were multiple retailers that use those exact words. 

[00:19:21] Jeff Roster: They can use whatever words they want. I let's see the action. I, I love the the press release the target point out that I read to you what, a couple of weeks ago, I'm looking for it now where they just basically just slammed the football on the end zone and said 95% 90, a direct, direct quote, 95% of our revenues from is related to the store.

[00:19:40] Right. And so, you know, simple, beautiful. And what that means to see what is it? More than 95% of Target's fourth quarter sales were fulfilled by a store that's a direct quote in the press release. And so what that means is that does not mean 95% was done in the store. That's that's, BOPIS, that's a buy online shipt, a shipped from the store, all of the above.

[00:19:58] And there was no silly words there that that was, right, old fashioned blocking and tackling. And I love that. 

[00:20:05] That's probably the greatest press release I think I've ever seen. How cool. Yeah, I 

[00:20:09] Ricardo Belmar: agree. I, I, I absolutely love that one. And in fact, as I'm looking through some of the folks in the audience who I had a conversation with earlier today, I was using Target as an example, because I look at that outcome that you just read out from their press release.

[00:20:24] I would draw the dots back to when they first started doing target drive up, right. Their curbside pickup, which to be fair, they started that not during the pandemic they already had things in motion to do that long before anybody had heard of COVID, to implement that as an additional convenience service, because Target had already been moving in this direction of store-based fulfillment. But if you were to ask the question, is curbside in and of itself, digital transformation is that really innovative and transformative? And I would answer that if I look at Target as an example, the transformational component of it, isn't curbside by itself. It's how that enabled them to achieve that 95% fulfillment from stores, number that you just read in their press release.

[00:21:06] That to me is really powerful and transformative. 

[00:21:09] Jeff Roster: And it's even better than that. It's that the transformation is that the DNA in the organization to say, let's start experimenting way ahead of the and let's understand what it takes to do it, and how do we execute it. And then all this nightmare that we've all lived through descends on the world.

[00:21:25] And some retailers said, we're ready to go. And let's. And others faltered. And that will be the, that will be the story. Along with all the tragedy, there's, there's some, there's some amazing stories and it's, it's all about the DNA. And it's got to go up to the CEO. They have to be comfortable operating in an environment where their technology people can experiment and we to get away from this.

[00:21:49] And I think we are, we're still plenty of examples, but, but I'm seeing more and more, I'm hearing more and more, from tech executives say, you know, I'm getting the green light increasingly I'm getting the green light and stories, like, you know, that this target press release and, Walmart and Amazon just really adds fuel to the fire.

[00:22:05] You have to, you don't have to spend big to experiment, but you have to have a different DNA. And that's, that's the shift I think that we all need to really, at least those of us in that, in the communication that's really need to push going forward. You don't have to be fancy, but you have to, you have to be innovative.

[00:22:22] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And, and you're right. It does require that experimentation mentality and realization that you don't need any one of these things to be a silver bullet. What you really looking for is how many new innovative things can I do and manage and produce a positive outcome that moves the business forward.

[00:22:38] I think that's a corporate culture kind of approach that that is starting to build and, and we see more and more that we didn't see before. And I think that's something that is going to have a tremendous impact in how technology gets used by retailers going forward.

[00:22:53] Jeff Roster: You you've probably said in as many different sessions as I have about, how do we how do we empower our, our leadership teams, our tech teams? Well, you got to let them take credit. You got to let them get up and be able to talk about basic technologies and not think everything is so super secret.

[00:23:07] It's it's been a curse for this industry. Every other industry, when I sat at Gartner , my colleagues in my practice were in manufacturing, were in healthcare, were in financial services. And when I talked to those analysts, they couldn't believe the fact that it was so hard for retail and be able to say anything about anything.

[00:23:24] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:23:24] Jeff Roster: I mean, we really, probably the only industry that that's so penalizes technology executives 

[00:23:30] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, 

[00:23:30] Jeff Roster: go look at the old Gartner symposiums. You never saw a retailer there because they couldn't come and talk.

[00:23:35] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:23:35] Jeff Roster: And say anything. 

[00:23:36] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:23:36] Jeff Roster: And that's, that has to change. I'm not saying you give up your, secret sauce, but I'm not sure talking about a BOPIS project is really, that big of a deal at this point, but allowing your team to take credit for it and to stand up on a national stage and say.

[00:23:49] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:23:50] Jeff Roster: What we did, and this is how we executed it. 

[00:23:51] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And here's the result

[00:23:53] Jeff Roster: and here's the result. Come on. I mean you have to...

[00:23:55] Ricardo Belmar: I completely agree you're, you're absolutely right. That, that has been lacking over the years in retail. I love seeing that when you see it posted now, in fact, I'll, I'll give some credit, 

[00:24:03] so I think Tractor Supply is really good at that. I've seen many times, where I'll find, even in social media, like on LinkedIn or on Twitter, I'll see a post from an exec at Tractor Supply, highlighting everybody who's on the team, this wonderful new project they just finished, how they rolled it out to all, you know, 15, 1800 store locations and how massive an impact it's had.

[00:24:23] And everyone celebrates that. And you see, the hundreds of people that click the like button on that one, because they see the impact and the result. There's no reason to be afraid to talk of these things. I look at this and I say this to people and say, What are you afraid of actually, because if what you're thinking is you're giving away the fact that you're considering this technology.

[00:24:42] I'll say to someone, let's think of that through though, because there are a dozens of people providing that technology, right? You're you're now in a position where you're trying to evaluate from dozens down to maybe three to get to one, do you think maybe there are other retailers, even some who compete with you for in the same categories that are also evaluating the same 12 technology vendors, trying to get down to three, to get down to one, to a deployment, the fact is you're not alone.

[00:25:07] These are not things that you're looking at in a vacuum and that no one else out there knows exists. That's not where you're going to get your advantage from. You're going to get your advantage from the results produced by having this technology deployed, if you do it right. Which means that the differentiator for you as a retail brand comes from how you execute it.

[00:25:26] And how successful you deploy it. And everyone deploys it somewhat differently because every retailer is not cookie cutter. One is different from the next, but the fact that you both use the same technology platform to roll out curbside pickup, that's really not a problem. 

[00:25:40] You're not going to lose anything because someone realizes that, oh, these two retailers use the same technology partner for that. That's okay. It's okay to collaborate. I mean, let's go one step further. We're both participating in activities that are designed to be sort of a neutral environment where retailers and technology providers, startups, everybody in the ecosystem can come together and collaborate on how to address these business challenges.

[00:26:04] It's okay to do that. And I think you're absolutely right that historically this was not an industry that wanted to do that. That wanted to be that collaborative. But I always find it surprising that as big an industry as retail is when you get down to the people that are making these decisions and evaluating these technologies.

[00:26:23] It tends to feel like a small world because you do tend to run into if you've been in the industry long enough you run into the same people from time to time, people move around, they go to different organizations, but there's no reason not to collaborate on the core pieces and understanding how do you address the challenge.

[00:26:39] You may have a different detail in how you solve it, even if you're solving it in the same way as the next retailer, but trying to keep it a secret is not going to give you the advantage. 

[00:26:47] Jeff Roster: Yeah. I've never been able to quantify this, but in, late evening conversations at NRF and whatnot , with retail execs , there's a pretty good sense that technology and retail is more expensive because of that.

[00:26:58] You don't see that in other verticals, you see different other operators in other verticals, saying, technology's non-differentiating, let's figure out how to do it cheap, and then we'll compete on our services and what not. You don't see that you don't see that in retail and that's, that's a real problem and that needs to change because that makes everything more expensive, harder to do.

[00:27:18] You're not giving people the credit for doing cool things. And it just mucks up our whole industry. I think that's changing. I hope, I hope, and I'm doing everything I possibly can to, to brag on retailers that want to be publicly challenged, where we possibly can, but that has to change.

[00:27:34] And we'll just, we'll continually be just training executives for other industries because they just get frustrated with ours and that's where we need to go. And I think that's where we're finally starting to do that. And if that's something that comes out of, out of COVID, well, that's one good thing in a sea of horribleness. 

[00:27:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely. Promoting that collaborative aspect and, and recognizing the accomplishments openly and publicly, I think are key, key factors for that. 

[00:28:00] So Jeff, why don't we talk about some different specific types and kinds of technologies and where we think they're headed and the impact on innovation. You recently have done on your podcast, some discussions around AI and where AI is going. Traditionally I would say up until the pandemic, I would claim the majority of the AI discussion. You always heard kind of centered around areas, tied to supply chain optimization, maybe around forecasts. And obviously your predictive capabilities there.

[00:28:28] what's your thought on where AI is going to go next in retail? 

[00:28:32] Jeff Roster: So when you start looking at forecast for AI spend, I mean, if they're just unbelievable, they're massively large numbers. And so if you talk to the folks in the space, they're working with AI, there's, there's literally nowhere it's not going. We just did a pod where we've talked about safety or, or AI and loss prevention, helping to which is good and bad because there's a lot of risks there because, we talked about the bias in AI, but as far as assessing risks, looking for guns, knives, whatnot, you know, facial recognition, all that sort of stuff.

[00:29:00] It's, it's pretty interesting. And to be honest, a little scary it's certainly going, and then by the way, you add voice on top of that also. And so there's, already some startups where we're analyzing the intensity of a voice call. So, it'll help our client services folks.

[00:29:15] And then probably it's only a matter of time before we're probably putting mikes on the retail, floor there to sense out, how things are going, which also might be a little scary. There's really there's nowhere that it's not going to go Ricardo. That's what's so transformative about this.

[00:29:29] Ricardo Belmar: There's just so much potential and where it can go. One of my favorite , customer facing examples that I'll often talk about with a number of retail tech providers is in how we can improve all of these various product recommendation engines that are out there.

[00:29:45] I mean, I I've lost count how many times I see online people joking about the latest, crazy recommendation they got for an unrelated product when they went to Amazon. And it's not just unique to Amazon, right? This happens on plenty of e-commerce sites where you get a strange recommendations that you look at them and say, well, that has absolutely no relevance to me.

[00:30:03] I think of in apparel specifically, I've often talked about examples where I'm waiting for the retailer who's going to add a capability in their app to help keep track of everything that's in my closet and not just determine how to put things together, but how I can put things together that I already own with things that they're selling or new products that they have coming in so that you can even pre-order them and have the AI do more intelligent recommendations that way.

[00:30:27] Because this is something I know it can be done with the technologies today. And there are at least a couple of tech providers. I know that are building this now. So I'm still waiting for which retailer is going to do that first, because I think there's lots of potential for that. Especially if you think about that in terms of a customer loyalty app and, things you can enhance the relationship that way but particularly around, pre-orders , and other related things you can do that just makes the relationship better because now you'll associate those life improvements around fashion and style in your, in your wardrobe with that retail brand.

[00:30:59] And I, I tend to think of this as one of the things when people ask the question, why do people like to buy Apple iPhones? And you always see Apple leaning towards discussions around how it makes your life better. It has nothing to do with the individual features, right. It doesn't have to do with the individual technology it's, how does it make your every day better by having this device?

[00:31:18] And that's what they build on. I think that AI is one of those technologies that will help retailers do something very similar, because if you think about it, I would claim, that everyone has a handful of retail brands that are much more deeply tied to their everyday lives and even their smartphone device because of who they go to to get a number of different products and services.

[00:31:38] But you probably don't think of them that way, because it's just transactional to you. And I think AI is one of those foundational innovation tools that retailers are going to use to change that brand relationship.

[00:31:49] Jeff Roster: Yeah. 100%, you can point to some really interesting example, both that Ulta and I believe also Sephora are doing around magic mirrors that are smart enough to analyze skin tones, which is not being a user of that product. I don't totally understand, but the technology behind it is fascinating.

[00:32:05] So you can easily point out to some really interesting early examples. And I guess the nice thing about being an analyst is I can look at a trajectory and say, I can see all the mistakes and yeah, they're funny and I laugh. Haha. But I don't care. As long as we're experimenting, as long as, we're pushing the ball forward.

[00:32:20] As long as I see your trajectory and I see value, it's all good.

[00:32:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Absolutely agree. 

[00:32:25] Let me take this opportunity to bring Casey into the discussion. Welcome Casey. Thanks for making it today. 

[00:32:32] Casey Golden: Hi, it's an exciting time. There's been a lot of news happening lately. A lot of the exciting things happening in retail these days. 

[00:32:39] Ricardo Belmar: So one thing I want to bring you into right, right off the start. So Jeff and I have been talking before about level of spend towards digital transformation innovation, and how spend was shifting from based on a need that there's less requirement to spend as much on infrastructure.

[00:32:56] And that frees up the ability to spend on more innovation. And that led us to a point about where startups are being leveraged by retailers. And one thing that we sort of touched on, but didn't go in deeper and I know you have some interesting thoughts around this and that's how startups are getting the funding they need in retail tech and how they're able to get those first few customers to drive the kind of innovation that, that we're all talking about here.

[00:33:21] And Jeff had brought up an interesting point about how now we have retailers who are starting to invest in these companies because they see the potential in the technology and the solution. And that that's one new avenue that wasn't there before. But I wanted to kind of get your take on, on what you see in the, in the retail tech landscape around new innovative technologies and where you think retail tech providers are getting the funding they need, and it's going to help them complete these solutions and get them in front of retailers between now and 2025.

[00:33:49] Casey Golden: Yeah, well, retail tech has always been a difficult conversation to have with Silicon valley. But I have to say that it's definitely improving on it's now at the forefront. The next unicorns I firmly believe will be a group of five to probably five to 10 retail tech companies, because that's just where the most growth is because of digital transformation.

[00:34:14] And this is the first time that retailers have put it as the primary budget and initiative that's moving forward. If you would've talked to me, like, two days ago, I probably would have had something else to say, but I mean, I've just gotten off the phone with a lot of different investment funds.

[00:34:29] That absolutely surprised me on their interest and acumen, in the retail space that has improved over the last 12 months. So it's getting very interesting. Having brands and companies invest in a tech startup does create some difficulties as far as having a brand use a piece of software that a competitor's invested in and information rights.

[00:34:55] And then also just having that entity as an owner there are people that are moving off of customer just because Facebook acquired it. Right. So does brand a want to spend their money with a piece of software that brand B is, is making money off the backend of Going to be interesting on how you play those strategic relationships.

[00:35:19] Personally, I'm staying away from corporate investment. But I do know some other people that have taken it from like a, a Farfetch or an LVMH or some sort, it does open yourself up. If you're looking to be acquired, if that's your goal definitely sets you up for that. So I think it'll definitely be an interesting space. I think retail tech companies will get funded in the next 24 months. There's a lot of people that have sophisticated software in market that has just been stuck in long sales cycles. So, it's not that these are, there's a lot of new companies where you're feeling like you're putting an MVP on to your, into your company.

[00:35:57] There's a lot of established and mature software out there that can support enterprise accounts and can implement and, and move forward. But I'm actually bullish for the first time. Since I've started my startup.

[00:36:09] Consultants that I feel that have the greatest opportunity to implement technology because they're known they have relationships, they understand the technical requirements and they can dig under the hood. And they've seen a lot of different pieces of software and can easily look at apples versus oranges and get into the technical details and the implementation details to really define if you sign this contract, this is what you're getting into.

[00:36:43] And I think that retail consultants right now should be leveraged by every single brand and startup to be able to connect those dots. And it's worked really well for me. And I trust the retail consultants. because That's their business, right? Their business is to be that go-between person and make sure that the implementations are successful.

[00:37:05] That's what they built their reputation on. 

[00:37:06] Ricardo Belmar: That's an excellent point. Yeah. In fact, we were talking earlier about the improving situation in retail, around collaboration. I think you just brought up an excellent example of leveraging the consultants and other let's call it third-party experts, that have good, useful, tangible knowledge that they're trying to share, right? 

[00:37:28] Casey Golden: Yeah. The trusted advisors that can dig under the hood and have those technical conversations where you're not necessarily talking to a CTO, you're talking to somebody that has reviewed 25 platforms in detail and understands the entire supply chain across, you know, 25 different types of brands and organizations and understand.

[00:37:50] Who everybody actually is. There's a lot of vaporware. 

[00:37:54] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, yeah, 

[00:37:56] yeah. You're absolutely right. Yeah. You, you, you do often need as a retailer, help with someone to help you kind of cut through the clutter. Right. And get through all the noise that's out there, which admittedly plenty of, of tech vendors out there help generate, but with good intentions, but it's there and, and everyone could use some help in leveraging that.

[00:38:17] And I think that's one area where it we're absolutely the collaboration should continue to improve. And, and if I were to make, turn that into a, a 20, 25 prediction, I'd say, we're going to see more and more consultants and trusted advisors, you know, choose your label on what you want to call it, but I'll, I'll call them independent experts.

[00:38:34] So to speak or, or neutral parties that can help bring. The technology providers, the retailers, et cetera, everybody else together in a meaningful way that adds value whether it's through direct relationship and networking or because you have access to a platform, it could be a platform and an academic institution.

[00:38:52] It could be an industry association, but I think all of those areas are going to increase their type of influence for the better of the of the industry. 

[00:39:01] Casey Golden: And I think that that's, yeah, that's going to be the key indicator is if you're not investing in software and technology and thinking about retail a little bit differently There's going to be some, some giants that can fall.

[00:39:15] And there there's opportunity for a lot of innovative growth in ways that we maybe only dreamt of some, some companies and brands are going to be able to move 10 years and another, and some others will maybe fall, fall back another five. We could have some really surprising results. If we get a lot more venture capital involved in retail technology, there could be some crazy results.

[00:39:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. I think there's, there's definitely some truth to that. And maybe a lot of it has to do with, like we were just saying, what do you define as retail? When we talk about those kinds of predictions and forecasts and what are you calling digital transformation. You know what what's being included in those two definitions, didn't come up with numbers like that.

[00:39:59] But I think your point is right though, that we are going to see you over the next few years. This is going to be a, a, almost a, a dividing factor, right? Those that are investing in these areas regardless of what the actual number is, but where the investment is going in this digital transformation, that's going to separate the leaders from the laggards, and it's going to separate the successful retailers from the ones that aren't gonna survive.

[00:40:23] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, I'm happy that I'm, not working at a brand right now. I don't think I'd sleep any, any, I probably wouldn't sleep any more than I do now, but it's different not sleeping for somebody else's company. 

[00:40:37] Ricardo Belmar: There you go. 

[00:40:38] There you go. 

[00:40:40] Casey Golden: There's a lot going on, I think right 

[00:40:42] Ricardo Belmar: now.

[00:40:42] Yeah, that that's, that's absolutely true. It's an interesting times. 

[00:40:45] Yeah. I mean, it, it speaks to corporate culture, absolutely speaks to the culture. You know, I was in a conversation earlier today talking about what are the hurdles, to tech adoption for a lot of retailers.

[00:40:56] It's that, that, that culture or mentality around how technology is used, it has to, has to come from the top down, right? To make sure that there is this favorable outlook on experimenting, which we talked about earlier. You know, this desire to whether you call it fail fast, whether you call it iterating on a, technology deployment, all of those things have to come together and it has to be brought into the DNA.

[00:41:19] If you're not an organization, that's going to be willing to do those things. You're not going to be able to advance with techn ology 

[00:41:26] Jeff Roster: Yeah, that really sounds like an interesting room that we have to do or, or somebody to do. What's the, what's the organizational DNA to not be called a legacy retailer. Cause I mean, it's known, we know, I intuitively I know exactly what it is, but I don't think, I don't think I've necessarily really seen it put to 

[00:41:41] Ricardo Belmar: yeah. Kind of spelled out. Yeah. You know, organically spelled out. 

[00:41:44] And how do you change? Right. If you are a legacy retailer, how do you make that change? How do you make that mind shift change? Other than you're bringing in a new CEO, 

[00:41:52] Jeff Roster: I didn't want to say it, but it's real easy to do a walk, either change a walk, there's just no way around it.

[00:41:58] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely true. There are answers and some of them are hard, tough answers, but they are out there for those legacy organizations.

[00:42:06] All right. Well, I'm gonna take this moment to thank everyone for joining us today. I think this was a great discussion around digital transformation and innovation and the future of retail. I'm sure we could go on for another hour and we may do a follow-up session to this one because I am already thinking of other areas just apart from the culture question that we just hit on that we could talk about.

[00:42:26] You know, that would really give us some, some room to discuss where, where things are going with retail tech in the future. So Jeff ,Casey, any final closing thoughts from you?

[00:42:36] Casey Golden: Well, thanks Ricardo. I apologies for being, being late. I know I missed a lot of good conversation, but thank you as always for, including me into the conversation. And I hope everybody has a really good week. 

[00:42:48] Ricardo Belmar: And thank you, Casey, for joining us. Jeff, thank you for another stimulating discussion on a topic that's near and dear to all of our hearts in this industry.

[00:42:56] Any final thoughts from you, 

[00:42:57] Jeff Roster: just you know, it's, there's just no question that retailers have to be serious about, about the next four or five years. I mean, I will never ever use the apocalypse term, but there is going to be a thinning of the herd. There's no doubt about it. 

[00:43:11] Ricardo Belmar: And I'll, echo that sentiment that again, without using the, the, a word as Jeff pointed out, I think that as a retailer, you have to be thinking about and committing to how you're going to invest in retail tech to move your business further over the next few years, because the bottom line answer is if you don't, one of your competitors will, and you won't be around to see them. I think that's the sort of the shocking conclusion that everyone has to come to. And it's not because of any sort of apocalyptic situation. It's just because that's the nature of the business. And if you don't follow along and down that path, then you're the path you will end up on is going to be pretty clear.

[00:43:52] But if you don't make the appropriate investments, and I think going back to something Casey said earlier with the industry experts and consultants that are out there, there is an army of people to really help you make those decisions and those choices. And I would even go so far as to say there are number of folks here in the audience right now who are in that same situation, looking to help people in the industry make these choices because at the end of the day, 

[00:44:16] the fact is we're all consumers, right? So from that point of view, need retailers to succeed to some level. So again, I think the final closing thought here from all of us that we all agree on is the future for retail is in digital transformation and innovation. And if you're not investing in that, you're probably not going to be part of the conversation in the future.

[00:44:34] But if you are then more power to you, when we all look forward to seeing what great things you're going to come up with as a retailer. And on that note, I think we'll close this room out and I want to thank everybody for joining us and hope that you come back next week and join us for another interesting retail tech predictions, 2025 discussion.

[00:44:53] Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend. 

[00:44:55] Casey Golden: Thanks everyone. 

[00:44:56] Recap Discussion

[00:44:56] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome back everybody. I hope our listeners enjoyed that deep dive into digital transformation and innovation retail, as much as we did.

[00:45:07] Casey Golden: And unlike our last few episodes. I'm sure our listeners enjoyed that it didn't go over an hour. 

[00:45:12] Ricardo Belmar: I think the one bit of feedback we're definitely not getting on the show so far is that our episodes need to be longer.

[00:45:21] Casey Golden: So Ricardo, I think there were five key points in that discussion to take away. One how startups are factoring into digital transformation initiatives, two how successful innovation culture starts at the executive level with the C-suite team. Third, digital transformation leads to a big shift in IT spend, moving more and more towards innovation just keeping the existing systems up and updated, leading to more experiential moments. I don't think we can deny that AI is leading the way and innovating in pretty much every area of retail right now. And finally, the important value of industry experts and consultants guiding retailers on this transformation journey, really getting that outside viewpoint. 

[00:46:08] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree. I think those really are the top takeaways. let's take the first one, we talked a little bit in the session about the startup community and this has come up in some of our previous sessions too, and we talked about a role academia has in retail, we had a little bit of discussion there about how they're a great neutral ground to bring startups into the ecosystem.

[00:46:27] But if we just think about how many retail tech startups there are now, and you've obviously got some expertise in this area and you know, It makes such a difference introducing retailers to new ideas and new ways of doing things. I think so many retailers, especially let's face it, the ones that have been around the longest, we always like to talk about legacy retailers.

[00:46:47] Some have really struggled in that area because their organizations are so siloed or it's just inherent in their culture to think about things in the same way a startup does. And so bringing startups in. To help with that makes a huge, huge difference. And I think there are some retailers that have been doing an amazing job of this.

[00:47:06] And you look for example, at Ulta beauty, right? They going as far as investing in some retail tech startups help with that. Nike, I think has done the same thing. They've gone even further than that and acquired some of those startup companies so they can really gain the technology.

[00:47:19] But I think if we were to make the short list of really successful retailers coming out of the pandemic, it's the ones who've really embraced that startup culture 

[00:47:27] Casey Golden: I agree. And a lot of that just comes from understanding that retail tech startups are just fundamentally built differently. very software first. they're focused on solving a problem, not necessarily services co building so much as we understand the problem. And we are going to spend a year digging into actually solving the problem and building software that works, which is just right out of the box, which is just fundamentally different than historically retail technology companies make money and run. 

[00:48:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's so true. You could even say it helps with that entire culture around experimentation. And the need to, to be willing, to take the risks on experimenting on new things and accepting that not all of them are going to work and that's okay. long as you quickly recover from that and move on to the next thing.

[00:48:20] I think that also relates to maybe this is part of that second takeaway you mentioned about innovation culture starting at the top. If management and the executive team can't accept that it's okay to fail on some of these things when you're experimenting, if they can't accept that, it's okay to get from outside organizations, you're really gonna put a crimp on that innovation culture.

[00:48:42] And it's really going to be tough for anybody in these individual teams to really get their ideas across

[00:48:48] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to get someone else fired, and, really making sure like when those startups go in, are these innovation programs? So much is built around success in defining what success is. everybody wants that, that project to be successful. But really about the way that they look at measuring, it's great experiences may not be rolled out through the entire organization.

[00:49:12] It might just be this small moment in one location. And most of the population may not even see it before that's, rolled out. 

[00:49:19] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. That's so true. Absolutely. Like we said, in the main discussion that this, it has to start at the top, you have to have leaders in the executive team that embrace this whole process and the whole idea of how innovation should work. they really need to lead.

[00:49:33] that way, and then if they do, then they're all the teams will follow because what I think a lot of retailers miss is that they've got people who have great ideas, whether it's internal or whether they identify a startup to work with from our first takeaway. They know they have ideas, they know what they want to try, and the key is letting them try. I think this also ties into that third point you mentioned about the IT budgets and where that IT spend is going. We talked before about how, spend overall at the retailers isn't always even coming from the it group now. There are other business functional areas that are spending on technology because it's so pervasive, but IT traditionally in retailers has been focused on either building up the right infrastructure.

[00:50:12] And we're not saying. The wrong thing to do, but what we're really here is that the more successful retailers have that while they got to keep doing that and sure they have to spend some money on keeping things up and running upgrades and so forth. There's gotta be some budget reserve for all of these new experimental innovative things

[00:50:33] their are other teams are going to bring in and that may mean more IT spend. And I think the trend is there. seen it in last year. We're seeing it this year. I've seen more IT spend increases than I've ever seen before. retailers, it was traditionally an industry that doesn't like to do that much incremental increase in it budget year over year.

[00:50:51] But I think over the years, whether it's being scared that Amazon is going to enter your product category and steal a lot of share or whether it's just, awakening that if you're going to be competitive, you've got to spend more on the right kind of technology used the right way. It's not just about bringing technology in right.

[00:51:07] It's in how you use it and where you put it.

[00:51:09] Casey Golden: Yeah. and it's expensive. know, this is, this has been a constant for brands to spend money and budget, significant amount of their annual sales to reinvest into digital and innovation.

[00:51:26] These are the biggest budgets we've ever seen. 

[00:51:28] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And one of those ways, the fourth thing you mentioned is how pervasive AI technologies have become now. We used to hear about this primarily in areas like in forecasting and the supply chain and a lot of operational areas. But now really we can point to AI use cases in just about every corner of the retail business at whether it's customer facing associate facing, whether it's internal on the backend and front of house, wherever it may be.

[00:51:56] We're just seeing it everywhere. And I think that really has pushed a lot of new experimentation and a lot of new innovation. And we might even be able to say that's led the way in part to what's allowed for an increase in that it budget spend.

[00:52:12] Casey Golden: Yeah, you got to prove it. And hardest things to be able to do to get a lot of these projects budgeted is to prove that there's some type of bottom line bonus, or some type of ROI. Really helped validate some of these projects that people want to work. 

[00:52:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think that absolutely no doubt about that. And this ties into the last point, you mentioned that validate that you're doing this the right way, well, what better way to do that than by learning from others? It in what I feel is a strong growth mindset for a lot of retailers that recognize that have to have all the answers internally. only is it okay to bring in those startups that are doing innovative and interesting new things, but it's okay to rely on industry experts and consultants who are getting as much experience as you may as a retailer, but they're seeing it across multiple retailers.

[00:53:03] They're being brought in brands in multiple areas . can share those learnings. You're bringing those experts in because they've seen things you haven't, and you want to benefit from that. So it's, basically taking what others built and building on that to your advantage.

[00:53:18] And I think historically retailers have considered that a competitive disadvantage, but I think that was to their disadvantage in fact competing on whether. You use a technology that your competitive brand does not use. You're really competing on how you use it the impact that technology has on your operations and your customer experience.

[00:53:39] And once you understand that you also then understand that it's okay to collaborate. It's okay to learn from others. And therefore it's okay to bring in those outside experts to let them share their experience with you.

[00:53:49] Casey Golden: A hundred percent. I mean, I have been continually impressed by the pulse that consultants have on the tech space right now. what everybody's doing. They understand how clients are using it. Working with these vendors and pushing them to really find these innovative solutions that kind of push the boundaries because any retail consultant on who we know has been in this business for, over a decade, they've seen it all!

[00:54:21] They know how we really work. So having these consultants just kind of dig in, they know what's going to get the job done and what, what has gaps. And I just think it's very, very important to lean on them because they're following what everyone is doing, that is their business.

[00:54:39] And there'll be able to come up with solutions that fit a business or category. 

[00:54:44] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that that's so true. And one of the, the good thing is, I think we're seeing is just, as you said, and more retailers are recognizing that that's a helpful way to go and it's the right way to go. And I think the industry is recognizing that, quick shout out to the team at rethink retail for doing a great job, collecting a list of who are all the top influencers. And when you look at that list, the number of consultants and other experts in there that retailers can rely on is pretty significant now. Well, Casey, I think on that note, it may be time to close out this episode of show.

[00:55:14] It is that time. So with that note, we will close this one out and another one in the books!

[00:55:19] Show Close

[00:55:19] Casey Golden: If you enjoyed our show, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review on Apple podcasts. 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 today? Take a look at the show notes for handy links and more deets.

[00:55:36] I'm your cohost, Casey Golden

[00:55:38] Ricardo Belmar: And 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 retail razor on LinkedIn and on our YouTube channel for video versions of each episode and the occasional bonus content. 

[00:55:53] I'm your host Ricardo Belmar

[00:55:54] Casey Golden: Thanks for joining us. 

[00:55:55] 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.

[00:56:05]