The Retail Perch

Do not miss this fascinating episode with Richard Kestenbaum, Partner at Triangle Capital LLC and contributor at Forbes.com. Gary, Shekar, and Richard discuss the impact the growth of online has had on physical store economics, why testing and failure are a part of the road to success, how subscription is an opportunity for grocery to make e-commerce profitable, and so much more.

This week Gary and Shekar interview Sandra Duff, President of Jackman, a customer engagement firm, whose clients include Lululemon, KAY Jewelers, and Staples. The three discuss the categories that will need to work harder to bring back in-store traffic, the importance of brands connecting with communities, the types of brands that are best positioned for success and much more.

In this episode, Gary and Shekar take a brief departure from grocery retail and speak with ShiSh Shridhar, Global Retail Lead for Microsoft Startups. ShiSh shares his insights into how the culture of innovation can be implemented in retail. The three also discuss an example of successful innovations and what made them successful, additive manufacturing as a supply chain disrupter, digital twin models, autonomous grocery, and much more!

It's high time for another Retail Round up where Gary and Shekar delve into some of the latest retail tech news. In this episode, they cover the latest FMI Shopper Trends Report, hybrid stores, Instacart's partnership with Fabric, scan and ship technology at Sams club, C&S wholesalers acquiring Piggly Wiggly, and Coborn’s switch to AWG as their primary wholesale provider. 

Today Gary and Shekar switch focus from AI-driven retail technology to merchandising and retail design. They interview Joe Lampertius President at ChaseDesign. Joe shares many stories from his years of experience including: how they convinced Amazon to change its wireframes for the household cleaning department and why, how the behavioral design approach changed the shape of the Head and Shoulders bottles, and how digital is influencing in-store environments.

This week Gary and Shekar have the pleasure of speaking with Olga Yurovski, inventor and CEO of Shopperations, a cloud based planning software for CPGs and retail marketers. Shopperations goal is to help shopper marketers become more agile and data driven. Olga shares her latest creation Vendorstan, a platform where CPG marketer can discover and evaluate new capabilities and easily reach out to the vendors' sales teams for more information.

DO you know where your customer data is? Do you know who has access to it? This interview with Ashish Shrowty, CEO and Co-founder of Divebell Inc is a must-listen for retailers. Divebell Inc helps companies protect data and alerts them to any violations around data protection. Ashish explains how his solution enables companies to maintain data compliance and security while still moving the business forward. Divebell Inc is a lightweight SaaS platform that does not require customer data to ever leave the retailer's own IT environment. 

This week Gary and Shekar are joined by Orlee Tal, CEO of Stor.ai, an end-to-end, digital e-commerce solution that is very tightly integrated into the retailers' internal systems. Stor.ai allows the retailer to take what they know about the customers through e-commerce interactions and apply it to the in-store experience. The three discuss D2C opportunities for brands, the fate of online shopping as the world opens up again, the role e-commerce plays in the survival of grocery, and why retailers should be cautious when it comes to their relationship with Instacart. 

This week, Shekar and Gary interview Roger Heaston co-founder and CTO of Refinition, and Elise Wood, managing partner of Refinition. Refinition empowers retailers and brands by allowing them to control their destinies through data. Elise and Roger discuss data issues including Google's recent 3rd party cookie ban, the common occurrence of brands overpaying to talk to the same people, and how Refinition can help put the power back into the hands of brands and retailers. If you want to own the relationship between you and your customers using ethical clean data, reach out to Refinition at https://www.refinition.com/.

This week, Shekar and Gary interview Michael Haase

CEO and Founder of Plant Jammer. Plant Jammer is a product that not only makes food preparation more fun and creative, but also drastically reduces food waste. This is more than just recipes; the solution does not contain a database of recipes, instead, it is an AI Chef. The user enters the ingredients they have on hand then the solution creates a recipe based on taught food pairings, basic rules, and user preferences. Offered in an app for consumers and also an API for brands to encourage true user engagement.