In this episode of the Ecommerce Evolution Podcast, host Brett Curry welcomes Mickey Winter (CEO) and Carrie Weidenbach (COO) of Aysnd, a digital agency specializing in purpose-driven ecommerce brands. As industry veterans with decades of combined experience, they share invaluable insights on maintaining brand mission during economic uncertainty, particularly amid recent tariff challenges. This conversation delivers practical strategies for navigating market pressures while staying true to your brand's core values and purpose.
—
Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!
—
Chapters:
(00:00) Introducing Carrie & Mickey
(02:22) Navigating Tariff Chaos and Supply Chain Diversification
(04:19) Defining Purpose-Driven Brands
(06:29) Pricing & Profitability in Uncertain Times
(12:25) Carrie & Mickey’s Background
(16:50) The Conscious Commerce Maturity Matrix & Level One, Awareness
(22:29) Level Two, Scaling
(27:06) Level Three, Optimizing
(32:38) Level Four, Leading
(36:15) Level Five, Pioneering
(39:38) Staying Mission-Driven in Uncertain Times
—
Connect With Brett:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
- Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
Relevant Links:
- AYSND: https://www.aysnd.com/
- Mickey’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickeywinter
- Carrie’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-weidenbach-a5272aa
- BOOM! Beauty: https://boombeauty.com/
- Patagonia: https://www.patagonia.com/home/
- AB InBev: https://www.ab-inbev.com/
__
Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Every one of us that starts abusiness, we have this vision,
(00:03):
this creative vision ofdoing something important and
providing a service or providing meaning.
And sometimes as companiesgrow, they lose sight of that.
(00:27):
Well, hello and welcome to another editionof the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.
I'm your host, BrettCurry, CEO of OMG Commerce.
And today I have two very special guests.
We got female co-founders of Ascend.
And when I say that these two arelegends in the e-comm and D two C
(00:48):
space, I'm not exaggerating,they've done some amazing things,
worked with some amazing brands you'regoing to hear about in just a minute.
But we've got MickeyWinter, the CEO of Ascend,
and Carrie Weidenbach, the COO of Ascend,
and they focus on workingwith purpose-driven
e-com brands and creatingsolutions for them.
(01:10):
And so we're talking about today is one,
how can you remain purpose-drivenin a time of uncertainty?
So when there's margin pressure,
which there has been in our space forsome time at the time of this recording,
there's tariff chaos in the industrythat no one knows exactly what to
do with. And so when there's timesof uncertainty or change or chaos,
how do you stay purpose-driven in that?
(01:33):
And then we're going to look at what theycall the maturity matrix and see where
you are as a brand on that matrix andhow you can get to the next level.
And so with that, Mickey, Carrie,
welcome to the show and how's it going?
Thanks for having us, Brett.
We really appreciate taking thistime to talk with you today.
(01:55):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And it's one of those things we connectedbecause Carrie, you and I go way back,
Mickey, we've met more recently, butCarrie and I go way, way back. In fact,
I think it'd be interestingto note, Carrie,
when did we first start workingtogether through Classical Lama?
That was like 2011 orsomething like that, maybe 12.
I dunno this forever ago.
It's definitely over 10years ago, over a decade.
(02:17):
And we've done a ton ofexciting projects together.
But let's dive into thistariff conversation.
Because.
People have to be nimble andquick and adjust to this.
And what we're seeing acrossthe board is if you have
a strong foundation in yourvalues, in your purpose,
(02:41):
you can really weatherthis storm of tariffs.
So we look at brands like Allbirds,
they build sustainably fortheir shoes and they have
their resourcing based on that,their suppliers based on that.
They have a diverse supply chainbased on the sustainability. And so
(03:07):
they can adjust andrefocus their supply base.
So I would say that's yournumber one strategy is having a
diversified supply base divers.
So you're not just dependent on China.
Brazil is a really appealingcountry to do work with.
That's what All Birdshas as an alternative.
(03:29):
And so they're just shifting moreof their supply base to Brazil.
Yeah,
we're hearing that from a number ofbrands and the brands that are in better
shape now than others are those thathave been working on diversifying the
supply chain,
not something you can just kind of snapthe fingers and get a new factory or a
new group making yourstuff in another country.
(03:52):
So those that had the foresight andwe're like, Hey, see this coming.
We've heard of some thathave pre-purchased inventory for the year that was a
winner. I've talked to abrand today that did that.
So they've locked in their pricing,gather, got everything imported.
Not everybody can do that.
But then others have workedto diversify the supply chain,
which makes a ton of sense.Do you think there's,
(04:13):
and we would love if you have apoint on that as well, Mickey,
but is there somethingalso about being, well,
let's maybe step back and define whatdoes it mean to be purpose driven or
mission driven and give some examples.You want to tackle that one, Mickey?
Sure.
Sure.
So it's taking your valuesas a brand and using that as
your north star when itcomes to making decisions.
(04:38):
It helps to create this pathway that
you can balance and taketrade-offs on when you're
consistently looking at whatyour ultimate purpose is,
be it being a sustainablebrand. Being a brand who,
(04:58):
one of the brands that I've workedwith in the past Garden of Life is
supplements. So thinking about them,
they focus on creatingsupplements that are fully
organic made with WholeFoods and sticking to that
as their base missionand not veering from it.
Because ultimately what it'sgoing to do is create this
(05:22):
strong connection withtheir customer base.
And the customer base can trustthat they will consistently
follow their mission and usethat as the driving strategy,
but then making the decisions based
off of your mission. So it'sreally whatever your purpose is,
(05:45):
it's really using thatas your guiding light.
Yeah, I love that.
And in some ways that can reallyhelp with messaging during this time.
So you are Garden of Life and maybe youare about to have to raise your prices.
You communicate to your customers, Hey,
here's why we will nevercompromise on these ingredients
(06:06):
or this approach to our product.We're going to be sustainable.
Come hell or high water,
we're going to deliver good ingredientsfor you because we believe this is why
we're here.
So to do that and to notto keep the doors open,
you think of an elegant way to say thatwe've got to raise prices a little bit,
and I think your core audiencewill likely understand that piece.
(06:29):
And when it comes to theprices and the price increase,
you want to be as transparentas possible with your customers.
So we've even seenexamples where brands are,
you're in the checkout flow, you didn'teven enter the checkout flow, actually,
you're in the cart and within thecart you see your estimated tax,
(06:50):
your estimated shipping,and the estimate on tariffs,
the additional charge for tariffs.So it's not something that's hidden,
it's not something you're burying.
And we've always found that e-commercebrands who are very transparent about
the total cost of ownership and the totalexpense that their customers are going
to have to spend, then they'remore likely to convert in the end.
(07:14):
Otherwise you're going to get a lot ofabandoned carts and people are going to
be confused as to why is everythingso high once I'm ready to
pull.
The trigger. Interesting. So yeah,
I've heard a few people talk aboutthat and I would love to hear your
perspectives and make yousort of laid it out there,
but would love to hear how this has gone.
So I know that there's onecamp of people that say,
(07:36):
just raise the price andfor certain categories,
the consumer will just deal with it,other competitors are raising prices,
it's just going to be the new normal.
Others say some of whatyou just said where hey,
keep the price the same in the cart,we're adding a line for tariff,
obviously then customers will see thatthat's going to change the total things
like that.
Does that cause a spikein abandoned carts or
(08:01):
have we not seen that have thatimpact? Is it too early to tell?
What's your perspective on that?
Yeah,
so Mickey and I are always proponentsof testing things with your customers
using test strategies todetermine the tolerance
for pricing changes.
So there's a lot of tools out therethat are dynamic pricing tools where you
(08:25):
can test this also with customers to see.
What.
Their level of tolerance is for justtacking on this tariffs surcharge.
In some industries, it's verydependent on the industry,
how price sensitive your product isfor what your strategy's going to be.
There is no one size fits all.
(08:47):
So we recommend being transparent,
testing this,
seeing what the reaction isfor what people will tolerate.
And it really is a matter ofrunning tests on at what price
point does, how does that impactconversion rate. And then you.
(09:07):
Can absolutely.
Chart that out and see what that'sgoing to do to your business.
But this is significant in a lot of cases.I listened to the Operators podcast,
which is one I highlyrecommend Mike Beckham,
who's the CEO andco-founder of Simple Modern,
their drinkware brand.
And they import everything from Chinais what it sounds like from the podcast.
(09:29):
He said that they wouldhave to raise prices 25%
and sell the same amount ofvolume to stay profit neutral.
So to keep profits where they are,
25% increase in price andkeep the same sales velocity,
not super likely thatthey'd be able to do that.
But that's one of thosethings where to me,
(09:51):
maybe there's a limit here to whatthat tariff add-on at the end can be.
If it's 25%, I think people are going tobe like, what is this? I'm out of here.
In that case you want toadd it upfront I think,
but it probably is worth testing doingit both ways depending on how much of a
tariff upcharge there is.
And it's not always, the solutiondoesn't always have to be raising prices.
(10:13):
It could be a little bit morecreative in even what you're offering.
So one of the brands that Ialways look to as a leader in the
space is Patagonia.
And I don't know if you're familiarwith their worn wear collection,
but it's pre-warn items and they also,
(10:33):
you have the abilityto refurbish products.
So instead of buying a whole new jacket,
you can get your zipperrepaired or maybe you
snagged it on a tree hiking orclimbing a rock or something. But
in those cases,
(10:54):
they were creative instaying within their mission,
but also creating a whole notherless expensive way to purchase their
products. And now you're refurbishing,
so you're not having to bringin from the manufacturers.
Super interesting. And that requiresa build out of services or build,
(11:15):
but way easier than spinning up afactory or getting out of manufacturing
relationship. And so that's an interestingspin as well. I really like that.
What else are you hearingbrands do right now?
And also I wonder if youare purpose-driven or
mission-driven,
you can probably protect themargins a little bit better.
(11:38):
You may have had better margins anyway,
but are you hearing anything else?
What are purpose-driven brands doingright now to protect margins and to keep
their mission?
So I think doing broadercommunication of that mission and
developing thatrelationship with the brand,
(12:01):
the more that you canincrease loyalty and talk
about other value thatyou provide as a company,
your culture focusing on that, taking
the focus off of price, Ithink is really helping brands.
(12:22):
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
I realized a few minutes ago, but we werein the flow so I didn't want to stop,
but we just got right afterdelivering value to the people,
telling people what they needto think about and do right now,
we didn't talk about your backgrounds.I said, you guys were legends. I said,
we known each other for a longtime and we got right into tariffs.
What do mean? They dunno who weare. Come on now. Nobody knows.
(12:44):
Who. For the audience that doesn'tknow your names immediately,
let's give the 32ndbackground because Mickey,
you've done a lot of amazing things.
What have you done in the industryand why did I call you a legend?
Yeah,
so I've been in the space for alittle over 20 years probably.
(13:05):
My longest stint was actually as thechief creative officer of something
digital, was an e-commercebased solutions provider,
digital agency,
and worked with a numberof brands back then.
I come from the creativeside obviously. So
I am always looking at creatingcustomer experiences that are based on
(13:28):
data. Like Carrie said,I'm a huge advocate of
creating a culture ofexperimentation, not only internally,
but with our clients as well.
And aside from being inthe e-commerce space,
I am also a painter, fine artist.
(13:49):
And my first career,actually, I was an educator,
so I taught high school nice artback in the day, way back in the day.
That's pretty the 20 years in this space
and also at the college level. So for me,
it's always important tohave that educational element in everything that I do,
(14:11):
be it with our internalteam or with our clients.
Love that. And some of the cool brandsyou've worked with over the years.
Oh yeah.
So some pretty big brands like Nestle and
L'Oreal,
but then everything fromhigh fashion and boutique
fashion brands like Love Shack, fancy,more mission-based brands like Bur Bees,
(14:34):
burs B's Baby was one of ourclients for quite a long time
as well as Bake by Melissa
really. So it runs the gamut.
And even pre e-commerce,
a lot of nonprofit organizationswe are focusing on.
So in the creation of Ascendwith Carrie, my goal was to go
(14:59):
back to the heart of things andworking with brands who are,
we don't care if you're juststarting out or you've been in,
you're a successful leader in the space,
we want to work with you regardless.
And we want to be able toprovide value to our clients
and helping them excel and lift theirmission and their impact make their impact
(15:24):
greater.
So good, so good. And thenCarrie, what about you?
You've been A-C-O-O-A long time,
you've been running opsat some amazing agencies.
You've worked with someamazing brands and companies,
but give the quickbackground for you as well.
Yeah, for sure. Brett,when you and I first met,
I was COO at ClassyLama and then eventually
(15:45):
became president of that agency.
I was a COO of another B2Be-commerce agency called E seven
Solutions.
And then I was vice president of programsat something digital in Wright Point,
where Mickey and I got achance to work together.
And my superpower all alongin this space has been
(16:06):
creating value by delivering e-commerce
websites,
the software developmenton time and on budget with
quality.
And you would think that thatwould be the norm in our industry.
But for everybody who's everdone a build out of a new site,
(16:28):
I can tell you it's not the norm.
It's not the norm at all. It'slike construction always late,
always over budget, just the way it goes.But yeah, I got to see that firsthand.
You guys deliver real solutionsthat work and on budget and on
time, which is very impressive. Okay,awesome. Now that people are like, Hey,
I got great tariff insights andnow I know who you guys are,
(16:48):
so let's get after a little bit.
So let's talk about this maturity matrix,
five levels to the matrix. I'm not surewho's doing which level, but level one,
what is it?
And give us some examples and then wheredo people get stuck in level one and
how do they move to the next?
Yeah, sure. I can kick us off. So overall,
(17:09):
we call it the conscious commercematurity matrix. I know it's a mouthful.
Anyone has better ideas andwhat to call it, we are open,
but basically it's a framework thathelps us evaluate in e-commerce
business,
digital maturity and then balance thatwith their purpose and their impact.
So each level outlines likekey marketing strategies,
(17:33):
e-commerce capabilities and functionality,
and then brand positioning to helpthat business scale effectively.
So the first one is we call it emerging.
So this is a brand that's in its infancy.
They're establishing likea e-commerce experience,
and they're beginning to explorepurpose-driven initiatives.
(17:57):
So basically they havea basic online presence,
minimal optimization, they'rereactive in their marketing.
They have very limited, ifany customer segmentation,
and we're really focusing onhelping them define their why and
then piloting their first initiative.
So there's a brand that wework with today called chena.
(18:20):
They're a new gym in communitycenter in Brooklyn in New York,
founded by on Acosta.
And we work with them to create on our
offering that we call ourminimum lovable brand,
which is very similar toa minimum viable product,
but from a branding purpose.
So you're focusing on the foundationalelements and you are focusing on
(18:43):
making those foundationalelements lovable, right?
Because you want people to have anemotion as soon as they interact with your
brand, a good, a positive emotion,
not.
Repulsion or.
Right, exactly. A affinity,some love goodbyes.
(19:03):
So in working with them, becausethey're a brand new brand,
it's really about establishing the base
visual identity and thenwhat that brand strategy is.
So we ended up building their siteon Squarespace and integrating with
mindbody. I'm not sure ifyou're familiar with that,
(19:23):
but all of the e-commerceengine is run by mindbody.
It's very much a platformfor businesses who are in
the wellness space, spasalons, gyms obviously.
And so right now we'rejust speaking with her
(19:44):
just yesterday actually,
I was speaking with Anna abouthow are they going to react to all
the tariffs and the chaos and everythingthat people are feeling, right?
Everybody's uneasy and is it timeto buy a new gym membership or
do you have any extra money to spend here?
So we're looking to developcommunity pricing model
(20:06):
where you can pay as you alower priced model interesting
for customers.
And it's really about the messagingthere because if you can afford it
and pay the standard fee,
you are helping to support otherpeople in the community that can't
and creating a balance there.
(20:30):
And that's part of the missionof isch is to really create
this open inclusive community in that
area and fostering wellness and joy.
And I think during times ofuncertainty, change and stress,
never a more importanttime to work out than now.
(20:52):
And so the last thing you wantto skimp on or cut out of your
budget is something that's going toimprove your health and your wellbeing.
But I love that where you can kindof present the message of, hey,
if you can't pay full price, great,
because what you're doing isyou're supporting Those that can,
and we got this community pricing,and so then it kind feels like, Hey,
I'm doing my part. I don't likethe tariff, but I've got money.
(21:14):
I'm just going to pay the full pricethat can allow someone else to get in
there. And so that's aninteresting angle. I love that.
So at this emerging level,
we're building the foundationof a minimum lovable brand.
We're creating all the brandingand all the foundation,
the messaging and things like that.Anything else to add to level one?
And then what are the things we haveto solve for to get to level two.
(21:36):
Right?
It's basically working through the list of
strategies.
So getting to a place where you have
an email subscriber list thatyou can consistently market to
and start segmenting if youhave less than 500 emails,
(21:57):
does it even make sense?
So it's not just from ane-commerce experience perspective,
but also the marketing andthe brand strategy behind it.
Blockers could just be asa new brand is just getting
awareness, making peopleaware of the brand,
and so increasing membershipat this particular
(22:21):
gym so that you can startputting money back into
evolving the business.
Great. Great. So thenwhat about level two?
What is level two and give us an example.
So level two is when we wantto start to scale the business,
we feel that we have a solidfoundation and we're ready to
grow.
(22:43):
So that starts with astructured marketing plan,
and that's often where teams like yourscome into the picture after we've built
the site and we havethat foundation stable.
But what we see a lot oftimes is we start with the
roadblocks and the misalignments. So Idon't know if you remember this, Brett,
(23:05):
but years ago you and I worked with abrand that was up and coming that nobody
had ever heard of called Johnny O.
Right now everybody knows Johnny O,but when you and I worked with them,
I was working on the marketing strategywith you and we were sending traffic to
their site, but it wasn't converting,
(23:28):
the message wasn't out there, the brandcouldn't sell it. And so John O'Donnell,
when he created that brand,
he had this vision oftaking East Coast Prep
Ralph Lauren and combining it withSouthern California grunge and
relaxed where,
(23:48):
and we were sending great trafficto them, but it wasn't converting.
So we really had to focus onimproving the CX and improving
the story there.
And so what level two is in scalingis you try something and you
tweak,
you try something and you tweakand you're really learning on how
(24:10):
to get there.
And I just love to see thetransformation of the Brandon Geno
and now they give backby giving away clothes
to disaster relief areas is.
It's amazing. It's amazing. And it'sone of those things where first of all,
love Johnny O. Love their style, lovethe way they approach things. But yeah,
(24:32):
when you start to see, hey,
we're driving traffic or we'regetting people to the site,
they're not converting it, what isit? Is it the shopping experience?
Is it the promise or the message isn'tthe same as what they're seeing on the
sites? There's lack of congruency. Arewe just pulling in the wrong people?
What is it that's not working?
But that's really what takes a littlebit of time to figure out time and data.
(24:55):
But then when you do get it right andit is the right message to the right
person at the right time andthen a good shopping experience,
it can create some magic as is thecase with Johnny O. So that's awesome.
Good. So what then aresome of the blockers?
What are some of the things we've gotto solve in level two before we get to
level three?
(25:15):
So misalignment, inconsistent messaging,
not evoking that emotion and thatfeeling that you're trying to convey
with your brand. We see all kinds of stuff
sometimes. And so we watch thatconversion funnel all the time.
(25:38):
Where are people not getting it? Whereare they bouncing? What's happening?
And like we talked about and then we test,
we do that conversion rate optimization.
It's so much less expensive for our
clients to do a test on thefront end to change something
(25:59):
before changing code, right?Code's expensive to change,
you've got to do a deployment,
but we start tweaking with testing.
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
And it's one of those things where it'sboth on the messaging side up front but
then also on the site and some thingsyou think are going to work, don't. Boom,
(26:20):
beauty longtime climb.
My buddy Ezra Firestone runs thecompany and there's always been skincare
for women like boomer women and older,
and they thought most women viewthemselves as so young and whatever.
So for a while they always had the ageappropriate models in their ads and they
thought, well, let's just try womenin their late forties or whatever.
(26:41):
And there was almost acoup, there was a protest,
the people reached out andthey're like, that is not me.
What are you doing in theseat? And you're like, oh, sorry,
we'll go back to the core.No problem. But yeah,
you got to test stuff like that becausesometimes little things like age of the
model or how we're displaying this thing,
you wouldn't think it would would've abig impact. It could have a big impact.
(27:03):
So really, really important. Good.
What about then whatlevel are we ready for? I.
Said.
Three.
We level three. Yeah, level three. So.
Go for it. Does that back to you?
What is level three? So level threeis optimizing, talking about testing.
So level, level two, you startdipping your toe into that.
But now level three istaking that data and then
(27:26):
using it to make the actual change.
So you're testing,
but now you are implementing thosetests that have proved successful.
You're leveraging automationand personalization.
So now you know more aboutyour customer, who they are,
what they're looking for.
You had mentioned with JohnnyO and sending possibly maybe
(27:50):
unqualified traffic to the siteand people were converting.
We know who the audience is at this level.
And there's also from an impactperspective or purpose perspective,
there's a structuredimpact strategy in place.
You know what you're trying to convey,
(28:10):
what the values arewithin the organization,
and you're putting thatfirst as you execute.
So you're looking at holisticmarketing strategies,
data-driven marketing automation, likeI said, even ai predictive search,
if you're thinking about thecustomer experience on the website,
(28:31):
loyalty and rewards programs.
But you always ask alsowhat might be a roadblock,
what's stopping them frommoving to the next? Right.
At level three,
one of the blocks that we see is alack of cross-departmental alignment.
So the marketing team might bemisaligned with the technology
(28:52):
team
while the purpose andthe mission is there,
not everyone's bought into it internally,
everyone has their owninitiatives going on.
And so that can really prohibitthe overall brand from successfully
moving forward. It's not alwayswhat's happening with the customer,
(29:13):
you got to look inside as well.
Yeah, it's such a goodpoint. What tips do you have?
What examples do you have?
And then do you have any suggestionson tools or other things that are
appropriate for this level?
So specific tools,
there's so many tools out there from ifwe're thinking about functionality and
(29:34):
everything from Algolia search andVU and things like that to help with
AI driven search,
but tools in thinkingabout how do you mend
that disconnect internally,
think about maybe there'sleadership training that
(29:57):
you're giving to the leaderswithin your organization.
Carrie and I are actually in the processof taking this really great conscious
leadership trainingthis month and I'm like,
everybody should takethis course because it's
been very eyeopening and also doing things
(30:18):
internally to get other people aligned.
If you're more friendly with thepeople within your organization,
you respect them and it's reallyworking together to do that.
And you need that leadership from thetop to help encourage the teams to
really get along and toget on the same page.
(30:38):
Yeah, I love it. I really believebusinesses only really has two things,
brand and culture. Brandis the outside perception.
It's what the marketplacebelieves about you,
thinks about you when they see yourlogo or your product, what do they feel?
What are those emotionslike we talked about before?
But brand and then culture andculture is who you are on the inside.
How are those departmentscommunicating with each other?
(31:00):
How are you actually operating?
Are you actually mission-driven or isthat just something you say and it's not
real? What is the culture?
Because ultimately the culture willinfluence the brand and it will
shine through and people willsee that. So both are important.
So I love that you brought that up.Sometimes it's not just a tech solution,
sometimes it's an internaldepartment solution.
Maybe that's part of the blockerthat's keeping you stuck where you are.
(31:25):
It's the need to get more alignmentand better communication and better
leadership inside your team, whichimpacts culture overall. It's great,
great insight.
Just a very visualexample that you can see
where there might be misalignmentin a brand is just the
carousel that they might haveon the homepage. There's five,
(31:48):
six slides of different,maybe it's products,
maybe it's mission-basedbranding and messaging.
But when there's so many different slides
within a carousel,
it's because everyone in the organizationis fighting for the top spot.
You can't.
Choose it's decision bycommittee or everyone.
(32:09):
Gets a choice.
Everybody fighting internally of theywant their thing to be upfront and
center. So the carouselkind of in my opinion,
developed because of internalstruggle and less about trying to
assist the customer in their experience.
Yeah,
it's a really good call out when somethinglooks kind of Frankenstein together
(32:29):
or where are we going here?
This is a committee decision thing oreveryone fighting internally or whatever.
Yeah, that's a really great example.Okay, cool. So level four ready for that.
Back to you. What islevel four? I'm going to.
Take this one. Oh, sorry. Just tomix it up, make things up for you.
But I wanted to take this one because
(32:51):
the name of this level is calledLeading. And like I mentioned before,
Patagonia is one of theleaders in this space. And so
if you're at level four,
you're recognized as a leader in thee-commerce space and as well as the impact
you're integratingsustainability, employee wellness,
(33:15):
customer experience at every touch point.
And they are a great case study for that.
They're strong brand loyaltydriven by values and innovation.
Their purpose is what differentiatesthem from their competitors.
Deep personalization happening onthe site. There's very high loyalty.
(33:38):
What I mentioned earlier aboutthe wear as a solution to
a different perspective on howto deal with increasing costs.
One of the things that could bea blocker though is losing your
authenticity as you continue to scale,
(33:58):
as you continue to grow. That wouldbe one area that you'd really need to
keep an eye on because youdon't want to lose that mission.
I'm not saying Patagonia is doing that,
I'm just saying for anorganization in this space,
that's one area you definitelywant to pay close attention to.
But outside of the warm wear collection,I don't know if you're familiar in,
(34:21):
I think it was 2010 or 2011,
they created this campaigncalled Don't Buy This Jacket.
And it was a Black Fridayad that ran in the New York
Times and it was like featuringtheir bestselling product
at the time, I think it was a fleeceor something. And it wasn't about,
(34:44):
they were saying don't buy this jacketbecause what they're saying is they want
customers to buy less and repair moreand they were really encouraging them to
go through the process of usingtheir wear collection or their
refurbished products.
So you can just send in your productsthat are Patagonia and then have them
repaired by the brand.
(35:05):
Super interesting and a bit risky.
So.
Don't buy this. But the cool thingabout that is everybody's like,
wait a minute, what? Definitely a patterninterrupt, not what you're expecting.
So then you lean in potentially a littlebit more, which is super interesting.
And their sales that year increasedI think by 30% after that.
And so their purpose andprofit can coexist, right?
(35:29):
It's not one or the.
Other.
And it's also one of those things toowhere that resonates with their customer.
So people that are active thatare climbing and affluent,
they're also conscious about theearth and environment climbing,
things like that. So that feelsgood. Just say, wait a minute, yeah,
I do have this awesome coat, I'mjust going to get that repaired.
(35:49):
But you know what, we alllike to buy stuff too.
So there's also a lot of thispeople that are like, yeah,
but I'm going to buy thispair of pants as well.
I'm going to buy this newthing for sure. Just I want to.
And now I feel like I'm giving backsort of even though I'm just buying
something. So yeah, it just all.
Works money. So now maybe I.
Save money.
Yeah.
We're always looking for the justificationof how can I justify this purchase
(36:13):
with logic? I already made itemotionally. Yeah, absolutely. Really.
Great.
Absolutely. So that's level four.So then level five, bring us home.
So back to you, Carrie. Yeah.
Yeah. Level five, pioneering.
So I have spent thelast five years working
with a very pioneeringbrand in the e-commerce
(36:33):
space, AB InBev,
the parent company of Anheuser-Busch.
I worked with them on theirdigital sales transformation,
B2B globally.
And they really went from anin-person sales strategy to
transition to onlineselling in a space where you
(36:55):
wouldn't expect it,
where you're selling to bars andrestaurants and corner stores,
beer.
But they have done some incrediblypioneering things in this space.
They custom built andalgorithmic sales predictive
engine using AI and usinghistorical data of what
(37:17):
customers were purchasing to say, okay,
now we think this is what yournext order is going to look like.
And so they would build up the entirenext order for the customer and present
that to them so they could put the entirething in the cart and just check out.
And that increased sales significantly.
And after they built thisinfrastructure and we launched it
(37:40):
in 24 countries in four years,they said, you know what?
We're going to take this a step furtherand we're going to become more like an
Amazon for B2B.
Now they've taken their e-commerceplatform and they're using it
as a marketplace for otherconsumer goods companies.
They've onboarded Nestle and Mondelezin a bunch of countries around the
(38:04):
globe into this platform.
So that's when you'retransforming business,
then you're a pioneer in this space.
Really interesting.
So what is their primaryobjective with this marketplace or
creating the Amazon for B2B?What's their objective with that?
They were really smart about it.
(38:26):
They have 2.5 million customers thatthey're selling beer to around the globe,
and they have the infrastructure already.
They're shipping weekly to all of theselocations. And they said, wait a minute,
why don't we share thisinfrastructure? Love.
It. I love it. It's.
Brilliant with other companiesthat are selling to our clients,
(38:47):
we've done all thework. Let's expand this.
Yeah, it's really what a great idea.We've already got the distribution system,
the relationships, the system customer.
Our stuff, customers using our app orour website to purchase every week, what.
Other products there.
For their store. If youhave a grocery store, a bar,
(39:08):
a restaurant, a corner kiosk,
you're replenishing the beer everyweek, you're in there ordering.
So how can we create new revenue linesand new opportunities here through what
we already have? I think that's just suchan important business skill of how can
I leverage existingassets, existing tools,
(39:30):
existing relationships toopen up new opportunities and
really create a solution. I love that.
What are some of the things thatyou're hearing right now from
your clients? Are theydoubling down on mission?
Are they a little bit fearfulbecause they're mission driven?
(39:52):
Because to me it seems like this is notthe time just to start slashing prices.
Nobody's slashing prices, I guess,
but it's not the time to go cheapor to just go into survival mode
necessarily.
This is the time probably to lean intowhatever your purpose is or whatever your
mission is. And there may be alittle bit of riding the storm,
weathering the storm,
but I think you can use thisto your advantage and to your
(40:17):
customer's advantage byleaning into your mission.
So what else are you hearing orseeing from your clients right now?
I think you're exactlyright. I think leaning
into the mission and why you'rein business in the first place,
every one of us that starts abusiness, we have this vision,
(40:39):
this creative vision ofdoing something important and
providing a service or providing meaning.
And sometimes as companiesgrow, they lose sight of that.
And we focus on
all the nuances of ourbusiness. The bottom line this,
(41:00):
the how are we going to change this?
And sometimes we forgetthat original purpose.
And what we see timeand time again is every
company who focuses on that culture piece,
on that purpose piece,
they really start to thrive.
(41:21):
It's more of a sustainablemodel in multiple ways.
It's more of a sustainable brand whenyou have a real reason for existing,
that's not just selling a widget,
which we're always all here to sellstuff and make money and make profits.
Obviously we can't exist withoutthat. But if there's more to it,
usually you're a little moreinsulated and a little more stable in
(41:43):
times of uncertainty.
Right? And what all the studies showalso is your team is more engaged,
they're more motivated to helpyou pursue that purpose. So.
I like it. I like it. Well, as we wrap up,
who should be reaching out to you? Soif people are listening and thinking,
(42:03):
I'm liking these tips and suggestions,
and I maybe I'm a level three and wantto go level four or wherever they may
find themselves on the maturity matrix,
who are you guys really bestequipped to help and how can you help
who should reach out to you and why?
Like I said earlier,
it is not a specific type of brand.
(42:26):
It is anyone who
is maybe struggling to definea mission for their brand,
a brand who might just bestarting up in the space,
but also brands who are just looking to
engage with their customersin a different way.
(42:48):
So we provide everything from,
like I talked earlier about theminimum level of brand offering.
We can help you establisha brand from the start.
Or if, I don't know, say for instance,
you're looking to do a refresh of a brand,
really start focusing on amission. We are here to assist you.
(43:13):
There's other ways in dealing withthe tariffs too and the uncertainty
thinking about testing and
really increasing theconversions that you have.
You still have the sametraffic that you had yesterday,
but how are we going to getthose people to convert more?
(43:34):
We can assist with ABtesting, conversion rate,
optimization testing,
and even if you're lookingto maybe switch platforms,
we are a shop wear partner
and we work with Shopify as well.
So anyone who might be out therelooking to make a little bit of a
(43:55):
change and start thinkingmore about their mission both
internally in the organization aswell as externally to their customers.
So from the branding pieceto the technology piece,
you guys have really built and beeninvolved with some very complex
technology deployments.
You talk about the AB InBevapp and some of these things.
(44:19):
You guys have really executedand delivered some very complex
technical solutions,
but you're also good at the brandingpiece and tying that in with mission.
And so really, really good.So how can people find you?
So if someone's listeningto this and like, Hey,
I want to talk to Mickey and CarrieEdison, how can they find you?
Yeah, so we are as send a
(44:41):
YSN d.com,
our Y is you.
It's all our clients that we serveso they can reach out at hello at
Ascend and talk to us.
And we wanted to offer all of yourlisteners a chance to connect with us
and let's test out thisconscious commerce maturity
(45:03):
model.
We'd be happy to do an assessment forwhere they're at and share their level
with them and
how they can level up in their business.
We can help look for thosegaps and opportunities for them if they're just maybe
even feeling a little bit stuckand not even sure where to look.
(45:25):
Yeah.
And you guys have such a keen eye forwhat's actually going to move the needle
with a business, and here's whatyou're trying to do with your brand,
but I don't think it's resonating.And so here's how we need to pivot.
You have a breadth of experience andtechnical knowledge and brand knowledge
that tied together isa really unique thing,
really unique offeringand unique skillset.
(45:46):
And so A YSN
d.com, check it out. And are youguys on the socials as well? Sorry,
I butchered that. But are you guys,you're on LinkedIn as well? Both of you?
Absolutely. Instagram,LinkedIn, even Facebook,
you can find us. Andwe're always putting out
(46:07):
value and advice for people,so definitely follow.
Us. Cool. So reach out, getthat maturity matrix assessment,
see where you fall on that. And hey,
now is the time to stay mission driven.
Stay the course. Look for waysto pivot and stay profitable.
Reach out to good partnerslike Ascend or like OMG.
(46:31):
And with that, ladies, thank you.
Thank you for bringing your knowledgeand your experience and for your time and
keep up the good work.
Thank you, Brett, thank youso much for this time. Yeah,
thank you for having us today,Brett. We appreciate it.
Awesome. Absolutely. And asalways, thank you for tuning in.
We'd love to hear from you. What wouldyou like to hear more of on the show?
(46:52):
And if you've not done it, please leaveus a review. That always makes our day.
And with that, until nexttime, thank you for listening.
Every one of us that starts abusiness, we have this vision,
(00:03):
this creative vision ofdoing something important and
providing a service or providing meaning.
And sometimes as companiesgrow, they lose sight of that.
(00:27):
Well, hello and welcome to another editionof the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.
I'm your host, BrettCurry, CEO of OMG Commerce.
And today I have two very special guests.
We got female co-founders of Ascend.
And when I say that these two arelegends in the e-comm and D two C
(00:48):
space, I'm not exaggerating,they've done some amazing things,
worked with some amazing brands you'regoing to hear about in just a minute.
But we've got MickeyWinter, the CEO of Ascend,
and Carrie Weidenbach, the COO of Ascend,
and they focus on workingwith purpose-driven
e-com brands and creatingsolutions for them.
(01:10):
And so we're talking about today is one,
how can you remain purpose-drivenin a time of uncertainty?
So when there's margin pressure,
which there has been in our space forsome time at the time of this recording,
there's tariff chaos in the industrythat no one knows exactly what to
do with. And so when there's timesof uncertainty or change or chaos,
how do you stay purpose-driven in that?
(01:33):
And then we're going to look at what theycall the maturity matrix and see where
you are as a brand on that matrix andhow you can get to the next level.
And so with that, Mickey, Carrie,
welcome to the show and how's it going?
Thanks for having us, Brett.
We really appreciate taking thistime to talk with you today.
(01:55):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And it's one of those things we connectedbecause Carrie, you and I go way back,
Mickey, we've met more recently, butCarrie and I go way, way back. In fact,
I think it'd be interestingto note, Carrie,
when did we first start workingtogether through Classical Lama?
That was like 2011 orsomething like that, maybe 12.
I dunno this forever ago.
It's definitely over 10years ago, over a decade.
(02:17):
And we've done a ton ofexciting projects together.
But let's dive into thistariff conversation.
Because.
People have to be nimble andquick and adjust to this.
And what we're seeing acrossthe board is if you have
a strong foundation in yourvalues, in your purpose,
(02:41):
you can really weatherthis storm of tariffs.
So we look at brands like Allbirds,
they build sustainably fortheir shoes and they have
their resourcing based on that,their suppliers based on that.
They have a diverse supply chainbased on the sustainability. And so
(03:07):
they can adjust andrefocus their supply base.
So I would say that's yournumber one strategy is having a
diversified supply base divers.
So you're not just dependent on China.
Brazil is a really appealingcountry to do work with.
That's what All Birdshas as an alternative.
(03:29):
And so they're just shifting moreof their supply base to Brazil.
Yeah,
we're hearing that from a number ofbrands and the brands that are in better
shape now than others are those thathave been working on diversifying the
supply chain,
not something you can just kind of snapthe fingers and get a new factory or a
new group making yourstuff in another country.
(03:52):
So those that had the foresight andwe're like, Hey, see this coming.
We've heard of some thathave pre-purchased inventory for the year that was a
winner. I've talked to abrand today that did that.
So they've locked in their pricing,gather, got everything imported.
Not everybody can do that.
But then others have workedto diversify the supply chain,
which makes a ton of sense.Do you think there's,
(04:13):
and we would love if you have apoint on that as well, Mickey,
but is there somethingalso about being, well,
let's maybe step back and define whatdoes it mean to be purpose driven or
mission driven and give some examples.You want to tackle that one, Mickey?
Sure.
Sure.
So it's taking your valuesas a brand and using that as
your north star when itcomes to making decisions.
(04:38):
It helps to create this pathway that
you can balance and taketrade-offs on when you're
consistently looking at whatyour ultimate purpose is,
be it being a sustainablebrand. Being a brand who,
(04:58):
one of the brands that I've workedwith in the past Garden of Life is
supplements. So thinking about them,
they focus on creatingsupplements that are fully
organic made with WholeFoods and sticking to that
as their base missionand not veering from it.
Because ultimately what it'sgoing to do is create this
(05:22):
strong connection withtheir customer base.
And the customer base can trustthat they will consistently
follow their mission and usethat as the driving strategy,
but then making the decisions based
off of your mission. So it'sreally whatever your purpose is,
(05:45):
it's really using thatas your guiding light.
Yeah, I love that.
And in some ways that can reallyhelp with messaging during this time.
So you are Garden of Life and maybe youare about to have to raise your prices.
You communicate to your customers, Hey,
here's why we will nevercompromise on these ingredients
(06:06):
or this approach to our product.We're going to be sustainable.
Come hell or high water,
we're going to deliver good ingredientsfor you because we believe this is why
we're here.
So to do that and to notto keep the doors open,
you think of an elegant way to say thatwe've got to raise prices a little bit,
and I think your core audiencewill likely understand that piece.
(06:29):
And when it comes to theprices and the price increase,
you want to be as transparentas possible with your customers.
So we've even seenexamples where brands are,
you're in the checkout flow, you didn'teven enter the checkout flow, actually,
you're in the cart and within thecart you see your estimated tax,
(06:50):
your estimated shipping,and the estimate on tariffs,
the additional charge for tariffs.So it's not something that's hidden,
it's not something you're burying.
And we've always found that e-commercebrands who are very transparent about
the total cost of ownership and the totalexpense that their customers are going
to have to spend, then they'remore likely to convert in the end.
(07:14):
Otherwise you're going to get a lot ofabandoned carts and people are going to
be confused as to why is everythingso high once I'm ready to
pull.
The trigger. Interesting. So yeah,
I've heard a few people talk aboutthat and I would love to hear your
perspectives and make yousort of laid it out there,
but would love to hear how this has gone.
So I know that there's onecamp of people that say,
(07:36):
just raise the price andfor certain categories,
the consumer will just deal with it,other competitors are raising prices,
it's just going to be the new normal.
Others say some of whatyou just said where hey,
keep the price the same in the cart,we're adding a line for tariff,
obviously then customers will see thatthat's going to change the total things
like that.
Does that cause a spikein abandoned carts or
(08:01):
have we not seen that have thatimpact? Is it too early to tell?
What's your perspective on that?
Yeah,
so Mickey and I are always proponentsof testing things with your customers
using test strategies todetermine the tolerance
for pricing changes.
So there's a lot of tools out therethat are dynamic pricing tools where you
(08:25):
can test this also with customers to see.
What.
Their level of tolerance is for justtacking on this tariffs surcharge.
In some industries, it's verydependent on the industry,
how price sensitive your product isfor what your strategy's going to be.
There is no one size fits all.
(08:47):
So we recommend being transparent,
testing this,
seeing what the reaction isfor what people will tolerate.
And it really is a matter ofrunning tests on at what price
point does, how does that impactconversion rate. And then you.
(09:07):
Can absolutely.
Chart that out and see what that'sgoing to do to your business.
But this is significant in a lot of cases.I listened to the Operators podcast,
which is one I highlyrecommend Mike Beckham,
who's the CEO andco-founder of Simple Modern,
their drinkware brand.
And they import everything from Chinais what it sounds like from the podcast.
(09:29):
He said that they wouldhave to raise prices 25%
and sell the same amount ofvolume to stay profit neutral.
So to keep profits where they are,
25% increase in price andkeep the same sales velocity,
not super likely thatthey'd be able to do that.
But that's one of thosethings where to me,
(09:51):
maybe there's a limit here to whatthat tariff add-on at the end can be.
If it's 25%, I think people are going tobe like, what is this? I'm out of here.
In that case you want toadd it upfront I think,
but it probably is worth testing doingit both ways depending on how much of a
tariff upcharge there is.
And it's not always, the solutiondoesn't always have to be raising prices.
(10:13):
It could be a little bit morecreative in even what you're offering.
So one of the brands that Ialways look to as a leader in the
space is Patagonia.
And I don't know if you're familiarwith their worn wear collection,
but it's pre-warn items and they also,
(10:33):
you have the abilityto refurbish products.
So instead of buying a whole new jacket,
you can get your zipperrepaired or maybe you
snagged it on a tree hiking orclimbing a rock or something. But
in those cases,
(10:54):
they were creative instaying within their mission,
but also creating a whole notherless expensive way to purchase their
products. And now you're refurbishing,
so you're not having to bringin from the manufacturers.
Super interesting. And that requiresa build out of services or build,
(11:15):
but way easier than spinning up afactory or getting out of manufacturing
relationship. And so that's an interestingspin as well. I really like that.
What else are you hearingbrands do right now?
And also I wonder if youare purpose-driven or
mission-driven,
you can probably protect themargins a little bit better.
(11:38):
You may have had better margins anyway,
but are you hearing anything else?
What are purpose-driven brands doingright now to protect margins and to keep
their mission?
So I think doing broadercommunication of that mission and
developing thatrelationship with the brand,
(12:01):
the more that you canincrease loyalty and talk
about other value thatyou provide as a company,
your culture focusing on that, taking
the focus off of price, Ithink is really helping brands.
(12:22):
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
I realized a few minutes ago, but we werein the flow so I didn't want to stop,
but we just got right afterdelivering value to the people,
telling people what they needto think about and do right now,
we didn't talk about your backgrounds.I said, you guys were legends. I said,
we known each other for a longtime and we got right into tariffs.
What do mean? They dunno who weare. Come on now. Nobody knows.
(12:44):
Who. For the audience that doesn'tknow your names immediately,
let's give the 32ndbackground because Mickey,
you've done a lot of amazing things.
What have you done in the industryand why did I call you a legend?
Yeah,
so I've been in the space for alittle over 20 years probably.
(13:05):
My longest stint was actually as thechief creative officer of something
digital, was an e-commercebased solutions provider,
digital agency,
and worked with a numberof brands back then.
I come from the creativeside obviously. So
I am always looking at creatingcustomer experiences that are based on
(13:28):
data. Like Carrie said,I'm a huge advocate of
creating a culture ofexperimentation, not only internally,
but with our clients as well.
And aside from being inthe e-commerce space,
I am also a painter, fine artist.
(13:49):
And my first career,actually, I was an educator,
so I taught high school nice artback in the day, way back in the day.
That's pretty the 20 years in this space
and also at the college level. So for me,
it's always important tohave that educational element in everything that I do,
(14:11):
be it with our internalteam or with our clients.
Love that. And some of the cool brandsyou've worked with over the years.
Oh yeah.
So some pretty big brands like Nestle and
L'Oreal,
but then everything fromhigh fashion and boutique
fashion brands like Love Shack, fancy,more mission-based brands like Bur Bees,
(14:34):
burs B's Baby was one of ourclients for quite a long time
as well as Bake by Melissa
really. So it runs the gamut.
And even pre e-commerce,
a lot of nonprofit organizationswe are focusing on.
So in the creation of Ascendwith Carrie, my goal was to go
(14:59):
back to the heart of things andworking with brands who are,
we don't care if you're juststarting out or you've been in,
you're a successful leader in the space,
we want to work with you regardless.
And we want to be able toprovide value to our clients
and helping them excel and lift theirmission and their impact make their impact
(15:24):
greater.
So good, so good. And thenCarrie, what about you?
You've been A-C-O-O-A long time,
you've been running opsat some amazing agencies.
You've worked with someamazing brands and companies,
but give the quickbackground for you as well.
Yeah, for sure. Brett,when you and I first met,
I was COO at ClassyLama and then eventually
(15:45):
became president of that agency.
I was a COO of another B2Be-commerce agency called E seven
Solutions.
And then I was vice president of programsat something digital in Wright Point,
where Mickey and I got achance to work together.
And my superpower all alongin this space has been
(16:06):
creating value by delivering e-commerce
websites,
the software developmenton time and on budget with
quality.
And you would think that thatwould be the norm in our industry.
But for everybody who's everdone a build out of a new site,
(16:28):
I can tell you it's not the norm.
It's not the norm at all. It'slike construction always late,
always over budget, just the way it goes.But yeah, I got to see that firsthand.
You guys deliver real solutionsthat work and on budget and on
time, which is very impressive. Okay,awesome. Now that people are like, Hey,
I got great tariff insights andnow I know who you guys are,
(16:48):
so let's get after a little bit.
So let's talk about this maturity matrix,
five levels to the matrix. I'm not surewho's doing which level, but level one,
what is it?
And give us some examples and then wheredo people get stuck in level one and
how do they move to the next?
Yeah, sure. I can kick us off. So overall,
(17:09):
we call it the conscious commercematurity matrix. I know it's a mouthful.
Anyone has better ideas andwhat to call it, we are open,
but basically it's a framework thathelps us evaluate in e-commerce
business,
digital maturity and then balance thatwith their purpose and their impact.
So each level outlines likekey marketing strategies,
(17:33):
e-commerce capabilities and functionality,
and then brand positioning to helpthat business scale effectively.
So the first one is we call it emerging.
So this is a brand that's in its infancy.
They're establishing likea e-commerce experience,
and they're beginning to explorepurpose-driven initiatives.
(17:57):
So basically they havea basic online presence,
minimal optimization, they'rereactive in their marketing.
They have very limited, ifany customer segmentation,
and we're really focusing onhelping them define their why and
then piloting their first initiative.
So there's a brand that wework with today called chena.
(18:20):
They're a new gym in communitycenter in Brooklyn in New York,
founded by on Acosta.
And we work with them to create on our
offering that we call ourminimum lovable brand,
which is very similar toa minimum viable product,
but from a branding purpose.
So you're focusing on the foundationalelements and you are focusing on
(18:43):
making those foundationalelements lovable, right?
Because you want people to have anemotion as soon as they interact with your
brand, a good, a positive emotion,
not.
Repulsion or.
Right, exactly. A affinity,some love goodbyes.
(19:03):
So in working with them, becausethey're a brand new brand,
it's really about establishing the base
visual identity and thenwhat that brand strategy is.
So we ended up building their siteon Squarespace and integrating with
mindbody. I'm not sure ifyou're familiar with that,
(19:23):
but all of the e-commerceengine is run by mindbody.
It's very much a platformfor businesses who are in
the wellness space, spasalons, gyms obviously.
And so right now we'rejust speaking with her
(19:44):
just yesterday actually,
I was speaking with Anna abouthow are they going to react to all
the tariffs and the chaos and everythingthat people are feeling, right?
Everybody's uneasy and is it timeto buy a new gym membership or
do you have any extra money to spend here?
So we're looking to developcommunity pricing model
(20:06):
where you can pay as you alower priced model interesting
for customers.
And it's really about the messagingthere because if you can afford it
and pay the standard fee,
you are helping to support otherpeople in the community that can't
and creating a balance there.
(20:30):
And that's part of the missionof isch is to really create
this open inclusive community in that
area and fostering wellness and joy.
And I think during times ofuncertainty, change and stress,
never a more importanttime to work out than now.
(20:52):
And so the last thing you wantto skimp on or cut out of your
budget is something that's going toimprove your health and your wellbeing.
But I love that where you can kindof present the message of, hey,
if you can't pay full price, great,
because what you're doing isyou're supporting Those that can,
and we got this community pricing,and so then it kind feels like, Hey,
I'm doing my part. I don't likethe tariff, but I've got money.
(21:14):
I'm just going to pay the full pricethat can allow someone else to get in
there. And so that's aninteresting angle. I love that.
So at this emerging level,
we're building the foundationof a minimum lovable brand.
We're creating all the brandingand all the foundation,
the messaging and things like that.Anything else to add to level one?
And then what are the things we haveto solve for to get to level two.
(21:36):
Right?
It's basically working through the list of
strategies.
So getting to a place where you have
an email subscriber list thatyou can consistently market to
and start segmenting if youhave less than 500 emails,
(21:57):
does it even make sense?
So it's not just from ane-commerce experience perspective,
but also the marketing andthe brand strategy behind it.
Blockers could just be asa new brand is just getting
awareness, making peopleaware of the brand,
and so increasing membershipat this particular
(22:21):
gym so that you can startputting money back into
evolving the business.
Great. Great. So thenwhat about level two?
What is level two and give us an example.
So level two is when we wantto start to scale the business,
we feel that we have a solidfoundation and we're ready to
grow.
(22:43):
So that starts with astructured marketing plan,
and that's often where teams like yourscome into the picture after we've built
the site and we havethat foundation stable.
But what we see a lot oftimes is we start with the
roadblocks and the misalignments. So Idon't know if you remember this, Brett,
(23:05):
but years ago you and I worked with abrand that was up and coming that nobody
had ever heard of called Johnny O.
Right now everybody knows Johnny O,but when you and I worked with them,
I was working on the marketing strategywith you and we were sending traffic to
their site, but it wasn't converting,
(23:28):
the message wasn't out there, the brandcouldn't sell it. And so John O'Donnell,
when he created that brand,
he had this vision oftaking East Coast Prep
Ralph Lauren and combining it withSouthern California grunge and
relaxed where,
(23:48):
and we were sending great trafficto them, but it wasn't converting.
So we really had to focus onimproving the CX and improving
the story there.
And so what level two is in scalingis you try something and you
tweak,
you try something and you tweakand you're really learning on how
(24:10):
to get there.
And I just love to see thetransformation of the Brandon Geno
and now they give backby giving away clothes
to disaster relief areas is.
It's amazing. It's amazing. And it'sone of those things where first of all,
love Johnny O. Love their style, lovethe way they approach things. But yeah,
(24:32):
when you start to see, hey,
we're driving traffic or we'regetting people to the site,
they're not converting it, what isit? Is it the shopping experience?
Is it the promise or the message isn'tthe same as what they're seeing on the
sites? There's lack of congruency. Arewe just pulling in the wrong people?
What is it that's not working?
But that's really what takes a littlebit of time to figure out time and data.
(24:55):
But then when you do get it right andit is the right message to the right
person at the right time andthen a good shopping experience,
it can create some magic as is thecase with Johnny O. So that's awesome.
Good. So what then aresome of the blockers?
What are some of the things we've gotto solve in level two before we get to
level three?
(25:15):
So misalignment, inconsistent messaging,
not evoking that emotion and thatfeeling that you're trying to convey
with your brand. We see all kinds of stuff
sometimes. And so we watch thatconversion funnel all the time.
(25:38):
Where are people not getting it? Whereare they bouncing? What's happening?
And like we talked about and then we test,
we do that conversion rate optimization.
It's so much less expensive for our
clients to do a test on thefront end to change something
(25:59):
before changing code, right?Code's expensive to change,
you've got to do a deployment,
but we start tweaking with testing.
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
And it's one of those things where it'sboth on the messaging side up front but
then also on the site and some thingsyou think are going to work, don't. Boom,
(26:20):
beauty longtime climb.
My buddy Ezra Firestone runs thecompany and there's always been skincare
for women like boomer women and older,
and they thought most women viewthemselves as so young and whatever.
So for a while they always had the ageappropriate models in their ads and they
thought, well, let's just try womenin their late forties or whatever.
(26:41):
And there was almost acoup, there was a protest,
the people reached out andthey're like, that is not me.
What are you doing in theseat? And you're like, oh, sorry,
we'll go back to the core.No problem. But yeah,
you got to test stuff like that becausesometimes little things like age of the
model or how we're displaying this thing,
you wouldn't think it would would've abig impact. It could have a big impact.
(27:03):
So really, really important. Good.
What about then whatlevel are we ready for? I.
Said.
Three.
We level three. Yeah, level three. So.
Go for it. Does that back to you?
What is level three? So level threeis optimizing, talking about testing.
So level, level two, you startdipping your toe into that.
But now level three istaking that data and then
(27:26):
using it to make the actual change.
So you're testing,
but now you are implementing thosetests that have proved successful.
You're leveraging automationand personalization.
So now you know more aboutyour customer, who they are,
what they're looking for.
You had mentioned with JohnnyO and sending possibly maybe
(27:50):
unqualified traffic to the siteand people were converting.
We know who the audience is at this level.
And there's also from an impactperspective or purpose perspective,
there's a structuredimpact strategy in place.
You know what you're trying to convey,
(28:10):
what the values arewithin the organization,
and you're putting thatfirst as you execute.
So you're looking at holisticmarketing strategies,
data-driven marketing automation, likeI said, even ai predictive search,
if you're thinking about thecustomer experience on the website,
(28:31):
loyalty and rewards programs.
But you always ask alsowhat might be a roadblock,
what's stopping them frommoving to the next? Right.
At level three,
one of the blocks that we see is alack of cross-departmental alignment.
So the marketing team might bemisaligned with the technology
(28:52):
team
while the purpose andthe mission is there,
not everyone's bought into it internally,
everyone has their owninitiatives going on.
And so that can really prohibitthe overall brand from successfully
moving forward. It's not alwayswhat's happening with the customer,
(29:13):
you got to look inside as well.
Yeah, it's such a goodpoint. What tips do you have?
What examples do you have?
And then do you have any suggestionson tools or other things that are
appropriate for this level?
So specific tools,
there's so many tools out there from ifwe're thinking about functionality and
(29:34):
everything from Algolia search andVU and things like that to help with
AI driven search,
but tools in thinkingabout how do you mend
that disconnect internally,
think about maybe there'sleadership training that
(29:57):
you're giving to the leaderswithin your organization.
Carrie and I are actually in the processof taking this really great conscious
leadership trainingthis month and I'm like,
everybody should takethis course because it's
been very eyeopening and also doing things
(30:18):
internally to get other people aligned.
If you're more friendly with thepeople within your organization,
you respect them and it's reallyworking together to do that.
And you need that leadership from thetop to help encourage the teams to
really get along and toget on the same page.
(30:38):
Yeah, I love it. I really believebusinesses only really has two things,
brand and culture. Brandis the outside perception.
It's what the marketplacebelieves about you,
thinks about you when they see yourlogo or your product, what do they feel?
What are those emotionslike we talked about before?
But brand and then culture andculture is who you are on the inside.
How are those departmentscommunicating with each other?
(31:00):
How are you actually operating?
Are you actually mission-driven or isthat just something you say and it's not
real? What is the culture?
Because ultimately the culture willinfluence the brand and it will
shine through and people willsee that. So both are important.
So I love that you brought that up.Sometimes it's not just a tech solution,
sometimes it's an internaldepartment solution.
Maybe that's part of the blockerthat's keeping you stuck where you are.
(31:25):
It's the need to get more alignmentand better communication and better
leadership inside your team, whichimpacts culture overall. It's great,
great insight.
Just a very visualexample that you can see
where there might be misalignmentin a brand is just the
carousel that they might haveon the homepage. There's five,
(31:48):
six slides of different,maybe it's products,
maybe it's mission-basedbranding and messaging.
But when there's so many different slides
within a carousel,
it's because everyone in the organizationis fighting for the top spot.
You can't.
Choose it's decision bycommittee or everyone.
(32:09):
Gets a choice.
Everybody fighting internally of theywant their thing to be upfront and
center. So the carouselkind of in my opinion,
developed because of internalstruggle and less about trying to
assist the customer in their experience.
Yeah,
it's a really good call out when somethinglooks kind of Frankenstein together
(32:29):
or where are we going here?
This is a committee decision thing oreveryone fighting internally or whatever.
Yeah, that's a really great example.Okay, cool. So level four ready for that.
Back to you. What islevel four? I'm going to.
Take this one. Oh, sorry. Just tomix it up, make things up for you.
But I wanted to take this one because
(32:51):
the name of this level is calledLeading. And like I mentioned before,
Patagonia is one of theleaders in this space. And so
if you're at level four,
you're recognized as a leader in thee-commerce space and as well as the impact
you're integratingsustainability, employee wellness,
(33:15):
customer experience at every touch point.
And they are a great case study for that.
They're strong brand loyaltydriven by values and innovation.
Their purpose is what differentiatesthem from their competitors.
Deep personalization happening onthe site. There's very high loyalty.
(33:38):
What I mentioned earlier aboutthe wear as a solution to
a different perspective on howto deal with increasing costs.
One of the things that could bea blocker though is losing your
authenticity as you continue to scale,
(33:58):
as you continue to grow. That wouldbe one area that you'd really need to
keep an eye on because youdon't want to lose that mission.
I'm not saying Patagonia is doing that,
I'm just saying for anorganization in this space,
that's one area you definitelywant to pay close attention to.
But outside of the warm wear collection,I don't know if you're familiar in,
(34:21):
I think it was 2010 or 2011,
they created this campaigncalled Don't Buy This Jacket.
And it was a Black Fridayad that ran in the New York
Times and it was like featuringtheir bestselling product
at the time, I think it was a fleeceor something. And it wasn't about,
(34:44):
they were saying don't buy this jacketbecause what they're saying is they want
customers to buy less and repair moreand they were really encouraging them to
go through the process of usingtheir wear collection or their
refurbished products.
So you can just send in your productsthat are Patagonia and then have them
repaired by the brand.
(35:05):
Super interesting and a bit risky.
So.
Don't buy this. But the cool thingabout that is everybody's like,
wait a minute, what? Definitely a patterninterrupt, not what you're expecting.
So then you lean in potentially a littlebit more, which is super interesting.
And their sales that year increasedI think by 30% after that.
And so their purpose andprofit can coexist, right?
(35:29):
It's not one or the.
Other.
And it's also one of those things toowhere that resonates with their customer.
So people that are active thatare climbing and affluent,
they're also conscious about theearth and environment climbing,
things like that. So that feelsgood. Just say, wait a minute, yeah,
I do have this awesome coat, I'mjust going to get that repaired.
(35:49):
But you know what, we alllike to buy stuff too.
So there's also a lot of thispeople that are like, yeah,
but I'm going to buy thispair of pants as well.
I'm going to buy this newthing for sure. Just I want to.
And now I feel like I'm giving backsort of even though I'm just buying
something. So yeah, it just all.
Works money. So now maybe I.
Save money.
Yeah.
We're always looking for the justificationof how can I justify this purchase
(36:13):
with logic? I already made itemotionally. Yeah, absolutely. Really.
Great.
Absolutely. So that's level four.So then level five, bring us home.
So back to you, Carrie. Yeah.
Yeah. Level five, pioneering.
So I have spent thelast five years working
with a very pioneeringbrand in the e-commerce
(36:33):
space, AB InBev,
the parent company of Anheuser-Busch.
I worked with them on theirdigital sales transformation,
B2B globally.
And they really went from anin-person sales strategy to
transition to onlineselling in a space where you
(36:55):
wouldn't expect it,
where you're selling to bars andrestaurants and corner stores,
beer.
But they have done some incrediblypioneering things in this space.
They custom built andalgorithmic sales predictive
engine using AI and usinghistorical data of what
(37:17):
customers were purchasing to say, okay,
now we think this is what yournext order is going to look like.
And so they would build up the entirenext order for the customer and present
that to them so they could put the entirething in the cart and just check out.
And that increased sales significantly.
And after they built thisinfrastructure and we launched it
(37:40):
in 24 countries in four years,they said, you know what?
We're going to take this a step furtherand we're going to become more like an
Amazon for B2B.
Now they've taken their e-commerceplatform and they're using it
as a marketplace for otherconsumer goods companies.
They've onboarded Nestle and Mondelezin a bunch of countries around the
(38:04):
globe into this platform.
So that's when you'retransforming business,
then you're a pioneer in this space.
Really interesting.
So what is their primaryobjective with this marketplace or
creating the Amazon for B2B?What's their objective with that?
They were really smart about it.
(38:26):
They have 2.5 million customers thatthey're selling beer to around the globe,
and they have the infrastructure already.
They're shipping weekly to all of theselocations. And they said, wait a minute,
why don't we share thisinfrastructure? Love.
It. I love it. It's.
Brilliant with other companiesthat are selling to our clients,
(38:47):
we've done all thework. Let's expand this.
Yeah, it's really what a great idea.We've already got the distribution system,
the relationships, the system customer.
Our stuff, customers using our app orour website to purchase every week, what.
Other products there.
For their store. If youhave a grocery store, a bar,
(39:08):
a restaurant, a corner kiosk,
you're replenishing the beer everyweek, you're in there ordering.
So how can we create new revenue linesand new opportunities here through what
we already have? I think that's just suchan important business skill of how can
I leverage existingassets, existing tools,
(39:30):
existing relationships toopen up new opportunities and
really create a solution. I love that.
What are some of the things thatyou're hearing right now from
your clients? Are theydoubling down on mission?
Are they a little bit fearfulbecause they're mission driven?
(39:52):
Because to me it seems like this is notthe time just to start slashing prices.
Nobody's slashing prices, I guess,
but it's not the time to go cheapor to just go into survival mode
necessarily.
This is the time probably to lean intowhatever your purpose is or whatever your
mission is. And there may be alittle bit of riding the storm,
weathering the storm,
but I think you can use thisto your advantage and to your
(40:17):
customer's advantage byleaning into your mission.
So what else are you hearing orseeing from your clients right now?
I think you're exactlyright. I think leaning
into the mission and why you'rein business in the first place,
every one of us that starts abusiness, we have this vision,
(40:39):
this creative vision ofdoing something important and
providing a service or providing meaning.
And sometimes as companiesgrow, they lose sight of that.
And we focus on
all the nuances of ourbusiness. The bottom line this,
(41:00):
the how are we going to change this?
And sometimes we forgetthat original purpose.
And what we see timeand time again is every
company who focuses on that culture piece,
on that purpose piece,
they really start to thrive.
(41:21):
It's more of a sustainablemodel in multiple ways.
It's more of a sustainable brand whenyou have a real reason for existing,
that's not just selling a widget,
which we're always all here to sellstuff and make money and make profits.
Obviously we can't exist withoutthat. But if there's more to it,
usually you're a little moreinsulated and a little more stable in
(41:43):
times of uncertainty.
Right? And what all the studies showalso is your team is more engaged,
they're more motivated to helpyou pursue that purpose. So.
I like it. I like it. Well, as we wrap up,
who should be reaching out to you? Soif people are listening and thinking,
(42:03):
I'm liking these tips and suggestions,
and I maybe I'm a level three and wantto go level four or wherever they may
find themselves on the maturity matrix,
who are you guys really bestequipped to help and how can you help
who should reach out to you and why?
Like I said earlier,
it is not a specific type of brand.
(42:26):
It is anyone who
is maybe struggling to definea mission for their brand,
a brand who might just bestarting up in the space,
but also brands who are just looking to
engage with their customersin a different way.
(42:48):
So we provide everything from,
like I talked earlier about theminimum level of brand offering.
We can help you establisha brand from the start.
Or if, I don't know, say for instance,
you're looking to do a refresh of a brand,
really start focusing on amission. We are here to assist you.
(43:13):
There's other ways in dealing withthe tariffs too and the uncertainty
thinking about testing and
really increasing theconversions that you have.
You still have the sametraffic that you had yesterday,
but how are we going to getthose people to convert more?
(43:34):
We can assist with ABtesting, conversion rate,
optimization testing,
and even if you're lookingto maybe switch platforms,
we are a shop wear partner
and we work with Shopify as well.
So anyone who might be out therelooking to make a little bit of a
(43:55):
change and start thinkingmore about their mission both
internally in the organization aswell as externally to their customers.
So from the branding pieceto the technology piece,
you guys have really built and beeninvolved with some very complex
technology deployments.
You talk about the AB InBevapp and some of these things.
(44:19):
You guys have really executedand delivered some very complex
technical solutions,
but you're also good at the brandingpiece and tying that in with mission.
And so really, really good.So how can people find you?
So if someone's listeningto this and like, Hey,
I want to talk to Mickey and CarrieEdison, how can they find you?
Yeah, so we are as send a
(44:41):
YSN d.com,
our Y is you.
It's all our clients that we serveso they can reach out at hello at
Ascend and talk to us.
And we wanted to offer all of yourlisteners a chance to connect with us
and let's test out thisconscious commerce maturity
(45:03):
model.
We'd be happy to do an assessment forwhere they're at and share their level
with them and
how they can level up in their business.
We can help look for thosegaps and opportunities for them if they're just maybe
even feeling a little bit stuckand not even sure where to look.
(45:25):
Yeah.
And you guys have such a keen eye forwhat's actually going to move the needle
with a business, and here's whatyou're trying to do with your brand,
but I don't think it's resonating.And so here's how we need to pivot.
You have a breadth of experience andtechnical knowledge and brand knowledge
that tied together isa really unique thing,
really unique offeringand unique skillset.
(45:46):
And so A YSN
d.com, check it out. And are youguys on the socials as well? Sorry,
I butchered that. But are you guys,you're on LinkedIn as well? Both of you?
Absolutely. Instagram,LinkedIn, even Facebook,
you can find us. Andwe're always putting out
(46:07):
value and advice for people,so definitely follow.
Us. Cool. So reach out, getthat maturity matrix assessment,
see where you fall on that. And hey,
now is the time to stay mission driven.
Stay the course. Look for waysto pivot and stay profitable.
Reach out to good partnerslike Ascend or like OMG.
(46:31):
And with that, ladies, thank you.
Thank you for bringing your knowledgeand your experience and for your time and
keep up the good work.
Thank you, Brett, thank youso much for this time. Yeah,
thank you for having us today,Brett. We appreciate it.
Awesome. Absolutely. And asalways, thank you for tuning in.
We'd love to hear from you. What wouldyou like to hear more of on the show?
(46:52):
And if you've not done it, please leaveus a review. That always makes our day.
And with that, until nexttime, thank you for listening.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com