Shopify + ChatGPT Checkout, Walmart’s Bold Food Shift, Amazon’s New Grocery Play | Live Retail Recap - The Retail Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, great to. See you, Alex.
Lovely to see you Jill. Hello to our wonderful audience
out there. We are doing our first live
transmission to you across Twitch, YouTube and LinkedIn.
So welcome, welcome. But we're going to be super

(00:29):
respectful to your time and the wonderful Jill and I are going
to get straight into we can't. Not start with AI mean what kind
of what kind of retailers would we be?
Yeah. This is this was really, really
big news and I have to say I didn't think it was going to
come so soon, but Shopify announced earlier this week that

(00:49):
there are 1,000,000 merchants will now have access to be able
to essentially turn live their check out through ChatGPT.
Now they're launching with one item in a basket at a time.
Etsy was their first launch is already live this week.
Etsy's stock shot up. It was already doing well.
I think it was around 70. Now it's closer to 80.

(01:12):
But now this is unleashed really.
I mean, it's crazy. You're bifurcating going to the
website now, right? You don't even have to go to the
website to buy something anymore.
It's it's kind of bananas when you think about it.
So anyway, there's 1,000,000 merchants and there are some
huge merchants on Shopify and Harley did a whole Instagram and

(01:35):
you know, X and all sorts of platforms to announce it.
And it's gotten a tonne of buzz and it's going to be pretty
cool. Yeah, I think Perplexity
obviously were the first AI platform to do it.
And so it's, it's fantastic and it's obviously what customers
want to be able to shop from their feed rather than have to
go out. So it'll be interesting to
watch. And specifically from a data

(01:56):
perspective, I'd be curious how much data the the retailer gets.
Obviously you end up on the retailer's page, right?
Are they doing their product pages OK coming into prime
season, the prime days back? And I think the statistically
this has shown that Christmas shopping the golden quarter has
moved. And so following Amazon you as

(02:17):
you would expect, Target has itsbig deal circle week full of
deals and offers as does Walmartall roughly around the same.
I think has it got the I don't understand.
They're all like October 7th and8th.
Yeah. They're coming up this next
week, yeah. Yeah, OK, so there you go.
So next week people are going tobe, you know, hunkering down and
getting their holidays. And I think it's a good litmus

(02:38):
test to see how will this have an impact on Black Friday, how
will this have an impact on Cyber Monday.
And as a lot of initial data shows that potentially we're
going to we're in for a flat golden quarter rather than an
increase, hey, flat is better than a decrease.
So if, if we maintain what we'vegot, I think that that's great.

(02:58):
But it's great to see that the big brands have come in align
themselves to help the modern shopper.
Right, to bring, you know, and Ithink a lot of it and especially
this year, it's just been such ait's almost like a ping pong
match of like, do you bring things in earlier to help try to
mitigate tariffs? Do you wait?
Do you, you know, it's just thisconstant battle of when, when,

(03:20):
when and you know, by bringing some of the demand forward even
more because a lot of the items are already on shore and they're
already here, You know, does that then decrease the Q4
numbers because the deals are now.
I mean, every year I for better or worse, I've been doing this
more than 20 years. Every year the holiday starts

(03:40):
earlier and earlier with the bigthree kind of coming out.
And you know, that's why has some great sales.
Like there's obviously a lot of a lot of people trying to price
match and create and capture that demand, but what are they
going to do if this is all the demand that they have?
You know, I was looking at a bunch of articles this week and
consumer demand really hasn't dipped yet.

(04:03):
What it has done is people are trying to trade down a little
bit. They're trying to trade into
value and they're trying to trade into, you know, deals.
So I think by bringing the dealsearlier, we will bring some of
the demand earlier. But at the end of the day, I
think the overall pie, it's not going to get any smaller.
I think it was Doug McMillan whosaid this like Christmas doesn't

(04:25):
go away. You know, you might, you might
be spending a little bit less per person, but Christmas
doesn't go away. The Jewish holidays don't go
away. All of the family celebrations
we do, they are all still there.People will still spend.
It's a matter of what and how are they buying.
And again, you know, e-commerce will jump.
So is the question is, is the total number going to jump or

(04:48):
our forecast I think comes out around November 5th or 6th from
the NRS? Yeah.
We haven't had a flat perspective ever so.
We'll see. All right, OK.
I think it was MasterCard that signed and one of them said it
was flat. Yeah, well, and look, they, they
have a, they have a very broad swath, but you know, they don't
have the debits, right? They don't have all the debits

(05:10):
at least. Yeah, no, absolutely.
And staying with you. We got it.
We got to throw some fun in here, all right?
Those La Boo Boo dolls. If you haven't heard of it, you
probably aren't on this podcast.Those little tiny cute gremlins.
They are now launching Pop Mart.The owner.
They are launching a Times Square.
Nowhere better to do this. Times Square store coming in

(05:32):
2026 where you can buy the physical items in store.
I mean it's insanely popular. I think I saw in that article it
was a 10 year lease. So let's hope they have a follow
up product because I don't know if Liboos are going to be a
thing 10 years from now. Maybe, maybe they will.
They're expanding in the UK, so Popmart have have expanded.

(05:54):
There's like 4 flagship products, Liboubou one of them.
So they go and maybe I don't know if it will be in time for
NRF, right. If they're opening in 2026, we
can all go and have a look. I know we should.
We should talk about a collab like an NRF labooboo.
You know, like a special, a specialty.
Product yeah, OK, so sticking with some positive news on what

(06:16):
Walmart is doing on its own brands.
And I think again, when Walmart tends to to do these things, we
see a shift in not only consumerbehaviour, but people start to
follow and then eliminated synthetic dyes across all
private brand food products, which is such a welcome move by
all parents or all shoppers who shop throughout the the US

(06:40):
because we're all aware of thesesort of ingredients that are in
our products. But Walmart have sort of taken
that a step further and they have decided to to eliminate
thirty ingredients that you knowfrom sweeteners, fat substitutes
in it and I have to stress in its own private brand foods, but
I think this is a great sign of things to come.

(07:02):
Yeah, it's what they can control, right.
So they're kind of putting, moving the marker forward and
putting, putting the stake in the ground.
I'm really interested to see if the colours change of any of the
products like it. Are those bright red, yellow and
blue drinks? Are they all going to be white
now? Like I'm, I'm not interested to
see, are they going to use beet dye?

(07:22):
Like are they substituting it? Is it so I can't wait, so I'm,
you know, I'm a big grocery member at Walmart so we can
report back when it happens. Yeah, I mean, it looks like from
I just reading the article, as you can see, like there's a
little bit of a colour change, but not much.
Yeah, but anyway, and maybe theygo from synthetic dyes to
natural dyes as well. And I think that's the big shift

(07:42):
that allows you to still have a a blue or red or a yellow drink,
but it's more from natural ingredients as opposed.
To blueberry. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, which is a fantastic one. And closing with you.
So Amazon, you know, got to got to go back to them this week
they announced that they are launching a new private label
grocery brand. So they have a few out there

(08:05):
that happy, happy belly when they had Amazon Fresh.
And then there's others, you know, the 365 whole food brands,
etcetera. They're launching one called
Amazon grocery. It's private label, of course,
and it's aimed at price conscious consumers.
So most of the products are under $5.
From from a quick look, it didn't seem like the typical oh,

(08:29):
it's cheaper, but it's smaller portions.
It didn't seem like a shrink flation right out-of-the-box.
So under $5 is a pretty great deal.
They have a lot of these stores now in cities, but of course,
you know, they they always push the online grocery delivery.
You get free delivery if it's over a certain amount and you're
a prime member. So again, just the flywheel of

(08:51):
their ecosystem is is big. Yeah, I mean, we've got 2
minutes left. What was interesting in, in, in
the, in the UK, they closed their Amazon Go stores and some
of them are changing to Whole Foods.
But in my mind, Amazon have beenthe masters of being able to
both of our phones have gone offduring the show.
We're only on a live right go off and only on a live will the

(09:16):
phone go off. But anyway, what was interesting
is they said, and it was and I, I think they are the masters of
experimentation. And so nothing happens with
that. So in my mind, they've they've
been trying and trying the different shopping missions for
Amazon go. They've noticed that food
potentially doesn't lean itself,but you know, in airports, in

(09:37):
other convenience place, it lends itself, but they are still
in grocery. There are still things to come.
I feel, and I feel what you're describing in the US is a great
example of that. I don't think they've nailed it.
I mean, last September they launched 1.
I think it was called Amazon Saver.
It's focused on value again, butit didn't really I I just didn't

(09:59):
see a lot of selection. So, you know, the groceries
business for Amazon has been a little bit of a trial and error,
but look, they, they can try, they can fail and they, as long
as they fail fast and come up with something, you know, the
replace that let's you know, it's, it's a great, it's a great
test to kind of watch and see. But that was the big

(10:21):
announcement this week from them.
And it's, it's not just food. I should have said it's all
their private labels. So paper towels, toilet bowl,
all household goods, detergent, things like that.
So big, Really. Both big announcements from the
two giants in the US this week. Yeah, look, listen.
And I think as the press releasesaid, I think on Walmart's press
release, they're listening to their customers, which is

(10:43):
exactly what the customer wants.And they're adapting to the new
pressures from the market, whichagain, I think, you know,
sensible, they're setting the standard and hopefully the
industry will listen. And then so follow, follow pace.
Jill, thank you so much. We've done it in record time,
it's been really good and it's our first life, so apologies for

(11:04):
the first hiccup, but we'll be back.
No fun. Thank you Alex, and to all of
you who tuned in, thank you. We appreciate you and let us
know if you have ideas for topics or things you want to see
covered. That's brilliant.
Until next week or until in a couple of weeks time.
We need a bro.

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Shopify + ChatGPT Checkout, Walmart’s Bold Food Shift, Amazon’s New Grocery Play | Live Retail Recap

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