Join Ger Keohane (StudioForty9) and Gordon Newman (Omnichannel Stories) as they embark on a voyage of discovery in the world of online retail. In this episode, their guide is Dean McElwee, Director of Global eCommerce Collaboration and Director of International eCommerce Strategy, Global Tools and Storage with Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. Their journey starts with an unboxing experience provided by Velo Coffee Roasters in Cork.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This is Functional & Fabulous, the omnichannel podcast where we unbox tales of online retail and digital transformation.
Welcome to the Functional & Fabulous podcast.
My name is Ger Keohane, and I'm functional...
My name is Gordon Newman, and I'm fabulous.
Let me tell you a little bit about this podcast.
(00:23):
Gordon and I have been working in retail ecommerce for the best part of our careers.
It's a domain we adore, not least because it demands both functional excellence and fabulous retail theatre.
During this podcast, we will be speaking with experts in the many and diverse areas that omnichannel commerce covers to unbox for you, our listener, the global standards for customer experience, operational excellence and digital wow, so you can understand how they are achieved behind the scenes.
(00:51):
Gordon, will you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?
What do I do?
I work with retailers across a number of different verticals.
Everything from electronics to jewellery to department stores and fashion.
And usually they call me and go, online isn't working, and how do we make this work?
(01:13):
And I go, okay, well, let's have a look at that.
I focus on the creative components, the story of the product, the story of the retailer, and how we bring that to life online through building experiences that really represent what that retailer stands for.
I think that makes me fabulous.
But what makes you functional, Ger?
(01:34):
Well, with a background in natural language processing and web application development, I come to retail ecommerce with a pragmatic attitude rooted in technical understanding.
I've been running the StudioForty9 ecommerce agency since 2006, where we've immersed ourselves in all things digital retail.
I love to work on systems integration, business process automation and the collection, communication and understanding of business data.
(01:57):
So I guess that's why I'm bringing the functional.
Now, with introductions out of the way, let's dive straight into this episode.
In this episode, Gordon gets expressive...
I'm going to think of the hand action.
Our guest forgets who he is...
Who the **** is Dean?
Grown men struggle to open a cardboard box...
Well packaged...
(02:17):
It's really well packaged, so much so I can't get mine open.
And Ger gets poetic...
As the mists and the fog dissipates, we still have the North Star, and it's still in the same place that it always was...
And today we're joined by our guest, Dean McElwee.
Dean is Director of Global Ecommerce Collaboration at Stanley Black & Decker.
(02:39):
He works with retailers the world over to place and position the entire product catalogue of the full suite of brands that Stanley Black & Decker operate on those retailers' ecommerce stores.
Stanley Black & Decker is an enormous business, doing in the region of $20 billion per annum, and is ranked in the Fortune 500.
And Dean is a globally recognised ecommerce and sales leader with over 17 years' experience in retail consulting and sales leadership for blue-chip multinational organisations.
(03:09):
His analytical approach, leadership and business acumen enable him to implement innovative growth strategies that not only drive performance, but also drive higher engagement and profit.
His experience spans both Europe and Africa across FMCG retail consulting with a focus on commercial strategy.
More informally, he declares his superpowers to be commercial strategy, data and analytics.
(03:34):
Welcome, Dean.
It's wonderful to have you here today.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
As ever, we'll start the ball rolling with a little unboxing.
Today we have a product by a local coffee roaster here in Cork called Velo Coffee.
They've kindly sent us some samples of their wares, so we're going to have a look.
In these lovely big white boxes.
Yes.
So we're going to wrestle with the tape and I'm going to go for a pull.
(03:59):
This is quite exciting.
Well packaged...
It's really well packaged, so much so I can't get mine open.
I got it done.
So Velo Coffee, it's a really interesting little business.
Started out in a Cork City cafe back in 2016.
And obviously, I mean, they're way better at naming things than I am.
So they've kind of gone with this Velo theme.
They have BMX coffee, which actually I'm very familiar with and it's my favourite.
(04:24):
They have Tandem coffee, and other kind of cargo bikes and things like that.
In the box, we have a beautiful, fabulous tote.
We have three lovely bags of coffee, beautifully packaged.
And I have a coffee pot.
I like the unboxing.
I like the inside of the box with the logo.
(04:44):
That looks great.
I love the colours.
I think these are fabulous.
It's nice to wake up in the morning and, you know, rip open a bag of this stuff.
Absolutely.
Great to experience it.
If you turn it around, there's a little patch where you can smell, which is really, really good.
I actually spoke with Rob Horgan years ago when he originally was starting this business.
And he had such a challenge to find packaging that was easy to send, that would get through a letterbox.
(05:10):
So I think he's pretty much achieved that incredibly well.
He's told me that their retention rate is up around 60%, which is...
That's because it's obviously good coffee, Ger.
Obviously good coffee.
Branding is really consistent on everything.
Branding across the inside of the box is great.
Ties in nicely with the coffee bags.
I think this is definitely fabulous.
Look at this.
I love this.
(05:31):
I have in my hand a coffee pot, which is super.
It looks really cool.
You were spoilt.
I think Dean and I only got mugs.
I got the same as Ger.
I got a mug.
Yay, I got a mug.
I'm the special one.
We're just functional.
We just got to make the coffee.
We have a lovely little message here from the guys in Velo.
(05:51):
'It has made our day to see that you placed an order for some Velo coffee.'
Lovely little handwritten message.
I really, really like this.
Some of the coffee is brilliant.
So creamy and balanced coffee with flavours of milk, chocolate, almond, shortbread and orange.
It's salivating just at the thought of it.
Super.
So that's Velo.
Lovely little bit of unboxing.
This episode of Functional & Fabulous is brought to you with pride by StudioForty9, retail ecommerce experts, omnichannel growth consultants and cut-through performance marketing specialists.
(06:23):
StudioForty9, where your digital retail success is built.
So welcome, Dean.
We're delighted to have you.
Hiya, Dean.
We're really keen to hear a little bit more about your role at Black & Decker.
Yeah, so my role encompasses working with our operating regions, so the US, Latin America, Asia and EMEA.
(06:44):
And I work with them to drive their strategy and implement their strategy from an ecommerce perspective.
And then I work across the regions on tech tools and what supports those tech and tools to deliver our ecommerce vision.
You've been involved in ecommerce at a senior level for many years now.
What do you see as the typical challenges in a business as it prepares for ecommerce, omnichannel and digital transformation?
(07:08):
Yeah, I think as businesses transform and go more ecommerce and get deeper ecommerce penetration, there are a couple of things that really start appearing as the business grows.
And that's what I often refer to as the ecommerce amplification effect, where ecommerce amplifies things that the business needs to get right and improve and evolve with.
(07:29):
So one of the biggest ones that I often see is data and data readiness and availability.
So do you have the right data and can you syndicate that out and provide it in the right manner throughout your business?
In a business like ours, for example, you have 400,000 SKUs and you've got to keep 150 to 200 fields of data across those 400 SKUs.
(07:52):
And this starts to become a rather large data management challenge.
I can't even begin to do the maths on that, Dean.
No.
It's a lot of data fields to manage.
I think this is why we should do maths until Leaving Cert because I can't do it either.
But with a challenge like that for a retailer and even a retailer that hasn't got 400,000 SKUs, huge challenge in managing accuracy.
(08:20):
And I think one of the things that ecommerce does is it really exposes any kind of gaps that exist in data processes, in data flows, in data accuracy.
But when those gaps are exposed, what does that kind of mean?
Like, what are the impacts for the customer?
What are the impacts for the retailer?
(08:40):
Well, I think, you know, I always bring it back down to the three deadly sins of digital, as I call them.
And it's digital and ecommerce.
It goes across both.
And that's really replication, multiplication and versioning.
In that, when you look at this from the value chain of a supplier of goods through to a retailer of goods, if I provide you with incorrect data and then you publish that data out to your customers, there's potential implication for that.
(09:08):
So I've seen various instances where you may have a food producer produce the food, send it through to a supermarket.
They don't know whether that data is accurate.
And then it goes onto the retailer's website.
And then the consumer, it may be the first time that they actually see that product in their hands is when it's bought and it's already delivered.
(09:31):
So if you think somebody who perhaps has an allergen to a type of cream, they buy it online, they get it home.
They don't look at the box.
They don't look at the ingredients.
But they've looked at the website to check that it's got the right things and allergens on.
And then they put it on.
And then there's a reaction.
The first thing they notice is a rash.
And you don't want a nasty rash.
(09:51):
Absolutely.
You don't want a nasty rash.
But that's the types of things that can happen with poor data management.
So it's really looking right through the value chain and saying, where does this information start?
Where does it originate?
What are the rules around how it's stored?
And then how does that progress down the value chain?
(10:12):
Because versioning, version control, which is the third deadly sin there is absolutely key.
You can change one ingredient in a food product.
You don't have to change the whole pack.
But you change one ingredient and suddenly there's an allergen there that nobody knew about.
I love the term, the amplification of ecommerce.
(10:32):
Because I think ecommerce, and the very nature of technology and the digital transformation element, throws a stark spotlight on all of the processes, the data in the business, and so on.
And all of a sudden, there's no place to hide.
I suppose one of the things we see a lot in our business is as soon as we put the letter E before the word commerce, all of a sudden people in the business who are very, very experienced retailers and quite senior, you know, they start to have difficulty imagining how they can understand digital.
(11:04):
And do you see that kind of problem as well?
We see it often.
And one of the things I often see is what I call the digital IQ of the senior leaders is often quite low, mainly because they didn't grow up around these things and they're not used to them.
And so it can be a bit frightening to certain leaders.
(11:25):
But it's really about working out how that is very similar to the other parts of the business and saying, you know, is what we're seeing on the ecommerce side different?
Yes, it's different.
It's a different execution.
It's a different customer experience.
But you're still focused on the same people.
So you're still focused on that same shopper who physically walks into your store.
(11:46):
You're just trying to encourage them to do it in a different way online.
And exactly like a retailer may focus on delivering the best possible experience in a store, they need to be focusing on delivering the best possible experience online.
And that can't look exactly like it does in the store...
Of course...
It's got to look different to attract that shopper.
(12:08):
Like ecommerce is just an expression of what the retailer is doing.
The same gut instincts, the same buying approaches and things like that still apply.
Absolutely.
I always think retailers have this, they almost have this reflex action.
They know what to do when it's in a store.
And some of the processes, they might not be documented, but they're certainly embedded within the business.
(12:31):
And one of the things I think that happens is ecommerce requires you to now think about how are you going to take that reflex action and turn that into a process that is effectively going to be, it's going to be executed by a machine.
But you've talked about it before, Gordon, the retailer reflexes, this kind of gut instinct.
(12:54):
Sometimes people are doing things in a structured way, they don't even realise they're doing it.
They're used to it.
That's their instinct.
But in the instance that Dean's just called out there, the digital IQ of a senior leadership team, if they're not familiar with it and they're deeply uncomfortable, how do you go about changing that?
So you're upskilling the leadership within a business.
(13:15):
So I think there's one of the things that we do, which is quite actually a simple thing to do, is we do digital store tours.
So we actually take people physically into store, if you can, show them what you look for in a physical store.
Where's the display?
How much shelf space is available?
Those types of things.
But then take them through the same process online.
(13:36):
What are you looking for when you shop online?
Through our eyes as opposed to their eyes, because that'll open up new things.
You'll start to see that there's a delivery store if it's a pick from store model.
So you've got to choose your pick from store.
You've got to do the search bar and take them through examples of how search works, and then start asking them the questions that they would be asking anyway.
(14:00):
Where's my best-performing SKU?
Every retailer, every manufacturer, knows the best-performing SKU.
Where is it on a webpage?
Is it buried deep on page six or seven?
Or is it on page one?
Where do they want it to be?
Everybody's going to say, I want it at eye level, at the front in front of the shopper.
And so doing things like a digital store tour helps them integrate and just bridge that gap from the sort of bricks and mortar world into the digital world.
(14:28):
And then we can start to talk about, well, are there additional opportunities to expose my brand on a retailer's website?
And then the conversation starts moving towards, well, how do I get the content ready for that?
How do I make sure I have all the content and all the data for that?
If a retailer wants to do a blog post, can I provide that to them?
(14:50):
Can I provide ideas and inspiration to help them sell their products and their services as well as my brands?
And it's such a simple thing, the idea of a store tour and applying the same kind of logic that, when you walk into a store, I know many retailers, they can immediately see whether the store has been merchandised correctly.
(15:10):
They know immediately how to operate in terms of the wayfinding within the store and things like that.
And just to kind of transfer that knowledge and understanding over to digital.
I think some of this actually comes down to base data, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Because if you think about default sort options on a website and compare that to, say, the visual standards that you would see in a physical store, the visual standards tend to be different because the default sort options are always bestselling price.
(15:39):
But customers aren't necessarily buying on bestselling or price.
And unless you're going to be manually curating every webpage, you can't do that physically.
And in your instance with 400,000 SKUs, you can't do that.
So the data has to be in really good shape so that you can use it.
Do you guys, like, advise retailers on that?
(16:02):
Yeah, I think this is one of the key things, particularly when you measure omnichannel retailers.
So we measure omnichannel retailers.
And one of the key data points that I always look for is what is their online market share of our brand?
And then what is our offline market share?
And what I'll often see is that there is a difference between those two.
That's interesting.
(16:23):
So in some cases, it might be that the online market share is quite a bit lower.
And that's because how you activate in-store and how you activate online are different.
They're different levers to pull.
And it goes also, once again, to the merchandising.
I can control and I can influence the merchandising in a bricks and mortar world.
So there's the pentagram, there's how it should be laid out.
(16:44):
In a digital world, it may be different and there are different levers that need to be pulled.
So how do we work with retailers to understand which are the most important products that they make the best margin on and then work out how we can display them, either through advertising that we put behind it or working on the organic search ranking as such with them?
(17:05):
Because I find it very interesting and I'm always curious about, and it indicates potential when you have different market shares or different shares of sales by category of product and so on, online and in-store.
And, you know, the mix is different.
And why is that?
Do you ever look at it from an assortment point of view?
Like, is the assortment offered online different to what's offered in-store and therefore the market share is affected?
(17:29):
So typically, that would often be the same.
You know, in some cases, I have seen that where an omnichannel retailer replicates the catalogue online, the assumption for a lot of people is that it's going to be the same catalogue.
But it's one of the things that, you know, we talk about ecommerce being a full team sport.
(17:51):
You actually have to get your teams involved to go and look, is that actually physically in-store and is it online?
Because managing those catalogues and syncing those catalogues online is quite hard for many retailers.
And it all, once again, comes down to master data.
Do you have the right master data to replicate exactly what you see in your physical store in your online store?
(18:15):
Especially when you have a pick-from-store model and the shopper can pick from wherever they want to pick up the stock from.
I think there's an interesting point you touched on, Gordon, there, where I think sometimes, you know, online merchants are led by the tech a bit and it becomes, you know, the tail wagging the dog.
So rather than dictating how you want your sort to work and merchandising your product listing pages and so on, you're allowing the default options in your ecommerce platform to dictate that.
(18:41):
So only the most recently added product ends up on the top of the page and you have those sorts of...
And that might not be the right place for it.
And that's why one of the things, and certainly as we've worked with different retailers, is actually understanding the buying cycle.
Why have the buyers, or in your case, maybe, Dean, why are things being built in the way that they're being built?
(19:06):
So why are things being manufactured?
How have they been designed?
What's the story that sits behind them?
And sometimes that just doesn't get surfaced if those communication flows aren't there.
Absolutely.
And things like seasonality, you know, we've got an outdoor business, which is lawnmowers and string trimmers, and that's a highly seasonal business.
And also snow blowers in certain parts of the world.
(19:28):
So making sure things like the sort order and when those things get prominent merchandising on a site means working with the retailer to do that.
And that takes a lot more data.
We make extensive use of Google Trends APIs to see exactly when people are looking for things like lawnmowers, or cutting the lawn, or searching for that, so that we can help inform retailers of what the trends are and therefore what they should be merchandising against.
(19:56):
Exactly.
And it's important to have the tooling in place so that you can surface that kind of thing.
You need the data to know which ones are the lawnmowers and you need the tooling to surface to the top.
And you need the story or the trend so that you can use that tooling because the tooling is just that.
It's a tool to help you make the change.
And I think if you just, say you're just relying on AI, AI sometimes can't have that predictive knowledge because it doesn't have visibility of the inputs.
(20:25):
And how do you find, you know, talking about AI, the whole kind of personalisation, I suppose, the focus on personalisation and creating these unique experiences for customers and so on.
It's a topic between Gordon and I, you know, of controversy.
Do you see the benefits?
Are we there yet?
(20:47):
I think we see the benefits.
I think we have more passage to go.
I think if the three of us all sat and opened a retailer's website, we'd probably get all the same experience.
So is that really as personalised as we've been talking about?
So I think there's an opportunity for retailers to up the ante in terms of the personalisation that they offer.
(21:09):
And the same for brand manufacturers.
I think we all talk about personalisation.
It may surface in the form of emails and email personalisation and customer journeys.
And I think the industry has done a great job of that.
I think less so in terms of the customer experience we experience on websites.
I think we all pretty much get the same experience.
(21:30):
Pretty much.
I think it seldom extends beyond, we might get a different set of product recommendations based on what we've browsed.
We're not necessarily going to be surface different content in terms of the stories that we're being told or in terms of the wayfinding that might suit me differently to what might suit Dean or what might suit you, Ger.
(21:53):
But I think that's quite difficult to then execute at any level of scale.
Yeah.
And for a lot of retailers, who are busy, plugging in recommendations is a nice easy tool and they tick the box on personalisation.
It's an interesting thing.
You know, we see now the democratisation of retail tech.
(22:14):
So software and capability that used to cost hundreds of thousands is now available on subscription, sometimes quite cheaply.
How do brands and retailers now differentiate when, you know, what is now a fairly level playing field?
How do you get the opportunity to differentiate yourself, would you think?
Well, I think this is one of the things that I talk about in terms of what ecommerce amplifies.
(22:37):
It's radical transparency.
I, as a consumer, can visit five or six different retailers and I can see what they offer in the span of about 15 minutes.
And these retailers can look at their competitors and see exactly what they're doing, too.
So how do you differentiate that not just from a digital point of view, but a complete experience point of view?
(23:03):
So complete omnichannel.
We look at that and we go and say, how can I help you experience it and drive it online?
So can I do live shopping, for example?
We recently launched live shopping on our B2B sites for our distributors in India to allow them to be able to ask questions and experience our brands in a totally different way because they physically can't get in to see the products, and we can't go to all 1,200 distributors in a country like India to expose them to the brands that we offer.
(23:39):
So I think, you know, particularly with retailers, it's how do you distinguish and make yourself quite distinctive in the market from everybody else by looking at all parts of your experience.
It's not just the online experience, it's the offline experience, it's the service, it's the people behind the counter, it's the experience even on buy online and pick up in store.
(24:05):
You know, I've done click-and-collect for a couple of times here and when I first arrived in this country, I'd go and do click-and-collect in the lashing rain outside Tesco and I'd sit there and I'd go, this is not great, this is just really not a great experience.
You know, can't you cover it or can't you put it in a corner of the store that makes it better for me as an online shopper to experience your brand, and I'm both an online and offline shopper, but I think that's where retailers can look at those types of experiences and can say, how do we make this complete experience distinctive and meaningful for the shopper?
(24:44):
Isn't that the retailer's job?
So a retailer is taking great master data
and they've got a great product feed
from their in theory,
from all of their suppliers
in a perfect world,
everybody's feeding them
the standard imagery,
everybody's feeding them
the product descriptions,
all of the specifications are correct
(25:04):
but everybody's getting the same,
and I think that's the retailer's job then
to differentiate above that
and as you say,
it's the service wrapper,
it's things like live shopping,
it's that spin that the retailer puts on it.
Just as one retail store
will feel different
(25:25):
to another retail store
selling the same product,
and I think there's so much
that you can do with the base data,
but then the retailer
has to then work with that.
100%, we kind of have a situation,
it feels to me that we have a situation
where we've plateaued a bit,
(25:46):
where the democratisation of the retail tech
has allowed a lot of retailers,
merchants to get up to the same level
and now they're trying to figure out
how to unlock the next level,
how to unlock the potential
that's in the business,
and what it is really
is now to forget about the digital part
and let that fade away a small bit
and get back to the retailing.
And we've talked in the past,
(26:06):
just stitching the experiences together,
identifying the experiences on the journey
just like you've spoken about, Dean,
what happens after I put through my collection order,
what comes next,
how do we stitch that together
so that it's the best it can be for the customer?
I think we've often got the order wrong.
So I think, I often say to teams
when we're looking at evaluating
new ways of going to market,
(26:28):
look at it from a consumer
or customer-focused angle
than business-led,
so what commercial decisions are you making
and then how does technology enable that
and deliver on that.
Don't get it the other way around
and go, here's a great piece of tech,
I want to implement it.
But isn't that always the way? You see a shiny new piece of tech and you think, I would love to do that, and the customer has no value for it whatsoever.
(26:54):
And the consumer may not even care, so I think it's really, go back to consumer or customer focus, depending on what your business looks like, and then what are the business-led decisions?
So as a retailer, do I want to make more money?
Yes, I want to.
So how do I, and do I want my supplier support?
Yes, I do.
So can I merchandise products that are profitable for me, and profitable for the supplier?
(27:17):
I mean, that would be fantastic if you could digitally merchandise that and also physically merchandise that.
And most exciting for the customer.
Yeah, and then get the tech to be able to do that for you rather than looking at the tech and go, yeah, that looks fantastic, I'm going to implement it, and nobody quite knows how to work.
(27:38):
And I think often what you then see is not enough utilisation of the tech, and the ROI isn't really there because you're focused on the wrong person.
You know, you've got to go back and focus on the consumer and the shopper.
You see a kind of a behaviour where the tech is implemented and then you walk away, kind of, you know, rubbing your hands, whistling, job is done, but it's actually not.
(28:00):
I think we're saying here, turn it on its head, what would you like to create for the customer?
Yeah.
And then what tech can help you do that rather than here's some great tech?
And I think it kind of also leads into other areas like loyalty programs, you know, and you know, you've spoken a bit in the past about the loyalty programs and your experience with them.
(28:23):
Do you want to elaborate on that?
So I think, years ago I worked for Mastercard, and one of the things that we learned there, we ran the biggest loyalty program in Africa, and one of the things that I always learned then and try to focus on was, reward the behaviour you want rather than the behaviour you have.
(28:44):
And specifically for retailers, you look at loyalty programs and you look at the way we even merchandise online or we get a market online and we've got your past behaviour so we're going to sell you exactly the same thing again.
Yeah, or exactly the same type of thing...
That you were going to buy anyway...
That you were going to buy anyway.
We're not trying to make you pay more for something.
(29:04):
Not trying to make you do it more often, or not trying to make, get you to buy more of it.
And so, really, when you look at that, it's rewarding the behaviour you want rather than the behaviour you have.
It's something my wife does with me very successfully.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Okay...
(29:25):
And leaving that aside, tell us a little bit about the fingertips of desire actually.
Just popped to my mind.
This is my favorite Deanism...
Is it?
So, well, just to give a little bit of background, I suppose, you know, we've spoken about this in the past.
The whole idea of how marketing has changed and the transformation of marketing from, you know, I suppose, from what it was into marketing the now or, you know, what is the right thing at the right moment, because everything is available now.
(29:58):
So that's the fingertips of desire.
Yes.
So I think when we look at digital specifically, one of the things that has transformed in the last 20 years is how we've engaged with marketing, and with shopping, quite frankly.
Both have been dramatically transformed.
You know, if you went back 20 years, you went to see billboards.
(30:20):
You drove past billboards.
You went and you opened magazines and paged through them until the shopkeeper decided to kick you out, or tell you to buy it.
And you heard radio slots specifically at certain times.
Now this was an era before social media sort of started climbing, from about 2010 onwards.
So it was really, marketing was there.
(30:43):
It wasn't here and in your face.
I think we, you know, we've ended up where you can open a news website,
you can go Independent.ie and you'll see an advert on the side.
You'll go on to Facebook.
You'll see an advert.
You'll see advertising all through.
So it's really quite close to you and it's always on, all the time.
(31:06):
And I think one of the things that I sort of often see is that, there's an analogy that when I spent some time at Coca-Cola, working for Coca-Cola, they had the strategy which was to be within the arm's reach of desire.
And I think for consumers and shoppers nowadays everything is within a fingertip's reach of desire.
(31:30):
You can press a button.
You can open up an entire shop.
You can see an entire catalogue of what they have and you can see that in five minutes.
You can't walk into a store and see what you can see online.
So the ability to open up the equivalent of entire shopping centres in a couple of hours just browsing online is really, really easy for consumers and shoppers.
(31:53):
And so I think the challenge for retailers is when consumers and shoppers are doing that, how do they stand out?
How do they catch my attention when everything is really, really at the fingertip of desire?
I can get whatever I want.
I can order whatever I want and I can find whatever I want.
Yeah, how to cut through, but also how to engage and get involvement because, like you said, it's right here, right now, but also the next thing and the distraction and everything else is also right here, right now.
(32:24):
And get me coming back.
How do you continually re-engage me to keep me coming back because I've probably got about 10 or 12 subscriptions to various online stores pummeling me with emails trying to re-engage me.
So how do you do that when everything is at the fingertip of desire?
And that's why I think retailers need to evolve and transform to get that cut-through.
(32:50):
And isn't this why the complete experience needs to be fabulous?
Yes, Gordon, it is.
See, that's thrown a spanner in the works, hasn't it?
100%.
So I think it's fascinating what we've talked about today.
I love the Deanisms.
I love, you know, the ecommerce amplification, radical transparency, the three Dean sins, is it?
(33:14):
The three deadly sins?
Deadly sins of digital, replication, multiplication, inversion.
Dean's deadly sins of digital.
Yeah, these are fantastic.
What do you think in 2023?
What are we looking for this year?
I think we're looking for a return to basics.
I think there's been there's been massive growth fueled online, and to a large extent offline, across a number of businesses.
(33:39):
And I think 2023 is the opportunity to pause, re-evaluate what you're doing, take, you know, the accelerator has been pushed really hard just to keep up for the last two years.
So how do we re-evaluate the experiences, focus on things like profitability, focus on things like experience?
(34:00):
I see a lot of that.
I also see a return to, really just trying to manage businesses correctly from an assortment point of view, from the strategy point of view.
What are the decisions you're making around assortment, about strategy, about how you engage with your consumers and customers?
(34:20):
Foundations and fundamentals.
Yeah, it's like, I really feel like in my own business, a year of consolidation, because we've had such tumult for the last three, four years, operating at Black Friday levels nearly every day for two or three years now.
So time to kind of get the house back in order, set out the basics.
I 100% agree with that.
(34:42):
And with your permission, Dean, I would love to co-opt all of your Deanisms, because I think they do a great job in explaining some of the need to actually reset and focus on those fundamentals and the reasons why.
It's how do you get that base functionality right?
(35:03):
I think we've strayed quite a bit towards really doing great transformations and putting in new tech and putting in things like that.
But have you got the functionality right in the businesses to be able to deliver that at scale and personalised?
I think we've tried to do it at scale, but have we evolved it to be at scale and personalised?
(35:25):
Exactly.
It's a consolidation of a platform for growth and scale while remaining fabulous, naturally, Gordon, because...
Absolutely.
It has to be done, but you can only focus on that if you have everything else working as it should.
And as a final note, Dean, what are we going to see at Stanley Black & Decker?
What kind of areas, if you can talk to that a little bit, are you guys going to be focusing on?
(35:48):
I think we're focusing very much on doing the same.
So I think we're focusing on consolidating the gains we've made over the last couple of years.
I think we're focusing on how can we drive more penetration of our products into different market segments?
So certainly for us, more expansion onto places like marketplaces for future growth.
(36:10):
And then looking at different business models.
I think, you know, we see a focus very much on B2B and how do we enable the B2B experience of how we trade with our customers using ecommerce being a big opportunity for area for us in the next two to three years.
That's really interesting.
How do you see the whole kind of shift, the DTC shift over to B2B and so on coming down the tracks?
(36:33):
The expectation from our customers is very much to have a DTC experience.
So I think there's a convergence between what is typically deemed to be a DTC experience and the B2B experience.
But it's DTC plus.
So how can I get live chat, for example?
(36:56):
We're a large producer of tools and could we provide online support after-hours in a chat functionality, by one of our customers coming onto the website and being able to do that?
So I think it's looking at how we engage with our customers and our shoppers from that point of view in a B2B approach.
(37:19):
And that's why looking at that sort of DTC plus, if you would.
Extended DTC or enhanced DTC.
I always think the B2B is often, it's so neglected from a CX perspective, but then we forget that the people placing the orders through the B2B portal are actually people, and for them to have a wonderful experience and for that to be enjoyable is, it would be a great differentiator, and also to be easy and help them to do their job much faster.
(37:52):
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, that's why the interesting one was I talked earlier about that live shopping in India.
These are distributor partners.
India is a huge country.
We can't get out to everybody...
The biggest in the world.
So India certainly is a great example.
(38:13):
You know, we started off thinking that this was a test that we were going to do, and then it became a must-have and it became a must-have from our customers' point of view because they wanted to interact with somebody about the features and benefits of our products and ask questions.
Does it work here?
(38:33):
Does it work there?
Which they may not get all that information directly from a web page.
And then they can place the order at the same time, and we can offer discounts to incentivise that.
And it's then transformed into also being used as an accelerant for our teams and training our own teams.
And being able to lean into that evolution because it is an evolution is not necessarily a change in direction or, you know, this is an evolution.
(39:01):
It's the next step.
It's so important.
Dean, thank you so much.
We could speak with you all day long, but I'd like to thank you very much.
It's been a pleasure to have you speak with us today.
And as always, it's been an absolute education.
Always a pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks a million, Dean.
Thank you.
(39:25):
I love talking to Dean.
Every time we catch up with him, we learn something.
What are your takeaways from today, Ger?
Well, I like the Deanisms.
I wish I was as good at naming things as Dean is.
I love the idea of the digital IQ and how in a business it's nearly inversely proportional to the seniority of the people in the business.
(39:47):
But also at the same time, if you can get across this idea that the technology allows us to, or allows the business to, you know, harness value and profit from what's in the business, I think people will jump on it, you know, very, very quickly.
They want to know, you know, how it operates, what's available.
And he made a great explanation of, you know, the ecommerce amplification effect.
(40:09):
Also, a Deanism I really, really like.
Yeah, I'm totally stealing that one.
And I love this idea that we have to think more from the consumer's perspective, because everything that the consumer wants is, you know, at the fingertips of desire.
And that radical transparency that the consumer is exposed to means that as retailers and as service providers to retailers, we need to work a lot harder on building that complete experience.
(40:39):
I'm totally stealing all of the Deanisms.
All of the Deanisms.
From this episode, by the way...
We have radical transparency...
Radical transparency.
I think we definitely need to talk about the three deadly sins of replication, multiplication and...
Versioning.
Versioning.
Versioning is the one that always gets me, but I think they're absolutely borrowable.
(41:02):
We see it so often.
And I mean, like, you know, as soon as you're putting your business online in the digital space, you have to be prepared for that radical level of transparency because your pricing is there, your data is there.
It can all be scraped.
It can be replicated.
It's multiplied.
It goes throughout the world.
All of a sudden, you have this amplification effect again and everything you get wrong is just amplified and everything you get right is amplified.
(41:29):
And you have to be so careful about making sure you know where it's gone, what the versions of it are.
You know, it's quite a bit to it.
Because I always think of the hand.
I'm going to think of the hand action.
Now that when we talk about the fingertips of desire, which is kind of like, but the consumer is on the receiving end of that.
And because the consumer has so much choice, they can switch.
(41:51):
And this idea of loyalty to one particular brand being hard fought for, it's hard won and it's hard kept.
Yeah.
And that's a challenge.
So this idea of focusing on fundamentals, making sure the basics work really well so you can build out that complete experience.
That was a lot.
That was a lot.
It was a lot.
But it gives me a lot of optimism as well.
(42:13):
You know, I mean, as we go into 2023, there's the talks of recession and there's all of that kind of negative talking and people talking about whether or not retailers will be able to cut through in Ireland in a marketplace that is now being entered by far, far larger, bigger online merchants.
Online marketplaces...
(42:33):
Online marketplaces...
That may be challenging...
But I hope it's clear that it's always still within the realms and within the reach of the retailer to make their distinction, to differentiate themselves based on what has always been the thing they're good at.
The retailing, the merchandising, the connecting with the customer, the buying the right stuff for the right person, buying it so that they can make a profit.
(42:57):
You know, these are the basics.
And going back to the basics in 2023 and amplifying those.
And the things that retailers know, and do brilliantly, is making sure that they can execute on that time and time and time again for their customers.
I'm excited about 2023.
I think there's a lot to do.
(43:17):
I think you also produce a little Gordonism as well.
The retailer reflexes.
I love retailer reflexes and you see it so often.
You'll see buyers buy a price architecture, they buy a product architecture and they'll do that to good, better, best.
They won't even think about it because they've been doing it for 10, 20, 30, and in some instances 100-plus years.
(43:41):
They just buy in that way and what ecommerce shows is that you can use ecommerce to surface that as long as all of that fundamental base data is there.
And I think it should be gratifying and maybe give retailers confidence a bit because when you overlay the framework of ecommerce on top of that and you're looking for those stories, those products have been bought in those tiers, they're always in the business.
(44:10):
The business has purchased correctly, they've bought correctly for their customers, for the most part.
They understand their customers.
So it's something that we need to amplify.
It's not to be worried about, you know, we need to amplify that and use the tech to amplify that.
And great that we're focusing in that area and not necessarily on the latest, shiniest piece of ecommerce technology, of which there is lots and of which it is very fabulous.
(44:34):
But it doesn't negate from that need to have that focus on the core.
Yeah, the customer experience.
I read an article recently, you know, through the storm of what's been happening in the last few years.
This is very poetic now, Gordon, you're going to love this.
So through the storm of what's been happening the last number of years, as the mists and the fog dissipates, we still have the North Star and it's still in the same place that it always was.
(45:01):
So, you know, and I feel that way about the retail approach, you know, the North Star is still there, it's still in the same place.
We just steer the ship.
I feel that all we were missing there, Ger, was a little bit of smoke...
Yeah.
Like, just for the footage and some, like, strings playing, gentle, kind of, gentle rousing music and some scenes of Achill Island.
(45:26):
We'll get that, we'll get that...
[Rousing music] Through the storm of what's been happening in the last few years, as the mists and the fog dissipates, we still have the North Star and it's still in the same place that it always was.
And I feel that way about the retail approach, you know, the North Star is still there, it's still in the same place.
We just steer the ship...
(45:51):
Well, I guess all that remains is for me to say thank you very much for listening to the Functional & Fabulous podcast.
And we are looking forward to you joining us again in the future, where we will have our next victim...
I mean, guest.
Thanks so much.
Thanks, Gordon. You've been listening to Functional & Fabulous with Ger Keohane and Gordon Newman. If you'd like to know more about the podcast, or about StudioForty9 and Omnichannel Stories, please go to functionalandfabulous.ie. Our sound engineer was Elaine Smith and the show was produced by Roger Overall.
This is Functional & Fabulous, the omnichannel podcast where we unbox tales of online retail and digital transformation.
Welcome to the Functional & Fabulous podcast.
My name is Ger Keohane, and I'm functional...
My name is Gordon Newman, and I'm fabulous.
Let me tell you a little bit about this podcast.
(00:23):
Gordon and I have been working in retail ecommerce for the best part of our careers.
It's a domain we adore, not least because it demands both functional excellence and fabulous retail theatre.
During this podcast, we will be speaking with experts in the many and diverse areas that omnichannel commerce covers to unbox for you, our listener, the global standards for customer experience, operational excellence and digital wow, so you can understand how they are achieved behind the scenes.
(00:51):
Gordon, will you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?
What do I do?
I work with retailers across a number of different verticals.
Everything from electronics to jewellery to department stores and fashion.
And usually they call me and go, online isn't working, and how do we make this work?
(01:13):
And I go, okay, well, let's have a look at that.
I focus on the creative components, the story of the product, the story of the retailer, and how we bring that to life online through building experiences that really represent what that retailer stands for.
I think that makes me fabulous.
But what makes you functional, Ger?
(01:34):
Well, with a background in natural language processing and web application development, I come to retail ecommerce with a pragmatic attitude rooted in technical understanding.
I've been running the StudioForty9 ecommerce agency since 2006, where we've immersed ourselves in all things digital retail.
I love to work on systems integration, business process automation and the collection, communication and understanding of business data.
(01:57):
So I guess that's why I'm bringing the functional.
Now, with introductions out of the way, let's dive straight into this episode.
In this episode, Gordon gets expressive...
I'm going to think of the hand action.
Our guest forgets who he is...
Who the **** is Dean?
Grown men struggle to open a cardboard box...
Well packaged...
(02:17):
It's really well packaged, so much so I can't get mine open.
And Ger gets poetic...
As the mists and the fog dissipates, we still have the North Star, and it's still in the same place that it always was...
And today we're joined by our guest, Dean McElwee.
Dean is Director of Global Ecommerce Collaboration at Stanley Black & Decker.
(02:39):
He works with retailers the world over to place and position the entire product catalogue of the full suite of brands that Stanley Black & Decker operate on those retailers' ecommerce stores.
Stanley Black & Decker is an enormous business, doing in the region of $20 billion per annum, and is ranked in the Fortune 500.
And Dean is a globally recognised ecommerce and sales leader with over 17 years' experience in retail consulting and sales leadership for blue-chip multinational organisations.
(03:09):
His analytical approach, leadership and business acumen enable him to implement innovative growth strategies that not only drive performance, but also drive higher engagement and profit.
His experience spans both Europe and Africa across FMCG retail consulting with a focus on commercial strategy.
More informally, he declares his superpowers to be commercial strategy, data and analytics.
(03:34):
Welcome, Dean.
It's wonderful to have you here today.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
As ever, we'll start the ball rolling with a little unboxing.
Today we have a product by a local coffee roaster here in Cork called Velo Coffee.
They've kindly sent us some samples of their wares, so we're going to have a look.
In these lovely big white boxes.
Yes.
So we're going to wrestle with the tape and I'm going to go for a pull.
(03:59):
This is quite exciting.
Well packaged...
It's really well packaged, so much so I can't get mine open.
I got it done.
So Velo Coffee, it's a really interesting little business.
Started out in a Cork City cafe back in 2016.
And obviously, I mean, they're way better at naming things than I am.
So they've kind of gone with this Velo theme.
They have BMX coffee, which actually I'm very familiar with and it's my favourite.
(04:24):
They have Tandem coffee, and other kind of cargo bikes and things like that.
In the box, we have a beautiful, fabulous tote.
We have three lovely bags of coffee, beautifully packaged.
And I have a coffee pot.
I like the unboxing.
I like the inside of the box with the logo.
(04:44):
That looks great.
I love the colours.
I think these are fabulous.
It's nice to wake up in the morning and, you know, rip open a bag of this stuff.
Absolutely.
Great to experience it.
If you turn it around, there's a little patch where you can smell, which is really, really good.
I actually spoke with Rob Horgan years ago when he originally was starting this business.
And he had such a challenge to find packaging that was easy to send, that would get through a letterbox.
(05:10):
So I think he's pretty much achieved that incredibly well.
He's told me that their retention rate is up around 60%, which is...
That's because it's obviously good coffee, Ger.
Obviously good coffee.
Branding is really consistent on everything.
Branding across the inside of the box is great.
Ties in nicely with the coffee bags.
I think this is definitely fabulous.
Look at this.
I love this.
(05:31):
I have in my hand a coffee pot, which is super.
It looks really cool.
You were spoilt.
I think Dean and I only got mugs.
I got the same as Ger.
I got a mug.
Yay, I got a mug.
I'm the special one.
We're just functional.
We just got to make the coffee.
We have a lovely little message here from the guys in Velo.
(05:51):
'It has made our day to see that you placed an order for some Velo coffee.'
Lovely little handwritten message.
I really, really like this.
Some of the coffee is brilliant.
So creamy and balanced coffee with flavours of milk, chocolate, almond, shortbread and orange.
It's salivating just at the thought of it.
Super.
So that's Velo.
Lovely little bit of unboxing.
This episode of Functional & Fabulous is brought to you with pride by StudioForty9, retail ecommerce experts, omnichannel growth consultants and cut-through performance marketing specialists.
(06:23):
StudioForty9, where your digital retail success is built.
So welcome, Dean.
We're delighted to have you.
Hiya, Dean.
We're really keen to hear a little bit more about your role at Black & Decker.
Yeah, so my role encompasses working with our operating regions, so the US, Latin America, Asia and EMEA.
(06:44):
And I work with them to drive their strategy and implement their strategy from an ecommerce perspective.
And then I work across the regions on tech tools and what supports those tech and tools to deliver our ecommerce vision.
You've been involved in ecommerce at a senior level for many years now.
What do you see as the typical challenges in a business as it prepares for ecommerce, omnichannel and digital transformation?
(07:08):
Yeah, I think as businesses transform and go more ecommerce and get deeper ecommerce penetration, there are a couple of things that really start appearing as the business grows.
And that's what I often refer to as the ecommerce amplification effect, where ecommerce amplifies things that the business needs to get right and improve and evolve with.
(07:29):
So one of the biggest ones that I often see is data and data readiness and availability.
So do you have the right data and can you syndicate that out and provide it in the right manner throughout your business?
In a business like ours, for example, you have 400,000 SKUs and you've got to keep 150 to 200 fields of data across those 400 SKUs.
(07:52):
And this starts to become a rather large data management challenge.
I can't even begin to do the maths on that, Dean.
No.
It's a lot of data fields to manage.
I think this is why we should do maths until Leaving Cert because I can't do it either.
But with a challenge like that for a retailer and even a retailer that hasn't got 400,000 SKUs, huge challenge in managing accuracy.
(08:20):
And I think one of the things that ecommerce does is it really exposes any kind of gaps that exist in data processes, in data flows, in data accuracy.
But when those gaps are exposed, what does that kind of mean?
Like, what are the impacts for the customer?
What are the impacts for the retailer?
(08:40):
Well, I think, you know, I always bring it back down to the three deadly sins of digital, as I call them.
And it's digital and ecommerce.
It goes across both.
And that's really replication, multiplication and versioning.
In that, when you look at this from the value chain of a supplier of goods through to a retailer of goods, if I provide you with incorrect data and then you publish that data out to your customers, there's potential implication for that.
(09:08):
So I've seen various instances where you may have a food producer produce the food, send it through to a supermarket.
They don't know whether that data is accurate.
And then it goes onto the retailer's website.
And then the consumer, it may be the first time that they actually see that product in their hands is when it's bought and it's already delivered.
(09:31):
So if you think somebody who perhaps has an allergen to a type of cream, they buy it online, they get it home.
They don't look at the box.
They don't look at the ingredients.
But they've looked at the website to check that it's got the right things and allergens on.
And then they put it on.
And then there's a reaction.
The first thing they notice is a rash.
And you don't want a nasty rash.
(09:51):
Absolutely.
You don't want a nasty rash.
But that's the types of things that can happen with poor data management.
So it's really looking right through the value chain and saying, where does this information start?
Where does it originate?
What are the rules around how it's stored?
And then how does that progress down the value chain?
(10:12):
Because versioning, version control, which is the third deadly sin there is absolutely key.
You can change one ingredient in a food product.
You don't have to change the whole pack.
But you change one ingredient and suddenly there's an allergen there that nobody knew about.
I love the term, the amplification of ecommerce.
(10:32):
Because I think ecommerce, and the very nature of technology and the digital transformation element, throws a stark spotlight on all of the processes, the data in the business, and so on.
And all of a sudden, there's no place to hide.
I suppose one of the things we see a lot in our business is as soon as we put the letter E before the word commerce, all of a sudden people in the business who are very, very experienced retailers and quite senior, you know, they start to have difficulty imagining how they can understand digital.
(11:04):
And do you see that kind of problem as well?
We see it often.
And one of the things I often see is what I call the digital IQ of the senior leaders is often quite low, mainly because they didn't grow up around these things and they're not used to them.
And so it can be a bit frightening to certain leaders.
(11:25):
But it's really about working out how that is very similar to the other parts of the business and saying, you know, is what we're seeing on the ecommerce side different?
Yes, it's different.
It's a different execution.
It's a different customer experience.
But you're still focused on the same people.
So you're still focused on that same shopper who physically walks into your store.
(11:46):
You're just trying to encourage them to do it in a different way online.
And exactly like a retailer may focus on delivering the best possible experience in a store, they need to be focusing on delivering the best possible experience online.
And that can't look exactly like it does in the store...
Of course...
It's got to look different to attract that shopper.
(12:08):
Like ecommerce is just an expression of what the retailer is doing.
The same gut instincts, the same buying approaches and things like that still apply.
Absolutely.
I always think retailers have this, they almost have this reflex action.
They know what to do when it's in a store.
And some of the processes, they might not be documented, but they're certainly embedded within the business.
(12:31):
And one of the things I think that happens is ecommerce requires you to now think about how are you going to take that reflex action and turn that into a process that is effectively going to be, it's going to be executed by a machine.
But you've talked about it before, Gordon, the retailer reflexes, this kind of gut instinct.
(12:54):
Sometimes people are doing things in a structured way, they don't even realise they're doing it.
They're used to it.
That's their instinct.
But in the instance that Dean's just called out there, the digital IQ of a senior leadership team, if they're not familiar with it and they're deeply uncomfortable, how do you go about changing that?
So you're upskilling the leadership within a business.
(13:15):
So I think there's one of the things that we do, which is quite actually a simple thing to do, is we do digital store tours.
So we actually take people physically into store, if you can, show them what you look for in a physical store.
Where's the display?
How much shelf space is available?
Those types of things.
But then take them through the same process online.
(13:36):
What are you looking for when you shop online?
Through our eyes as opposed to their eyes, because that'll open up new things.
You'll start to see that there's a delivery store if it's a pick from store model.
So you've got to choose your pick from store.
You've got to do the search bar and take them through examples of how search works, and then start asking them the questions that they would be asking anyway.
(14:00):
Where's my best-performing SKU?
Every retailer, every manufacturer, knows the best-performing SKU.
Where is it on a webpage?
Is it buried deep on page six or seven?
Or is it on page one?
Where do they want it to be?
Everybody's going to say, I want it at eye level, at the front in front of the shopper.
And so doing things like a digital store tour helps them integrate and just bridge that gap from the sort of bricks and mortar world into the digital world.
(14:28):
And then we can start to talk about, well, are there additional opportunities to expose my brand on a retailer's website?
And then the conversation starts moving towards, well, how do I get the content ready for that?
How do I make sure I have all the content and all the data for that?
If a retailer wants to do a blog post, can I provide that to them?
(14:50):
Can I provide ideas and inspiration to help them sell their products and their services as well as my brands?
And it's such a simple thing, the idea of a store tour and applying the same kind of logic that, when you walk into a store, I know many retailers, they can immediately see whether the store has been merchandised correctly.
(15:10):
They know immediately how to operate in terms of the wayfinding within the store and things like that.
And just to kind of transfer that knowledge and understanding over to digital.
I think some of this actually comes down to base data, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Because if you think about default sort options on a website and compare that to, say, the visual standards that you would see in a physical store, the visual standards tend to be different because the default sort options are always bestselling price.
(15:39):
But customers aren't necessarily buying on bestselling or price.
And unless you're going to be manually curating every webpage, you can't do that physically.
And in your instance with 400,000 SKUs, you can't do that.
So the data has to be in really good shape so that you can use it.
Do you guys, like, advise retailers on that?
(16:02):
Yeah, I think this is one of the key things, particularly when you measure omnichannel retailers.
So we measure omnichannel retailers.
And one of the key data points that I always look for is what is their online market share of our brand?
And then what is our offline market share?
And what I'll often see is that there is a difference between those two.
That's interesting.
(16:23):
So in some cases, it might be that the online market share is quite a bit lower.
And that's because how you activate in-store and how you activate online are different.
They're different levers to pull.
And it goes also, once again, to the merchandising.
I can control and I can influence the merchandising in a bricks and mortar world.
So there's the pentagram, there's how it should be laid out.
(16:44):
In a digital world, it may be different and there are different levers that need to be pulled.
So how do we work with retailers to understand which are the most important products that they make the best margin on and then work out how we can display them, either through advertising that we put behind it or working on the organic search ranking as such with them?
(17:05):
Because I find it very interesting and I'm always curious about, and it indicates potential when you have different market shares or different shares of sales by category of product and so on, online and in-store.
And, you know, the mix is different.
And why is that?
Do you ever look at it from an assortment point of view?
Like, is the assortment offered online different to what's offered in-store and therefore the market share is affected?
(17:29):
So typically, that would often be the same.
You know, in some cases, I have seen that where an omnichannel retailer replicates the catalogue online, the assumption for a lot of people is that it's going to be the same catalogue.
But it's one of the things that, you know, we talk about ecommerce being a full team sport.
(17:51):
You actually have to get your teams involved to go and look, is that actually physically in-store and is it online?
Because managing those catalogues and syncing those catalogues online is quite hard for many retailers.
And it all, once again, comes down to master data.
Do you have the right master data to replicate exactly what you see in your physical store in your online store?
(18:15):
Especially when you have a pick-from-store model and the shopper can pick from wherever they want to pick up the stock from.
I think there's an interesting point you touched on, Gordon, there, where I think sometimes, you know, online merchants are led by the tech a bit and it becomes, you know, the tail wagging the dog.
So rather than dictating how you want your sort to work and merchandising your product listing pages and so on, you're allowing the default options in your ecommerce platform to dictate that.
(18:41):
So only the most recently added product ends up on the top of the page and you have those sorts of...
And that might not be the right place for it.
And that's why one of the things, and certainly as we've worked with different retailers, is actually understanding the buying cycle.
Why have the buyers, or in your case, maybe, Dean, why are things being built in the way that they're being built?
(19:06):
So why are things being manufactured?
How have they been designed?
What's the story that sits behind them?
And sometimes that just doesn't get surfaced if those communication flows aren't there.
Absolutely.
And things like seasonality, you know, we've got an outdoor business, which is lawnmowers and string trimmers, and that's a highly seasonal business.
And also snow blowers in certain parts of the world.
(19:28):
So making sure things like the sort order and when those things get prominent merchandising on a site means working with the retailer to do that.
And that takes a lot more data.
We make extensive use of Google Trends APIs to see exactly when people are looking for things like lawnmowers, or cutting the lawn, or searching for that, so that we can help inform retailers of what the trends are and therefore what they should be merchandising against.
(19:56):
Exactly.
And it's important to have the tooling in place so that you can surface that kind of thing.
You need the data to know which ones are the lawnmowers and you need the tooling to surface to the top.
And you need the story or the trend so that you can use that tooling because the tooling is just that.
It's a tool to help you make the change.
And I think if you just, say you're just relying on AI, AI sometimes can't have that predictive knowledge because it doesn't have visibility of the inputs.
(20:25):
And how do you find, you know, talking about AI, the whole kind of personalisation, I suppose, the focus on personalisation and creating these unique experiences for customers and so on.
It's a topic between Gordon and I, you know, of controversy.
Do you see the benefits?
Are we there yet?
(20:47):
I think we see the benefits.
I think we have more passage to go.
I think if the three of us all sat and opened a retailer's website, we'd probably get all the same experience.
So is that really as personalised as we've been talking about?
So I think there's an opportunity for retailers to up the ante in terms of the personalisation that they offer.
(21:09):
And the same for brand manufacturers.
I think we all talk about personalisation.
It may surface in the form of emails and email personalisation and customer journeys.
And I think the industry has done a great job of that.
I think less so in terms of the customer experience we experience on websites.
I think we all pretty much get the same experience.
(21:30):
Pretty much.
I think it seldom extends beyond, we might get a different set of product recommendations based on what we've browsed.
We're not necessarily going to be surface different content in terms of the stories that we're being told or in terms of the wayfinding that might suit me differently to what might suit Dean or what might suit you, Ger.
(21:53):
But I think that's quite difficult to then execute at any level of scale.
Yeah.
And for a lot of retailers, who are busy, plugging in recommendations is a nice easy tool and they tick the box on personalisation.
It's an interesting thing.
You know, we see now the democratisation of retail tech.
(22:14):
So software and capability that used to cost hundreds of thousands is now available on subscription, sometimes quite cheaply.
How do brands and retailers now differentiate when, you know, what is now a fairly level playing field?
How do you get the opportunity to differentiate yourself, would you think?
Well, I think this is one of the things that I talk about in terms of what ecommerce amplifies.
(22:37):
It's radical transparency.
I, as a consumer, can visit five or six different retailers and I can see what they offer in the span of about 15 minutes.
And these retailers can look at their competitors and see exactly what they're doing, too.
So how do you differentiate that not just from a digital point of view, but a complete experience point of view?
(23:03):
So complete omnichannel.
We look at that and we go and say, how can I help you experience it and drive it online?
So can I do live shopping, for example?
We recently launched live shopping on our B2B sites for our distributors in India to allow them to be able to ask questions and experience our brands in a totally different way because they physically can't get in to see the products, and we can't go to all 1,200 distributors in a country like India to expose them to the brands that we offer.
(23:39):
So I think, you know, particularly with retailers, it's how do you distinguish and make yourself quite distinctive in the market from everybody else by looking at all parts of your experience.
It's not just the online experience, it's the offline experience, it's the service, it's the people behind the counter, it's the experience even on buy online and pick up in store.
(24:05):
You know, I've done click-and-collect for a couple of times here and when I first arrived in this country, I'd go and do click-and-collect in the lashing rain outside Tesco and I'd sit there and I'd go, this is not great, this is just really not a great experience.
You know, can't you cover it or can't you put it in a corner of the store that makes it better for me as an online shopper to experience your brand, and I'm both an online and offline shopper, but I think that's where retailers can look at those types of experiences and can say, how do we make this complete experience distinctive and meaningful for the shopper?
(24:44):
Isn't that the retailer's job?
So a retailer is taking great master data
and they've got a great product feed
from their in theory,
from all of their suppliers
in a perfect world,
everybody's feeding them
the standard imagery,
everybody's feeding them
the product descriptions,
all of the specifications are correct
(25:04):
but everybody's getting the same,
and I think that's the retailer's job then
to differentiate above that
and as you say,
it's the service wrapper,
it's things like live shopping,
it's that spin that the retailer puts on it.
Just as one retail store
will feel different
(25:25):
to another retail store
selling the same product,
and I think there's so much
that you can do with the base data,
but then the retailer
has to then work with that.
100%, we kind of have a situation,
it feels to me that we have a situation
where we've plateaued a bit,
(25:46):
where the democratisation of the retail tech
has allowed a lot of retailers,
merchants to get up to the same level
and now they're trying to figure out
how to unlock the next level,
how to unlock the potential
that's in the business,
and what it is really
is now to forget about the digital part
and let that fade away a small bit
and get back to the retailing.
And we've talked in the past,
(26:06):
just stitching the experiences together,
identifying the experiences on the journey
just like you've spoken about, Dean,
what happens after I put through my collection order,
what comes next,
how do we stitch that together
so that it's the best it can be for the customer?
I think we've often got the order wrong.
So I think, I often say to teams
when we're looking at evaluating
new ways of going to market,
(26:28):
look at it from a consumer
or customer-focused angle
than business-led,
so what commercial decisions are you making
and then how does technology enable that
and deliver on that.
Don't get it the other way around
and go, here's a great piece of tech,
I want to implement it.
But isn't that always the way? You see a shiny new piece of tech and you think, I would love to do that, and the customer has no value for it whatsoever.
(26:54):
And the consumer may not even care, so I think it's really, go back to consumer or customer focus, depending on what your business looks like, and then what are the business-led decisions?
So as a retailer, do I want to make more money?
Yes, I want to.
So how do I, and do I want my supplier support?
Yes, I do.
So can I merchandise products that are profitable for me, and profitable for the supplier?
(27:17):
I mean, that would be fantastic if you could digitally merchandise that and also physically merchandise that.
And most exciting for the customer.
Yeah, and then get the tech to be able to do that for you rather than looking at the tech and go, yeah, that looks fantastic, I'm going to implement it, and nobody quite knows how to work.
(27:38):
And I think often what you then see is not enough utilisation of the tech, and the ROI isn't really there because you're focused on the wrong person.
You know, you've got to go back and focus on the consumer and the shopper.
You see a kind of a behaviour where the tech is implemented and then you walk away, kind of, you know, rubbing your hands, whistling, job is done, but it's actually not.
(28:00):
I think we're saying here, turn it on its head, what would you like to create for the customer?
Yeah.
And then what tech can help you do that rather than here's some great tech?
And I think it kind of also leads into other areas like loyalty programs, you know, and you know, you've spoken a bit in the past about the loyalty programs and your experience with them.
(28:23):
Do you want to elaborate on that?
So I think, years ago I worked for Mastercard, and one of the things that we learned there, we ran the biggest loyalty program in Africa, and one of the things that I always learned then and try to focus on was, reward the behaviour you want rather than the behaviour you have.
(28:44):
And specifically for retailers, you look at loyalty programs and you look at the way we even merchandise online or we get a market online and we've got your past behaviour so we're going to sell you exactly the same thing again.
Yeah, or exactly the same type of thing...
That you were going to buy anyway...
That you were going to buy anyway.
We're not trying to make you pay more for something.
(29:04):
Not trying to make you do it more often, or not trying to make, get you to buy more of it.
And so, really, when you look at that, it's rewarding the behaviour you want rather than the behaviour you have.
It's something my wife does with me very successfully.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Okay...
(29:25):
And leaving that aside, tell us a little bit about the fingertips of desire actually.
Just popped to my mind.
This is my favorite Deanism...
Is it?
So, well, just to give a little bit of background, I suppose, you know, we've spoken about this in the past.
The whole idea of how marketing has changed and the transformation of marketing from, you know, I suppose, from what it was into marketing the now or, you know, what is the right thing at the right moment, because everything is available now.
(29:58):
So that's the fingertips of desire.
Yes.
So I think when we look at digital specifically, one of the things that has transformed in the last 20 years is how we've engaged with marketing, and with shopping, quite frankly.
Both have been dramatically transformed.
You know, if you went back 20 years, you went to see billboards.
(30:20):
You drove past billboards.
You went and you opened magazines and paged through them until the shopkeeper decided to kick you out, or tell you to buy it.
And you heard radio slots specifically at certain times.
Now this was an era before social media sort of started climbing, from about 2010 onwards.
So it was really, marketing was there.
(30:43):
It wasn't here and in your face.
I think we, you know, we've ended up where you can open a news website,
you can go Independent.ie and you'll see an advert on the side.
You'll go on to Facebook.
You'll see an advert.
You'll see advertising all through.
So it's really quite close to you and it's always on, all the time.
(31:06):
And I think one of the things that I sort of often see is that, there's an analogy that when I spent some time at Coca-Cola, working for Coca-Cola, they had the strategy which was to be within the arm's reach of desire.
And I think for consumers and shoppers nowadays everything is within a fingertip's reach of desire.
(31:30):
You can press a button.
You can open up an entire shop.
You can see an entire catalogue of what they have and you can see that in five minutes.
You can't walk into a store and see what you can see online.
So the ability to open up the equivalent of entire shopping centres in a couple of hours just browsing online is really, really easy for consumers and shoppers.
(31:53):
And so I think the challenge for retailers is when consumers and shoppers are doing that, how do they stand out?
How do they catch my attention when everything is really, really at the fingertip of desire?
I can get whatever I want.
I can order whatever I want and I can find whatever I want.
Yeah, how to cut through, but also how to engage and get involvement because, like you said, it's right here, right now, but also the next thing and the distraction and everything else is also right here, right now.
(32:24):
And get me coming back.
How do you continually re-engage me to keep me coming back because I've probably got about 10 or 12 subscriptions to various online stores pummeling me with emails trying to re-engage me.
So how do you do that when everything is at the fingertip of desire?
And that's why I think retailers need to evolve and transform to get that cut-through.
(32:50):
And isn't this why the complete experience needs to be fabulous?
Yes, Gordon, it is.
See, that's thrown a spanner in the works, hasn't it?
100%.
So I think it's fascinating what we've talked about today.
I love the Deanisms.
I love, you know, the ecommerce amplification, radical transparency, the three Dean sins, is it?
(33:14):
The three deadly sins?
Deadly sins of digital, replication, multiplication, inversion.
Dean's deadly sins of digital.
Yeah, these are fantastic.
What do you think in 2023?
What are we looking for this year?
I think we're looking for a return to basics.
I think there's been there's been massive growth fueled online, and to a large extent offline, across a number of businesses.
(33:39):
And I think 2023 is the opportunity to pause, re-evaluate what you're doing, take, you know, the accelerator has been pushed really hard just to keep up for the last two years.
So how do we re-evaluate the experiences, focus on things like profitability, focus on things like experience?
(34:00):
I see a lot of that.
I also see a return to, really just trying to manage businesses correctly from an assortment point of view, from the strategy point of view.
What are the decisions you're making around assortment, about strategy, about how you engage with your consumers and customers?
(34:20):
Foundations and fundamentals.
Yeah, it's like, I really feel like in my own business, a year of consolidation, because we've had such tumult for the last three, four years, operating at Black Friday levels nearly every day for two or three years now.
So time to kind of get the house back in order, set out the basics.
I 100% agree with that.
(34:42):
And with your permission, Dean, I would love to co-opt all of your Deanisms, because I think they do a great job in explaining some of the need to actually reset and focus on those fundamentals and the reasons why.
It's how do you get that base functionality right?
(35:03):
I think we've strayed quite a bit towards really doing great transformations and putting in new tech and putting in things like that.
But have you got the functionality right in the businesses to be able to deliver that at scale and personalised?
I think we've tried to do it at scale, but have we evolved it to be at scale and personalised?
(35:25):
Exactly.
It's a consolidation of a platform for growth and scale while remaining fabulous, naturally, Gordon, because...
Absolutely.
It has to be done, but you can only focus on that if you have everything else working as it should.
And as a final note, Dean, what are we going to see at Stanley Black & Decker?
What kind of areas, if you can talk to that a little bit, are you guys going to be focusing on?
(35:48):
I think we're focusing very much on doing the same.
So I think we're focusing on consolidating the gains we've made over the last couple of years.
I think we're focusing on how can we drive more penetration of our products into different market segments?
So certainly for us, more expansion onto places like marketplaces for future growth.
(36:10):
And then looking at different business models.
I think, you know, we see a focus very much on B2B and how do we enable the B2B experience of how we trade with our customers using ecommerce being a big opportunity for area for us in the next two to three years.
That's really interesting.
How do you see the whole kind of shift, the DTC shift over to B2B and so on coming down the tracks?
(36:33):
The expectation from our customers is very much to have a DTC experience.
So I think there's a convergence between what is typically deemed to be a DTC experience and the B2B experience.
But it's DTC plus.
So how can I get live chat, for example?
(36:56):
We're a large producer of tools and could we provide online support after-hours in a chat functionality, by one of our customers coming onto the website and being able to do that?
So I think it's looking at how we engage with our customers and our shoppers from that point of view in a B2B approach.
(37:19):
And that's why looking at that sort of DTC plus, if you would.
Extended DTC or enhanced DTC.
I always think the B2B is often, it's so neglected from a CX perspective, but then we forget that the people placing the orders through the B2B portal are actually people, and for them to have a wonderful experience and for that to be enjoyable is, it would be a great differentiator, and also to be easy and help them to do their job much faster.
(37:52):
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, that's why the interesting one was I talked earlier about that live shopping in India.
These are distributor partners.
India is a huge country.
We can't get out to everybody...
The biggest in the world.
So India certainly is a great example.
(38:13):
You know, we started off thinking that this was a test that we were going to do, and then it became a must-have and it became a must-have from our customers' point of view because they wanted to interact with somebody about the features and benefits of our products and ask questions.
Does it work here?
(38:33):
Does it work there?
Which they may not get all that information directly from a web page.
And then they can place the order at the same time, and we can offer discounts to incentivise that.
And it's then transformed into also being used as an accelerant for our teams and training our own teams.
And being able to lean into that evolution because it is an evolution is not necessarily a change in direction or, you know, this is an evolution.
(39:01):
It's the next step.
It's so important.
Dean, thank you so much.
We could speak with you all day long, but I'd like to thank you very much.
It's been a pleasure to have you speak with us today.
And as always, it's been an absolute education.
Always a pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks a million, Dean.
Thank you.
(39:25):
I love talking to Dean.
Every time we catch up with him, we learn something.
What are your takeaways from today, Ger?
Well, I like the Deanisms.
I wish I was as good at naming things as Dean is.
I love the idea of the digital IQ and how in a business it's nearly inversely proportional to the seniority of the people in the business.
(39:47):
But also at the same time, if you can get across this idea that the technology allows us to, or allows the business to, you know, harness value and profit from what's in the business, I think people will jump on it, you know, very, very quickly.
They want to know, you know, how it operates, what's available.
And he made a great explanation of, you know, the ecommerce amplification effect.
(40:09):
Also, a Deanism I really, really like.
Yeah, I'm totally stealing that one.
And I love this idea that we have to think more from the consumer's perspective, because everything that the consumer wants is, you know, at the fingertips of desire.
And that radical transparency that the consumer is exposed to means that as retailers and as service providers to retailers, we need to work a lot harder on building that complete experience.
(40:39):
I'm totally stealing all of the Deanisms.
All of the Deanisms.
From this episode, by the way...
We have radical transparency...
Radical transparency.
I think we definitely need to talk about the three deadly sins of replication, multiplication and...
Versioning.
Versioning.
Versioning is the one that always gets me, but I think they're absolutely borrowable.
(41:02):
We see it so often.
And I mean, like, you know, as soon as you're putting your business online in the digital space, you have to be prepared for that radical level of transparency because your pricing is there, your data is there.
It can all be scraped.
It can be replicated.
It's multiplied.
It goes throughout the world.
All of a sudden, you have this amplification effect again and everything you get wrong is just amplified and everything you get right is amplified.
(41:29):
And you have to be so careful about making sure you know where it's gone, what the versions of it are.
You know, it's quite a bit to it.
Because I always think of the hand.
I'm going to think of the hand action.
Now that when we talk about the fingertips of desire, which is kind of like, but the consumer is on the receiving end of that.
And because the consumer has so much choice, they can switch.
(41:51):
And this idea of loyalty to one particular brand being hard fought for, it's hard won and it's hard kept.
Yeah.
And that's a challenge.
So this idea of focusing on fundamentals, making sure the basics work really well so you can build out that complete experience.
That was a lot.
That was a lot.
It was a lot.
But it gives me a lot of optimism as well.
(42:13):
You know, I mean, as we go into 2023, there's the talks of recession and there's all of that kind of negative talking and people talking about whether or not retailers will be able to cut through in Ireland in a marketplace that is now being entered by far, far larger, bigger online merchants.
Online marketplaces...
(42:33):
Online marketplaces...
That may be challenging...
But I hope it's clear that it's always still within the realms and within the reach of the retailer to make their distinction, to differentiate themselves based on what has always been the thing they're good at.
The retailing, the merchandising, the connecting with the customer, the buying the right stuff for the right person, buying it so that they can make a profit.
(42:57):
You know, these are the basics.
And going back to the basics in 2023 and amplifying those.
And the things that retailers know, and do brilliantly, is making sure that they can execute on that time and time and time again for their customers.
I'm excited about 2023.
I think there's a lot to do.
(43:17):
I think you also produce a little Gordonism as well.
The retailer reflexes.
I love retailer reflexes and you see it so often.
You'll see buyers buy a price architecture, they buy a product architecture and they'll do that to good, better, best.
They won't even think about it because they've been doing it for 10, 20, 30, and in some instances 100-plus years.
(43:41):
They just buy in that way and what ecommerce shows is that you can use ecommerce to surface that as long as all of that fundamental base data is there.
And I think it should be gratifying and maybe give retailers confidence a bit because when you overlay the framework of ecommerce on top of that and you're looking for those stories, those products have been bought in those tiers, they're always in the business.
(44:10):
The business has purchased correctly, they've bought correctly for their customers, for the most part.
They understand their customers.
So it's something that we need to amplify.
It's not to be worried about, you know, we need to amplify that and use the tech to amplify that.
And great that we're focusing in that area and not necessarily on the latest, shiniest piece of ecommerce technology, of which there is lots and of which it is very fabulous.
(44:34):
But it doesn't negate from that need to have that focus on the core.
Yeah, the customer experience.
I read an article recently, you know, through the storm of what's been happening in the last few years.
This is very poetic now, Gordon, you're going to love this.
So through the storm of what's been happening the last number of years, as the mists and the fog dissipates, we still have the North Star and it's still in the same place that it always was.
(45:01):
So, you know, and I feel that way about the retail approach, you know, the North Star is still there, it's still in the same place.
We just steer the ship.
I feel that all we were missing there, Ger, was a little bit of smoke...
Yeah.
Like, just for the footage and some, like, strings playing, gentle, kind of, gentle rousing music and some scenes of Achill Island.
(45:26):
We'll get that, we'll get that...
[Rousing music] Through the storm of what's been happening in the last few years, as the mists and the fog dissipates, we still have the North Star and it's still in the same place that it always was.
And I feel that way about the retail approach, you know, the North Star is still there, it's still in the same place.
We just steer the ship...
(45:51):
Well, I guess all that remains is for me to say thank you very much for listening to the Functional & Fabulous podcast.
And we are looking forward to you joining us again in the future, where we will have our next victim...
I mean, guest.
Thanks so much.
Thanks, Gordon. You've been listening to Functional & Fabulous with Ger Keohane and Gordon Newman. If you'd like to know more about the podcast, or about StudioForty9 and Omnichannel Stories, please go to functionalandfabulous.ie. Our sound engineer was Elaine Smith and the show was produced by Roger Overall.
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