Brian Walker is Chief Strategy Officer at Bloomreach which, if you’re not familiar, powers something like 25% of ecommerce between the US and UK. The sheer size and scope of what they do gives them a unique perspective on e-commerce trends so we sat down with Brian to talk about the upcoming holiday season, with all of its new complexities, and what brands and consumers should expect.
Below is a full transcript of the conversation.
TheCustomer
Hi, I’m Mike Giambattista and I’m publisher of TheCustomer and today I have the pleasure of talking to Brian Walker who is Chief Strategy Officer with Bloomreach and if you’re not familiar with Bloomreach you probably need to be. I’m sure you’re familiar with the effects of their work but I read an interesting stat on your site this morning, Brian, that uh Bloomreach powers something like 25% of e-commerce between the US and UK which is a phenomenal statistic. And that’s just a big, big deal. But I think, you know, other than being just a really cool thing, it shows how powerful your technology really is. It also gives you perspective that I think, not a lot of people have. So, that was my really long way of saying I’m really grateful that we’re talking right now and welcome.
Brian Walker
Well, it’s my pleasure, Mike. Thanks so much for having me – it’s great to be here.
TheCustomer
So, maybe you could do a better job than I did about telling us what Bloomreach is, and what you do.
Brian Walker
Yeah, Bloomreach is a is a commerce experience solution set. So, we provide solutions that help businesses drive and optimize their digital commerce experience. We do that with a with a range of different products that all come together and kind of unify around what we call our “commerce data platform”. But essentially, we power marketing solutions for customers – how they drive email marketing, text messaging, social marketing and so forth. Highly personalized and kind of enable our customers to aggregate lots of different types of customer data and get very granular at how they message and communicate to their customers. You know, right message, right offer, right time, so to speak.
And then we provide a range of solutions that help kind of inspire and engage customers and ultimately help them convert with optimization around our search technology product recommendations. A whole host of online merchandising tools and content solutions that help marketers and merchants you know, drive a relevant personalized and engaging experience. So Bloomreach is all about powering and enabling digital commerce and we work with a range of different businesses across lots of different verticals. We tend to work with what you would call like “emerging brands” who are really growing rapidly (and) very large established players.
TheCustomer
I’m interested – are you able to talk about any of the brands you’re working with – to name any of those people?
Brian Walker
Yeah, I mean there’s a number of brands, I mean we’ve got a lot of case studies out there on the website. We work with brands like Puma. We work with businesses like Staples and Williams Sonoma. We work with some b2b businesses as well like MSC and HD Supply and we do some business in the travel and financial services market as well. CapitalOne would be a well-known financial services brand that we work with or AMEX for example. So, we work with primarily businesses that are looking to engage and drive their business through their digital channels working direct with their consumers or b2b customers as well.
TheCustomer
OK so, as I mentioned when we first started this conversation – your company powers something like 25 % of e-commerce between US and UK which gives you … I think it says a handful of things. It talks an awful lot about your scale and abilities, but I think probably more interesting for the people that are watching and listening to this are your perspectives because there aren’t a whole lot of people out there that get to see what you see. So, I would love to get your thoughts on what do you see for holiday season, why do you see some of the things you’re seeing and predicting – because there’s so many different factors at play right now. New factors that have never been, you know, around before. Love to hear your thoughts on that and here we are in early November just kind of crossing into you know, the hectic season. But all kind of wondering now – will it be hectic or won’t it?
Brian Walker
Yeah, well I think there’s many people who have said it in the past right. Predictions and forecasts are particularly hard when they’re about the future, right. So certainly true. I think you know, when we started looking at this well back in Q3 and kind of looking at what we were expecting to see this holiday season, you know. What we saw was that the baseline of digital commerce was still, year over year, up significantly from the previous year.
So, obviously we’re all very familiar with the story around the inflection point the digital and e-commerce experience due to the pandemic, right. With many different product categories, you know, growing significantly, many consumers who are somewhat still on the sidelines or who hadn’t really gone like, you know, full digital in the sense right, were forced to, in many ways. And certainly some of the challenges around locating supply of PPE and other essential products also drove consumers to try a lot of additional brands. So we’ve seen, you know, a real reshuffling also occur in terms of brand loyalty and brand preference all kind of driven by the pandemic as well. But when we look at the baseline of consumer behavior, we’re still well above pre-pandemic levels, right. We’re about 25 % above pre-pandemic levels in terms of consumers leveraging the web and online channels. And certainly we saw that in the Bloomreach data as well right, continuing to trend well above 2020. So we’re annualizing the pandemic peak if you will, as we were progressing through 2021. And so, you know, our forecast looking at holiday season was quite bullish based on that and i’d say bullish relative to other forecasts that were out in the marketplace as well. And we were forecasting a 30% growth year-over-year in holiday online sales.
TheCustomer
Wow, that’s a big deal.
Brian Walker
And that’s actually because we were seeing you know, year over year numbers in the low 40s you know, trending into Q3. So continued strong growth in digital channels. The reality is we are facing a really challenging period though in the marketplace and there’s a lot, as you said, a lot of different dynamics that could end up impacting, you know, where we ultimately end up. And some of those have a lot less to do with kind of consumer behavior and a lot to do with inventory availability and consumer sentiment and a whole host of other things. So, we’ll have to see obviously where it all kind of comes out in the wash. But as you said, there’s a lot of different factors that may ultimately impact where we end up. And there’s a lot of downstream, sort of impacts we’re all seeing in the market.
Whether you’re running or involved in a digital business today or just as a consumer, you’re probably already experiencing. I mean, we’ve just turned the clock on Halloween and rolling into early November now, but holiday of course, is now in full swing. Yeah, it’s been for some time and certainly retailers are interested in moving demand forward for a whole host of reasons and consumers are, you know, kind of responding in part due to the new cycle and other factors.
TheCustomer
So, you know, we haven’t but we should touch on supply chain issues. It seems to me, especially based on your forecast, if you’re saying or looking ahead towards a 30% growth, that’s no small thing. But you know, call that the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. When those forces collide, what is that going to mean for consumers? And again, you’re probably in a great position to advise brands on how they navigate those tricky waters.
Brian Walker
I think you’ve got to look at a couple of different compounding factors and realize that supply chain is certainly one of them. You know, if the inventory has not already landed in the US and it’s not already kind of into the distribution network, it’s going to be very hard to catch it back up right and catch the demand before we hit early December. You’ve also got to factor in the labor crunch that many retailers – and our logistics providers are also experiencing, and recognize that it’s also a challenge with in-store staff or warehouse staff or staff to do the processing and delivering and moving of goods, right. Everything from a shortage of truck drivers and delivery people to warehouse workers and in-store workers – so a lot of businesses are struggling to just, you know, have the workforce in place and trained to process this like increased volume of business.
So, I think what we’re going to see here – and we’re going to start seeing the messaging already – but even more so over the next few weeks, is you know really stores encouraging curbside or in-store pickup. And for consumers it’s a great way to, you know, do a lot of my shopping online which, now I’m much more comfortable with. And certainly, when it comes to finding hard-to-find goods, it’s way more convenient, obviously, to be doing that online. But you’re going to start seeing, you know, in-store pickup and curbside pickup become a real norm for a consumer. It’s very convenient, right – I get to schedule or make a trip when I know the product is there. And my time is precious, right.
And certainly with, you know, the return to work still kind of progressing slowly in many different regions and locations in the country – you know many workers are still working remote largely if not full-time. Certainly part-time, you know, even our routines as consumers have been kind of disrupted, so curbside pickup and in-store pickup become much more convenient. I know if I’m going to get in the car, or I’m going to make that journey, you know, the products there for me to pick up. And, you know, I’ve saved time and maybe even save some money by shopping online.
We will see, you know, certainly less discounting activity, I think, than we’ve historically seen. That’s a good thing, I think, for a lot of retailers and brands who for many years have tried to wean themselves and the consumers away from heavy discounting which often, you know, comes into play during the holiday season. We’re gonna see a little less of that – that’s actually kind of a healthy thing. And so, margins are actually better. So, even though inventories are down and that, you know, that’s going to be a constraint on how much business you can do, you’re transacting at a higher margin than you would have, you know, in the past. So that’s a positive thing.
So, we’re going to see a lot of these different kinds of dynamics playing out, really, over the course of November and into early December. And I think, for retailers they’re trying to, you know, encourage early shopping. They’re strongly signaling to consumers – even putting it up on their home pages – that they should buy now, right. Don’t wait, you know, that if they want to have the gifts in time for holiday, you know, now is the time. So, strong signaling from the retailers. It’s obviously in the news cycle – consumers are starting to respond pretty aggressively to that. So, our holiday peak is moving earlier and getting kind of flatter, if you will, versus that steep inflection point we would typically see with black Friday, Cyber-Monday, and into early December. So, you know, it’s a lot of different things there, but those are some of the impacts we’re going to see.
TheCustomer
Interesting that you brought that up because even in this morning’s “Wall Street Journal”, one of the front-page articles had to do with holiday shopping and what consumers need to be dealing with right now. And just almost verbatim what you just said, either buy it now while it’s available when you see it or get an inventory tracker and hope for the best at that point.
Brian Walker
I kind of laughed a little bit at the article because it was sort of like, you know, steering consumers towards trying to hack the system. And I think around, you know, certain high-demand products, you know. I could certainly see a few consumers doing that but that’s going to be relatively few consumers who are going to try to do it. Retailers are wrestling with bots and aggregators, people buying product with intention to resell it. And brands kind of losing some brand control and retailers actually seeing, you know, their inventory basically being gobbled up early by resellers who are trying to resell some of this product on you know marketplaces and Ebay, and so forth. And I think that’s just really interesting – not long-term sustainable trend – but something that we are seeing now really, in relation to the supply chain crunch and lack of inventory and some, you know, some product association.
TheCustomer
I would love to get your thoughts on the meaning and value of Black Friday and these times because it’s different than what it was two, three years ago – vastly different. You know, those dynamics have changed and flip-flopped and become less and more important kind of simultaneously.
Brian Walker
So, well let’s just maybe end on a thought on that. I mean, you know everyone here may realize that you know, the term Black Friday was related to you know, retailers likely going from red to black on their balance sheets based on the inflection of sales at that time. And certainly, the retail industry over the past say you know, 50 to 100 years, really put a lot of emphasis on driving demand you know, right after Thanksgiving in the US and that of course has now kind of become an international phenomenon in some ways.
But just think about the consumer behavior and look back at that. I remember working in stores like when I was in college, and so forth, and having people lined up in the parking lot the morning after Thanksgiving, you know, and just the frenzy and the chaos. And I can say that most consumers are not interested in that, let alone that we’re in a pandemic still, in a sense right. And so, you know that peak of demand and sort of the frenzy that retailers would sort of try to encourage like that, doesn’t really have the same impact anymore. And now you’re really trying to moderate that kind of demand across, you know, many different weeks – if not months – and really enable your organization to respond effectively and meet the customer promise.
And certainly, that in-store experience that was Black Friday, frankly I don’t think most consumers are very interested in going back to that. And so, in a sense, Black Friday marks a point in the calendar. And certainly, you know, these kinds of shopping holidays are important in some respects, in the retail calendar but it is less important.
And I’ll say that there’s another online shopping holiday that is starting to kind of, become more present in kind of western markets – US and in Europe for example. And that’s Singles Day which, of course, started in in China essentially as a created shopping holiday. It’ll probably be our second biggest peak of shopping in the US market now.
TheCustomer
Wow that’s a big deal.
Brian Walker
And so, it’s really about you know, retailers kind of pushing demand into those days. And it’s about you know, their marketing and merchandising strategies kind of converging on these key points in the calendar to capture and drive intent, in demand. And you know, so we’re seeing kind of a moderation of that over the course of a few months and Black Friday, as you said, is much less important than it used to be.
TheCustomer
Yeah, it marks a day on the calendar when the frenzy officially begins, i suppose. In any case, Brian, thank you so much for your time, for your thinking, for your perspective. I personally love these kinds of conversations. I hope we can do it again frequently. Your perspective is valuable to our readers and viewers so, again, thanks.
Brian Walker
My pleasure, Mike. Thanks for having me.
