Parinda Muley (@parinda), the VP of Innovation and Business Development at Macy’s. In this broad-ranging interview, we discuss a number of Macy’s innovation initiatives including ThredUp, Macy’s Market @ Macy’s, B8ta, Story, and Style Crew. We also talk about the strategies for fostering innovation, and how retail innovation is likely to evolve in the future.
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Episode 192 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, August 21st, 2019. live from the eTail East trade show in Boston, MA.
http://jasonandscot.com
Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.
Automated Transcription of the show
Transcript
Jason:
[0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded live from the etail East trade show in Boston on Wednesday August 21st 2019,
I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott was unable to join us today so you’re getting twice the Jason for half the usual price which as I understand it is a bargain but the sweeten the pot we have an awesome guest adjoining on the podcast is
parinda movie.
Malay thank you very much she’s the VP of innovation and business development at Macy’s prenda just finished a keynote panel discussion entitled
fostering Innovation rethinking the omni-channel organization today thanks very much for being on the show.
Parinda:
[1:09] Thank you for having me.
Jason:
[1:10] We are thrilled to have you you have a slightly unusual title to me
and I mean that in an exciting way what does a VP of innovation and Business Development do for someone like Macy’s.
Parinda:
[1:23] Yeah so the whole team is fairly new to Macy’s on this group is about 2 years old and I think it was when retails really
focused on how do we continue to drive change in an organization from the inside and I think that was what about 2 years ago and they were looking to establish a team that was focused on
Innovation and what’s new what’s next which is one of our pillars and so I think establishing this group was really around
focusing on new business models new initiative how do we solve for a customer for tomorrow’s customer and we are opportunities that we can continue to play in a game chair in if I knew Sharon and
play it with an authentic voice.
Jason:
[2:04] That sounds fabulous and I want to dig into that a little bit before we do what’s her background you have to have to get real like that can you talk a little bit about your background.
Parinda:
[2:13] The absolutely so I very new to retail I have been in the business development Innovation function for a very long time but mostly within the media sector I came from timing.
I’m where I served as a sort of a business development lead mostly on the digital side.
Prior to that I was with MSNBC and then with a startup before that and Consulting before that but I’ll really in the media space and so I think I spent a lot of time focusing on
driving new revenue streams for companies and how do you start
relying Less on the core and sort of innovating in the news of the function and the you know start of shift to retail was actually not that big of a job after I did it and it stopped
felt a little daunting initially but it was the same problem different industry and I think you know
there’s a running joke in my family that you moved from one struggling industry to another but I think that’s what’s so exciting is that there’s so much opportunity to to reinvent and change and that’s sort of the perfect time to do that I’m in the perfect role to be in to help.
Jason:
[3:11] Well I’m super excited to have met you because I feel like I have a bunch of Industries I can recommend for you.
Parinda:
[3:16] What’s next.
Jason:
[3:19] Erica rejected have you thought about the buggy whip at all.
If you.
Not done. I teased I have to be honest you give me hope I feel like this the new trend on the show is all the gas are reformed Consultants.
And as a current practice in consultant I like to see that there’s a chance for me to redeem myself at some point so so thank you for setting a good example.
Question about Innovation cuz it comes up a lot in retail in my mind there’s there’s two opposing philosophies you you mean a lot of retailers that have set up these dedicated.
Innovation functions and I’ll call it the Ivory Tower approach like hey.
Protect these people that just focus on Innovation don’t distract them with the day-to-day rigours of the organization you know when the normal profitability kpi is and let them really focus on.
Innovative stuff and you know ideally iron interdisciplinary team that have a lot of complementary capabilities and on the other end of that extreme is.
Dodge for Innovation be valuable it really has to be grounded in the organization’s unicor problems and we really got to develop Innovation organically from.
The company’s practitioners and I suspect the answer is somewhere in between but like how do you guys think about Innovation at Macy’s.
Parinda:
[4:43] Yeah I think it’s it’s it’s a great question and when we started it was probably the former in terms of what you describe we were working very much and isolation and we were able to do big things we launched very big Concepts
we spent a lot of time studying that space and we were able to do it with our own budget our own team and we went and ended stuff I think well that was exciting I don’t.
The rest of the organization is is onboard completely because you’re working so much and isolation.
Version 2 was well that’s kind of come more towards the middle but we probably song a little bit too much and we started doing a bunch of tests and and more smaller impact but it wasn’t.
It also wasn’t the right solution to when I was swinging a little bit in version 3 of this
sing a little bit more to the left I don’t think there’s a perfect answer I do believe that you need a dedicated team that focused on this day in day out because it doesn’t otherwise it’s not top of mine they’re still obviously we have.
Afloat until focusing on the core and making sure we’re delivering for holiday and that’s it has a very important it’s always going to be in.
How do you balance that with making sure we’re solving for tomorrow and I think there’s a bridge in between but you do have to infuse that mindset and bring your stakeholders in
earlier and get them onboard earlier because I think that’s the only way that you can have the greatest impact is getting more people aligned to the vision in the way that were that were working.
Jason:
[6:05] No I think it’s a universal retail conundrum that revenue is always urgent and Innovation is always important and if.
One human being is left to prioritize between urgent and important unfortunately important I was going to list.
So can we talk about a couple of the cool examples of things that have come out of your department.
Parinda:
[6:27] Play so I think one of the ones that are very that I was very excited about was you know we’ve been studying as
most of the details had been its growth in on direct to Consumer brands are these digital native brand and there was a flood of them and I think it was exciting to see was a lot of them were manifesting into.
Spaces and they were using their physical space and wanted to be in physical space to to get to the customer to allow the customer to touch and feel their products in a different way and so that’s real kind of studying that and started talking to more of these
digital brands and we recognized that they were struggling with finding the right real estate is expensive to find the right real estate then they have to
figure out a way to Garner the audience to come to them so they were spending a lot on marketing activations and and and getting customers to come to them they also we’re struggling it’s running a store when you’re kind of doing it.
[7:17] Hopsin I’m having the right teams in place to operationalize the space was also challenging so that was put me putting Macy’s in the perfect position to say we have.
Real estate everywhere Best in Class we have,
operations and Logistics is what we do that’s our bread-and-butter and we are able to we have staff we can we can put a lot of resources against these guys and we can give it we can give them space that’s
economically viable for them and they’re going into space where there’s cuss inherit customer traffic and so I think being able to take that to some of these Brands and actually really
quantify they’re spending 345 exmoor on a weekend pop-up forces being in our space.
4 a month in in with the same value proposition and I think that opened up a really interesting opportunity for us to take could we create.
Retail as a service and it was a mice in my shift for the company because we’re such a sales heavy organization that sort of our our our core and now we’re saying what let’s.
Feel the secondary here let’s try to create this package and bundle package for the digital brand would they can come in and a very flexible model that they want to come in for a month they can come in from us if they want to come in for 6 months they can come in,
100 square feet 65 it’s really up to them and what works best for them.
[8:33] But now we’re giving them away to literally just all that we needed their inventory and we will staff at we will educate our staff on their products we ask for a lot of what differentiates their products that we can speak to it in the right way,
and you know the first version of when we launched if we want chicken tenders when we started and we didn’t mark it at all and it was called The Market at Macy’s.
[8:54] And we really just used our internal team of four or five to just go out to our own connections and see if there was interesting,
and demand for coming into our space and what was really fascinating as me again I’m coming from the
mediaspace I didn’t have a ton of retail connection then all the sudden I started hearing that media companies were interested in coming and testing Sony Pictures came in to say
we don’t get customers watch a movies we’d love to activate a trailer in your space Downey came in to say I know your customers by detergent but I don’t get the same visibility in your stores as I do in the visibility that yet in cpg or Target,
is one of many verses no one else is in your space and I can tell a different narrative and so we started getting a lot of different types of companies wanting to come
and in addition to the digital native Branson say this is great for us I cannot be in 5 locations and not just wanted I physically don’t have to be there and so it was really kind of flipping the lid on on the business model
and saying we think they’re still profitable model here
I’m which is what I sort of live by I don’t want to just launched for the sake of lunching there’s a compelling business model around it but there’s value to the brands that are coming in and it was just a happy medium to say Let’s test and I’m since then we launched into Mordor then once things are sort of.
[10:09] We have an initial model that’s when we like to push it back into the business and so at the same time we had acquired story until Rachel shechtman leads our brand experience and it made sense a ton of sense for the market at Macy’s to live
I’m in that world so now she is she’s managing.
Jason:
[10:24] Very cool so.
Like I couldn’t see the value to these brands are getting access to like the enormous put traffic that you guys have and I would assume it’s a nice surprise and Delight moment for the mini z shop.
Parinda:
[10:40] Solutely and that’s what we wanted to make sure you know when you go back to our other than here at what are we solving for it’s this freshness discoverability
being able to what you see today might not be here tomorrow and that sort of
in a surprise and Delight was really important for us to continue to make sure that we have a way to Showcase these was also a really great way from Macy’s to test Brands to say now we have an ecosystem that allows us to see what’s our customers,
for some of the stuff they’re seeing and then could we actually move it into a larger relationship partner relationship I’m in that’s happened within the.
Case isn’t so it’s been really an interesting sort of way to test and learn for us as well as any other compelling piece of this was.
I think there’s an expectation with digital brands to
and turn to the metrics that they get in the data that they have at their fingertips when they’re online and how do we make sure we deliver that in-store until we outfitted each of these faces with,
with cameras that allowed us to measure and customer engagement allowed the brands to access in real time
who is spending time with our product what’s the dwell time in that space what’s 12 to conversion and again giving them that data allowed them to a b testing her in a real time in a physical store in a way that they couldn’t do.
Jason:
[11:48] Yeah it would just totally awesome.
Now I’m imagining that the relationship does brands have with Macy’s is also somewhat unique in that it’s not the traditional wholesale model where they’re just telling you goes in your setting a price in your merchandise.
That they’re I’m assuming they’re sort of renting space from you.
Parinda:
[12:06] Play it is 8/8 a retail as a service so it’s a service offering we are they keep 100% of their sales.
I mean that’s what we had to sort of change the mindsets it’s not about the sales for us it’s about giving our customers the right experience with new brand it’s allowing activations to happen in our space and it’s allowing Brands to
tell the narrative that they want to do in a physical in a physical store and I think that that new proposition is what sort of
it was very different from Macy’s but it also was very compelling to Brant because now they are allowed to come into a space where they can keep 100% of what they.
Jason:
[12:40] Shirts and when the things I appreciate about your execution so this is becoming some sort of a popular Trend and I I won’t put you on the spot by asking you to comment on other Zedge execution but there is
a lot of sort of retail is a service targeting these digital native brand so I think I would like the neighborhood Goods or showfields or
Four Corners in WoW,
the assortment in the product selection in those doors can be really interesting in a similar way to Market to Macy’s the retail execution is actually very traditional,
I just a shelf put yourself on the Shelf figure out how to do some static merchandising and we have some salespeople and the.
The market at Macy’s execution has those components but then there is also some digital storytelling for every product and there are these Richard Analytics
you know a lot of these products that tend to make it in the marketplace feel like products that require.
Some demonstration enter video storytelling they benefit from this more digitally enabled shopping experience than.
Simply like sitting in a box on a Shelf.
Parinda:
[13:54] Absolutely and I think that’s what was what we are trying to achieve is its first understanding what’s
what’s your goal like talking to these Brands and saying what are you trying to get out of this expense are you testing right now are you trying to understand what
what demos run it resonate with your product are you are you just focused on sales are you trying to do a marketing activation and I think,
we could help Taylor that for them because it’s really about their experience and we want them to be successful in that in whatever they’re showcasing because.
That would prompt them to want to come back and I think,
defrost it if you looked at the market when we launched it it was very plain vanilla I mean it was not we didn’t focus a lot on the Frills of what it looks like it also wasn’t overly curated it was a little bit like.
A market right and it was you would see Ferrari next to a barbecue sauce I mean that was
the reality of what we were showcasing having some of that has to change and we are as we serve in the next version of it it’s now how do we Elevate the space how do we make it
stand out from an experience perspective it makes a lot of sense to live in Rachel’s world because she does that so well until I think it’s that’s the next version that needs that will come out but I think it’s a.
It’s a little bit about us making sure that we’re delivering what is and managing expectations of what these Brands want out of there.
Jason:
[15:05] For sure that’s going to be fun to see how that involves wheat we certainly have been pulling her stuff so that that’s a great success story what else have you done.
Parinda:
[15:18] So I think one of the other ones will one, that I’ll add about
aftermarket is I think what was really interesting from a business development Innovation perspective is nowhere very limited with how many Brands we can on board and there’s a technology that you know just from a technology perspective.
Dbrand so quickly and I think that was when we were started looking at the market today is there a way that we can onboard that brand and manage the entire brand experience perspective
beat at the time was doing the same thing in this
that technology space and speed actually came into Macy’s at the shop and shop and we started having more dialogue around here are very similar philosophy how do we serve work together in launching.
Rocket Macy’s so we invested in beta and they became the platform that sort of.
Operation behind the market at Macy’s to make sure that we could scale this in the right way and I think that was a really great partnership to bring to life because it was say it was.
A company saying we recognize that we have limitations in our own technology let’s bring in the right partner to make sure that we can operationalize this in the way that we need to.
Jason:
[16:23] It’s funny so they boo one of the founders of it has been on the show and we have this
good natured ribbing so I was one of many people to be able to talk to early on when he was thinking about this concept and I told him I thought it was a super interesting concept I said I think it’s particularly interesting as an enabling
technology that could be leveraged inside of traditional retail stores that I might oh and by the way that probably is your exit strategy and a focused on.
We’re going to be way better than traditional retail we’re going to put all the traditional retail out of business and this is the new model we’re for sure not going to want to partner with any of these right so in my mind.
I gave him some Sound Advice he wasn’t ready to hear and now he’s very successfully following so I like had this sense of satisfaction,
she remembers that conversation slightly difference.
And he he remember some other suggestions I gave him when he was asking for other business models to protect potentially pursue and he’s not one of them was particular wacky so he tells everyone this wacky advice I gave him and I may I tell everyone this this
you know Savvy business model advice I give him and I suspect the truth is somewhere in between,
but I digress so awesome story certainly been following the bay. Concept closely and and it seems like the collaboration with you guys has been particularly interesting but we were going to give it to another win.
Parinda:
[17:50] Yeah and I think you know again I think the way that the bd-team really starts and thinks about any initiative is.
Where’s our customers standing there time their share of wallet their energy and do we have the authority to play in that space and if we do what are we bringing to the table and I think that’s a piece that a lot of.
Other retailers forget is just because we’re an older company and we’re trying to innovate into from the inside how do you balance tradition with disruption,
and I think it’s really interesting to see that we have such valuable and Rich assets that sometimes need.
Theory utilized in a more creative way and so one of the other initiatives that we launched which I’m super excited about is something we’re calling Macy’s style crew and essentially was saying me a hundred thirty thousand employees can we actually make them,
sort of sellers of our brand in a completely new way
we’ve been following video Commerce in as well and we’ve been studying that space a lot of players were coming into that space we’re following the influence our world and kind of seeing
what’s happening in that space and
we think and we can emerge the two and create something new that allows us to activate video cameras in a new way but use our own assets to do it and so
what we did is we started with a pilot of 20 colleagues across the company so you had engineers and developers yet accounting.
People you had a lot of people in the store and said let’s just start with these funny and let’s give them the tools to create content.
[19:15] Any content that they want that somehow talks about their Macy story so it could be a walk down the street and they’re showcasing what they’re wearing it could be we had one person that does animated stories and and somehow incorporate the product but we wanted to make sure that they have the tools to tag products.
And put them in their videos and we said let’s just just show them to your own network when I’m going to put it on Macy’s anywhere that’s one of the biggest challenges
want to take down the guard rails we couldn’t fully take them down but we said you don’t see it with your own network and let’s see what happens.
Our numbers were pretty outstanding and we and what we did as we’ve said.
Everything that you said we kind of bake them into the reward so there is an incentive to salad and and commissions and what was what was fascinating is a lot of them didn’t care about that a lot of them just wanted to.
Wanted to expose their voice to create their followings or to add to the following.
We are now close to almost 5,000 employees and it’s just unlock
so much for us in terms of now having sort of a geographically relevant marketing tool that we can that we can use at a moment’s notice in real-time so if.
You get a really warm day in the middle of December in Chicago you could actually talk about shorts and you don’t have to activate this big campaign but you can do it in real time with.
[20:29] With the Macy’s style crew and it’s been really fun to see the type of people that are interested in being in this is unless of it for like a new love for the brand and you know people are talking about you good and bad all the time so why not give them a forum to talk about,
your brand in a new creative way and it’s been exciting to create this community which is essentially what we’ve done to
to Showcase new brands that they loved it also been really interesting cuz we’ve been hearing from The Venture Community to say it is an interesting can we participate in this do we have Macy South we talked about our brand we haven’t activated that in a a a formalized way yet but.
We certainly can we can we did a test with Clinique and with it was an opt-in program and and you know it allows RR
our colleagues to be able to genuinely talk about products the way that they like it and it gives
real content for some of these Brands to use and so you can imagine where we can go with us if we can scale to not only our employees are our colleagues but
then our best customer that can be a loyalty play and there’s a lot I think that’s
that this program could enable down the road and we again as a BD team with built it and now it’s living in our marketing world.
Jason:
[21:38] Yeah it was just awesome I love style crew.
[21:43] It’s funny because I can we talk about influencer marketing a lot for like a lot of people’s mind goes to these Mega in the Kardashians of the world and to me that’s mass-marketing
people understand that she’s Hocking product that she’s paid to and so like.
I can be a good reach play for some opportunities but I’m really excited about the micro influencer space and they these more much narrower markets but much more authentic advocacy for products
and this huge challenge with micro influencers a scaling them.
Ride that to get a reach it’s meaningful for Macy’s you know it’s very hard to go scraping YouTube to find.
Thousands of people like in a particular genre that each have I don’t know you know $10,000 or something like that.
So turning inside and saying hey we have all these brand loyal as they like shows to work in our store instead of some other retail store because they already have an affinity and gravitated to a pretty good apartment like.
It feels like the perfect audience to evangelize as influencers.
And it’s crazy I’ve done some shopping in China and you go to like these luxury experiences in China and you meet these super high-touch sales associates.
[23:03] That might have a hundred thousand followers on WeChat.
And it’s like you got oh my God there’s like so much power here so I feel like that’s a super exciting initiative I’m eager to see how played.
2 questions so.
[23:17] In my experience when you when you have a you know when you come into the office and say hey we have an idea we’re going to empower a bunch of our in-store Associates to start publishing content.
There’s some
institutional inertia that the typical corporate antibody start flowing in like God forbid there’s a lawyer on your Innovation team
it can be very hard for an organization except that was that the case at Macy’s or was.
Parinda:
[23:45] Absolutely and I think
we’re public company so we have to be smart about the stuff that we launched and we have to be strategic and I think there was there’s always red tape that we have to go through I’m legally even using initially we have the idea of could we leverage Macy’s handles
does showcase some of this and that was you know we said no and then and I understood it said we don’t know the type of content that’s being created and so okay well then let’s put it around that and so it hasn’t prevented us from doing things but it absolutely is something that we have to overcome now that we’ve launched a few initiatives I think building The credibility internally has
made it easier for even our legal team to get behind some of the stuff is a okay well let’s let’s focus on that the stuff that we think are really showstoppers then and we can talk about the rest or we can you know
we can. We can figure out the rest and I think there’s just more openness and there has been a little bit of a shift in mindset internally to say we can get on board with this or we can Fidelis
Cat Tattoo in a smaller way but let’s test it and I think the appetite for doing more has been as an incredible this past year.
Jason:
[24:47] That’s awesome and I was like to remind people like all of these dialogues and content are already happening.
Like it’s not like they’re not happening because you don’t put some guide rails around it and structure it in so like I’ve been having these programs gives you an opportunity to.
Put the appropriate guide rails on a 10:00 amplifier but it’s not like it’s that there aren’t Macy’s employees with social media,
so then the other challenge is there some new technology enablement that you would need like in organization like Macy’s.
You go out and find like startup partner that’s interested in that same experience and kind of Leverage their their tools or do you build tools from scratch or what do you do.
Parinda:
[25:30] It’s always a conversation so kind of going back to the store the process that will use a weirdo customer spending their time and energy third share of wallet
do we have the authority to play in that space if we do what the business model around and with the value of bringing and then it’s saying okay
do we need to build this internally or do we partner with someone to help accelerate or to enable something that we don’t have or to build credibility even if it’s whitespace opportunity that we’re not in we need to partner with the right.
Great company to help Drive some of that credibility in that space and so are
our team is very external focused so we are keeping a pulse on what’s out there who’s out there who’s doing what that will never start with the technology were really starting with the concept in the initiative and then saying is there a partner that would help
drive this forward and that’s sort of how the beta partnership came about we’re partner with a company called TV page on for Macy’s style Crew That’s.
A very small company based out of San Diego initially but they were allowed they were able to customize a lot of the program for us which house.
Is because there are a lot of video cameras to hold out there but a lot of them are geared for marketing teams and we want to put the tool in front of the
user that’s not necessarily A sophisticated as a marketing team until how do we want to make sure that it was.
Seamless it was easy to use and so there was a lot of custom work that was required so it’s a little bit of a bridge but when you find the right partner who’s willing to customize for you it makes it a lot easier.
Jason:
[26:55] That’s awesome and I I particularly like digital shopping vendors emerging and San Diego I grew up there and so I feel like I.
Parinda:
[27:03] Amazing.
Jason:
[27:03] I need a retirement Opportunity by Journey.
Turn vibrate companies I can work with in San Diego one day so those are two terrific examples I’m super excited about I’m going to go out on a limb and say like not every idea
turns into a.
That kind of sort of public-facing success Nike are there any examples of either Runnings Macy’s had from trying things that may be like weren’t valuable to the customer or or even just like General pitfalls you think about an innovation.
Parinda:
[27:35] Yeah I mean I think there’s
there’s always ones that we will go after that you know that need we launched the wine club early in our days I mean wine is something that people surprisingly search a lot for on our sites and it’s not it’s a very litigious space
and it we couldn’t figure out a way we actually have a lot of liquor licenses but we can’t activate in all of our stores in the right way so it’s how do we get around this problem and
how do we solve for what people are asking for it so so what if we launched the wine club as opposed to actually selling wine in our stores.
And so I think that was a really interesting task we found again I read the right partner that has the distribution and all of the the rights and all of all the states to be able to service that and we launched and I think launched successfully,
at the end of the day it was a really was a marketing Ploy and if you don’t have the right marketing tactics and place you’re not going to be able to get it to the right consumers and consistently it’s a clubs and I think he’s a scription recurring.
Revenue in all of that so I think that one is one that it’s still alive and it’s still good but we have to do a lot of work to continue to revamp like how are we getting this event of our customers in the right way and I don’t think it’s perfect.
Jason:
[28:39] I do have it on good authority that how often is one of the highest volume users of the Wind.
I’m just saying I don’t ask me how I know that but just when you you reference Macy’s having a lot of liquor licenses that’s predominantly on from for your food service and what not.
Parinda:
[28:56] Absolutely and we run a very big food food group you know it’s people don’t.
Look at us as a food destination but I think that’s another one that’s a really challenging one that’s been on my radar in terms of Engagement we think I’ll wear to customers spend their time and their their energy a lot of times It’s associated with food and so how do we play in food in
olestra dishin away because food is a very infrastructure heavy offering and so and the
the price points are very low submerged the business model around food is not always great until can we activate food in an interesting way that
less infrastructure heavy but we can think about ways to engage the customer is it pre-packaged is it is it things that we could is it
instagrammable moments that we have to share around food and and how do we continually conceptualize around that we haven’t landed a great answer to that yet but we’re working very closely with our food seem to say how do we make sure we can bring food to more location because we know that.
Just one coffee offering coffee in our stores amount of radiated sales that it drives it’s pretty significant so how do I activate that and more location.
Jason:
[30:00] That know I’m certainly very grateful to your food team it’s a cohort of one but I spend an awful lot of time doing store visits and I’m well known for having a significant Starbucks problem.
It’s a wagon traditional retail I had to always like visit a Bass Pro Shop or a Macy’s in the middle of my day because I could rely on that that Starbucks fix
I’ve been doing a lot of working grocery lately and that’s why I like revolutionary for me because they all they all have a Starbucks franchise.
That that is a totally fun and a great example of where there’s maybe opportunities that people haven’t.
Haven’t totally figured out yet.
Parinda:
[30:39] Yeah there’s so much disruption happening in the food space everything from the delivery side to just Innovation and food Concepts as well so I think there’s just opportunity.
Jason:
[30:47] Yeah it’s I feel like one of things we talked a little bit. The show is as a result of digital disruption in the old days you had restaurants that mainly focused on on frame consumption you had
Quick Serve that mainly focused on these like
eat utility-based me occasions and you have grocery that you you know focused on it at home consumption and
digital is blurred the lines between all those Concepts in so you now have people like using mobile order and pay to get fast casual food faster than they used to be able to get quick-serve,
and you have grocery store serving Ready-to-Eat meals and doing home delivery and in like the good news,
addressable market for all those Concepts just wildly expanded the bad news is the competitive set for all those landed at the same time.
[31:37] Awesome I can talk about this stuff all day
but I am giving your your role in Innovation and I know you have to always be looking forward and I’m I’m always interested
get other practitioners povs about where the markets going so if you were to put your sort of Futures hat on or jump in the hot tub time machine with me and come to etail East,
I know that was just a bad visual you didn’t want.
I should have done the DeLorean Bedouin tells me when I do the time machine DeLorean that I’m dating myself so I’m trying to have more contemporary references
but I digress 2025e tail has the shopping experience involves like like any any premise about you know sort of things that may be on.
Typical today that will be common or what.
Parinda:
[32:24] Yeah I mean I think probably no surprises here but I think the concept of personalization is increasingly important convenience is increasingly important,
I think connected experiences so you know just what we were talking about in the panel
this morning is really about making sure we are everywhere
I’m along the customer journey and making sure if she’s on her phone if she’s at home if she’s in the store we can deliver the same experience throughout and that’s connected I think that’s increasingly and important. I also think what,
exciting for me is just their new places that our customers are hanging out or they’re spending their time when you think about there in rideshares there in.
Places that we are not there and so can we be there or do we have the authority to play in that space and so I think there’s a lot of more white space than there was before I think our traditional competitors are no longer our only competitors and I think that,
that the volume of where you could be it has increased and I think that’s just more it’s more that we could be doing and I think,
using our space continuing to use our space differently so I think there’s going to be a lot more activations and experiences I think that’s.
Something that our customer is asking for and so how will the retail shopping experience I don’t think it’s going away I don’t think physical is going away but I think what they see in the store could
be wildly.
[33:44] And so I think that’s what’s exciting about continuing to operate stores and having really Prime real estate to say how can we use this differently and how do we start thinking about activating new things.
Jason:
[33:55] Jansen what sounds like that’s some job security for you.
And that’s going to be a great place to leave it because it’s happen again we’ve used up all our listeners a lot of time so if you’re dying to continue the conversation you can always hit our Facebook page
or I reach out to us on Twitter as always this would be a great time to jump over to iTunes and finally give us that five star review that you’ve been holding back
but Brenda if folks want to find you online do you live anywhere on the digital web.
Parinda:
[34:23] I mean I do I’m on LinkedIn is probably the easiest place to find me a 4 in the Malay it’s a pretty straightforward there’s not a lot of friends out there but what.
Jason:
[34:32] The exact right amount.
Parinda:
[34:33] Pretty easy Vine.
Jason:
[34:37] Awesome so we’ll put that your LinkedIn Link in the show notes and thanks again for coming and spending some time with us today.
Parinda:
[34:44] Thank you for having me.
Jason:
[34:45] And until next time happy commercing.
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2021-11-23
