EP345 - Agentic Commerce, TikTok Shop & Tariffs with Steve Madden's Josh Krepon

I am definitely incredibly proud of how far we've come on that side of the business in particular because it is so complex because it's not just participating or communicating with customers on those platforms, but it's now. The content as you know better than most that is also very specific to the platform that there's no more of this like let's create a video. Anyway, it's not like that, so I think to be able to engage and still feel like it's authentic if your team is recognizing that it is credit to the team. Welcome to the Jason and Scott show your source for the latest news and trends in the e-commerce industry featuring host Jason retail geek Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer, publicist and Scott Wingo co-founder and CEO of ReFi by here are. Welcome to the Jason and Scott show I'm your host Jason retail geek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co host, Scott Wingo. Hey Jason and welcome back to Scott show listeners. We are coming live from NRF next and we've been what we do is we go and we befriend people the cocktail area and then we drag them in and they can do a podcast. And we were fortunate to stumble upon Josh, Josh Crepon. He is the president and US D to C and global global digital at Steve Madden and we in the green room we determined he has more words in his title than Jason. Congratulations with room for more. Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to workshop that later and I'll stop pretending you just be friendly. I mean we go we go back a bit. Yeah, we go back a bit mixes sound words are managed. Yeah, I put someone out of the audience. Well, maybe true that we way laid you it was not at the bar. We way laid you on the way to the pickleball court. Yeah. Yeah, that got it reamed or else. Yes, I know actually the timing was timing was perfect. Yeah, well, Josh, we're super happy to have you on the show. A tradition we always have with guests is to start with a little bit of a background. I know you you have a interesting tour of some really interesting brands. So what give us give us the elevator pitch of how Josh got here. Yeah, I have worked with a lot of great brands. I moved to New York in 2005. So, Paul's angle sure you guys know him. He was my first boss at Ralph Warren. So that was probably early 2006 working on their you know interactive creative group or something. I believe they called it at the time and had no intention of going into retail. I had moved to New York and or fashion for that matter and I met Paul and I was like, wow, this guy can just be a great boss. We are still friends to this day. And I spent several years there. I went to Victoria's secret from there also working on the Internet side of things in addition to their digital fashion show. Those were interesting times. I guess we don't need to get into that, but you probably know some of the stories. I know they're having a nice moment. Yeah, yeah, so it's it. Well, quick side note. It was funny. It has one of the folks on the team here was mentioning to me. He's like, why do I know your name? Like we hadn't met before. And he was like, Oh, I know it's because your name is still tied to the app developer account. Victoria's secret and I was there in 2009 and I was like, they're about something. So from there, I went to Tori Birch and spent a few years there on a nice rocket ship run and then went to Cole Han for six plus years. And then finally with Madden, I've been there for about the last five and a half, almost six, so 20 years in total and the retail in the retail world. I'm a retailer now before that. Not a liquor. No, I was in I worked for a company in DC that was acquired by Gardner later in life, but I was doing web related things. Do you have any fun Ralph or of course for public consumption Ralph. I mean Ralph was an interesting place. I think it was it was it was. Yes, I mean, it was, you know, it was very important in terms of what you were wearing. It was determined whether you were in the meetings. So, you know, it really were just wait to see if you got the call and maybe a little bit of up and down. Yeah, you're out for the day. And then my one funny story when I was at Tori is I walked in one day and I sort of did a double take to the guy that was like sitting in the chair in the lobby. And he was just like sitting there by himself like waiting for Tori to come by. And this is when he was like going into fashion. And I think he was he was, you know, asking her for help or I think she did help. Did she have invent the leather daughter pants with him? Perhaps. I don't know. That's maybe a different story. Well, and I spent this time with founder companies in between Ralph for Steve. I mean Steve, not everybody knows it's still very involved in business. And it's just I think also once you learn how to adapt to those environments, I think it does help you as sort of go through that your career journey. Somehow maybe I'm like a moth to the light of just like, Oh, I know how to I know how to work within this construct of founder led businesses. But it's not also for everyone. Yeah, and I was going to say my impression is they're not just founder named businesses. They're founder web business where founders are all continue to be. Yeah, absolutely. And Steve is, you know, his name is obviously on the on the brand. And yes, we do own other brands. But he, you know, that's what he lives and breathes every day. So one of the things that's interesting to me is, you know, when we all started our digital careers, digital was a bolt on, right? And maybe originally it was even a separate legal entity that ran the e-commerce side. And then it was for sure a silo PNL. But the number of words in your title aside, it feels like you have a very unified PNL. And so I'm curious from that seat, like, does it. I would hope that it makes a lot of things easier and it makes it more organic to act in the overall company's best and. Yeah, no, I mean, I think the longer that you spend in the operator side of things and with different companies, not every company obviously operates in the same manner. I do think my role has migrated a bit since I've or my remits changed a bit since I started where, where I do oversee stores and e-commerce. And I think that's sort of vertical alignment. I think it's usually powerful and definitely not true where you're still talking to companies that don't look at marketing, you know, as the same team. They don't look at the PNL as the same team within, within stores e-commerce or otherwise. So I do think it helps us make decisions faster. It certainly helps from an alignment perspective. So I, I realize that it's like a grateful thing to have that that structure because it's not. I guess the downside of that though is I do feel bad for your digital team that like they can't pull the wool over the boss of thought. Most, I work for a lot of bosses that like didn't understand any digital KPI so it kind of made things easy. Well, and also the other side to that is coming from the digital world and going into stores. I don't know that it works both ways. And so in some ways it enables our digital and our e-com team to probably be more empowered because I like I know I know that job. And I think it's just like well, here you go. You're going to go you go do you do your thing where I'm over here learning a lot about stores and finding about all these like amazing things that I've been indirectly involved with in my past. But now directly involved with. It's definitely very high maintenance revenue per square foot. If I could get I can do all the metrics. I got them all. I got them all. Let's start with a little give us a little background. Yeah. So Steve Madden the brand started in 1990. And we have an office in Long Island City, New York, which is not actually long on city. It's more of like sunny side, woodside queens for anybody that knows like the geography of the five burrows. And there's a little bit of like superstition to like we're just not leaving. Like it's we're now a $3 billion company and like that and there's there's always some superstition involved I think in retail and and we have broken down walls, put up walls, created offices torn down on I mean it's like the space. You own the building or we don't know that's a lot of pressure on the guy that's got or knew that we. I mean it's it's just like what you just do as you please. We have a factory in our office, which a lot of people also don't know we produce shoes samples. If it's for shoe shows, if it's for just read and reacting and moving really quickly. We have we have an actual factory in our office, which is I think is a really unique part of what makes us special company. This prompts a side question. Have you gone to the factory and try to stitch a pair of shoes yourself? Yeah. I have not no, but little little side note, one advantage to the factory is I have my oldest daughter has been through a bot mitzvah and my younger one is still on the way and we we did put it. We did put together shoes for her that we hit the sock liner and on the inside had her bot mitzvah date on it in her name and the other shoe. So that was like a nice perk where it's like I can show you pictures. It was like really cool and she still has it and so and then through that time we have acquired other brands. We own well, I'll talk about the most recent story, but we own Dolce Vita, which is a little higher price pointed women's shoes. in some accessories. Betsy Johnson has been around for a long time. She's still in the mix and in the picture and living her best life. We've got, and then from there, some smaller brands, we've Bondo is one of the Canadian waterproof brand, ATM Collection, which is the premium apparel brand, and then Kirk Eiger was our largest acquisition. Last, I think it closed last May, they're based in London, mostly predominantly accessories, handbags, also footwear, but a lot of really nice to Jason. What we do well, and we have amazing positioning across like the wholesale accounts where you can go in a whole set, like into dealers, and it's like you got Steve Madden, you got Dullchabita, you got Betsy Johnson, now you have Kirk Eiger, and it's like you're looking at the floor, and I'm like we've got a good, we've got a good handle on this. So it's fun, it's like, you know, I can sort of, you know, pick and choose, play around, like test and learn, whatever it is across the portfolio, and I actually was one of the things that attracted me. What's a different, what digital perspective, different audience? It is, it's different customers, it's different audiences, it's different, there's different needs, it's also mixed at the times, but it's when you think about resources and how you staff against that, but it does, it does help us to play around. And then in terms of go-to-market, all of those brands are sold through wholesale, so you have, you mentioned dealers, I think you have a partnership with Macy, these other accounts, but then you also have a very robust D to C business, and is the D to C like digital and some flagships? Is there a like on the store side? Yeah, yeah, I mean, we have in the US, we've got around 100 stores, which as I mentioned, it's part of my my responsibility. So inventory management, buying, planning, all that sits within our org, as does marketing. So again, the kind of vertically integrated aspect of like we are buying for retail and e-commerce, or we're buying for our outlet stores, or the other brands don't have much of a store footprint, but it's still, you know, an affordable effort. And then you're looking at in the context of what the wholesale sortments are, but yeah, we're managing it. One of the things I promised to ask you is my social team uses you guys as an example a lot, like the, they've, yeah, well they feel like you guys are very good at monitoring the organic socials and like responding appropriately on the brands by hat. And so they they both come to use you an example of what we call multi-tier social, where you partner with some pretty famous personalities and have these sponsor things you also like have a robust micro influence or program. And it seems like the brand has a it's own good voice on social. So you kind of touch all the basics. And so I'm assuming you're going to tell me someone someone more confident than you. Well, I would say I am definitely incredibly proud of how far we've come on that side of the business in particular because it is so complex because it's not just participating or communicating with customers on those platforms, but it's now the content as you know better than most that is also very specific to the platform that it's there's no more of this like let's create a video and we're going to put it on YouTube and meta and on Google and then we're going to put you know YouTube got it. But anyway, it's it's not like that anymore. So I think to be able to engage and still feel like it's authentic if your team is recognizing that I just it is credit to the team. Yeah, I think it will actually yeah that's a good that's a good question. I think when I joined it was still like influenced food or bad you know like how do we control them. Yeah, and you know how do you lose you know how can you use influencers not lose control of your brand and now not brand safe. Yeah, now imagine having that conversation. It's very different. So but some of it is just what's the demographic of brand? What's appropriate? I mean there but there are influencers at every level of brand, right? I mean from Walmart, you know that the their spokespeople we've talked about do like who we choose to work with whether it's festival or mother daughter or there's just so many different layers to this. So yeah, it's it's yeah, I was new since I think I I joined and it's only gotten more robust and bigger and every year. And I'm just assume like TikTok wasn't even very relevant when you started and now of course. Yeah, I mean that was a COVID thing and we didn't I mean we just we did dance, right? And that was that was TikTok. Remami, do you do any transactions on TikTok? Do you guys were on TikTok shop? Yes. Yeah. And it's the same thing. It's a growing business. I think it's something we talk about if not daily certainly weekly. I think it's you know there's certainly companies out there that are getting a lot of press for the level of volume. I think it's always this sort of careful throttling of like like how big is big similar to like what we were talked about in Amazon in the days of just like you want it to be big you can make it big. TikTok I think is sort of heading down that path where it's it just seems to be growing at a very rapid clip and I think if you want to make it big I mean again right price points you can you can grow it. I've been having a lot of interesting conversations with brands that are blowing up on TikTok like as a retailer if you just look at their GMV they're super significant. They're like fastest growing retailer ever they're like the fourth largest comer side in the world now and so in a lot of demographics and in your categories like there's a lot of importance a lot of people are discovering product there right and it's nice that you can sell stuff there in generate some revenue. Most brands and most products I talk to struggle to achieve profitability platform both because people tend to discover one's you and buy a single skew often you're paying a commission to a creator it's not the cheapest platform in the whole world and so you add all that up and even though it's a it's a revenue stream in the same way that we might look at Amazon revenue or Macy's revenue I think at the end of the day it really is more a discovery platform so I more recently I've talked to brands that try to sell stuff on TikTok shop but they they're inventory planning is get people to discover it on TikTok shop and then load up the inventory either on D to C or Amazon or wherever else you see when you make something explode on TikTok shop do you you see those spikes on your other points of distribution I mean there's yes there's two elements I think that are worth considering on the TikTok piece specifically the first is the profit right so there used to always be this this not always but there was this idea of any comp if you had AOVs under $50 you probably aren't making and then when you take TikTok which does tend to gravitate towards lower price points with the fees and everything else you're like oh that's a tough that's a tough place to make money and then the second thing is you don't just like in the Amazon you don't own the customer so you're you're losing that relationship that I think if you look at where the transfer of that behavior is going if it's from your comm to TikTok or to Amazon there is that sort of customer and is there a flywheel or that person coming back to your comm we're still working through that but so yeah I think the discovery piece is probably like the best angle depending on your price points I think we're we've proven that we can sell higher price points on TikTok which I do think helps us in sell full price but not every not every brand I think you can say that and I think there is a correlation I think to like how hot your brand is and can you sell a full price and can you sell it higher prices because obviously if like if you're in beauty or if you're in just anything that's that's not a considered purchase I mean you're to it's the race to the bottom so yeah I understand the element it's really hard to buy and plan to viral products like there's no you have to comp it there's not like you're not like oh we're going to this product is going to be going to be viral now like let's let's buy appropriate although those conversations do yeah you'd be like oh that's not how it worked you know we're we're just post the world cup and like you know during this world cup like the one thing you could not buy was the US national team jersey because like the the producers of those products like wildly underestimated yeah I had to buy my USA hat here just because I need to get I need to get some merch out of this yeah I like to find the colors yeah you probably know I talked to a lot of retailers and brands about friend right and your industry has been particularly hard to talk about because it's like there's so much whiplash there's so much up and down like you you know oh it's a covid was a headwind for apparel now it's a tailwind this year overall on average apparel is one of the categories that's outperforming the industry but when I look at that if I double click on that there's very clear winners and losers right so there's some some retail or some brands that are doing really well there are others that are doing poorly and it and you consider footwear as part of that or do you apparel for wear or apparel no I'm bundling which is probably there uses the census data so yeah the data sets that I'm most talking about are harder to dis aggregate footwear so there's a lot of that and then the conversation I most have in apparel and footwear in particular that's super complicated right now is the paper right because they're very hard to there's a lack of certainty like they they come they go they're higher they're lower I feel like I've heard you guys on earnings calls talking about the challenge of facing that and I'm just like, is that still a thing? Has it settled down? Like, you know, is it difficult? Like I'm sitting here going, oh man, how does Josh know what marketing been to do if he doesn't know what's gonna happen with all those things and yeah. - Well, you know, it goes back to the last comment about, you know, well, there's always a breakdown of what you can pass through to a customer versus what you have to take, you know, you already have to take your medicine and then obviously also control and/or cost. So I would say, again, publicly, we've done all of those things. Now, granted, the refund piece has come through for whatever the illegal tariffs. I don't know in the current environment that we're in today how these latest things are going to play out legally. But, you know, and again, if your brand is having a good moment, as you said, there's winners and losers. And I would say we've, I mean, you know, we've been a winner in this scenario from a consumer perspective knock on wood. And a lot of that is because, you know, back to the trends, like dresses, we're in a dress inning right now where, and that works really well for our brand. We're the best at chasing trends. That works really well for our brand. So even if you are looking at it from, you know, what are the impacts of the tariffs specifically, which let's all remind ourselves, 2020, when I was terrible, like it was not, I mean, there weren't any companies that were like, yeah, we're like, this is, this is totally fine. Like we got this. It was hard for everybody. And we're obviously not out of the woods yet because I, you know, the government is very unpredictable. So I would just tell you it is like a constant conversation of how that affects the IMUs and how we're pricing our goods and what are the other costs that we have to be considered of. But we're, you know, after that initial scare of like from April of last year until, you know, because we moved so fast on product, I think we were affected probably sooner than most when I think some of that, the pricing pressure and everything was coming through. I think if you see the numbers, there's probably like last fall holiday. We were learning well before that. So the good news is that like we figured out how to work really quickly and we're pretty well positioned to just like take it as it comes and it's like that classic like, well, control what you can control. And if you don't, then you're just, you're spinning out. - Yeah, and I would assume your experience in the uncertainty of trends, like help prepare you for the uncertainty of care. - Yeah, basically. Yeah, if you don't know how to move fat, I mean, it's like, and also, also by the way, some of the companies that were slow also benefited in some regards because a lot of that change, it was like China, China's a great example, right? Like everybody was like, all right, we got a rush out of China and that was the big story. And then all of a sudden China looks more attractive than some of the other countries and now you're looking at countries like Brazil where very difficult, obviously. - This week? - And China is like, well, that looks pretty good. And again, I'm not just on behalf of our company, it's just in general. It's like, sometimes it doesn't actually pay for everyone to go at 100 miles an hour. - I think one of the key notes here was, it's important, but directions even more important. - So in your role, as you look at kind of this year, what are some of the big strategic initiatives? And we can also, I don't know how you guys, I know in your world, you're planning fashion seasons into next year, but whatever period of time you wanna look at, just like what are, just so folks can get an idea of like, what is it important to some of the energy business like this? - It's gonna vary across stores, e-commerce, I mean, we can focus most of this on some of the e-commerce sides, you know, certainly happy to nerd out on the agente piece. I mean, you know we're on it. - Is that a thing? - Jason likes to see how long we can go without it. Give me a hard time, probably give you some credit for helping us along that journey and I will. But it's, you know, we raise our hand, we're like, we think this is a thing and we wanna be on it. So, and it's also, like there's, like selfishly, it's just kind of fun. Like there's, you know, we were sort of in a lull in terms of like, shiny objects, I would say, for like outside of like TikTok, it was like, there really hasn't been a whole lot over the last like, and COVID probably set something back. But it's like, so this is something that's like, it's new, it's, there's a lot of energy around it. Like, yes, there's a lot of press. Yes, there's a, but, but it's also like a material thing that we are spending time on that. We just launched, like just this week on DoorDash for two of our brands for Madden and Dolby Pita. So that's an interesting sort of omnichannel. Like is that, is this sort of like, demand aspect of, you know, if you're at a conference is one example that we've used in the past that like, and you don't have whatever shoes, you know, you can, you can DoorDash. So, and then that's like, I kind of love that story. Like there's, there's interesting ways to show up now as, as, as a brand that happened to me, right? Oh, not my suitcase and my dress shoes aren't in there. It's like that. I had to. That's a great, that's a great, that's a great story. I can't take credit for that one. Colleen and, I don't know my team. Like, it came, you know, it's like, and it's like, these are real world examples where, and so I'm super curious to see how, how that plays out. We should say that Google, earning for yesterday, you guys got a shot of it. Yes, that was proud, proud moment. Proud work, workplace moment for me. We did have a little bit of a heads up there and so, I like ran back to my, my hotel room yesterday after the sessions and I was like, in the meeting was, I didn't realize they're earning for like, wow, we're small. It's like ours are like 45 minute, you know, there's a lot. And that feels the long already, but yeah. Yeah, so I was like, oh, okay, I need to like rewind and I was on the live YouTube and I'm like listening for a brand and it was like, and I, and I heard, I was like, yes, this is like, and I'm like, trying to do high fives in my hotel room was just me, but I just thought that was like really. The new listeners that won't actually watch the Google earnings that it was in reference to your adoption of universal checkout. Yeah, so they were sort of going through all of their hot points on commerce and the UCP is the big one for them, of course. And in partnership was Shopify. And so yeah, there was, they were mentioning brands that were live today on UCP. Target was the other one. Amen. And so, $4 trillion plus company given us a shout out. So, I was, congrats, that's awesome. Well earned. There should be a plaque. Yeah, like, is there, like did he do? If you give like a million followers, they give you like a gold YouTube button, so they should give you like a gold earnings button. Shopify has like the, they have trophies too when you do a certain number of orders, so it's like, I feel like, I don't, maybe you're, maybe you're a connect that Google could, could report directly to Steve or whoever you report to you should get it. I did, I do report to the CEO who's not Steve, but his, yes, I gave him heads up, he was, he was pretty excited. I texted him and me. I was like, we got the mention. (laughs) That's great. What other, other than the conference, what else is big going on? Well, let's see. I mean, we are always testing around on the AI side of things. Of course, that could be not. On the marketing side, it's a lot of emphasis on incrementality, diversification of media and platforms, which we sort of talked about earlier. That's a big focus. Also, just the fun things, like, driving more profit and margin expansion, all those things, like it's at your cost, yeah. So we have to, you know, especially after last year, you know, it's like, that's a, that is always at the top of the list. It enables a lot of good stuff. It does, yeah, it's important. - I know from my daughter back in school, as big as you guys, so she's been shopping yourself pretty hard here. - Actually, can we just talk about that for a second? Because I think it was your daughter that wrote the guest post on your sub-stack. - Yeah. - I think-- - That's a fast influencer. - Well, I love that, actually, because I'm so obsessed and fascinated with consumer behavior changes and shifts. And this concept of, like, chat now is like, and just the quick background was, she was explaining how he searches for discovery and things. And they call it chat, you know, when they're going to chat, you be tea, and they'll have personalities. - They talk to it a lot more. - Yeah, and I just think that is, you know, is it driving the business that they know? But like, just how that starts and then sort of reaches this, like, escape velocity of how people start. I mean, I'm just super fascinated. And if she wants to keep an end to her chat, like, I'm, you know, I think that's even better. 'Cause we're showing up, I don't know if you know this, but we're showing up in discovery. - You were there? - Yeah, exactly the ones that the, so she found this, she's an authority, and they have to do this. Last year, she's on the being recruited site, and now she's proven. - Okay. - Yeah, they give him this list of like, it's like, hey, three days, like a new valve. - Right, you guys? - It's bad for the parents. - It is good, it is good for us. - And she found a video where she, like, went through and said what you want to wear on each day, and a lot of them were Steve Madden's, but it was like a little bit of an older one, so it was hard to. But then she discovered TikTok has this. - Yeah. - And it would suggest alternatives. It was actually a pretty product to wear. - That she's like, you've got to write about this. I was like, I really don't want to have TikTok on my phone and get addicted to it. - Oh. - She's like, I'll do a guest post, I was like, sure. - Is it take-o? Is that what you're saying? - Yeah, is that what you're talking about? - Yeah, they also do, they have an agent for vendor. So there's this symphony is like the ad agent when you buy TikTok at my ads. I don't know how they pronounce it. Taco or take-o. - I thought it talked. was already taken. See what you did right there. Yeah, it's a little too political for that now. And as funny as talking to Colleen, she said it's only a couple of users, like a very small percent of users see it. And when you guys have talked to TikTok see what see this taco. Oh, okay, we say this. Yeah, they're they're they're basically it's a little bit to commerce. I mean, it's got broader scope, but the day it will recommend products and talk about availability. She said that it's pretty limited. Well, that's another thing that I'm just interested again as like a curious operator, but also as a consumer of what are what are the tools that consumers adopt to drive the discovery? Because discovery for the longest time has always a problem for e-com in general. It's stuck in filter nav for memory. Yeah, and it's like in it's in the paid ads and everything it's just it's not a great experience. So if it's like chat on site or if it's chat through GT or through Gemini or through Taco or whatever, you know, I think those are probably more I would say more favored I'd say to win in this scenario than like site chat I think, but you know, but the behavior is changing in terms of how people and even through voice, right? If not, it's not just you're not typing anymore because we don't want to type 35 words in it. It's like that's easy to type. Yeah, when you're in like just give me the phone and the microphone. I'll just yeah, yeah, yeah, way more prominent. Yeah, so it's really interesting. I am curious, got a little more well-versed on your whole portfolio of AI initiatives than I am, but obviously like you guys are in discovery. So you're in UCP. I think you're you're in the beta for for universal cart too, right? So you can you conduct transactions. Are there any like owned touchpoints where you're where you're finding AI is also interesting? Like well, would customers use AI for foot fitment or returns the batement or any or or on site search or any of those sorts of things or those the lower priority free? That's an interesting one too because I mean those tools have existed for a while. So is it a matter of these partners sort of reframing their business model to AI? I seriously doubt it. I can't imagine that. Yeah, no, I think that'd be silly. Yeah. So, you know, there's always I this is maybe a good conversation too because in all, you know, assessing vendors specifically for as long as I've been doing it, it was always, you know, there's always like two things that we're working in my head. One is I want to see the logos of who you work with already and two, how long have you been working or like how long you've been business? Well, the second one now is almost in some ways like an issue, right? Like to your question of like what's happening like what AI is working on site? I mean, I I'm now drawn to companies that have been created in the last year or two and because that's modern technology, it's there's modern use cases very, you know, you're not working with now. It's crazy because if you were a six year old company that started, you know, over COVID, you're using legacy tools and you're probably having to reinvent yourself. So I like from as the operator sort of business owner decision-maker, it's a very like weird time, I would say in terms of like just assessing and that but that's where pilots really coming in like you can't commit. Obviously, like the contract durations event, like you can't do anything long term anymore, but also just like we've got to do pilots here because you might be brand new, but I like I've got to be able to see whether that's I definitely want to double click on that, but I and I hate giving Scott credit for anything, but I do have to point out Scott actually caused a kerfuffle on on the inner web who when he lied, he shared the POV that like probably can't call yourself a native AI company if you're 10 years old. All right, you can't. It is funny. We, you know, we go to the shows and they'll throw. We do this, which is their old mission, and they'll throw on the end. We're helping bring products to humans and making them more personalized. I mean, there's companies that have reinvented themselves, like I think of like someone like a yacht, but like they have reinvented themselves, but it's very hard. And I have examples that I that I won't name that we work with that. I mean, we have made decisions that it's probably of our, you know, in our best interest to move on because they haven't been able to modernize in that within that two year time frame because I it's it's hugely relevant. We had Jason. I know a very nice lady that was looking for a marketing job. She during her interview process, she would ask the mostly at the Vendory type folks in our world. And then she would ask, what do you think about it to commerce? Many of them kind of said it was a bad thing like that because she's such a big listener to my part of the show. Yes. So I heard you may or may not be related to me. Yeah. Well, it's hard to because anytime there is a new there's a new shiny object. And then it's just, you know, the entrepreneurs and the venture just circles around like sharks, right? It's just like, so it is sometimes hard to distinguish of like what is, you know, again, if you're in my seat of like what is worth spending some energy and resources. Fortunately, there's not like a big capital investment because these days, you can try things with very little, very little costs. But, you know, it's like Apple Pay was not like, should we invest in this or do we wait, you know, do we sit on the sidelines a bit until there's adoption? You know, there's always been these moments in time where there's something shiny and you have to figure out again from my seat. Like, do we spend some energy and resources in this or do we just sit on the sidelines? So, you know, and we're in another one of those moments with agentic where it's hard to get information, right? Like, you're the information of bot traffic, human traffic from agents is like a really interesting one for me of like, it's, you know, up triple digits percentages. Well, numbers are easy to grow fast. You know, we don't even have great analytics. So, I think, you know, even like on the Shopify side, which again, we're fortunate to have them as a partner because that we wouldn't be where we are today without their efforts in this space. And, you know, they've just released their dashboard of agentic commerce and across the four they call it four is the the three main ones and they've added their own shop, which makes our volume look much better when you're including shop and they're like, yeah, I don't know if that's agentic or not, but I sort of see their perspective. I did want to double click on that that vendor selection coming to me earlier for just one second. Like, in the old world and we all live through this, like, you needed a new platform, right? You go to gardener or forester and you get some, some wave and then you, you do like an in hash shootout and it might take like six months, right? And then you pick what you thought was going to fit your needs best. And then you'd sign some absurd long term contract or friend Mark Rubin at PSI used to get these, like, 20 year contracts, right? And I think about the world right now and how fast this is all changing and if you did any of those steps, you'd be too late. Like, how do you think procurement department? You know, what do we do? It's just, yeah, the RFP process, if it's not being rewritten, it probably should, should be because I mean, nowadays, it's like, you pick up a phone and it's like, what are, I mean, there's always the strong network of our community of just being able to have that conversation, of course, but that's the speed now, right? I've just like, all right, well, who's doing what? And what's working? What's not working? But it's very often just a phone call. It's like, well, what are you using? Or like, you know, I still do rely on the logos a lot, even though I know I just made a comment about like the earlier, the better, but as you know, it's got like your want to bring people on if it's through design partnerships or pilots or what have you, because there is, there is a ripple effect to that obviously the network. Any other big initiatives you want to talk about? Pickleball shoes? Are you guys launching on Pickleball shoes? No, no, no, we'll stick to, stick to these. So, little on fact, Scott's company, RepiBuy, was really largely founded on the premise of picking the best Pickleball pedal. Is that right? Yeah, well, I did see that in some of your, yeah, in some of your shopping. I'm thinking like, what would be a really hard, I was going to challenge the tech guys and I was like, I want something that has like, simply an early variation. So then I started looking at Pickleball pedals and it's tricky because most of you have like 20 of them show up at your house and you're just like, I was just like, I was shopping and I was like, it was janky experience, buying them and I was like, this is perfect because this is, this is pretty messed up. A lot of the vendors are, because Pickleball was actually relatively new and it's, you know, it's rise. There's some, there's some OGs, but there's like, most of the vendors are new, so there's no standard organization or anything. Yeah, so it's got like a fair amount of chaos to it. It's like, we can do that. What's your assessment of because it is so not like, we've talked about like commerce is not and that's why, you know, the chat GPT story of commerce and check out of like, okay, maybe this isn't the direction that we need to go in, but like, on a, I don't know, scale 1 to 10, like, where do you think we are in terms of like the commerce aspect of like, you've gone through so many different. examples, I guess, now I'm asking for it, but like, no, I don't know if anyone's closer to this than you are, so like, where do you think we are in that journey? With what, with the gender commerce, yeah, if you think about, you know, sort of Amazon marketplaces, probably the witness test, maybe TikTok, where they are, as far as proving how you can build up, you know, $10 billion to $100 billion market, you know, new, new channel for some things. I think Universal Card is getting there. It's probably two steps away. And then there, you know, in the Amazon era, the steps were every 18 months. The Google was like, really, they were really leading it very hard. No more question I get is, Google tried this six times in the marketplace era and never took root. Well, you didn't have all the conference calls that we're talking about, right? So that's got CEO and IR level. Yeah. So up and down the Google order, they have a legend about this. Yeah. And I have to think on that, the, the exit velocity comes when they open up the payment. Like, the, the Google pay, I think, is, it's just not widely, it's not been widely adopted. I think once you have the trust that exists in an Apple pay or something, you know, or even just your own credit. I mean, that's, I think where you start to see that, like, go from an eight to a 10 or, you know, whatever the, I don't have any inside information, but you've been in the street long enough to know that there's going to be summers kind of quiet, but everyone's building aggressively. And I think from kind of August 15 to 11 months, to be crazy. I look forward to the, to the many posts. I'm somewhat of two minds because I feel like there's, where are we on the capabilities curve, right? And Scott actually has this good, like, four level framework of capabilities at five. And everyone's kind of hovering between two and three, right? Is that fair, fair characterization? And I totally subscribe to that. I think that's valid. And the pace of change is so crazy. The, the, my new example and the pace of change is like about a week and a half ago, open AI launched ads. I'm, I'm exaggerating. It was a little longer than that ago. And it was, it was an absurd MVP. Like, it was, it was a really broken, deficient, like, ad platform with $60 or CPM. And then I blink my eyes. And now they have a super robust market reading ad, ad platform that, that CPC's going up a little bit of feed. They're getting to the point where you can bid by category. So just how fast they go from MVP to really mature, like, we've never seen that before, right? So on the capabilities that I think this is happening really fast, I kind of suspect the 10 years from now when we all get together for the reunion and we're all successfully retired, right? And I'm hoping you invite us to the boat for the reunion. I think we're going to talk about. He was pointing at Scott not me. Yeah. I'll take either of your boats. I just, the only thing better than owning a boat is having a friend that has a boat. Kago has big legs. They do. They do. You can bring your boat here anytime you could get one. But I kind of think we're going to look back and say, oh my God, that wasn't even the first like this, this change involved and became so much more important in the consumers lives that like all of these things that we're agonizing about now that are, you know, super interesting and important. I have been we're going to put back on it and, you know, be able to chuckle a little. Well, if there's one thing that we love to do in this industry is move the goalposts. Yeah. So, I mean, we'll have no problem pushing that out, depending on what, what changes like it in my current state of like the sort of the growth trajectory of like the agentics, specifically, like I don't know if this like autonomous checkout is the end state. Like I just don't really see that as being this like, oh, here's the, here's the path that you're on and that's where it ends up. Now, obviously not for everything, but I just like that just doesn't feel like the right thing to me. Yeah, and that to me is great. But I'm setting up when they offer the just make the toilet paper magic. But it's like, how come we couldn't do that? Yeah. I think there's a big difference between what about the comeback of the button that you could push. Yeah. It was just before it's done. That that absolutely could be true. I'll bet you by accident, all the devices in our home are going to have, you know, intelligence. And so a lot of that that does come back in. Yeah. I'll tell you what consumers universally love when they test is in home delivery, right? And when you have in home delivery, a dude is going in your pantry wearing a body cam. And guess what happens to that body cam? Like, suddenly they know the inventory of everything in your pantry, right? And so you think about like, subscription was interesting. We all thought subscription was going to put all these these commodity categories out of business. And it kind of did for a week. Like there was a peak when everyone had to pay forgins to Amazon, subscribe and save. And then things totally died because subscription fatigue. Like we don't all consume these products in some super predictable way where stuff could just magically show up. And we all started feeling guilty when all the water filters piled up in our in our positon. We never changed the water filter on our picture, right? The potential of agentic for some commodity items is it can know your real consumption through a variety of means, camera, sensor, whatever, just statistical data and much more accurately have that stuff show up when you need it. And I think there are things in our life. We used to all have to work hard to pick our music. And some people are still music experts and love curating their own playlist. But the vast majority of us are just happy to say, play something interesting Spotify. And we're willing to do something for something so personal and taste related is that I have a feeling we're going to be pretty comfortable outsourcing the paper towel, replenish it. It's almost like just to kind of bring it to a real world example of like what we've been working on with you. Scott is that, you know, if you have like on the product catalog like augmentation, like if you if you have a confidence level of whatever it is 95% then just push it through without human interaction, right? So if it's like, if we have a 95% confidence level that you do need to other paper, like you should just it should just push through. And you like to be interesting if you just had this list of things that you reorder that are commodities. And it's like, and then you can decide the ones that you want to get in the, you know, to put a stop to or the ones that are just like, yeah, like it's it's time for paper towels. Like, uh, so I don't know. Maybe there's something to that that should just, you know, well, Josh, I feel like we need a part two because I think we could go on and cover a bunch more stuff. But we burn through our a lot of time. I know you have a very important appointment on the pickleball court. Sure. Yes. It's after hours. So yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Josh is boss as well. Yeah. Yeah. This is a 1138 night. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was nice to spend this evening with you. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Josh, do you post frequently on any of the socials? Do you share some of your thoughts? I don't really. Okay. Yeah. Well, Colleen does. So if you're going to see what Steve has, Colleen. Yes. Yeah. RCMO and Colleen are, I feel like they do a great job of, of touting all the things that were the amazing work of the team. So I can just sit back and, and like the poster or maybe put in a snarky comment in the comments. We appreciate taking time out of your business. Thanks for having come on. And until next time, happy commerce. You've been listening to the Jason and Scott show for all the latest news and trends on e-commerce and shopper marketing. Subscribe to us in iTunes or visit Jason and Scott dot com.