Consumers Are Changing The Rules of the Game

As Amazon blazes the path forward in ecommerce, consumers are becoming used to the perks of being a Prime member. This has changed the entire landscape of both ecommerce and brick & mortar stores.

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Michael Maher:

Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Longer Game Podcast where we talk all things retail focusing on the future of retail and what it holds for us, ah. My guest today. I don't know why I said "Ah," but my guest today, Tyler Wallis, is a co-founder and managing partner of The Lab Consult. I'll give him an opportunity to talk about that a little bit, and then we'll start talking about retail. Thanks for joining us, Tyler.

Tyler Wallis:

Happy to be here, Michael.

Michael Maher:

And by us, I mean we. I mean me. Because it's just me. So tell us a little bit about your history of the past couple of years in The Lab Consult. What you do now.

Tyler Wallis:

Thank you. And thanks for the introduction. So a little bit about my history and background. So I recently left a career at Amazon after being there for seven years. And to back up a little bit, because I know we're talking about retail, and we're talking maybe a little bit about e-commerce today. So I first found my way to e-commerce in early 2010. I went in-

Michael Maher:

That was the same year as me. That's awesome.

Tyler Wallis:

Well, I guess that was a good year for producing-

Michael Maher:

E-commerce blood brothers.

Tyler Wallis:

... e-commerce people, right?

Michael Maher:

Or something like that.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. I just hated my job. So I'm like, I want to get out.

Michael Maher:

Well, I didn't really know what exactly I was looking for or that e-commerce was even that exciting back then. I bought a few things online, but I actually... So I joined an online grocery delivery company in the best way I can define it as is as Amazon Fresh before Amazon Fresh was like a household name.

Michael Maher:

That is like pioneering. I mean, that's over 10 years ago, grocery delivery company. That's crazy.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. It was a really fun experience. And it was really early days too. Like today, there's Instacart. And I feel we order almost all of our groceries at our household online and just have them dropped off at the door. But back then it was a hard sell. We were up against the inertia of, "I want to go. I want to pick out my produce. I want to touch and feel and see exactly what I'm getting and the quality. And I just don't know about something getting dropped off at my house and-"

Michael Maher:

And one of the things that I've talked about on the few episodes that have been here, but just talk that that had been recorded, but also talk about prospects, whatever the case might be, is that people still want that tactile experience. And so I don't think that we're going to go totally away from retail, but in order to succeed in e-commerce you have to create some of that experience.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. I totally agree with that. And I think that it's been interesting from my point of view and even within kind of the Amazon arena, the pendulum has swung from really emphasizing e-commerce to almost back to this omni-channel. Brick and mortar has a place that's important. It's not going to go away. But yeah, anyways, I got my start there doing sales and marketing. And really, I think what gave me the itch to stick with e-commerce was understanding that I'm not the kind of guy that I love to stand in checkout lines and go spend my afternoon at the store. And in seeing that you can order your groceries, in this case, in 15 minutes online. And then also just the sustainability of it in that, instead of everyone in the neighborhood taking a weekly trip to the grocery store, you can have one person, one truck, make delivery every couple of minutes to each of these homes. And so you effectively reduce many, many trips to the store and trips on the road.

Michael Maher:

I didn't even think about that, but that really, hopefully that's the case. But yeah, that's a really good point that you're, it's something that, we could get real deep, like taxes are infrastructure-less. Saves on gas, saves on emissions. However deep you want to go. So that was a pretty good point. Tyler one, Michael zero.

Tyler Wallis:

I mean, I'll just to emphasize my point there, my one on the leaderboard. I recently read a study from Amazon's 2020 sustainability report, and they had actually done it. They had environmental kind of scientists do an in-depth study on what the carbon emission impact was of ordering online versus going to the store. And they found that on average, an average product bought online versus going into the store, had 45% of the carbon footprint of that same product bought in the store.

Michael Maher:

Wow. I guess if you could think about driving your car to the store, all it takes driving back, maybe you forget something, you go back again, whatever the case might be. I mean, that's a big impact. And I also think our lives are very busy, even with the pandemic. A lot of people are working from home. I've been working remotely for a little while, so it wasn't a big adjustment for me. Because honestly, I didn't want to go into an office when I started my agency. I don't want to pay for it. I want to be able to work from wherever I can. And I'd already started hiring outside of my city and outside of the U.S. So a lot of people are working from home more, and are likely getting caught up in work. And so going out, and getting out of your pajamas, it just takes a lot more effort. But you're able to do stuff like, "Hey, I've got a meeting. I can get groceries delivered real quick, just do an order. And then boom, I'm done."

Tyler Wallis:

Totally. So it can be efficient for the supply chain, but it's also this huge convenience for all of us as consumers, right?

Michael Maher:

Yeah.

Tyler Wallis:

So anyways, I worked for that company for a couple of years and it was fascinating. I want to know more about business, and I want to get better finance chops and et cetera. And so went to business school. And my foreign Amazon was during that time. I did an internship between my two years of business school, and got hired on at Amazon. I think because, in hindsight, I had that previous online grocery experience. Because I got placed with the Amazon Canada team to help them launch the shelf-stable grocery business in Canada.

Michael Maher:

Okay.

Tyler Wallis:

And it was super fun and super interesting because I started early June and almost no work had been done. It was like, "Hey, this is a top level, market size of the opportunity. And the U.S. has this, so we know we want it. But we haven't figured out any of the logistics to launch this yet. And by the way, we're launching in October of this year.

Michael Maher:

Go!

Tyler Wallis:

So go figure it out.

Michael Maher:

Awesome. Yeah, great.

Tyler Wallis:

So it was super fun just going through that go-to-market strategy and figuring out, "Okay, how do we start getting traction on this? Fast forward, I went back to Amazon after finishing my degree, and had a few different roles. I would say most notably my first role was managing the marketplace business in the U.S. for the PC or computers category. Interestingly, the largest category. It was a $4 billion category at the time, at least.

Michael Maher:

You and I have talked about how that's drastically changed.

Tyler Wallis:

Right. Right. And then I spent some time on what some folks in our communities might call the dark side of Amazon, which is Amazon retail side. I went over and led a retail buyer's team.

Michael Maher:

That's funny.

Tyler Wallis:

So I was on the buying team, competing against all the marketplace sellers. But working with some really fun brands in the home improvement as smart home space. Again, this is when Amazon Alexa and Echo was just really young and early. So it was really fun to kind of ride the coattails of that wave.

Michael Maher:

Okay.

Tyler Wallis:

And then after a few years-

Michael Maher:

Seven years is a long time at Amazon too, correct me if I'm wrong.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. It's interesting. They have this tool internally at Amazon called the old fart tool.

Michael Maher:

Okay. It was some kind of grandfather, like, yeah.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah, and so you can look up, you can plug in your employee ID and see how long you've been there relative to all of their employees. So I did that on like my last day, just for kicks in. I had been at Amazon longer than I think 96% of employees at Amazon.

Michael Maher:

Yeah. Wow. Round of applause, man.

Tyler Wallis:

Well, it-

Michael Maher:

It really does sound impressive. I'm being facetious. And I guess I am a little bit, but that really is impressive that you stuck around for so long. And it sounds like you moved around to a lot of different business units. So you got a lot of experience, which not all people always, they don't always get that.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah, and I think part of it is seven years is a long time at Amazon. Certainly there've been people that have been there 20, 25 plus years. But I think the other piece of it too is just how fast Amazon's grown. So when I went to work there, there were five office buildings in Seattle. And when I left, there were 38.

Michael Maher:

Crazy.

Tyler Wallis:

So, just Amazon has been on a tear in terms of hiring. And they're over 1.3 million employees now. So that inflates the numbers a bit, but yeah, seven years-

Michael Maher:

It's eating up all of Seattle.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah, it has. Certainly it'll be interesting. I haven't been there since things have started opening up post-COVID, because I've recently moved down to California. But I imagine, I am curious to know what traffic looks like. Traffic was a beast.

Michael Maher:

Well I will say this because only because I have family that lives out in Seattle, and I've been there many times before I was even involved with anything Amazon. But the viaduct totally got redone within the past couple of years. I don't know if you were still up there when it got redone. Were you there when it was finished?

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. I assume you're talking about the viaduct that they bore through kind of the west side of Seattle?

Michael Maher:

Yeah. They put down underneath that was going along, and it was very scenic. But it was very old and traffic would get backed up on there pretty often. So I don't know if that helped at all.

Tyler Wallis:

I think it did. I took that route a few times after it opened and it was a tunnel. And it was quite a bit faster. Probably saved five minutes on ground consistently.

Michael Maher:

Yeah. So that makes a difference. That's like brushing your teeth, maybe taking a shower. I don't know. It depends on how quick you are.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. That adds up to every day. Yeah.

Michael Maher:

And then things that, oh, go ahead. You talk.

Tyler Wallis:

Oh I was just going to say, and then my last role, I decided that I really did enjoy the marketplace side of the business, third party sellers. And so, I went back to Amazon Canada and led a few different things. I led retail marketing for consumer electronics. I led our environmental compliance initiatives in Canada. But then most recently led the Canada marketplace businesses. So that was really fun. Just kind of taking a view over the business-as-a-whole there for sellers in Canada. And really understanding kind of what processes would help accelerate the business and be good for sellers, attract sellers selling on Amazon. And Canada is obviously still a younger marketplace than the U S. And so, a lot of those decisions were really key during this transitional period in Amazon Canada's lifecycle. So that took me up to February of this year. Left Amazon, and as you already shared, am now happy and having a blast growing The Lab Consult.

Michael Maher:

Yes. And so are you doing more consultative work or what does that look like?

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah, so what we do at The Lab is we really help brands scale their business and operate with a higher level of excellence and scalability. So a lot of it's honestly operating more like Amazon and applying some of the mechanisms and blueprints that we developed. My co-founder also spent seven years at Amazon. And so what we don't do is we really don't do much of the kind of account management, what will take over everything and run everything for you. But we work alongside brands, and we help really differentiated brands, implement the data, the goals, the mechanisms to profitably scale their business and become these hundred million dollar businesses in a few years.

Michael Maher:

Okay. And I think, just overall, Amazon is an area of specialty for both of us, you being in the belly of the beast. Me, I've never been in the belly of the beast. I started selling. And then that's how I started to make my way up. So maybe even like two different trajectories and we're starting to meet in the middle now. But I think what's interesting about Amazon, there's a lot of stuff that you could talk about. I've had multiple conversations with people already today. It's only 3;30 my time, and I've talked about Amazon outside of this project, or this other project, multiple times.

Michael Maher:

And Amazon has really changed retail in general. Partially, I think, because of the demands that consumers now have on brands, whether you're in retail, whether you're in e-commerce, whether you're on Amazon. They've changed a lot of those demands on what people expect, two-day shipping. They expect great customer service. They want to take something back to a store and get their money back without, even if they spilled juice on it, or there's a big hole. You know what I mean? The expectations of that have changed. One of the things I'm curious about is, was it like that when you started working in the retail side of Canada? And is there a different vibe in Canada for the consumer overall versus the U.S.?

Tyler Wallis:

That's a really interesting question, Michael. I would say in Canada, yes and no. So, first of all, it's interesting that e-commerce penetration, at least over the last few years I was on that business, was much lower in Canada overall versus the U.S. And so a lot of people still hadn't even heard or ever shopped on Amazon before, let alone walmart.com or walmart.ca, I should say. In some of these other big retailers. And so-

Michael Maher:

And that's literally just geography that is created that, right? It's a huge country, very remote places. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I know that shipping there can be very expensive because you're having to go over tundra or something like that to get... East to west would be very hard logistically.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. Well, there is certainly some of that. So what was interesting for me when I first went to the business is, actually in Canada, almost all the population lives within a hundred miles of the U.S. Border. So it's mostly kind of this strip with these hubs around Toronto, Montreal area, and then Vancouver, BC in the west and a few places in between. But there certainly are the territories and in the more remote locations that are probably a lot more remote than what you would find in the U.S. So I do think that's one of the challenges.

Tyler Wallis:

Another challenge is just that a lot of the brands, both US-based brand, as well as international brands, U.S. is a much bigger market. And so if you're going to launch, whether you're in the U.S. or in Germany or Japan, and you're going to launch in North America, you're going to in the U.S. first. And you're going to build your business there. And then you're going to think about maybe going to Canada. And so for those reasons, a lot of the brands hadn't thought about building much of a presence in Canada e-commerce, at least as early as they did in the U.S. And I think that that played into it. And then finally, there are, I think, some regulatory, so like Health Canada, and some of these other agencies have a little bit different or nuanced requirements versus what you find in the U.S. so that's another-

Michael Maher:

I know learning curve, border, if you've got someone in Canada, they're coming over to the U.S. and it's like food or cosmetics or anything FDA, starts to get involved. And then vice versa. A lot of people are, in the U.S., "What should I even expect going over to Canada?" And I would also say to your point, a lot of big brands ignored Amazon for a long time because they thought, "Oh, it's only $10 million. It's only $20 million." They're in a billion dollar business or industry. And so they're looking for the things that can really grow top line, not maybe a little bit more on the bottom line. But once it started to become more brand-focused, people realize how impactful that could be. So don't overlook what seems like the underdog. Canada might be a smaller, from an Amazon perspective, might be in general, but smaller than U.S., I think, Germany, UK, and even Japan, but it's still right across the border. Not something to be ignored by any means.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. And you're spot-on in terms of the sizing there. I know that we're talking a bit about the future of retail. I think one topic, since we're talking about Canada and the opportunity of selling on Canada that is super key as brands think about international expansion, I think we're going to see more of this, is that Amazon, and now some of these other retailers, are making it so easy to sell globally, to sell across border. Amazon has the North America Remote Fulfillment program. There's global selling, build international listings. They're all these different programs aimed to try to make it easier for somebody that maybe just has their FBA and e-commerce business in the U.S. to be able to tap into these other markets.

Tyler Wallis:

And so it can be really attractive to just say, "Oh, well, I'm going to just use these other markets as like a sandbox to test different ideas. Because it's kind of funny money. At this point. I'm just testing it out." And I think that it's really good for validating the opportunity-size for the brand. But where I've seen some brands inadvertently create problems for themselves, are seeing it too much as again the sandbox to test different ideas. I'll give a quick example of that.

Michael Maher:

No, it's both. It's a double-edged sword, basically.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. It is a double edged sword. So quick example is, when I was over the consumer electronics marketing in Canada, we had a large cell phone manufacturer, household name. And they had decided that they were going to test a different profit strategy in Canada versus the U.S. And so the cell phones that they sold in Canada, very similar to the cell phones sold in the U.S., they were going to have a different mark up structure and a more premium price point. The problem is it's effectively the exact same phone. Like a different UPC, but it works the same. It actually works with the same carriers. And so-

Michael Maher:

And that is a thing. So people can look up pricing elsewhere.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. And so there's that. And what ended up happening because of that transparency is you had nobody buying the Canada phones in Canada, and everyone in Canada was buying the U.S. phones, right? Because, if it's the same thing, why am I going to pay 20, 30% more for the same cell phone? And so that was-

Michael Maher:

So weird to do it so close together, I would think, do it in EU or something like that. I don't know.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah and maybe that would have been a better test for this particular brand to try doing something overseas versus within such a close proximity. But yeah, even EU, even some of these other countries, there's so much transparency. I think Amazon, and a lot of these e-commerce platforms make that transparency so easy for consumers that you can't get away with, "I'm going to have one returns policy or one pricing strategy in one country, and then something significantly better or worse for the customer across the border." I feel that strategy just doesn't work and it's going to work less and less going forward.

Michael Maher:

That's interesting. And it's interesting because the market place, even though it's developed a ton, it's still feels kind of new, just the whole marketplace concept. And there are so many channels popping up now. And one of the things that I've seen is looking at the amount of... There's a lot of focus on the U.S. market. Understandably so, because it's big. But looking at the EU, there are a ton of marketplaces that are even regional to the country. I know there's one in Sweden that has, I think, 70% of the market share. I was talking with someone who was part of a company that basically takes your catalog, creates kind of a main catalog, and pushes it out to these places. But they're doing it, I think, more focused in Europe and less in the U.S.

Michael Maher:

There's a lot of companies I know here in the U.S. that are like, "We can help list you on amazon.com, walmart.com, newegg. Sears was an option at some point. I actually, believe it or not, when I was selling, because that's how I started, I was selling product on Sears marketplace and it was terrible. But I was like just try it and see what happened. I remember submitting a request on the seller site saying, "Hey, there's incorrect information on the page. It's saying this thing is a 12 pack or a six pack, but really it's a single." And the message I got, the automated message said, "Hey, thanks for submitting this. We'll get back to you within seven business days." And I was like seven business days?

Tyler Wallis:

Eternity.

Michael Maher:

That's a long time. There's going to be a lot of refunds. And there wasn't a lot of traffic. But anyway, there's so many different marketplaces. And so, like you said, there's a lot of transparency across these marketplaces. Now I know that there's even, we all see like Kayak and stuff like that that are comparing prices for flights. But I know there are apps and technologies that can compare prices across the market. And if anything, Amazon's probably get the best ones internally because they're tracking your product prices on your website, on other places, to determine, "Hey, are you selling the product for too much on here?" So that there is...

Michael Maher:

I don't know so much about regulation around price parity. I think two retailers decide to price match. I don't know if that's illegal. I feel like I've heard that before. Tell your friends it's truth because I just stated it, and it's going to be on the internet soon. My daughter believes everything on the internet, so maybe she's going to come tell me that someday. Because of the advances in technology, they're able to utilize that to say, "Hey, we want a consistent message and the message could be pricing or premiumness. We want to see that across the board.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. Yeah. So true. And your example of, "We'll get back to you in seven days." It's interesting because I feel when we were kids that would have been status quo and today that's just atrocious.

Michael Maher:

I was shocked. And that was five years ago. I was like, "What? Seven business days? This marketplace is going down before seven business days." I was hopeful that it would be something, but I just don't think it really ever, didn't really amount to much there's. I think it was kind of like a Sears was dying and they're like, "Oh, let's try marketplace. But we're not really going to put all our effort into it.' And just probably look back going down. So some of the evolution that you've seen or some of the evolution we're talking about is that consumer demand. And by consumer demand, I'm not talking about the demand of product quantity, I'm referring to the demands they have as a consumer. How they expect things to go because of some of the advancements that Amazon's made. Talk about, please, I'll be nicer. Please talk about the evolution of Amazon over time and how they've kind of changed some of those things.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. I can give you a couple of examples. I'll talk about it from the retail perspective, the retail environment at large, and then, also-

Michael Maher:

You can get more e-commerce, that's fine too. It's just everything doesn't have to be all retail. But yes, I think there's a global change that's happened.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah, well I think it's interesting to consider the overall retail landscape and then we can chat more about Amazon marketplace specifically. But, overall in retail, back when Amazon launched the Prime Program with two-day free shipping, that was a differentiator. That was a game changer. Not just the free aspect, because they already had super saver shipping for meeting a certain price threshold, but the two-days was a big deal. That was super fast. And now you look at Amazon and they're aggressively rolling out one-day shipping, same-day shipping. They had the Amazon Prime, sorry, the Prime Now program that's been consolidated with Fresh and other programs they have.

Tyler Wallis:

And so it's really become the expectation that things are delivered super fast. And I remember last year, 2020, when Amazon and everybody was hit with all of these supply chain issues with COVID, right? And so the one-day, two-day promises got extended, and that was really painful. Myself, as a customer, I was like, "What? I have to wait four days to get my shiny new electronics, something completely-

Michael Maher:

I need these headphones right now.

Tyler Wallis:

Exactly. Yeah. And so we've all been trained that way. But I think that that's interesting as we think about the e-commerce and brick and mortar, physical and omni-channel experience. Before, and kind of going back to even grocery and apparel and soft lines and some of these other categories, it was like, "If I think that there's a high likelihood I'm not going to like something, I'm not going to like it's quality, I'm not going to like how it fits on me. I don't want to deal with the back and forth of getting something shipped in two or three days, and trying it on, and shipping it back in two, three days, and buying something. That's going to take way too long. And there's-

Michael Maher:

There's less efficiency in that type of shopping for the category.

Tyler Wallis:

Right. Right. And I think that what has really brought e-commerce on a more level playing field with brick and mortar over the last few years is this acceleration of both the delivery times going to the same-day, one-day deliveries, as well as the reverse logistics of like, "Hey, if I don't like this, I can drop it off at a Kohl's or an Amazon locker or wherever else like it. I can drop my walmart.com order off at a Walmart store and I can get refunded right away." In some cases, I don't even need to have the box or a receipt with me. And I think that both sides of that, the end-customer, as well as the reverse logistics speed, has made this expectation that you can take a bet on buying something online.

Tyler Wallis:

But it's also created this expectation that anything else sold online has that same SLA, that same speed. And so that's why I think that, whether you're fulfilled by merchant or you're just your own Shopify store, there are so many of these warehousing and third party logistics companies using really advanced technology that are popping up and serving the customer fulfillment for a lot of these digitally native brands today. Because it's hard to do that. It's hard to be that fast. It's hard to have those reverse logistics, if you're like a mom and pop shop shipping out of your store.

Tyler Wallis:

So it's really interesting-

Michael Maher:

How companies do reverse logistics and just provide the return envelope in there. Because they're kind of already expecting you to do that anyway. And then if you buy everything, you get a discount. My daughter was very excited about getting her first Stitch Fix box with her stylist, which SHE was very poignant about. It was poignant when she pointed it out to her friends that "My stylist picked this out," which I thought was funny.

Michael Maher:

But I think what you said about reverse logistics and the advance in technology that's allowed the companies or brands to do this, retailers. When you are a consumer and you know nothing about supply chain, you know nothing about how the company works, buying something online and saying, "Return it in the store." That makes total sense. And what I think a lot of consumers don't know, on the backend, having to connect a dot-com system of a marketplace to then connect with Walmart's in-store system, or even Walmart's... Their vendors that they have, they call them suppliers, but their suppliers having that be bought online ,and then going to return something like that in-store, that takes sometimes multiple technologies to talk with each other.

Michael Maher:

And if you don't have something that can directly integrate... Like integrations is something that many softwares have now. I use Slack that integrates with a ClickUp, which integrates with Google Drive. And so having those integrations is key to making things run more efficiently. Sometimes having integrations with your competitors, like ClickUp, having Asana integration, they pretty much do very similar things. I'm not promoting one of the other, but if one of them wanted to sponsor us, I would happily promote their products online. But they're having to create these integrations to make life easier. And that's now even becoming more of an expectation. But to think about even internally two technologies that are different talking to each other, that likely took a lot of work and engineering and dollars too.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's such a great point to emphasize the integrations in how you can really create your own customized tech stack affordably and elastically today. You don't have to go raise money to get these awesome, integrated services that make you feel like a top notch service to your customers.

Michael Maher:

That's one of the things that I really tried to focus on is there's a lot of buzz about automation and AI. And one of the things that, just even in the Amazon industry alone, like from an advertising perspective, but just in general too. And I think a lot of people are expecting Isaac Asimov's I. Robot to come true. And the robots are going to turn against us when the technology, it's getting better. But it's not to that level. They're not going to be sentient beings. And I don't know that they ever would be, at least I'm not nervous about it in my lifetime. Maybe my daughter will have to deal with it and best of luck, sweetie. I hope things go well. If you're listening to this, and it's the year 3000, I will be very surprised.

Michael Maher:

But, back to my point, because that was a very long tangent. When it comes to that technology, I don't think it's as advanced as it really is being portrayed as. And so I think there's a lot of people saying, "We've got automation, we've got automation." And it's really just two things talking to each other. All algorithms essentially start out on a spreadsheet. It's a bunch of formulas put together. And so there's sometimes a disconnect of what this thing actually is and what it can do. But having softwares that can communicate with each other and can automate tasks for you to make your service better. Or if you're an e-commerce development agency and you're helping someone integrate a chat into their...

Michael Maher:

I was just on a call today where people were talking about integrating a chat feature called Gorgeous onto an e-commerce website. And it helps them with conversion rate because the person pops up and they could be like on a fashion website. "Hey, I love Gucci. And I like going shopping in the weekends. Tell me about what you need help with." And having that picture and that text there helps people convert or increases conversion rate, but getting old companies to understand that and implement that new technology, it's difficult to do. But it's something that has allowed us to, I think, get more out of what we're going for. So there's integrations and advances in technology is what's also driving some of the demand for increased services, things like that. And I don't know. Do you think that a company has to build that technology or just integrate it from somewhere else?

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah, that's a such an interesting question. And first of all, I just have to say, I love that you not only quoted I. Robot, but that you know the author's name off the top of your head. That's a very cool-

Michael Maher:

Yeah. I just have it sitting on my bookshelf. I don't know why, but I have a very specific memory about reading it, but also seeing the version that I think had Robin Williams in it? Where you found out, like his face came off. That just really stuck with me. So-

Tyler Wallis:

Wow.

Michael Maher:

I haven't seen a lot of movies in the past 10 years, so don't ask me about any of the Marvel things. Don't ask me about anything like that because I will not know.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. Totally getting back to your point about these integrations and the data that they can add. Don't get me wrong, even at The Lab Consult, we start with data, and we see that as step numero uno and the most important thing to get in place to be able to drive strategic insights. I'm a strong believer that you can't just rely on data ,and you can't just rely on processes and the tools and the systems, because inevitably something's going to break. And maybe it's somebody is listening to this in the year 3000, that won't be the case.

Michael Maher:

Oh my gosh. If that actually happens, we'll all be dead. So it doesn't really matter.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah, I guess not. But, even Amazon, like people, I remember when I went to Amazon, it was known as like, "Oh, you're working with big data. That's the place where they have data points on everybody and everything"-

Michael Maher:

And data lakes, and everything goes into the data lakes. And it was like the dark web back in the day. It was the dark data.

Tyler Wallis:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure all sorts of ideas, and it's not just Amazon. You pick any of the big tech companies out there. And first of all, it is true to an extent. Amazon has tons of data, and everyone in Amazon is expected to use data in making decisions and making arguments. But at the same time, you can't just rely on data. And there were so many times, and this is really core to how Amazon operates, and Jeff Bezos operated, is that you have to use those customer anecdotes to find out where the data and the tool and the integration and the process is not working.

Tyler Wallis:

And you're always going to find something if you look hard enough. And so, I am concerned, I guess, going back to your idea of this double-edged sword, that with as easy as just integrating all of these different services to just run your business on autopilot, if you get too comfortable with that, we're going to run our retail business or e-commerce brand just on autopilot with all these integrations, you will likely not catch customer issues until it's snowballed into a really big issue. And so, I'm a big believer in having the right audits and the right mechanisms in place so that you can do non-scalable, non-automated things on a regular basis, diving deep enough into the business to find out what's not working with those processes. And I mean hopefully it gets better. Hopefully that one day everything will just be so fine-tuned that it'll be turnkey and easy, but it's not-

Michael Maher:

I don't even think that's going to be the case because, and a lot of people get scared talking about robots, but humans were created to have other interactions with humans. I don't think that will ever go away. I don't know that we can change our DNA like that. So I feel that someone is going, at some point, want to go into a store and try something or have an experience. And I think as technology grows, a lot of new companies think what is our brand differentiator? And it's this new technology, it's this new thing. Maybe your brand differentiation has nothing to do with technology and has everything to do with creating an experience.

Michael Maher:

Because people like stories. Experiences create stories. People can share that. It's remembered to them. Even if it is anecdotal for them, they remember it and they come back. And so creating the experience based on emotion, knowing that, yes, there's a lot of data behind people purchasing, 28% of people are purchasing in three minutes or less on Amazon now, which is just crazy. So very, very quick decisions. But people still want to be seen and noticed and have experiences that they're going to remember. So your brand differentiation does not have to be technology or your tech stack per se. I think a combination of both utilizing tech, my viewpoint is utilizing technology so that you can do the human things better or provide more of a human touch.

Tyler Wallis:

I agree wholeheartedly with that, Michael. And I recently wrote about, on Amazon Marketplace, it's entering what I think is a golden age of brand builders. And I think that over the last decade plus, Amazon has really focused on selection through resellers, through white label. And they now have sellers and brands all over the world. And it's easy to find exactly what gadget or gizmo you're looking for on Amazon and get a competitive price point on it. But I think what you emphasize there, the machines can't do, that algorithms and arbitrage formulas can't do, is tell that brand story. And tell a story about what is it beyond just the functionality of a product that you are buying when you buy this brand. And I'm really excited for the investment and the focus that I think is going to help tell more of the stories. I think that's where brands are going to have to differentiate themselves over the next decade.

Michael Maher:

I can not be in more agreement. And with all the advances in technology, we have still not found a way to create more time. So we're out of it. I was thinking about that while I wasn't even listening to what Tyler is saying. I'm sure it was important. Just kidding. Tyler, tell people where... I think that was a great ending. And honestly, we could even talk more about brand at great length, but tell people where they can find you. If they're looking for you, is it under a tree? Is it in a car? You tell them.

Tyler Wallis:

Occasionally, either of those places. But I think the easiest place to find me would be on LinkedIn. I'm usually on LinkedIn pretty regularly. Certainly, if you're interested, you could go to our website, thelabconsult.com. But yeah, I'm happy to tell everybody-

Michael Maher:

He has some stuff below, so you can link to that. So you can talk to Tyler. I'm actually going to talk to him about some stuff too. So anyway, thanks for joining us on The Longer Game. I have no good outro, so that's it. Take care.

Tyler Wallis:

Thanks Michael.

Michael Maher:

Thanks.