ShopTalk 2018 Trip- takeaways from the industry event

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Shoptalk 2018 concluded this week, on 21st March in Las Vegas.
Its been couple of days since I got back and caught up with my work and personal life.
Shoptalk was an excellent event overall and I came back with a lot of interaction, learnings & meetings.

Here are some notes from the events.

Show recap

1. In contrast to NRF, IRCE and some other bigger events, Shoptalk was very focused on bringing the best around retail and all products & technology aspects in the periphery of this industry. Digital commerce, Store solutions, grocery, emerging technologies covering Artificial intelligence, Augmented reality & Machine learning were the flavors in every dish served here.
This year the conference grew bigger, and approx 8500 attendees made way to this event.

2. The sessions at the event covered a lot of broad base companies like Macy's, Target, eBay, Boxed, Ascena Retail, Nike. The sessions all reflected on a broader vision which these companies have in the world of omnichannel, user experience & what they are doing to adapt themselves to the changing market. The brands used Shoptalk as an active medium to talk about their key initiatives as there were a lot of media outlets present at the event.
I also sensed that instead of usual fluffy conversations by most brand at these events, a lot of leaders actually went into the detail of their initiatives, and also used this as a brand building opportunity.

Maybe the closure of major brands like ToysRus has made the big brands realize how important these initiatives and opportunities. However, it was good to hear some detailed accounts from few brands like Nike, Macy's, etc on their future strategy.
Macys's CEO's Talk on Sunday evening
3. Amazon was mentioned in every chat. I didn’t attend NRF, but heard from friends who attended that even a mention of ‘Amazon’ was forbidden at the event talks, collaterals etc.
At shoptalk, almost every presentation made a mention of Amazon. Rightly so! 

Amazon has disrupted the market and transformed forever, how people shop online & what they expect from their experience. hence its always good to look at that. Now, not everyone has to compete directly with them. 
Hence, it was fairly encouraging to see brands rising up to making use of the power of stores to counter the commerce pure play giant's growing impact.

4. Shoptalk event was organized in a similar fashion as a lot of major events. The day started with few keynotes, and then different track sessions were planned for people to choose from. However, a few peculiar things which set Shoptalk aside were:
- the theme was 'back to class' type, which was setup around learning & going back to the drawing board.
-The overall exhibits were divided into 3 segments- store of the future, Artificial intelligence & Emerging technologies. these are very pertinent to todays changing needs & focus areas. These areas greatly helped the way you look at service providers, product companies while sifting the conference.
-There were pre-booked retailer meetings, which are similar to a speed dating concept. There were 600 tables set up for the same where service providers and retailers meet for 15 mins. It was exhilarating seeing these 600 tables begin chatting at the same time.

Have a look below.

Now let's look at some use cases & learnings from the event


1. Usage of AI/AR in real-world use cases: There is a lot of chatter in the market around AI/ML/AR everywhere. 
It's almost like the rise of buzzword 'cloud' a few years back. Even if no one was doing it, people knew that it would be insane not talking about it. Same is the notion around AI/ML/AR today. Every retail company is looking for a good use case of these technologies. Every Solution provider is looking to use these as part of their value proposition. however, there were very few real-world use cases which could be seen at the show.

The most impressive to me were the use cases shown by eBay team on how they have modelled their 'image search' algorithm and how AR is helping solve the 'shipping' use case [helps decide which box is best to ship a particular item, by using AR to help overlay the 'virtual' shipping box on the object.

The other very impressive use case was shown by Macys's CEO on the usage of AR for customers to be able to design a complete room and visualize without really putting actual furniture together or moving them around it. fairly need demonstration and I am really looking forward to these being used in real world.

VR for Macy's
2. Usage of voice or gestures or wearables in mainstream shopping: Surprisingly there was no mention of actual use cases of gestures, voice as a medium for shopping, or any impact of wearables in the mainstream shopping from any of the retailers.
Overall chatter suggests that while a lot of people are using google home, Alexa, Siri in their daily lives, those interactions are much more related to accessing basic information, reminders, activities etc.
Unless I missed a particular session, there was no one showcasing a voice-based use case to sell more or making commerce seamless. There were no data points shared around this medium as well.

3. Scan & go selling method is becoming more and more mainstream. While the 'amazon go' stores have made its buzz, retailers can clearly see that 'scan & go' models are much more scalable overall and they continue to roll out their solutions.
Macys CEO brought it up and made announcements of their top 50 stores which will become a sort of test lab for them to invest money and experiment with concepts which makes shopping experience of their customers better.


4. Data is becoming the king & retailers are waking up to it: I can not re-iterate enough but I saw almost every leader talking about how valuable is the data of their existing customers. Even talking to few retailers from Europe, it's clear that not making use of existing customer data is just throwing away a huge opportunity. From brands like Ulta beauty whos prominent business comes from customers shopping in 'logged in' mode, to a ton of retailers who don't leverage the customer data, everyone's looking to leverage the existing customer, by rolling out their loyalty programs or taking those loyalty programs to next level.



5. Hyper-personalization & its true implementation: hyper-personalization ties closely to loyalty programs, making use of the knowledge about the existing customer base and applying all of this information in the context of what the customer is currently doing on the website.
I loved the perspective
There were quite a few sessions on hyper-personalization where everyone wants to discover that one implementation which has an excellent example of hyper-personalization and their secret sauce, however, this is still a conceptual topic at best.

6. Lot of interest in store engagement, last mile delivery and similar type of applications: Another item which was not surprising but interesting to track. With retailers now standing up to tackle Amazon, there is a lot of interest in solving those problems originating from-engaging customers in store, getting to their doorsteps faster, making deliveries which don't get lost, etc. hence, there were a lot of companies and solution providers which were showcasing their in-store engagement solutions, delivery solutions or makeup or merchandising tryout applications using VR or AR.
Retailers cant just build a lot of these solutions in-house so it is a healthy sign that there are companies looking to invest & an experiment in this space.

7. Stories from flip kart from India: It was not surprising, but very interesting that Flipkart played a pretty significant role at the event. They were presenting quite a few sessions and were very well received. Flipkart has been Amazon of India and has done extremely well over the year. even though they may still not be profitable, they have some excellent learnings to share with the industry.  Also, with Flipkart starting their innovation center in the USA, we will see more and more participation from them in these industry events.

One of their very interesting talk I attended was around their usage of Machine learning to look at customers shopping bags and see if they begin to recommend products to those customers. They started with their initial hypothesis of creating & segmenting the user profiles. most of their buyers were "men". 
however soon the data was able to prove their hypothesis wrong as they began learning that in Indian households, a particular account may be used by the whole family and not just by the man. 
Hence, they were able to readjust their 'user profile' based on additional attributes like family type, urban vs tier-3, etc to show recommendations on these new profiles which address the family types.
Flipkart talk
8. Young companies & passionate stories Vs old companies & adaptation: It was also very clear in terms of the differences between younger companies and some of the older brands. The focus for both of these is different. Boxed.com's CEO's presentation on the final day was an example of the same. it was an excellent example of storytelling, passion at the forefront and a good business solving a business problem.
On the contrary, there were a ton of brands(without naming names), where the top leaders came forward, used all the industry buzzwords to tell how they are adapting themselves but were little passion in their speech when they used words like 'exciting', 'wow the customer' etc. Most of the big brand's presentation didn't really inspire the audience much, at least me and some people I spoke with.
[for me, Nike, Ulta beauty(fairly young company), Kroger) were the best presentations, and Boxed.com won the top spot].
It's pretty clear that large companies are almost forced to change otherwise they know they will perish.
Not only these events are opportunities to learn technology and business insights of brands & their leadership but also a great example of public speaking and how do you move the audience in front of you.
I enjoyed every bit of this aspect.

9. Smart use of campaigns: Almost every company which has been using social media, email and all other digital campaigns effectively, also likes to showcase it. Target's leadership talked about their #targetRun campaign and how overall their social media campaigns has been super successful and driving younger generations engagement with the brand. I have written about it in the past as well [target opens near Austin university].
The best example came from Nike which actually used many examples to showcase their campaigns and how digital has been making use of their branding and events everywhere.
They quoted some excellent examples- launching a new shoe during super bowl- Justin Timberlake was wearing during his performance at the half-time, making that shoe available in the real time on their website, which was wiped away by customers almost immediately. or nike stash campaign for digitized shoe hunt.
So, a lot of experiences, and learning from the event.
So this was my recap of my shoptalk event attendance this year. Let me know what you think. If you attended the event, let me know what other lessons you learnt.

Thanks much! leaving you with some useful slides




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