Drapers Talks podcast: Digital directors debate the state of ecommerce, including Urban Outfitters, Crew Clothing and more

0:04Welcome to Draper's Talks, our podcast series bringing you cutting edge content from our live event. My name is Graeme Moran and I am the Associate Editor of Drapus. This episode was recorded live on the 22nd of September as part of our Inside Ecommerce webinar series in partnership with Commerce. The next installment of our Digital Leaders webinar series continues with the decision makers, bringing together digital directors from Crew Clothing, Urban Outfitters and Marks & Spencer to discuss what's next for fashion retail online. First, we'll kick off with a note from today's partner, Commerce.

0:44Commerce offers flexible, AI-driven solutions for next-generation commerce, connecting the tools and systems that drive growth. Its open, intelligent ecosystem empowers businesses to unlock data potential and deliver seamless, personalized experiences at scale. Commerce brings together e-commerce platform BigCommerce and feed management solution Feedonomics. It serves tens of thousands of brands and retailers in 150 countries, including H &M, New Balance and Puma. To find out more, visit commerce.com. Thank you and enjoy the podcast. Now, let's get started with today's session and welcome our panel.

1:28My name is Gray Moran, and I am the Associate Editor here at Draco's. Thank you all for joining us. Today, we are here for part two of our Inside E-Commerce series. From changing consumer behaviors and scaling digital operations, to modernizing tech and embracing AI, the series will explore the trends, the opportunities, and the decisions defining digital retail today. Thank you to today's panel for joining us. Rain, why don't we start with you? Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do? Hi there, I'm Rain Peake. I'm the Group Digital Director at Crew Clothing. We also have Ben Sherman, Saltrock and Pringle, so a great selection of brands.

2:21I've been here just over 18 months. Prior to that, I was at New Look and Jigsaw. I've always worked in fashion. And we're on a really exciting journey here at the group because we are re-platforming in like D-Day minus six weeks. So it's a little intense, shall we say. Thank you, Ray. Stephen, over to you. Afternoon, Stephen Langford. 25 years in retail, predominantly digital across Tesco, Asda, George, Walmart, and most recently the last six years at Marks & Spencers, leading the digital journey. I am now running LDA, which is an advisory business working with retailers, with investors, with brands to support their growth strategies.

3:22Thank you very much. And finally, Ian, over to you. Hi, I'm Ian Smith. I head of e-commerce, performance marketing, loyalty and analytics over at Urban Outfitters. I'm in my second stint in the business so I've got over 10 years associated with the brand similar to Stephen I spent the last 25 years working in the space in various leadership roles across multi-channel, pure play and subscription got trading and marketing experience across the globe heading up the much missed HockeyNee.com, Stone Island and CP company in my earlier days worked for a period in the Middle East for the largest fashion pure play and also running the Kate Hudson back subscription out to the way brand Fabletics here in Europe before stepping back into the urban business just before the pandemic.

4:11Thank you very much, Ian. For those who are listening live, please do engage with our panel, send in your questions via the chat function, and we'll do our best to answer them throughout. Now, I thought we would start today's discussion with something positive once um I wanted to ask the panel what is working for you and your teams online is there anything specifically driving success at the moment um Rain you're the first on my screen so why don't we start with you um yeah so we're um the splitter sales is actually around 50-50 online and offline. And what we found is that when we're looking at the offers for customers, if we drive a sense of urgency and we really time limit those promotions, it's really successful.

5:08And that's not the case for stores. So stores, you know, you need the customer to go in there over a week, all of those things, and they actually have to have a lot longer promotions. But we've really made a pivot to actually address the fact that the customers behave in different ways so we have quite time-bound promotions and we generate a sense of urgency across all our marketing channels so um crew's got an older demographic so email is a really important channel for us and we have a lot of loyal customers so we we really kind of target all of our marketing towards the um generally on a sunday um and we um so create that sense of urgency and kind of fomo through that and that's that's proved really successful it's really changed our trading calendar in terms of what we do in the here and now.

5:53Very interesting. Thank you, Rain. Ian, what about you? Is there anything you've done recently, implemented or launched similar to Rain that you're seeing good success with? Yes, we've been really firmly focused on product discovery within our digital experiences. We're seeing like most people, our product page is really becoming a new gateway or I've heard people said the new site homepage. We're seeing a growing and actually the majority of our traffic now landing on these pages. So for a business like ours where we stock women's wear, home wear and men's wear, it's really made us think differently about how we can open up more of our inventory on these pages so customers can see more of what we offer and be inspired.

6:38Obviously, whilst not trying to interrupt the customer's journey too much. So we have to think about ensuring what they're looking for and what their behavior is is still very relevant. So we know, for example, if a customer is looking for a pair of black jeans, we're going to make sure them we're showing those black jeans and other black jeans. But we equally want to inspire and open up more of our inventory. So it's kind of been quite a bit of a journey for us. And we've had to incrementally shift the design of the product details page to optimize as much as possible whilst not detracting from the primary reason for why people are visiting that page which is usually to buy a specific product so we've really been looking at recommendations and user generated content have been really crucial to that overhaul and we've been playing with the placement of these items when to surface them also you know should they be surfaced in different positions based on a customer's intent um you know i think it's an ongoing journey but we've been really proud of some of the improvements we've been making and our goal was really to get people deeper into the site viewing more products spending more time on the site um which is the ultimate goal we've seen that happen so yeah i think it's a journey but something we've been really proud of the progress on definitely thank you and steven as you said 25 years in retail you've now um set up your digital advisory so maybe asking for some free advice here um if a brand came to you today and you know they wanted to improve do all the things that rain and ian have spoken about what are maybe the the first two or three things that you'd you'd look at to begin your advising uh sure uh lift the lid first and foremost on on data data health So starting with customer data, understanding repeat rates, understanding the value of customers, really with a view of understanding whether growth compounds or it leaks.

8:50That's the first part to start with. I think the second part of data health is your product economics, your margin economics, what's contribution per order looking like after returns, after delivery. Because that, again, is ultimately the way that growth compounds. And then the third and probably the most under-recognized at the moment is the quality of your product data and really understanding that and the opportunities of enhancing that product data. That is ultimately driving discovery. It's driving search. It's creating your ability to personalize experiences and to be visible within the LLMs.

9:45So, you know, a huge amount there in really lifting the lid around that quality of data. And then the follow-up that I would say to that then is the understanding of the organizational setup to be able to leverage that data and to be really clear or to understand if there is absolute clarity on who owns the outcomes associated to those. Because otherwise, you're buying licenses, you're not buying capabilities. Excellent. Thank you. I think, as you've alluded, we'll definitely come back to a few of those points, particularly around this idea of data and discoverability and kind of all of the things you can do when you have your product data sorted, let's say, for want of a better word.

10:40But one thing I wanted to touch on before we go on to the all-important AI is we talk a lot about customer behaviors and paths to purchase and personas and kind of boxing people, shoppers into different categories, etc. Are there any shopping behaviors that have changed over recent years or anything that surprised you? I know I'd spoken a lot of time talking through COVID, post-COVID, the return to store, this mix of browser line, pick up and store return in a Dropbox, etc. Are there any behaviours that are kind of sticking out to you or that have changed recently? Again, Rain, why don't we start with you?

11:34I think it's that whole kind of omnichannel piece. So I think it's actually that path to purchase and where do people research? And that links into obviously the LLMs and all of those other good things and data. So it's actually a lot of people are starting their journey there. You know, it's about 25 % look there, but they don't actually check out that. That's not actually a function that people do yet. So I think it's actually being really open to that and treating that as a channel that will become probably quite important in the future. when I joined crew we were last click based and then we changed to um we work with Phosphor and we use a like a multi-model attribution method and we're building our own multi-model attribution and I think it's it's the kind of knowledge that everything's quite complex and there's no just one path to purchase and it depends on actually what that customer is intent at that point you know sometimes they're just going to want to go in and out in our case for a half sip jumper other times they're going to want to you know browse all of those things and it's a very very different customer journey so I think it's it's kind of reacting to that and knowing that not everything is the same and it's it's a it's a much more complex area and how do you put weight behind it and how do you develop your own model because your model is going to be really different from other people's and it's you know we used um a lot of brand marketing last year and a lot of upper funnel marketing which then kind of brills that brand reinforcement so you're front of mind so it's a it's a kind of different way of looking at the sort of same problem but it's it's to be flexible and know that it will change.

13:06Definitely. Stephen, six years at M &S, I think you must have seen shopping behaviours change. Maybe you didn't. You tell us. Yeah, for sure. Probably the biggest change is discovery and how that's really fragmented from or off Google. and that pace has been, I think it's taken everybody by surprise to some degree. I think increasingly over the last few years, we've seen customers absolutely trained to wait for discounts and that has changed the way that I think all retailers have had to trade. I think that journey started a number of years ago with the onset of Black Friday, but that has become, I think sadly, at the heart of online retail and is a problem that we've all got to solve.

14:27I think that the surprise for me at the moment is actually the quality of that AI-referred shopper traffic converting. Better, not worse. I would have thought that's taken us all by surprise somewhat. Ian, what about you at Urban Outfitters? I wanted to specifically point out, typically your audience is a younger audience, which a lot of people will then switch to talking about, you know, Gen Z this, Gen Z that, they like to shop like this, they don't like to shop like that. In your experience, are there any behaviors that do define Gen Z? And are they really that different, I guess, at the end of the day?

15:23I think there are differences, yes, definitely. There's naturally going to be similarities, but essentially how I think about it is this generation are probably more socially native as opposed to cough. My generation who are more search native, the more I to search products on your typical social platforms and therefore ultimately more comfortable buying through these channels. they also think things like um resale secondhand the sort of default behaviors for gen z i mean that's slight generalization potentially but it's not a niche interest for them which i think does perhaps differ from perhaps an older generation um it's a really important part of our dna secondhand one-of-a-kind items rework products and they've been part of our strategy for decades so it's how many people have discovered urban outfitters via vintage rails and stores so you know i think they're some of the differences that we think about um perhaps some of the more kind of core behavioral elements like mobile first browsing price sensitivity and we all want fast reliable delivery returns i think they're essential for all demographics so for us really i suppose ultimately it's our challenge is to think about how we inspire our customers where they are comfortable being inspired.

16:41So for me, I want to show up in genuine and authentic ways on the likes of TikTok and Meta. Our customers, and I don't think Gen Z in particular, they don't suffer fools. They understand what's being paid for, what's advertising, what's fake. And they seem to take an active stance in rallying against that. So yeah, that'd be my perspective. Very interesting. Thank you, Ian. Slightly off piece, I didn't warn you about this, Rain, but just speaking, hearing Ian talk about socially native, you wouldn't necessarily think of the crew customer as being, you know, big on TikTok. But you've seen success on TikTok, haven't you?

17:23Yeah, we really have. TikTok is one of our fastest growing channels. and we were one of the highest spenders on TikTok advertising with our previous digital marketing agency, which you wouldn't necessarily think for queer clothing. You know, you do think of it as a much older brand. But I think we've got like the dads and the sons. I think that's kind of, you know, all the mums and daughters. It's very much a kind of cross-generational product. But I do think, yeah, echoing Ian's point, I think you just need to show up where you know your customers are. And TikTok, you know, people are on TikTok.

18:02You know, it doesn't really matter about age. You know, we do have, you know, if you look at our social channels, you know, Facebook is, you know, it's got the most people on it. It's the highest engaged. But, you know, they do. It's much more of a moaning channel than Instagram where we're kind of inspiring and we're using that for all of our sponsorships for like the Red Roses and things. And we have the most engagement on those channels. So I think linking in again to what Ian said, you've got to give the person a reason to shop on why they're actually looking at it and it's not just a product placement ad.

18:35So whenever we message about, you know, good luck the Red Roses or we've had like paddle tournaments and things, they're obviously all in crew outfits. That's the point, right? But it's a kind of slightly different way of looking at it and giving people a reason to shop as well as here's more stuff that you probably, you know, you've got stuff like it. So it's that kind of different reason. But yeah, TikTok has worked, particularly well for us but I do think linking to my earlier point it's how we measure it and how we measure all of those things they might not check out through there but then we know the impression share and all of those things has actually been really influential definitely thank you Stephen I you have officially left M &S now so I can't but I can't not talk about M &S You were there for six years and saw massive growth.

19:26I think online reviews went from 800 million to 2 billion. And online has moved definitely to being a very important part of that growth. If you had to highlight one or two things that really drove that growth within MNS.com, what would you highlight?

19:54Firstly, it's not an MNS.com problem to solve. That was, I think, the fundamental mindset shift at MNS. This was a whole company fight. And I think for too long, every retailer's looked at the e-com equation of traffic times conversion times basket. And they've looked at their e-com director or their digital director and expected them to solve it all. And I think we all know that the reality of that is incredibly different. And M &S Online moved from being a channel or a department to being a P &L with real clarity of outcomes associated to success. And that's a really, really important distinction because it enables everybody across the organization to better understand what is needed for them, from them, and it sets up a digital team who feel as though they have the opportunity to influence and drive change across the organization.

21:18And particularly when you look at more traditional retailers where the lion's share of the business has been built up on stores, accepting that the economics of the channels are fundamentally different, accepting that pricing or promotion or marketing strategies do actually need to be optimized at a channel level rather than a one-size-fits-all, is very easy to say. It's very, very hard to do. So it's that business mindset shift that is above all the driver, I think, of any success and of any transformation, M &S or anywhere else. And then just a couple more points briefly on it, I would say a focus on all of the unglamorous, unsexy stuff.

22:18Rarely are the problems all solved by technology. And actually, when you look at how you grow an EBIT from 2 % to 8%, it's all the unglamorous bits. It's a focus in on returns. It's a focus in on fulfillment. It's a focus in on marketing effectiveness and efficiency. And then it's a focus on capabilities and ensuring that you're building teams that are based around specific skill sets to be industry leaders in those spaces rather than jack-of-all-trades trying to whack every single mole as it appears along the journey. Definitely. Great advice. I wanted to touch specifically on brands at M &S and kind of how much of an element of the success that was.

23:19We're seeing this, you know, the brands app, the online marketplace strategy driving growth for a lot of businesses, Next, Ebonyms, etc. I'm interested to know how you see that evolving and I guess how big can that get?

23:42Yeah, I think from the M &S journey, it was, I think, zero to 200 over a relatively short period of time. I think the starting point with this and for any brand or retailer is a marketplace initially, it monetizes the traffic that you already have. If you haven't got the traffic, I think there's far more effective ways of generating, creating traffic and demand than looking to create a marketplace. So that's a strong starting point for a, as was then, a monobrand of M &S. The principle, certainly back in the day, was we have a significant number of loyal customers who are buying from Marks and Spencers.

24:51But there are very few consumers out there who only buy from one brand in fashion. And we can either sit there and accept that or we can look to understand what are those brands that our core consumer is purchasing elsewhere. And how can we create an opportunity to keep them in the ecosystem? And that's really the evolution of brands at M &S. I think the key points within it are staying true to the DNA of the brand and therefore curation, I think, becomes a very important part of any brand strategy. I think that's important, not only for consumers, it's important for your brand because every additional brand has the opportunity of diluting further the DNA of your own brand but it's also really important for the partners that you're choosing to work with and I think ultimately you want deep partnerships with brands and you need to be providing them with good economics and understanding that they're not just a number in one of many, but a valued partner of that marketplace.

26:30I know we've actually talked about this in the past, the idea of if you can get everything everywhere all at once, is there going to be a swing back to even more curation and even smaller, you know, smaller offers. And I don't know, I think it's going to be really interesting to see how that evolves because I think your point, the last time we spoke about this was no one's going to pull the plug on it now that that plug did. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it evolves. Ian or Rain, do you have any opinions on the... Go ahead. We're on M &S and John Lewis and Next. so and it's a valuable part of our business and I think the partnership with the brands as Stephen said I think is super important I think you know then you're kind of understanding each other's different customers you're kind of tailoring the range to all of those things but from a small I mean we're quite big but from a in comparison to a smaller brands perspective you're getting eyeballs from like you know the biggest websites in the in the country so you know as long as you can make the economics work I don't understand why you wouldn't do it I think it's a really great thing for our customers to see us there and for our customers to be able to have that kind of different choice.

27:46And then from an expansion point of view, you know, we could then go into Europe and test it with Marketplace rather than having to build all of that. Not that we would ever want to do that, but, you know, it makes it a much more different proposition. And you're kind of, you know, you're looking at different areas of expansion that will give you a different customer set when you, you know, we are opening stores, but if you don't want to open stores in France or Germany, for instance, all of these things, I think it's another addition to the kind of P &L. Definitely. And as we've touched on already, it's all those different paths to purchase now.

28:21Why not plug into those different paths? Ian, do you have anything to add? Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, I'd really echo those comments. It's clear it's a real growth opportunity within the e-commerce space. But again, probably quite similar to what I mentioned before. us like it's really important that you you do this with the fight you know find the right partner in the right market it's something we do um we have you know stepped into the space with the likes of zilando um being a big one but we obviously want both parties to succeed and flourish and as rain mentioned you know it's really been helpful for us to learn about new markets perhaps where we haven't gone feet first into it's allowed us to sort of test and learn and hopefully both parties benefit we've definitely seen you know halo activity in areas where we've got less of a footprint less awareness than we have in the uk and our bdg brand for example has certainly seen that um from our partnership with zolando so yeah it's something we are thinking about but yeah cautiously with the right partners in the right places excellent um steven i can't move on without talking about the M &S cyber attack.

29:29I know you're somewhat restricted about what you can talk about, but I will ask what I can. Obviously, for those who don't know, M &S was hacked. You shut down online operations, six and a half weeks, not a single online sale, estimated 300 million hit to operating profit, obviously a huge deal. Tell us what you can about that experience. Is there anything you learned from that? Anything you'll take away? Any advice for those listening? Yeah, sure. I'll leave the details and the numbers to M &S. That's their story now. What I learned, a huge amount, I mean I think in any situation crisis you learn first of all first and foremost you learn a lot about yourself but second and probably more importantly you learn about people and you learn about teams so yeah my kind of people learnings I mean, a crisis is, describe it like the most honest test of a team.

30:50You find out who rises to the top, who has real depth, who has an unbelievable knack for problem solving, who has energy to just keep going and going and not taking impossible as an answer. So I found that absolutely fascinating because it's not always who you think is going to be side by side with you. I learned a huge amount about pace and how to get things done or how things can be done differently to drive a different level of pace. In particular, bringing perhaps slightly disparate teams together and working on problems together, not just in a hybrid situation or in a building situation, but in one room for hours on end, for days on end, with not just daily stand-ups, but stand-ups every two or three hours.

32:17No emails going out that won't get read until tomorrow. The pace that you can actually deliver things when you have a single problem to solve or a single outcome with everyone unified behind it. Unbelievable. I certainly learned that you don't tackle, it's not just one big problem. If you can break that down to hundreds and hundreds of little problems and be very targeted, then again, what you can achieve, I think I was astounded at. And then finally, I think the power of communication or the importance of communication, even when you've got absolutely nothing to say, absolutely no new news, nothing to be able to come or to make people believe that there's progress, that even then, silence just fills with rumors.

33:30And even just standing up and telling everybody that there's absolutely nothing to say is better than just letting people fill a void of silence. So, yeah, I certainly learned a huge amount from all across the business around the effectiveness of proactive communications internally and externally. I think some great advice there, whether it's a crisis or not. But it's one of those things that I'm sure you probably would never want to go through it again, but it's such an interesting experience that I could ask you more questions, but I won't. let's talk about something else that everyone's been talking about recently the rise of chat gbt and ai and agentic commerce we've been writing about it non-stop i'm sure people have been asking you about it non-stop my question is you've all touched on it this morning so it's definitely on your radar but how much of a of a revolution do we think agentic commerce is really going to be do we think the mainstream people main the mainstream population are going to be shopping via platforms like chat gbt in the near future um rain what what are you seeing from your customer um i mean if we haven't it's it's small the amount that are actually kind of buying through there we did have a while ago um our one of our biggest search queries was can i ask you a question in our search box on site so people are definitely kind of you know getting going towards those things and kind of behaving slightly differently i mean i do think it will i don't think it will happen but i think it will just be a different channel in terms of how people actually shop and we all need to service it as such.

35:31So I think from a customer behaviour point of view, obviously everybody always said everybody's going to go to Google, everybody's just going to go to Snapchat or whatever it is. But they did as well as. So I think you'll have some people that shop exclusively through ChatGPT and you need to optimise for them, and some people that will kind of continue going to stores and using it for research and all of those things. But I do think it will definitely be a factor. And I think what we're really concentrating on here is readiness. So it's data readiness, it's discoverability, it's, you know, all of those things that will enable us to actually show up on all of those platforms.

36:14because I think that's the most important thing that you can do at the moment. I think, you know, we don't know how quickly it's going to change, but we can actually all absolutely prepare for those changes and kind of start testing the models and working with them. Definitely. Stephen, you touched on it earlier, that discoverability and data piece. Yeah. What are your thoughts on how much of a revolution this is going to be? I think the political answer is it depends. It depends on, I think it depends massively on sector and category. If you're really looking at a GenTik and are we going to, you know, simply put, are robots going to buy that product as well as help us discover it?

37:07And I think the answer is yes in many sectors. I think is probably no in apparel, where ultimately this is an emotional purchase. It's rarely a needs-driven purchase. Clearly, where it is a needs-driven in your basic and essential categories, then quite possibly. But I think we can see that at the moment. where 62 % of consumers using AI to discover, but a very small percentage that actually gets through a checkout experience. I think there is obviously AI revolution. How much of it's agentic, I think, is perhaps a side question. But where I see the revolution is kind of in three parts. The first is the back office for us all.

38:15Again, a lot of that's the unglamorous stuff, but it's the cost saving, it's the speed to market, it's how we do business, the size and the scale of the teams that we need to run large e-commerce or digital businesses. the second is on site how we are personalizing experiences whether that's through search or through merch or through recommendations all the way through to check out and then the third is discovery which we have touched on and I think the concerning stat for probably the majority of people on this call is when it comes to apparel, I think the apparel, clothing, fashion sector is further behind on the quality of their product data than any other sector.

39:15So, you know, the longer that lasts, the less likely that that agentic AI revolution will become a reality. really in um anything to add on that are you doing anything to to help your products be discovered um on these kind of platforms yeah definitely i mean i'm probably very similar to the comments rain made we're doing a lot um still feels to me very much like housekeeping at the moment if that's the right terminology um you know ensuring the foundations are in place for when it becomes a serious traffic and sales generating engine you know for me it's a little chicken and egg at the moment of balancing that and the resource that that requires for the payoff um because despite its rapid growth it's still for me for us it's still a relatively small channel um but we know it's it's an active thing and it's growing and it's building so for me and i think many others probably it's it's really striking the balance and from a strategic point of view you know thinking about how that works in tandem with your SEO needs because there are some conflicting things in terms of how you structure data and on-page content for example you know that some of the LLMs prefer things slightly structured slightly differently versus you know your approach from a from a google ranking point of view so yeah that that that's that's my area of focus foundation is just getting things in a good place you know checking visibility scores um how you're ranking and and building from there so we're ready for when that when it when it does become more serious yeah what i think um you've definitely all touched on it uh the one that's been sticks out in my mind is steven mentioned it but you just did there in is getting this foundation of data ready but does anyone have anything to share about what that actually means you know if someone on the call right now is like okay i need to tidy up my product data what what what do they need to do like where am i where should they start maybe we're in a fortunate position that well i mean i'm saying fortunate at the moment i think i've got ptsd with the read platform but um so we're we're re-architecting all of our data so what we've done is we've pulled it all out and we've actually got agents to go over the top of it.

41:39So we are having agents looking at all of those, all of the product data, structuring it, adding in anything that's missing. Because, you know, we're a legacy brand where humans put it through an ERP. So there's quite a lot that's kind of can be missing or not quite right. So we've done about three passes through of all of our product data to actually enrich it. So we've got, you know, basic enrichment of where things are missing, which an agent can easily find. Then there's kind of descriptors that you can easily put in in terms of search queries and all of those things. And then there's kind of the readiness of actually how you want your data structured to then ingest it into other engines.

42:19So we've it's it's, you know, I think Stephen said it as well. It's not sexy, but we've kind of done it a few times just to make sure that all of our data going in is actually in a much better situation than it is now. And it's going to be such a big game changer from our legacy systems where we're literally uploading and downloading and have people doing it. And the ability to be able to change. So if something's like, I don't know, a white top, you can change it to Winter Wonderland or, you know, whatever the kind of thing is at the moment. If Harry Styles wears a white top, we can say, you know, Harry Styles Winter Wonderland white top.

42:52So it's that speed of being able to change that data through agents being able to pull it out and put it back in again. Everyone's nodding. Does anyone want to add anything there? Yeah, I think that's spot on. There's increasingly, you know, it's a good investment area into tools to support. And, you know, those that will be left behind are those that still expect their buyers to fill in an attribute sheet. Definitely. Ian? uh yeah i think for me i just i've certainly learned a lot through the process i think there's um and i include myself in this a lot of impatience um because it is such so important and so foundational and i don't think rain it was your point you know we're all used to running our own reports and running big excel files and they're all in slightly different forms and i think you know that has brought to light the need for consistency and to almost take a step backwards and get the foundations in place.

43:59So, yeah, I think, you know, for us to truly succeed, it's an important step and it's having that patience and I think that sort of state of mind to be able to say, you know, we need to pause here and get this right to be able to then take a bigger leap forward. So I think we're just, we're trying a lot of things at this stage, encouraging teams, experimenting, learning, feeding back, spin as inquisitive as possible. Definitely. I guess that leads to my next point, which is, experimenting and giving things a go often comes with the need for investment how do you how do you decide well you know there's lots of talk at the moment about AI and agentic and things that things that are buzzwords and trendy and you know I think somebody on the previous session referred to it as a slow sheep like they'll follow what other people have done and if it if it sticks we'll give it a go uh but also you know sometimes you do have to be the leader and you have to innovate yourself how do you i guess decide what to invest in and when if and when things come with investment attached to them um rain should i pick on you yeah and i think that i mean it's a fundamental whether you're looking at it from an ai point of you or not is what problem is the thing solving for you so it's actually I mean I'm very guilty of seeing a new shiny thing and thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread but actually it's not solving a problem it's just adding to something else so it's actually what problem is that thing solving we um we also have a couple of data scientists where we run proof of concepts so that we can then run those proof of concepts and see whether actually if we then invested in something else or did something else or or looked at a different you know in relation to what I was saying before like a different PIM system whether that would actually add efficiencies but I think you know what we are very conscious at the moment of not signing very long contracts and being very clear with suppliers that the pace of change is so fast that what is perfect for now might not be perfect in a year's time so we're looking at things that will solve a problem now and then really getting that payback within a year because everything's moving fast within the landscape of solutions not necessarily moving as fast in the landscape of what customers are doing but the solutions are evolving so quickly that that you you know you don't necessarily want to be tied in for a long time to something that will have been leapfrogged by something that we don't even know exists yet definitely i think that's that's that was kind of part of my question is when do you decide when it's something worth waiting for and then do you wait too long uh steven if if someone came to you in your advisory position with a big pot of money where would you recommend um they spend that given given everything that we've spoken about today well i think everything that we have spoken about today so starting with you know the big pot of money to to um to feel as there you've got genuine data quality that is the foundation, the bedrock of the business.

47:21And then the ability to measure incrementality of the decisions that you are making. And then I think when it comes down to which parts of, which products are you backing, which tools, what innovation are you backing? I think you've got to keep instinct and gut right out of this. I think this is, you know, which line on the P &L is this going to shift? How are we going to be able to measure that and have confidence in the benefits associated to it? is that growth that compounds or is that a one-off spike? Absolutely agree with Rain. If you can't see a material benefit within a 12-month period, then you've really got to question whether that's the right thing because underlying all of that needs to be a level of speed to market.

48:37You need to be able to get in fast, test fast and get out fast in this market, I think, or at this time more than ever before. So your investment ultimately needs to go into creating that capability to be able to test, learn, measure, exit or scale. And a lot of that investment, therefore, is about capability, people, expertise, to be able to leverage that data kind of foundation that you need to put in place. Thank you very much, Stephen. Now, we are running out of time. So I wanted to, I've got, you know, three digital leaders on this call. I wanted to ask some career questions. Firstly, we spent a lot of time talking today about LLMs and agentic and, you know, the unsexy data, taxonomy, keywords, etc.

49:47Which is something that not a lot of us were talking about just a few years ago. So what advice do you have, I guess, for keeping up? You know, how do you stay relevant? How do you know what to read up about? You know, do you follow trends? Do you try and know about everything? Or do you focus on, you know, what's doing well in your business? Anybody want to take the lead on that question? I think it's all about being curious. And I think that kind of leads back to your team and you. And I think it's actually asking questions. So it's actually being interested and excited and being curious as to what these things are going to solve and how you can solve it and working in different ways.

50:38Because, you know, I've come from a merchandising background. It's really, really different. Product attributes were a thing then, but we had eight. So, but it's actually, you know, how do you then keep thinking about what am I doing? How am I shopping? What are the things that people are actually asking about? And I think it's, you know, then asking your colleagues, asking your team, you know, being very open with the team because, you know, they're obviously dealing with things on a day to day basis and they can kind of, you know, make some great suggestions. And I think it's just, you know, there's obviously so many vendors and so many different things out there all the time.

51:14But I do think it's important to kind of have a look at everything and to see whether there are certain trends that are kind of moving in certain directions. and then seeing whether it's relevant for your business because not all things are relevant for all people as well. So it's kind of cutting out that noise of all of those things. But I think it's that curiosity about actually, it's curiosity in just life in general, I think. But I think it really sort of neatly fits into this. And then you'll get some kind of different answers and you'll get different answers from the team as well. Thank you, Rain.

51:44Anyone else have anything to add on that? I think for me, like you say, it's a real mindset thing. It's about, you know, making the time, which is difficult. We're all, you know, busy lives, busy working lives. And for me, you know, I've made a real effort to attend more, you know, industry events, which I do find difficult, to be honest. There's so much going on. You have to be so selective on the quality because there's so many. And just, you know, encouraging and empowering your teams to do so, you know, sharing with your networks. I always find I get a lot of inspiration and ideas from my peers in the industry.

52:21I always find people very willing and open to share and discuss. You know, challenges aren't wins. So I think, you know, I personally would just encourage lots of that. Definitely. Ian? Yeah, just to, this is probably, this is probably more something I haven't done, but as, you know, and I have regret and remorseful. and it is about diary management and setting time aside and one way is and I think the way that many of us do manage it is I'll get out to a conference for a day once a quarter and I'll block that out of my diary but another way is say yes to all these 15 minute demos It's all it takes.

53:13And try and carve time out on a weekly basis to hear a few sales pitches, to understand what's being pushed. And for me, I think that's the best way to keep your finger on the pulse and to be able to evaluate in the moment more so what's got substance and what hasn't. Great answer. And Stephen, you touched on the strength of teams earlier. And I wanted to, my question was, if you met junior candidates today, what is it that makes you want them on your team? What is it that stands out? You know, we've touched on some of them being curious and being up to date, being relevant. but what is it that really you know makes you say let's hire let's hire that person rain why don't we start with you um it's definitely that curious thing i think that's that's kind of key because i mean depending unless it's a very very specific task most people you can kind of upskill into um so yeah that's that's definitely um something that we found here and something that's worked particularly well.

54:35We've had quite a few graduates recently who we just could tell they were really interested in it. They've kind of done tons of research and they've got that real kind of pragmatic and kind of proactive way of working and challenging things. So, you know, we've had some great results in terms of all of the re-platform and product data work that we've had where people have come in. And this is, I think it's quite a sort of a fashion thing where you have the buyer's admin just filling in the thing and then somebody else fills it in and we've had people come and go why on earth are people filling in all of these things let's just kind of change it and they've kind of really like turned it all around and looked at a different way of working so it's that not not wanting to put up with um crap old legacy systems as well which I think then kind of you know it's a curiosity and a problem solving and it's all of those kind of things and I think you can quite easily identify that in people it's you know will they put up with the status quo will they change because if you don't change at the moment you are really not going to last very long because what you are going to do six months ago is not going to be the same as now definitely great advice uh ian what about you uh that's very similar i think it's all about attitude um i generally believe um a lot of what we do can be trained and learned if you've got the right mindset the right attitude I guess I'm always I'm looking for energy desire to learn inquisitiveness keenness to get involved they can go such a long way at a junior level um you know I think you all can see workplace and attitudes towards how you become successful in your career are changing and quite often for the better um quite frankly um but you can't go wrong with a positive attitude in my mind uh steven similar question but maybe flipping it the other way how has leadership changed what makes a good leader nowadays you know you've led through crisis you've led through success um what what makes a good leader today in the digital space yeah i think historically a good leader in the digital space was having a good grasp of every function or every kind of specialist area, gathering and requesting or asking the right questions around the insight that you need and then making decisions.

57:08And I think that is long gone now. And uncomfortably, I think for many, it's about setting outcomes, setting guardrails, and then letting your teams or your models execute. And, you know, that kind of takes out, removes that insight loop and means that, you know, it is very much about creating the right framework, the right culture, the right levels of confidence of your teams to not, well, to problem solve, to, you know, have license to think outside of the box to deliver that outcome. which is exciting and scary for many. Excellent. We've ran out of time. We have had some questions from the audience, which I will get answered offline.

58:10But just to wrap us up, this session is, the series is called Inside E-commerce. So I wanted to ask for a bit of a quick fire round to end us. Looking ahead to the near future, And what excites you about the digital space? Is it an innovation or the pace of change, which we've touched on a lot? Yeah, what is it that excites you in this e-commerce space? Rain, why don't we go to you first? I think it's the innovation. And I think it's how you, basically, I mean, in my career, it's selling clothes to humans. but how do you do that in a different way and how do you kind of challenge what normally people do and how do you make it more exciting?

58:57I think that's the most important thing. Thank you. Stephen? It's a more level playing field than it ever has been before for small and large retailers and just because you've got the biggest team or you've got the biggest pockets doesn't mean that you're going to get the best results. And I think that's the really exciting period that we are in, that with all of these new capabilities and new tools, a small group of effective brains can be all that you need to deliver a really strong growth strategy. Definitely. Very exciting. Ian, over to you. yeah i just think for me it's a sort of pace of change i think to stephen's point we've all we know it's um we've all got access to the same things i think we're going to see you know we always i always was very motivated excited about the e-commerce industry being you know being very fast moving i think it's about to get even faster and that sort of excites me and there's more competition than ever um so saying on top of that is going to be a really uh interesting ride definitely well as i said we are unfortunately out of time but uh thank you rain steven and ian for a great conversation thank you um for listening and thank you to our serious partner commerce this podcast was brought to you by drapers delivering you content from our inside e-commerce webinar series in partnership with commerce if you enjoyed this podcast please subscribe to have each new episode delivered directly to your device.

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