Disrupting Brick and Mortar Retail By Marrying Digital Content to Physical Products with Athena Yap

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Product Boss. Today, we'll be breaking down the disruption of brick and mortar retail by marrying digital content to physical products. To drop these value bombs, I brought Athena Yap into EO Fire Studios. Athena was an aerospace engineer who quit her six-figure career to start a dog bakery. After a decade of wholesale and retail ventures, a life-changing event resulted in a new retail spatial media tech startup.

0:38So today, Foundation, we'll talk about why now is time for disruption. We'll talk about why anybody should care. We'll also talk about how businesses can increase influence engagement and revenue and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Athena and our sponsors. Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Feer, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life. A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen.

1:13Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts. Want to meet me, JLD, in person? Attend Clay Clark's two-day interactive business workshop and meet me, Tim Tebow, and Clay Clark this June. Experience the highest rated business workshop in America and hang out with me in person at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Again, that's thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Learn more and request your tickets at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Athena, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, I don't know if most people disagree with this, but I don't think most people actually take the time to think of what being successful means to them.

2:00And I believe success consists of multiple phases. It's not just one endpoint. But anyways, to answer your question concretely, becoming successful requires one to push beyond their current capabilities and work towards their delusional desires, which is what I always do. Fire Nation, we're going to have a great conversation with Athena today about disrupting brick-and-mortar retail by marrying digital content to physical products. But I want to start by just asking why, Athena? Why is now the time for disruption? Technology is now ripe for this as we have an abundance of digital content and machine learning capabilities that make this possible.

2:45Our mobile devices too are now ready with the chips that are capable in processing tons of data in nanoseconds. On top of that, society as a whole is now embracing technology more than ever. All of this is true, but I want to keep asking why. Why does this matter? Why should anybody even care? We are really talking about sustainability here, both time and physical matter, true targeted access to information. And let me explain. How many products have we wasted collectively that ended up in the landfill because we made the wrong choice. Specifically in the beauty and makeup industry that we are specializing in right now with Gosha, how much time have we wasted also searching and scrolling search results in the store on our phones when all we wanted were very specific product in front of the product in front of us at that time?

3:45And for businesses, how much time and resources are currently needed to getting that marketing shelf talkers, for example, into all the stores around the country. Let me tell you, it's a lot, starting from getting store buyers approval, printing physical shelf talkers, distributing them to maintaining them in the stores. Time is valuable for anyone, especially for businesses. We are shortening the time and reducing trade ways for businesses to get their messages to their customers in stores. This is what and why we feel it matters and anyone should care. I want to talk now about how businesses can leverage this if they want to increase their influence, their engagement, their revenue.

4:34What are the processes there? Yeah, very good question. So let me start with explaining what Gasha is. Gasha is a consumer app that helps shoppers shop smarter and brands engage better in physical stores. So think of Yelp and Google had a baby, but for in-store products in obtaining reviews, ratings, how-tos, virtual try-ons for makeups and more. Now, how? We all know that the more people love and trust us, the more loyal they are, which leads to sales, continuous sales, engagement, social media shares, and referral to their friends. Gosha offers a platform to do all that. In the beauty industry, giving virtual try-on capability online has proven to increase sales.

5:26For physical retail stores, however, we have a huge, huge disconnect. This is why Sephora is spending more money putting in try-on kiosks in their New York physical stores. Gosha gives this capability to brands and retailers without this kind of investment through our platform. Maintaining and managing business global marketing as well is all done remotely without stepping into any stores. Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding where this is an interesting time for disruption, where you can utilize some of these things that Athena is sharing to increase your influence, to just maximize your engagements, and of course, to really focus and double down on your revenue.

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9:16Become the next success story and request tickets to join Tim Tebow, myself and Clay Clark at the June business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. So Athena, we're back and I want to talk about how we're doing this specifically. Can you give us some examples when it comes to AI augmented reality. I know that you're really doing a deep dive on this disruptive technology. So let's chat about it. Gosha literally turns products on the shelves into virtual kiosks for try-ons, reviews, ratings, how-tos, and product information through our AI and augmented reality algorithm. No longer we are relying on RKA QR code.

9:58No QR codes needed because again, we are talking about not needing to print, redesign labels, or distributing any in-store promotional piece. Our image recognition AI algorithm does all that. So for example, you walk up or any shoppers walk up to a product on the shelves literally by tapping on the scan button on our app, pointed at the product on the shelves, and AR specific to that product will pop up. And once the AR video is done, the user or the shoppers can tap on the screen again, and that will lead to either executing a virtual try-on for the makeup or link to more reviews and ratings or product link to the information or a product website.

10:49And let's see, our image recognition does all that. our augmented reality video that jumps out of the product in real time, try-ons are more engaging. Also, on top of all that, for businesses, the platform also allows brands to reach out to shoppers and provides information on which product gets more engagement in which stores at what time. So it's all very transparent and data. We're giving a lot of data for improving efficiency as well. Now, I want to dive into the next step, which is beyond retail and actually into our personal lives. So can you talk about how you foresee what we just talked about, you know, AI, augmented reality, this other disruption that is really interesting in today's day and age?

11:37How can this benefit beyond retail in our own personal lives? Beyond making shopping smarter and faster, more efficient. What I've not mentioned is that Gosha is an open source user platform. What this means is that anyone can contribute the digital content to share information about products, artwork, cooking recipes, crafts, DIY projects, or on a more personal level, personal memories with family pictures and kids projects. Now, what if somebody who's listening right now is like, this is all really interesting stuff. I think that this could impact my own business, my own life. And they were kind of curious about joining this open source user generated content platform that you're talking about.

12:27What would be the next steps? I'm excited to bring this to everyone. I want to invite listeners to join us in making shopping more fun and informative while moving us collectively towards a more efficient and sustainable future by marrying digital content to your physical world. You can find us in Apple App Store or visit us at Gosha.com. That is Gosha, like oh gosh, with S-H-A after that. Gosha. So take a step back, Athena, and just talk about overall in general, what you want Fire Nation's biggest takeaway to be from our conversation today. The biggest takeaway is that there are a lot of information online.

13:17But when you walk into any stores, your physical environment, there is a disconnect. We want information. They are already out there, but it's not easily accessible in our real world. So Gosha helps connect the dots. and we hope we can bring information easily and more curated information accessibly. Athena, if Fire Nation wanted to connect with you, wanted to learn more from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Anyone can reach me easily on LinkedIn. I'm big on LinkedIn. So if you search for Athena, yeah, that's A-T-H-E-N-A, yeah, it's Y-A-P. I'm on LinkedIn almost all the time.

14:05Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with AY and JLD today. So keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Athena, A-T-H-E-N-A in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up. And again, there'll be links to everything that she mentioned here today. Athena, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John. Glad to be here.

15:00A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts. Want to meet me, JLD, in person? Attend Clay Clark's two-day interactive business workshop and meet me, Tim Tebow, and Clay Clark this June. Experience the highest rated business workshop in America and hang out with me in person at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, that's thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Learn more and request your tickets at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.