The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: ladies do not stop spending. They don’t care about the recession.
[00:00:03] , it’s insignificant if there’s a recession or not on those businesses because they’re about personal, treating yourself type thing.
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[00:01:10] Intro: Q4 or the holiday shopping season, or even Christmas as I would call it, is of course for retailers a huge deal, especially in certain industries like toys and games. But not only, of course that is true within e-commerce as a subset of retail as well. But today we’re gonna talk about the fact that 2022 Q4 may be quite different.
[00:01:30] Some statistics that one of our panel members, Kyle Hamer has come up with, and our discussion. Could be of great interest to you if, like most of us, you have a seasonal business in some form or other. So check it out and go and have a think about maybe resetting your expectations for Q4 2022.
[00:01:48] Enjoy the show.
[00:01:49] Jason: Wow. That is a huge percentage change, man. 40%. And even the distance. Yeah. The digital thing is obvious. Like the gift cards have always been popular and digital gift cards are really popular now too. The, the virtual version of a gift card. And so that’s fascinating, but 40%, that’s pretty radical.
[00:02:05] And
[00:02:06] Kyle: another interesting tibit, 58% people said that they were looking for, deals and discounts. So they were looking for the best deal that they can find, which is usually the case. But in some prior years they were less slightly and you would see higher ticketed items be, going off the shelf without any concern.
[00:02:24] Like they were just out. But now I think people are definitely hunting more for the best deal that they can find. , to make their dollar or their currency units go further.
[00:02:34] Michael: Talking of currency units, I think it’s really important to not fall into the trap of everyone uses phases like the West when it comes to the war with Ukraine, for example.
[00:02:43] Which means America plus, Europe and other places allied with it like Australia, New Zealand, maybe Japan. I think that’s, lumping together that belongs in history because I think Europe and North America are gonna have very different paths over the next, while economically. It’s not for subtle reasons.
[00:02:57] We, we, the gas is being cut off literally, physically and in any practical way by war, and that just impacts everything I think. German’s ability to manufacture anything is right now being slashed. And that includes things like fertilizer. That means you have crops next year. So I think the economic path forward for Europe is gonna be and include the UK cuz it’s only 20 miles off, off the European, mainland.
[00:03:19] Unlike the mentality of some people here. Their paths are linked, and I think that’s gonna be very different. Which makes me think as a British person, of course, that I need to stay selling in America in the longer term. Cause I think the paths are gonna be different there again, which is, I haven’t seen the statistics of how they’re gonna be.
[00:03:35] Jason: You remember in Rocky three? No. Rocky, yeah. Three. When they asked Clever Lang what his prediction for the fight was, he said, Pain and, yeah, I, it’s what’s slightly
[00:03:48] Michael: reductionist, but yeah, on
[00:03:49] Jason: those lines, it’s like a, is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Obviously the inflation is real and people are actually paying a ton more for food and gas, so you could understand that the Christmas time gift giving would be, they have to economize, in household budget.
[00:04:04] But some of this feels like self-fulfilling prophecy. Now the, impact of the Ukraine war, of course, isn’t, those are real, those are real action steps that have been taken and real impacts. But some of it is also just the mindset of all of us, oh, recession’s coming this, it just feels like there’s this impending sense of, concern or doom.
[00:04:22] And how much is that as a self-fulfilling prophecy? I wonder.
[00:04:29] Kyle: Yeah.
[00:04:29] Chris: I got a different take on why we’re spending less money and,
[00:04:32] Jason: especially at
[00:04:33] Chris: Christmas time. What is kids don’t need anything. Like growing up it was like, holy smokes, you want a Nintendo, you better just wait for eight months, wait for Christmas. Maybe the whole family and I, I grew up very poor, like this a poor family experience history.
[00:04:48] Maybe you’ll get a Nintendo if everybody you’ll get like one big gift. And I do think that the big gift of birthday and Christmas goes, yeah. Not just poor families, but that’s how it used to be. And now it’s like the new PlayStation’s out and you just. Or you need some new shoes and you just go get some new Jordans and you like, like it isn’t this, and I say this from experience, like my kids, it’s not that they’re showered with things all the time, but it, we don’t have this, Hey,
[00:05:10] Jason: wait for Christmas kind of thing.
[00:05:13] Okay.
[00:05:13] Chris: Like we’re like, what do you guys, we literally sat at the table yesterday, what do you guys even want for Christmas? Are we even gonna do Christmas? What? It’s not this, Hey, we need to spend X number of dollars. So if our spending is down 50% for Christmas, I would not be surprised.
[00:05:27] Like we’re just not even thinking about it. I don’t know if it’s, if social media’s affecting this, but . We just did Christmas a year ago. Now we’re doing it again. Like we have to buy everybody a gift again. Like it does, I don’t know if it’s, the older you get, the more it really does feel like this intentionally commercialized event where it’s designed to get you to buy things instead of nah, man y don’t have to buy anything.
[00:05:45] Y’all want to get together and have a drink and party and do whatever you want. And I’m personally like, we can do that anytime, right? We don’t have to wait until December 25th to do this. Jason, you wanna come over and have a good time? We’ll do that tonight. Did you encounter
[00:05:57] Jason: that?
[00:05:57] And people are going, Did you encounter that with Black Friday? This cyber Monday? Cuz I literally was like, I paid, I need, the only thing I got was a little Bluetooth JBL speaker and it was only like $19.
[00:06:10] Chris: And you didn’t even need that. You didn’t even need that. You like, eh, that is a good idea.
[00:06:16] Michael: I absolutely loved on an e-commerce podcast, we got somebody saying, yeah, Christmas has become this artificially commercialized thing.
[00:06:21] I’m like, yeah, we’d be working
[00:06:23] Jason: really hard to do that.
[00:06:25] Kyle: It’s been a. We’ve been working on it for a long time. And the other thing that I guess it’s apparent is that the older Chris gets, the more he turns into Ebeneezer. He’s ah. But no, I do agree with you. I think that’s why I think leaning into, at least for me, like with my kids, it’s like it’s not about getting.
[00:06:44] It’s about how do you, how can you give, how can you help serve other people? What can you do? It’s so reframing it as instead of making it all about the presence and the gifts to actually something that they can contribute to the world. It’s becoming much more of an important conversation for us, as a family.
[00:06:59] And I think that is my response to, that whole thing. It’s yeah, do you need more stuff? Yeah. You want, it’s our here and there, but experience is over. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:10] Chris: No, that’s a growing trend and eCommerce sellers should be thinking of that. Like what experience, yeah. Can I sell or what can I sell that isn’t time dependent where you have to buy it at q4, buy a Q4 if you want, but cash it in the spring.
[00:07:21] Like it doesn’t matter. It’s an experience. It’s not something you have to open on a specific day of the year.
[00:07:27] Kyle: And one other point that came out of that, consumer trends report. 54% said that they were making travel plans for 2023, which was up 16% from last year. And another, like 79% said there are some things like dining out and, like manicures and stuff like that, experiences that were non-negotiable expenses.
[00:07:47] So they were, they, would they be willing to pay less for gifts for people as long as they could maintain their, personal experiences that provided value to themselves.
[00:07:56] Jason: I just listened to a podcast of, a lady. That is a broker for, franchises. She helps people find the ideal franchise and she said she loves service industry stuff.
[00:08:06] And she said, with the impending, recession, she said there are some, that you can start that really are not impacted. And she said the, he, the beauty like Mass V or like the beauty type stuff. She said the literally she. We do, ladies do not stop spending. On those items. They don’t care about the recession.
[00:08:27] Those are almost, it’s insignificant if there’s a recession or not on those businesses because they’re about personal, you know what kind of treating yourself type thing. And self care. Self-care, yeah, for sure. Interesting.
[00:08:43] Chris: I got a trivia question for you guys. What year did Charlie Brown Christmas.
[00:08:49] Jason: Howard Schulz. I’m Rose in California.
[00:08:51] Michael: 75 or something like that?
[00:08:54] Jason: Any other guesses? 67. Kyle, you’re too
[00:08:59] Chris: late. Jason, you are closest. It was 1965 it came out, and if anybody watches it with a Kenai, They talk about the over commercialization of Christmas. Christmas, which came out in 1965. So yeah, we’ve been saying the exact same thing for a really long time.
[00:09:21] So when everybody’s oh, it’s too commercialized, whatever. It’s the same commercialization it’s ever been. Yeah. , but pay attention. Like if 54% of people are saying they’re gonna travel more in 2023, people who sell products, who, a lot of the sellers I know, they sell commodities, they sell whatever they can sell.
[00:09:36] They’re not necessarily a brand and niche sellers start thinking, okay, people are traveling, what do they need? What can I sell? And don’t go basic oh, I’m gonna sell them like a toilet tree kit and I’m gonna sell ’em like a passport holder. But everybody else is selling those things.
[00:09:47] But stop and think, where do you have a sustainable competitive advantage? And what products can you sell to make people who are traveling in 2023 make their lives? Help them save money, help them enjoy their time more. I know someone who’s making a guide about how to get the most out of different theme parks in terms of being efficient and using technology to know where to go and like how to save money.
[00:10:07] And that’s a valuable product. And that’s not even an actual physical product, right? You’re selling information and subscriptions and all these things to what help people save time, save money, all these things that’s more interesting than, Hey, I didn’t sell as many slippers in q4. No one cares man.
[00:10:25] Yeah. Like I don’t even know who, who would say that to, cuz
[00:10:27] Jason: no one cares. We have more people this year that have signed up for learning about our trips to Zambia. Generally, we’ll do, we’ll take about eight to 14 people. Obviously covid shut us down for two years and then, this last year was a great trip And now for 2023, we have a huge list of people.
[00:10:44] We might end up doing two or even three trips, very interesting.
[00:10:50] Chris: Do you have a way to turn that into a gift, where someone could sponsor someone or,
[00:10:56] Jason: Like those are the things Yeah. I, no, I, it’s giftable certainly. I’ve never marketed it that way, but, people generally pay their own way, obviously.
[00:11:03] Yeah.
[00:11:04] Michael: Interesting. One thing that strikes me is just that whatever you’ve done a heck of, a lot of you want the opposite. So if you’ve been stuck at home buying away eCommerce products cuz you had no choices and you couldn’t leave the house, then of course you wanna leave the house. And, that’s part of the demand care, isn’t it?
[00:11:18] And then as you say, Kyle, I guess that raw statistic, that’s more than the haircut, that’s more like a. Head decapitation of its 40, 50% revenue drop. But that could be that the implication is that’s to do with the cost of living crisis. But I think that’s obviously part of the picture.
[00:11:32] To your point, Jason, how far is that self perpetuating? I dunno, it’s a good question, but the media’s reliable enough that they will keep perpetuating it. I think , the echo chamber will keep echoing, but, it’s a good question about, I think it’s quite category specific. And to your point, Chris, if travel’s rebounding, then it’s a smart move to, to see that.
[00:11:51] We, I’m aware that we have one more potential topic area. I’m happy to do that thing that senators do, whatever that is that you mentioned, Jason, and pass on anything my side. Chris, I’m intrigued to hear what your thoughts are these days. You always got an active mind.
[00:12:09] Chris: I’ll kinda get back to work cause Jason has a hard stop, soft stop, medium stop coming up. Yeah. We’ve given people a lot to think. There’s always gonna be new things. We’re gonna, rapid innovation is happening, so there’s always something new. So it’s more important to, act than, keep talking sometimes.
[00:12:27] Michael: Yeah. Good, good. Words on which to wrap things up, then get into action that there was a TV program. Called, why don’t you, in the eighties and the end of the theme music went, why don’t you stop watching a television set and turn it off and go out and do something useful instead. So on that note, , we’ll take a leaf out of why don’t use, theme tune.
[00:12:45] If you’ve enjoyed listening to today’s show, don’t forget to check it out and the podcast out near you, the eCommerce leader, all subscriptions free. But it is a digital subscription service, so feel free to use that. Thanks very much for listening.
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