On this episode meet John Hazen, the Chief Digital Officer at Boot Barn, a west-coast-based specialty store retail powerhouse. John describes his journey to working within a retail first brand and appreciating the cultural differences in any organization to be truly successful. Next, John talks about his deep attachment to ensuring a seamless shopping experience for his customers and the journey at Boot Barn to keep the focus and understand the power of their stores and the force multiplier that a well-architected digital strategy must become.
Welcome to the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with CommerceNext and presented by CommX.
On this episode meet John Hazen, the Chief Digital Officer at Boot Barn, a west-coast-based specialty store retail powerhouse. John describes his journey to working within a retail first brand and appreciating the cultural differences in any organization to be truly successful. Next, John talks about his deep attachment to ensuring a seamless shopping experience for his customers and the journey at Boot Barn to keep the focus and understand the power of their stores and the force multiplier that a well-architected digital strategy must become.
About John
Omnichannel and e-Commerce executive/thought leader rooted in apparel&footwear. Extensive experience architecting, launching and running global enterprise initiatives focusing on Omnichannel, e-commerce, retail digital enablement & CRM . Expert in commerce platforms, merchandising, technology with a strong digital background , inventor of patented technology for Nike Digital. MBA from Loyola Marymount University and extensive (15+ years) digital experience working within the apparel/retail industry.
Skateboarder, surfer , triathlete and Pixar nut. 🤙🏻
ABOUT US:
Scott Silverman
An ecommerce veteran, Scott Silverman has been active in the industry since 1999 and is passionate about digital retail and the innovation driving the industry. Scott Silverman is the Co-Founder of CommerceNext. Previously, he spent 10 years as Executive Director of Shop.org where he launched the Shop.org Annual Summit. Scott co-invented “Cyber Monday” in 2005 and was the founder of Cybermonday.com in 2006, a shopping site that has generated more than $2.5 million for Shop.org’s scholarship fund.
Veronika Sonsev
Veronika Sonsev is the Co-Founder of CommerceNext. She also leads the retail practice for Chameleon Collective and is a contributor for Forbes on how to grow retail and ecommerce in the age of Amazon. Having spent the last 10+ years working with some of the largest retailers and direct-to-consumer brands, Veronika has intimate knowledge of the challenges facing retail and ecommerce today. She is also an advocate for women in business and founded the global non-profit mBolden, which is now part of SheRunsit.
Michael LeBlanc is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome to the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with CommerceNext and presented by CommX.
Michael LeBlanc 00:09
On this episode, meet John Hazen, Chief Digital Officer at Boot Barn, a west-coast-based specialty store retail powerhouse. John describes his journey to working within a retail first brand, appreciating the cultural differences in any organization to be truly successful. Next, John talks about his deep attachment to ensuring a seamless shopping experience for his customers. And the journey at Boot Barn keeps the focus and understand the power of their stores and the force multiplier that a well-architected digital strategy must become.
John Hazen 00:41
I had no idea what I was doing. When it came to digital. I said, ‘Hey, you want to get into eCommerce? Can you help us build this thing?’ Your answer should always be, ‘Ye’s. And try to figure it out. You know, you want to take those opportunities when they show up. That's when the good stuff happens when someone turns and says, ‘Hey, we need help with this, you want to get involved?’ So, don't say no, don't, you know, take a risk. And even if you don't know how to do it, try to figure out how to solve that problem, right? That may not work in aerospace or architecture, if you're building buildings, right? So, don't take that forward. But in digital the beauty is we can always correct our mistake,
Scott Silverman 01:15
John Hazen, welcome to Conversations with CommerceNext. I've known you for a number of years so I'm excited to talk to you. You are perhaps one of the coolest guys in eCommerce certainly like looking at your LinkedIn page. You got skateboarding, it looks like you're at the, the wave camp or something like that as a surfer. So, that's very cool. So, nice to have you with us today and looking forward to talking about you, about your career and what's going on at Boot Barn and a few other things.
John Hazen 01:48
Absolutely, happy to be here. Yeah, I sometimes I get a little bit of ribbing about some of those photos, but I can still, still skateboard and that was at Kelly Slater's Surf Ranch, which is one of the coolest things I have done in a long, long time. I'll probably use that one as the next icebreaker at our next event that I go to with you Scott, but that was an amazing time that was kind of recently in the last couple of months.
Scott Silverman 02:10
And I'm here with my podcasting co-host Michael LeBlanc up, you're I assume you're up in Toronto today.
Michael LeBlanc 02:18
I am and, and off mic and if you're watching a little excerpt, a fellow Habs fan. Are you born and raised in, in Montreal, Montreal area, (crossover talk),
John Hazen 02:26
I was born and raised in Montreal on the west Island and grew up delivering the Montreal Gazette for many, many years as a kid in the Montreal winters and was a Habs fan since a young age and have one of each of the Montreal forum seats here in my office in California.
Michael LeBlanc 02:40
That was going to be my next question. Where are we finding you today? So, you're on the West Coast, (crossover talk),
John Hazen 02:43
We are in Irvine, California, so I live in Huntington Beach. Boot Barn was founded in Huntington Beach, which most people don't know. And we're based here in Irvine at our store Support Center where we support our 300 plus stores.
Michael LeBlanc 02:56
Fantastic. So, you've landed in a, in a place that has very similar weather to Montreal, so congratulations, (crossover talk),
John Hazen 02:58
Totally.
Michael LeBlanc 02:59
I'm sure you look for that,
Scott Silverman 03:02
You know, we, we like to talk about careers here at Conversations with CommerceNext. And, you know, I think it'd be great to hear your professional, your digital professional journey. And, and maybe segue into, you know, what your role currently encompasses at Boot Barn today?
John Hazen 03:20
Sure. So, I started in, in IT traditional management information systems as it was known way back when. In Montreal, my uncle and my aunt, who were my mentors, were CTOs at the time at Abbott Labs and Avon. And so, I started working on a helpdesk, you know as an AS 400 Operator, right in the early, early days of the internet. I always knew I wanted to move to California because of my passion for skateboarding and surfing recreationally, not professionally. I jumped in a car and came to California in early 99.
John Hazen 03:36
And I was waiting for my work permit to come through and got a side job working in the apparel and footwear industry for seven bucks an hour entering EDI orders for a Missy company called Democracy Clothing through a friend. And that's a shout out to Suzy Hart. If she sees this, she was the one who gave me that job. And that's how I kind of fell into the fashion business and they had never had a cost sheet in Excel. You know, everything was kind of done by hand. They didn't have emails or, or even a website back then again, this was early 99. So, that was how I kind of fell into the fashion business and it's where I've spent most of my career.
John Hazen 03:58
I made the jump to eCommerce. Another shout out to Bob Hurley, who founded Hurley in roughly 2006, Nike owned Hurley at the time and Bob stopped me on a skateboard in the parking lot at Hurley, where I was working in IT and said we need someone to figure out how to take us direct-to-consumer. Nike, of course always has been focused on direct-to-consumer for many years, told Hurley we had to go direct-to-consumer and, and Bob tasked himself and Nike brought down Marybeth Laughton. And we figured out how to take Hurley direct, back in 2006. And that's how I fell into eCommerce.
Scott Silverman 05:09
Awesome. Yeah. So, so fast forward to today, your Chief Digital Officer at Boot Barn. You know, tell us about, well, maybe start with like, not all of, everyone in our audience wears cowboy boots, I would assume, but maybe they will. Once you, you get through to them. But yeah, maybe like, just help us understand. First, you know, who is Boot Barn? You know, what's the market you're after? Where do you sell? You know, what are some of the differentiators and then maybe, you know, transition into your role there.
John Hazen 05:41
So, Scott, we're getting a little closer to you. We opened in Cherry Hill in New Jersey last week. So, we, we've got a store in New Jersey now. But Boot Barn was founded in Huntington Beach and, and the Western business the work in western business was very fragmented for, for many years. And now we're the biggest retailer in the space. We did about a billion and a half dollars last fiscal year. We have roughly 315 stores right now. And we sell cowboy boots, workwear and kind of outdoor slash country apparel.
John Hazen 06:03
So, we have really four segments: we have our traditional Western customer who's riding horses and working on a ranch, we've got our work customer who works in oil, or construction or agriculture, we have our fashion customer (inaudible), you know, women going to Stagecoach. And then we have our, our customer segment called, Just Country, which is a guy who drives an F 150, who maybe wears a cowboy hat, enjoys cowboy boots, but doesn't wear them every day functionally, but kind of lives that lifestyle, listens to country music drives a pickup truck, that sort of customer segments. So, those are our four major customer segments. We sell work and western wear, you know, brands like Carhartt, Ariat, Pendleton, to, to both men and women, a little more men than women, but both, both genders and do about a billion and a half dollars in, in work and western wear across the US. We're working our way into the Northeast. Now opening, we have stores in Delaware in Philadelphia, in New Jersey, more states to come. The biggest states, of course, are California and Texas, as you would expect. But we're in about 40 states now.
Michael LeBlanc 07:18
You know, as I, as I look at your site, is there a segment out of those four segments that's growing? I mean, if I looked at your homepage randomly today, it looks more like the fashion segment than any others. Is that purposeful or is it a rotation? Is there one segment that, that rises above the others? Or (crossover talk),
John Hazen 07:34
No, fashion is actually you know, we get this question a lot around it, you know, do you guys have a fashion risk. I mean, we're not a swimwear company, right. But a fashion for us, one of ours, is our smallest segment. Again, it's really femal-, only female, female versus female and male and of course work uses much more male than, than female. I know the reason for that is the images. As we do all of our photography in house, our creative team is incredible. And some of the most stunning images that we come up with end up being some of the fashion pieces. So, we, we have work, work western fashion, Just Country email segments that we have different creative going out to, but when you put them all kind of on a table and look at them, we, we do have a bias towards, you know, stunning imagery and more times than not that ends up being something that falls into that fashion segment.
Michael LeBlanc 08:27
Alright, so you've been CDO for just over four years, there haven't been, I wouldn't call them an ordinary four years, you know, been part of the COVID era. But thinking when you arrived t-, t-, today, how has the digital business changed in your mind over that time? You know, often people talk about an accelerant that COVID was and the way we work is different. How do you think of that, that time that's just passed, over the last couple of years, (crossover talk),
John Hazen 08:51
There's a couple of things that happened. One from when I came in to boot barn, we you know, boot barn was the smaller of our two big eCommerce sites we had, we had bought a business called Sheplers. That has been around since the 1890s. And was the biggest eCommerce player in the western wear business. And so, Sheplers was a bigger eCommerce business with a lower margin rate. And as I joined the company, we really shifted to making Boop Barn our digital flagship and a full price business that, that was the digital version of what we had in our store. So, the exact same promotions as we run in stores, very similar margin profile to what we have in stores. And so, the biggest shift internally for us has been the move from Sheplers, which is still a great and, and very successful online business. The stores have been transformed into Boot Barn stores and making Boot Barn, our digital flagship and our biggest eComm business. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure and hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss another great episode. We'll be right back with our interview with John Hazen, Chief Digital Officer at Boot Barn, right after this message.
Michael LeBlanc 10:00
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John Hazen 10:34
As it relates to COVID and beyond that, you know, one of, one of the other things I always say is, I'm going to be long retired, and perhaps long gone by the time eCommerce overtakes stores for Boot Barn. We are a store's first business and will continue to be a store's first business for many, many years. We've recently updated Wall Street that we think we can open upwards of 900 stores. So, we used to say 600 stores, we've now said publicly 900 stores, we're at 316 stores today, we're going to open between 40 and 50 stores this year, this fiscal year.
John Hazen 10:48
And so, if you play that forward, we've got many, many years of growth ahead of us on the brick-and-mortar side, which is a more profitable channel for us and virtually everybody. So, we're not at that point in the runway or even close to it where you know, eComm even growing nicely double digits is going to catch up penetration wise to the stores or even get much beyond the 15% penetration we're at now if you kind of add in a new store doing a few million bucks a year, and we're open 40 or 50 of those a year, it just doesn't pencil out. So, we're going to be, you know, 85% stores business for, for the foreseeable future, which, which is going to be a long period. And so, a lot of the focus for us is on digital and stores. I spent about half of my time running the eCommerce P&L and running the online business. And I spent about half my time working on digital initiatives in-store and improving the in-store experience because you know, stores aren't just an afterthought or a slowly declining business or, you know, a stable business but not where the growth is going to come from, like you see at other retailers. For us the biggest growth initiative we have are stores.
Scott Silverman 12:20
So, kind of speaking of stores and, and having the benefit of, of knowing you for a little while and been at a few dinners with you. I know you've told the story that I feel like it has to get a bigger audience about something you did related to buy online pick up in the store. And to me, there's a lesson of leadership, resourcefulness, innovation, all I, this is why I love this story. So, I'm just going to without giving any more away let you I think you know what I'm talking about let you, (crossover talk) share it.
John Hazen 12:53
Absolutely. So, we were getting ready, as COVID occurred. And we were putting some of our omni-initiatives in, focus was up and running, but it wasn't fully deployed to the stores of course COVID is an accelerant and, and focus was out the door and fully deployed and you know, three weeks into COVID. And one of the challenges we had was how do you notify a store that they have an action to take that they've got to same day delivery that they need to prepare, or you know, which has maybe a little bit higher of an urgency than an in-store fulfillment order or a focus order? How do they know they need to take action on an omni-order?
John Hazen 13:29
And so, I walked around a couple of malls here in Southern California, the Irvine Spectrum and ironically the Westminster Mall near my house, not the greatest mall but, but I walked around both of those malls and kind of asked store associates at stores like Zumiez and PacSun, I walked into Gap. I asked different stores. How do you guys know when you have an order that needs to be picked, packed and shipped. Most of them said they had a portal that they constantly refreshed and checked for any new orders. I heard from one retailer that said you know the phone will ring and it'll be an automated mesh-, message that says hey, you need to, you need to take action on an order. But then they were struggling because they didn't know who had picked up the phone and who had taken the action.
John Hazen 14:11
And then a young man on my team by the name of Justin Hanley and full credit to him. I take zero credit for this. I came up with the idea of us developing and building and 3D printing our own IoT, Internet of things, devices that would visually notify the store. And so, what we put together was a device that we called Annie, like Annie Oakley, so it's a 3D printed device that listens in the cloud. It runs a little raspberry pi inside of it, and it has an LED light on it that's inside the device and it will light up different colors based on how many orders need to be actioned on at the store.
John Hazen 14:34
So, each store, 315 stores has two of these devices in them, one at front of house one at back of house. The first 300 we soldered and built-in house here, assembled here and you know, put together our own Annie light as we call it. And we have this IoT solution deployed to all of our stores. And that's how they know they have a same day delivery order, an in-store fulfillment order, or a buy online, pickup in store order that needs to be actioned upon visually, just by looking over and taking a peek at the light and seeing how many dots are lit up on there. So, it was kind of a wild idea. We said let's build a couple and, and you know, you know, I love the saying from Ed Catmull from Pixar, I'm a big Pixar fan, "it's better to correct mistakes than try to prevent them". So, I said what the hell, let's build a few of these and see what happens and lo and behold, we've got an in house IoT device that is critical for all of our omni-channel operations.
Michael LeBlanc 15:44
Let's change course or to talk a little bit and talk about career advice. So, you have a very successful career as you reflect back and even ahead, is there anything you would have done different or advice that perhaps you said boy, if, if I knew then what I know now kind of stuff or best advice you recall receiving talk about to talk about that as part of your, (crossover talk),
John Hazen 16:05
Absolutely. So, one of the, one of the things that I spent most of my career on the brand side, so I was with Hurley, O'Neill, True Religion, and Fox Racing, and, and in, in the apparel and fashion space. On the brand side, we focus, of course, there's financial acumen, but we focus so much more on the brand, building, the marketing, the creative, the design process. And I say this to my boss, our CEO, and our COO all the time, who've been amazing partners and taught me so much.
John Hazen 16:12
When I came to Boot Barn, we're truly a retailer, you know, we've got folks that came from Federated and May Department Stores the, the financial acumen at a true retailer, not a brand, was so much stronger, right? I generally didn't talk in single basis points ever in my life when I was referring to gross margin, right? We do that here. Right? It we, we are much more, we have a much more financial discipline for lack of a better term, then on the brand side, and I think part of that is on the brand side, you already had, you always had one more place, you could get rid of product that was the retailer, right? You could always call up Ross or TJ Maxx or, or dump it somewhere.
John Hazen 16:30
And so, I got to tell you, when I came into Boot Barn, and I've said this to my boss, I felt a little dumb, right, I think the one place I am you know, technically I, I, of course I'm great digitally. I'm great at marketing, brand creative, and very comfortable all the time. But sitting in the first couple of months of the Monday meetings at, at a true retailer, not a brand, I got to tell you I was a little nervous, it was not you know, I was a little out of my comfort zone. And if I could go back in time, and I've said this to my son, I'd spend more time paying attention in some of my finance classes, I would probably dive deeper into some of that earlier in my career, be able to run through a P&L back and forth with my eyes closed because it did not come naturally. To me, at least coming from the brand side it was, it was marketing, creative, digital. And then of course, I grew up as a technologist so I can, (inaudible) I always come back on the technology side.
John Hazen 17:02
But I think that financial acumen piece, you know what was a little bit of a shock to me coming here and working for a true retailer and I wish I was better at it earlier in my career. Let's narrow that advice lens so to speak a little bit and just talk about digital executives’ kind of early in their career their first 10 years. So, let's assume the same applies that you know, let's make sure you have that kind of financial acumen. Is there anything else you would advise the listeners around their careers early in their, in their, in their digital careers?
John Hazen 17:28
I mean it I'll, I'll start with, with saying I teach at Orange Coast College, I teach an eCommerce class and I've done it for about seven years now. I teach usually for two semesters COVID has been a little bumpy but usually teach both in the Spring and Fall Semester, I have about five students who are now all working here at Boot Barn. So, it's kind of a feeder program for, for Boot Barn in, in everything from the creative side to digital marketing to working in email marketing. So, we've got a wide variety of students that have come up and, and started their career in marketing or digital. So, I'm talking to students constantly about this sort of stuff. And, and a couple of things I would absolutely say, one may be a little more controversial than the other. But never say no, right? Even if you can't do it. If someone wants you to, you know, going back to my Bob Hurley story, I had no idea what I was doing when it came to digitally saying hey, you want to get into eCommerce? Can you help us build this thing? Your answer should always be yes and try to figure it out. You know, you want to take those opportunities when they show up. That's when the good stuff happens when someone turns and says hey, we need help with this. Do you want to get involved? So, don't say no don't you know, take a risk. And even if you don't know how to do it, try to figure out how to solve that problem, right? That may not work in aerospace or architecture if you're building buildings, right. So, don't take that forward. But in digital, the beauty is we can always correct our mistakes or mostly correct our mistakes, right? That's what I love about digital, you can move quickly in most things and take a little more risk than you would in something like aerospace.
John Hazen 18:50
The second thing I'd say, and this, this may tick a couple of people off along the way. But, you know, I do say, when you're young and your career post-COVID, and in this kind of work from home environment, you should be in the office, you know, people use the term proximity bias as a negative thing. I don't think it's a negative thing. I think, you know, you know, my boss, Jim Conroy says the term, it's like hanging around the hoop, he plays basketball, and he goes, if you hang around the hoop, you're going to get shots, right, you're going to get some rebounds, and you're going to get some shots. And so, especially when you're younger, and I would argue all the way through, we are mostly back in the office, we are virtually 100% back in the office here at Boot Barn.
John Hazen 19:13
But I think about a young person starting their career, the first two, three years of their career in any industry, digital investment, banking, accounting, you're going to learn from, from, from just listening from the person in the cubicle across from you, suddenly, someone's going to be in a panic, because some projects going to need extra hands, you know, for whatever task, and they're going to go, do you want to give us a hand, do you want to help us out, that kind of stuff happens in person, right? I'm not going to get on teams and go, God, I need someone to help me. We all of a sudden, got to get 100 new styles up tomorrow, because we're launching XYZ, and we didn't know about it. I'm not going to turn and go through my team's directory and try and find someone, I'm going to walk out the door of my office, look around and go, hey, can you work late tonight and help me with this? That's, that's what happens. And I, I, maybe I'm old fashioned. But I still think that's what's going to continue to happen. I think that's what people's initial reaction to a mini crisis will be is to look around for people who can help nearby. And those are the people who are going to get the chances. So, if you're young, and you may not want to hear it, I think you should get yourself into an office.
Scott Silverman 20:44
(Inaudible) it seems like those two pieces of advice go together nicely. If you're around more, there's going to be more opportunities to say yes,
John Hazen 20:47
Absolutely.
Scott Silverman 20:45
To things so, all right, so we're going to make one final transition in this conversation, and that is to look forward a little bit. And you've been around a while, you've seen a lot. You have this technology background. I'm interested to hear you know, what retail technologies do you think are potential game changers? Is it IoT? Is it AI? Is it the metaverse? I cringe saying that? Yeah, so ya know, like, what do you, what do you do, what gets you excited? Like, what do you feel like? Do you think if, if retailers were to lean in a whole lot more and you know, in a particular area, there's going to be a really nice payoff?
John Hazen 22:06
(Crossover talk), we will just address the metaverse because, because we have to. It is when I was at Nike, we built products and the start of a store in Second Life. So, I went through this 15 years ago in Second Life. What puzzles me the most about Meta's metaverse is it doesn't look much better than Second Life 15 years ago, but I digress, right? I (crossover talk), I play around with this. I have to stay on top of it. Of course. So, I've been inside the Vans World, and Roblox I've been in the Forever one, Forever 21 store. I was in the Miller Bar, which was the waiting room for the Foo Fighters concert post Super Bowl in the meta, - in Meta Horizons.
John Hazen 22:37
And none of it impressed me, all of it has, you know, there were some interesting things that Vans was trying to do and I love the brand, Forever 21 was, was quite terrible. The Meta experiment with Foo Fighters was a, was a complete disaster. I won't bore you with the details, you can look it up. And I'm always sitting there going what, what is there anything interesting going on in this space, and the one that stood out to me is I walked by my son's room and he you know, we generally play as a Canadian, we play NHL 22 together and we play video games together.
John Hazen 22:56
But he was playing NBA 2K. So, he was playing basketball. But I walked by his room, and he wasn't playing basketball. He was sitting on the courtside at a street court that looked like Venice Beach. And with other people, real people watching other real people play basketball, street, Street, Streetball in this video game in NBA 2K. And they're all talking and they're cheering people on, and he doesn't know these people. And that was one of those moments where I was like, wow, this one, it looks good, right? The graphics are incredible, two, it felt like a, a, a, a world, a community where people were spending time together.
John Hazen 23:38
And the one thing it didn't have, and I think this is the biggest issue is it wasn't virtual reality, right? I think people are so hung up on VR (inaudible) and trying to make it work in VR versus work in a video game environment. You know, that was the best example of anything Meta I had seen. I'm not a big believer in it for retailers. I think there's some money to be made. I think there's some FNTs to be had, I think there's some virtual products. I mean, you know, I've got a MINECON cape still from 2016 at the last MINECON. So, there are, there are use cases. But I think for most retailers, I think it's a, it's a distraction today, but you, you got to pay attention to it and stay on top of it. If I, if I look forward to retail, I think the future for stores is still bright. I think about where Lululemon is going, I, I don't know if it's all going to be malls, right. But I think the future of stores is still very bright for many retailers, maybe not the ones that have maxed out their number of locations, because they're mall based, and they got in a B+ or in an A mall. But I do think, you know, places like BestBuy and ourselves and many other retailers are doing some making shopping in-store fun again, you know, even a Five Below I was in a Five Below for the first time a few weeks ago. And I was like they've done a really nice job. It's an enjoyable store to shop in.
John Hazen 23:55
I do think the speed at which IoT is moving is interesting, I think you think about things that used to be really expensive, whether it be security cameras, or traffic counters, or Alexa type devices and how easy it is to build those things today, as we kind of talked about already. I think the future is bright for, for people to do that either themselves or, or do it in a much more low cost way than, than we've done in the past AI again, maybe I'm getting old but you know, I always try and differentiate between AI and machine learning, Machine learning is what you can back into if you had a million people with a million spreadsheets AI you know, if you think of the, the, the old Chinese game Go. AI is where you like. I can't figure out how they got to that answer and how they knew that right.
John Hazenn 24:22
So, I don't think there's a lot of AI yet in retail. Are we, we, we generally and we test it once every quarter. Our site managers and site merchandisers usually beat out most of the AI, AI enclosed driven recommendation engines that we test, we've been neck and neck a few times. And we've even been beaten once or twice. But we're not seeing a world where machine learning based recommendation engines or AI based recommendation engines are, you know beating the crap out of my site merchandisers who do it based on intuition and, and what's selling in inventory depth and you know, people who buy this really want that. If you buy one fridge, it doesn't mean you need to buy two more fridges right, it means you probably need a stove.
John Hazen 24:54
So, in the cowboy boot world, that's kind of a funny thing, how many brown boots are you going to recommend to somebody? So, I think AI still has a ways to go, I think point of sale is ripe for disruption in, in our space. I mean, it has been a long time since there has been someone at scale, who's really changed point-of -ale, it still very much runs the way it did 20 years ago, I'm optimistic and a big fan of Shopify. So, we'll see how far they can push it, you know, and try to do what Toast and some of the other, some of the other more hospitality-based point-of-sale systems have done, right. You've seen it change dramatically in, in the restaurant business, and it just hasn't happened in retail yet. It's kind of interesting to look at the differences between the two spaces.
John Hazen 25:19
But you know, from a storage perspective, it's hard for a lot of people. People have a lot of stores and to, to, you know, we always talk about this. If you replaced every single point-of-sale system and every single store, how many more sales would you actually get? Maybe there's some days where, you know, it could speed up transactions slightly, but it's not like there's going to be a rush of customers that come in because you got a tablet-based point-of-sale system now. So, I can see why most retailers haven't invested heavily and maybe why you know, entrepreneurs haven't built a lot of that next generation point-of-sale. But I think, I think stores are the future. Still, I think eCommerce will continue to grow but at a slower rate. I think and I've ranted about this for years. I'm still not a fan of marketplaces, right? I think Amazon is one thing because they are not a retailer. They're a technology company at heart. I think Target and Walmart and Best Buy are trying to be marketplaces. I've always had a disdain for it when, when you know you can price gouged, grandma's getting price gouged for an Xbox One during the holiday season because she hasn't realized it's not really Walmart selling it. But it's a, it's somebody outside an outside third party selling it for $1,200, right. So, I've never been a big fan of marketplaces on retail sites. I don't know if that's kind of my stream of thought. I'll stop there.
Scott Silverman 29:31
All right. Awesome. That was a lot of stuff that you covered. Yeah, just like last thing, imagine that Chief Digital Officer role five years from now, you talked about, you spent about half of your time running the eCommerce business and half of your time thinking about digital in stores. Thinking about this CDO role five years from now, how do you see it evolving? Do you put it in the, in the, through the lens of, you know where that may shift? Is it no longer 50/50? Or we often, you know, kind of (inaudible) this question, and you know, are you going to be more focused on just pushing levers and dealing with technology? Are you, do you, does it shift more to being creative? Where, where do you see that role going?
John Hazen 30:19
It's funny, I always, I knew a couple of folks who were advisors and sort of mentors to me, when I was very young, who were almost, they were, they almost felt they did, they fell behind when the internet came, right. These were old, old-school technologists and the internet, and eCommerce threw them for a loop. And then they threw, it threw their career for a loop. And I was just lucky by my age when I came into technology, right? And there is a certain amount of luck there.
John Hazen 30:40
And so, I've always thought about is there going to be a thing that is going to affect me the way the internet did the original kind of IT, guys. And, and, and that's why I've stayed so much on top of NFTs and, and, and the metaverse. I mean, you know, I, I, I, you know, I'm on OpenSea, I've got my MetaMask wallet, I don't love it, but I'm trying to stay on top of it, I'm always worried there's going to be that thing that catches me by surprise. So, I'm always, always trying to stay ahead of that. I think the biggest changes are going to be on the, the demand creation side around ad spend, right, everything that's going on with, with privacy and UF IDs. And you know, Apple saying privacy first, but now they want to quadruple the size of their ad business, is a privacy except when it's them. I think that the world of PPC spend, and how that evolves is a place that will continue to take more and more of our time for sure. So, I, I, I've always spent a fair amount of time on it. I'm spending more time on it as those privacy changes happen. And I think it's going to get tougher and tougher as we go down that road. So, I think that's probably going to be one of the biggest shifts in the next five years, is what that looks like from an ad spend and a marketing perspective. And that focus is going to become larger.
Michael LeBlanc 32:09
Well, John's, it's been a fantastic conversation. I mean, it's been a wide-ranging kind of in some ways masterclass in, in digital, but also just understanding your career journey and your perspective looking ahead. I love this point about, you know, if I what, at what point in my career, could I be displaced by the next technology that wave, the three of us, I think, lived through eCommerce. It was exciting for us. But it wasn't always that exciting for the AS400 Operators who were like, you know, having to figure out some cloud-based thing here or there. But anyway, listen, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a great conversation; I really appreciate it. Go Habs. So, for the listeners, that's the Montreal Canadiens, so Go Habs. And thanks again for joining us, continued success and have a great rest of your day, (crossover talk),
John Hazen 32:51
Thank you, nice talk guys. Talk soon.
Michael LeBlanc 32:53
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
stores, eCommerce, retailers, business, barn, people, career, boot, digital, brand, biggest, metaverse, retail, Montreal, fashion, AI, Hurley, build, technology