In this episode I meet Ryan Urban, the founder of Wunderkind, and Seth Goldman, the CEO of UrbanStems. These two founders share their analysis and experience regarding the latest trends in retail marketing, customer engagement and employee empowerment.
Welcome to the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, Season 1, Episode Three , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with CommerceNext and presented by Wunderkind.
In these times, insights on modern, post-COVID ear consumer attitudes, behaviours and norms has become the new life’s work for brands and agencies alike. How can retailers find opportunities for growth in a consumer environment that is recovering from widespread disruption? What strategies and tactics can their agency partners bring to bear to get them there?
In this episode I meet Ryan Urban, the founder of Wunderkind, and Seth Goldman, the CEO of UrbanStems. These two founders share their analysis and experience regarding the latest trends in retail marketing, customer engagement and employee empowerment.
Together, they discuss they discuss their respective career paths, how finding and retaining great talent has changed and evolved, and ultimately how connecting all of these dots leads to better customer experience.
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Thanks for tuning into this episode of Conversations with CommerceNext. Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast platform where we’ll be sharing career advice and marketing strategies from eCommerce and digital marketing leaders at retailers and direct-to-consumer brands each and every episode. CommerceNext is a community, event series and conference for marketers at retail and direct-to-consumer brands. Through our online forums, interviews, webinars, summits and other in-person events, we harness the collective wisdom of our community to help marketers grow their businesses and advance their careers. Join CommerceNext events to meet other industry leaders and learn the latest ecommerce and marketing strategies. You can find upcoming events at CommerceNext dot com
Have a fantastic week everyone!
Seth Goldman
Experienced e-commerce manager with strong finance and analytical skills and a passion for consumer products and services. Industry expertise in consumer consumables, food and floral.
Seth is currently the CEO at UrbanStems, an ecommerce company disrupting the floral and gifting space. UrbanStems' mission is to send 'Send Happy' to all of its customers, and to make it easier to send a beautiful gift to friends and loved ones. As CEO, Seth has successfully installed processes and reporting to allow the business to scale significantly. He has focused on increasing margins while maintaining strong top-line growth.
Prior to UrbanStems, Seth ran the US division of HelloFresh, and helped scale that business into the leading meal kit company. HelloFresh raised nearly $300 million from its investors to disrupt the food delivery and grocery space, culminating with a successful IPO in 2017. While running the US business, Seth added facilities in NJ, TX and CA, expanding HelloFresh to a national footprint. Seth built many parts of the business from scratch, including the operations, finance and HR departments. Under his leadership, HelloFresh was able to secure a $37 million incentive package from the state of NJ to support their exponential growth.
Before joining HelloFresh, Seth was at Quidsi (acquired by Amazon), where he was on the launch team of Wag.com, a pet-focused commerce site. At Quidsi, Seth led supply chain for Wag and three other sites. Seth began his career working in management consulting and private equity. Seth holds an AB from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Stern School of Business at NYU.
Areas of expertise:
* E-commerce
* Consumer Products, with specific expertise in food
* Scaling high-growth businesses
* Operations, supply chain and logistics
* Hiring and managing high-performance teams
* Cash flow modeling and valuation analysis
* Statistical and quantitative analysis
Ryan Urban
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.
About CommerceNext
CommerceNext is a community, event series and conference for marketers at retail and direct-to-consumer brands. Through our online forums, interviews, webinars, summits and other in-person events, we harness the collective wisdom of our community to help marketers grow their businesses and advance their careers. Join CommerceNext events to meet other industry leaders and learn the latest ecommerce and marketing strategies. You can find upcoming events at https://commercenext.com/commercenext-webinars/.
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, season one, episode three. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc. And this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with CommerceNext and presented by Wunderkind.
In these times, insights on modern post COVID era consumer attitudes, behaviors and norms, has become the new life's work for brands and agencies alike. How can retailers find opportunities for growth in a consumer environment that is recovering from widespread disruption? What strategies and tactics can their agency partners bring to bear to get them there?
In this episode, I meet Ryan Urban, the Founder of Wunderkind, and Seth Goldman, CEO of UrbanStems. These two founders share their analysis and experience regarding the latest trends in retail marketing, customer engagement, and employee empowerment. Together they discuss their respective career paths, how finding and retaining great talent is changed and evolved, and ultimately, how connecting all of these dots leads to better customer experience.
Seth Goldman
So, what we want is just like Facebook promises to tailor the messaging to the right customers with the way that they tag different customer sets, we wanted that with our other channels with email.
Michael LeBlanc
Let's listen in now.
Ryan and Seth, welcome to Conversation with CommerceNext. How are you both doing? Ryan, where are you this morning? Are you, where am I finding you today?
Ryan Urban
At the top of the world, World Trade Center, 474.
Michael LeBlanc
Fantastic. And Seth, you're in New York City as well, yeah.
Seth Goldman
I am. I am at home though. Just on the second floor.
Michael LeBlanc
All right. Closer to the streets where the action is right?
Michael LeBlanc
Ryan, let's jump right in. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about your professional journey, your personal and professional journey, what you do at Wunderkind. And let's start there.
Ryan Urban
Alright, so, hey everybody, I'm Ryan, CEO and Founder at Wunderkind. And we're, we're about a decade in, and this is, this is kind of my life's work. I'm, I'm 41 now and before Wunderkind, I kind of look at that as my, my teenage years. So, I ran marketing at Bonobos and a few other eCommerce companies. I had my own eCommerce company, but really like, my body of work has been at Wunderkind over the last 10 years.
Yeah, we've been really focused on just, just making, making things a better experience for, for people, consumers. So, making, making marketing a vibe, make it a pretty cool experience. And we've accomplished a lot in the last 10 years, and I think we're gonna accomplish the next 18 months will, it'll be more than the previous ten years.
So, now it's, now it's really the fun part. Where we're really working well together. We got our leadership team working, working really well for a long time and that's the best time I've been having. So, it's, it's been, been a great ride and now you know what, watch out what happens next.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, fantastic. But you know, were you always interested in the marketing function or the sales function? Was that always your vibe? Like starting were you,
Ryan Urban
I'm a true marketer. It's, it's ridiculous. I love, I love brands. I love, I love being a consumer of brands that just make great products and services. I love like a brother, I really, really care about this stuff. And, I have the opportunity to build software and services to support new brands and, and great iconic brands is something I love. I love the science and art aspect of marketing. So, I like having, representing something as a brand and, and then you (inaudible) products and then you have to communicate that. And then there's a lot of science be, when, how you convey, convey marketing, convey advertising, and doing in a way that's kind of thoughtful forward. It's, it's there's so much, so much nuance to it, and I really like it.
Michael LeBlanc
So, fantastic. Seth, what about yourself? What's your, what's your background? What's your, what's your story? And what do you do at UrbanStems?
Seth Goldman
Yeah, so Seth Goldman, CEO of UrbanStems. We are an online flower and gifting company. We were founded seven years ago, on Valentine's Day, which is a interesting day to start a flower company.
Seth Goldman
My personal journey, kind of like Ryan, a tale of two parts of my career. First part, I was in professional services consulting private equity. When I was in investing, I started to meet some of the folks who were running the companies we were investing in. And I thought that their jobs were really interesting, really dynamic. And, I wanted to go to the other side of the table. So, I use business school as an opportunity to switch gears and got into eCommerce and fall in love with it. I've been a part of three amazing companies. First with a company called Quidsi, which was sold to Amazon. Then with a terrific company called HelloFresh, which went public and has been very successful. And now with UrbanStems. Always in products and services meant to make life a bit more convenient and easier for people.
Michael LeBlanc
Sometimes retail has been described as an accidental career. Is that the way, you mean you, you've talked about your origin story and kind of navigating, are you, do you consider yourself a retailer, or a technologist, or consumer advocate? What, what, what's kind of prime driver that's been the thread of consistency throughout your career in your life?
Seth Goldman
Yeah, I love the part of the job which is interacting with consumers. And what I love about DTC is how much feedback you can get. And that feedback really helps you make the product and service better and also keeps you humble. Because no matter how well you design, whether it's your physical product, or your digital interface, someone will come back to you and tell you how terrible you did on something. And that, that feedback, that unvarnished consumer feedback helps you get better and improve at a faster rate than I think anything else. And I, I love that. And I've always loved working with products that are tangible that you can, you can pick up and you can try to make better and it's, it's simple, but it's not easy.
Michael LeBlanc
Ryan, let's talk about Wunderkind, give us a sense of scope, what you do, you've touched on it in your, in your kind of opening remarks and your origin story. But, tell us, tell the listeners, tell the folks out there all that Wunderkind. What do you do? What a space do you occupy? Why was it that there was an need for a shop like yours and scope of work?
Ryan Urban
Yeah, we're a company of marketers that we build, we build stuff for marketers. So, I'll kind of add on to what Seth is saying, we get to be the stewards of consumers across all brands. So, and our clients, our clients are brands, but our first customers are actually their customers. So, we often times don't listen to our clients. I even represent consumers a really simple way like, hey, every brand wants to have a, have a big email list, or a text file. So, we had to like kind of create the standard, like this is how you interact with consumers on, when it's an opportunity to opt-in email. And, this is what an email program should be like. This is, so just even something simple, like, like that, it's very important to us.
Then it's like, okay, cool, we kind of we got a good system in place for, for brands, and what's, what's a proper way to do kind of offer opportunities to, to join a list and, and how you have that. Then it's like, alright, well now let's, let's make it better. So, I'm like, hey, we have really tried to scale personalization, or one-to-one marketing. Every, everyone on the consumer side really likes when they get stuff that's really for them. And it performs well for brands.
There was an issue of scale. So, like, oh, let's, let's figure out how we, how we scale that and add more to that. So, when we started, there was a lot of people would ask the cart and you maybe get an email per brand with, with the things in your cart. And that's very convenient for people.
We polled everyone, we polled a lot of our clients, just consumers in general and people like what are, what kind of messages do you like generally really enjoy receiving, or you would you like to receive? And we started building technology around that. So, things like even the items that you just browse, if the price changes on an item you looked at, if somebody looked that was out of stock, and it comes back in stock, if something you looked at now there's only a few left and you want to, want to know about that, when new arrivals come in, you'd like to see the ones that are just kind of, kind of made for you. So, it's like one of the things that people really enjoy receiving and are valuable and convenient, enjoyable. And build that and build that a scale and do it in a nice elegant way that represents brand so, so we got to, we got to do a lot of that.
Now we're really like kind of text as a, as a channel, we're really creating some, some great standards for brands of how to really treat people like, say you have a YouTube channel, you have subscribers, but oftentimes marketers will treat like their email as a list. It's like you really got to be very thoughtful and treat people, subscribers and, and understand like what's, what's, what's really, really nice for, for your subscribers to receive and creating that across the board and, and create an ecosystem there. Now I think we do a really good job of that.
And now we're evolving to really represent brands, where we at first it's really hard to focus on a brand's customers now it's, it's showing brands how to be proper brands express themselves as a brand, how to elevate the brand. So, now we're getting to that level.
And then separately, I'll answer a different question what we're doing as a people as Wunderkind, so that's I think it's equally as important.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, and, tell me a little bit I think you operate on both sides of the ocean. Right? And you have a European office. So, how many people? How many people are you? What's your kind of scope and scale? Just kind of that,
Ryan Urban
Yeah, we're close to 600 Wunderkinds at this point,
Michael LeBlanc
Wow,
Ryan Urban
We have a tremendous office in New York. I think it's the best place in the world where we are now. It's a really special place to do good work. We have a great, great place in Indianapolis and really representing the, that city. Everything to me, outside New York, the Midwest or the South, so people will correct me. But that's, that's also, that's terrific and in London we'll probably approaching 100 people. I just came back from there last week their, their energy over there is really good. They're, they've, they're, they're coming back fast so, that, they're pretty excited.
So, not as a company it's really, really important to expand your, your talent pools and that sort of every company will tell you it's like getting great talent and developing talent is, is everything. I just having a great presence in a different city and different so the Indianapolis one is really important. I got to kinda went to California but that's got some people, in New York like we want, we want people like, have a different type of culture.
Michael LeBlanc
That's interesting.
Ryan Urban
We have a few different ones.
Michael LeBlanc
Seth, let's talk about UrbanStem. So, I think 48 states, 21 plus cities tell us all about the origin story. You got to deal with Vogue. It's very, I mean, I, we were talking off mic, your site is, is wonderful. It's a beautiful site. But just talk us, talk to us, and the people about UrbanStems, where you operate, how you go to market, what's the business model?
Seth Goldman
So, UrbanStems was founded on the principle that gifting, especially floral and living gifts, or not meeting up to the experience and expectations of consumers. And, we really wanted to create something different, something special. And we started in Washington, DC, quickly expanded to New York. And we have these really great cities where you can get a delivery, you can order up til, I think 3 or 4pm, get a delivery same day, multiple delivery slots each day. And we want to bring that to as many cities as possible.
In addition to that, around three years ago, we partnered with Vogue, that's been a tremendous partnership. We launched our nationwide next day service. So, anywhere outside of Alaska and Hawaii, and we're sorry, we can't get there. You have the ability to have any of our beautiful bouquets and plants shipped next day to your door. That was a landmark in our company's growth and acceleration. And it has allowed us to grab a lot of data so we can figure out which cities we want to jump into next. And it's that combination of next day everywhere and same days specific targeted cities. That's how we're thinking about growing the organization.
Michael LeBlanc
And from a product perspective. I mean, it's, it's not like it wasn't a category that, that was it was a fair, somewhat crowded category, right? There's lots of florist’s services, but you found yourself this niche of being that same day. What did Vogue find interesting about your business? Why did that partnership come together,
Seth Goldman
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
From, from their perspective?
Seth Goldman
Yeah, so,
Michael LeBlanc
And you're,
Seth Goldman
In terms of number of participants or competitors, you have 1000s of local florists each servicing a very small geographic area. You then have a number of large players like FTD, and 1-800, who are aggregators of those services. They mostly collect orders and push those to the local florists. Local florists, are actually declining in number, although some consolidation is happening.
What Vogue saw in us was a brand that was really pushing the envelope on design, and innovation of the product itself. By centralizing ownership of the product and inventory, we're able to come up with designs that were much more interesting, unique and exciting. And offer those nationwide. One of the challenges of having a design that's offered by 3 or 4000, individual florists is everyone's kind of going to have their own take on it. And so, it's, it's impossible to promise that, that same bouquet will look well, that bouquet will look the same in Maine, and Memphis and Minnesota, and California.
Michael LeBlanc
We'll be right back with our interview with Seth Goldman and Ryan Urban, right after this message.
Wunderkind is a leading performance marketing engine that delivers tailored experiences at scale. Digital businesses use Wunderkind to remember who users are better than ever before, allowing them to deliver high performing one-to-one messages on websites, through emails and texts, and in ads at a scale that's not otherwise possible.
Wunderkind drives $1.2 billion annually in directly attributable revenue for top eCommerce brands like Uniqlo, Sonos and HelloFresh. Often ranking as a top three revenue channel in their own analytics. Learn more at wunderkind.co that's wunderkind.co.
Ryan Urban
And I don't know if you've ever seen UrbanStem that the packaging, the experience is so nice. And flowers are super underrated. Just even in my house, I have them, I have them on my floor in the entrance. I have them in my kitchen, in my room, on my bedroom floor. I get it, probably,
Michael LeBlanc
On your shirt and pants?
Ryan Urban
On my shirt and pants. Yeah, yeah, its, I've never been anyone, or when they have flowers around is not, not, not a little happier.
Michael LeBlanc
Let's, let's merge these two thoughts here. These two streams. Seth, what were you looking to solve when you engaged with Wunderkind and Ryan? What brought you two together? And what problem or opportunity were you looking for that, that they, that they solved for you or brought to the table?
Seth Goldman
Yeah, so the generic problem that we and all companies are looking to solve, I think is diversification of your marketing. So, having more channels through which you can advertise to customers, talk to them about your brand. The specific problem is personalization and customization. So, what we want is, just like Facebook promises to tailor the messaging to the right customers with the way that they tag different customer sets, we wanted that with our other channels with email, with etc. And they were able to provide us that and that's really cool.
So, if you looked at a specific product, when we, when you don't buy we want to be able to send you that product tell you a little bit more about it in an email. If you live on the west coast and we want to push specific inventory to you, or specific products, versus to the west coast, they were really able to do that. And that customization personalization is important for both because we are a perishable product, and because we're very highly giftable product. So, those were the two specific areas where, where we really wanted to partner with Ryan and team and where they've come up very, very highly.
Ryan Urban
Oftentimes, I always get asked the question, and venture capitalist questions, they might like, 'Hey, what are you trying to solve? Or what problem you're trying to solve? I see very, extremely rarely, are the best companies world solving problems. It's usually like, they have a vision for something important, they're building something, or they're like really maximizing opportunity.
Solving a problem, it's like, once you solve the problem, you can solve the problem in a week, maybe six months, like, and then it's like, hey, do we pack up and go home, like not have a company anymore? So, it's a, almost every iconic company is, is really a kind of maximize opportunity, or you're having a vision for something, to building something special, or taking something that exists and really making a trade, or building something new, taking some zero to one. So, that's, that's what we're, we're, we're looking to do.
It's a, you know the ads on Facebook and Instagram are very good. I enjoy the advertising experience. I really enjoy the advertising experience in magazines, Vogue, like that is part of the content, right? You pick up, but like if you go to Vogue's website, or you go to weather.com or CNN, the ads are not really content, it's not a vibe, and it should be. And, we want to make sure that happens that we represent publishers, and we represent eCommerce companies.
So, we want to not only have ads that are for people like that, but it should be it a vibe. You should be able to go to some sites to really experience as part of the content and, and consumers should really have a, very few brands even look like iconic brands like Nike and Apple, very few of those iconic brands have relationships with even a percent of their customers. And that's a huge opportunity. So, I don't think it's a problem. Does Nike have a problem? Like Oh, they don't have, like Nike's doing pretty good. But I think we would like to have,
Michael LeBlanc
Right,
Ryan Urban
A much closer connection with some of their best customers or most of the customers. So, we're looking to build some stuff like that our ecosystems.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, let me follow that thread for a little bit. When we talk about the future, this isn't a history lesson, we're not going to talk about the COVID era, so to speak. But undeniably, and you work on both sides of the ocean, you've got a front row seat to great clients, like UrbanStems, your understanding customers, what if anything, in your mind has changed or accelerated thanks to the COVID era of this, this 18 months to 24 months that, that the world has gone through. Are you looking at different perspectives? Are you thinking the customers are acting or behaving different? Give me your, give me your perspective on that.
Ryan Urban
It, definitely pulled things I'd say five years forward. The main thing is, people now are comfortable purchasing consumables, groceries, regular day to day items in house, clothing. Most people didn't really purchase a lot of clothing online, furniture. I think people like taking their homes and design their homes more seriously. I think generally people started dressing better, including, including men, but, I think more comfortable doing different things that they haven't done before.
And you know what, I think you're gonna have a commerce, on in store commerce, retail really explode this year. And it's a real focus on experience. That's how you win. It's like, that's how if you create a really good experience and, and not it's not about like doing site wide discounts or sales, it's like, hey, you have great products, great experience. I've seen a rapid changes to supply chain. So, companies were take them six months to get products, some could do it in a month, a week. So major changes to supply chain.
Major changes in like, how you market a lot more collaboration of the brands on collaborations with, you see influencers, it's a lot more product collaboration. So, products are getting better, which is when you sell a lot of things online, you can have a higher return rate. So, it's I see products and services really improving. I see consumers really purchasing way more and more different things. I think consumerism it's going to can really, really rapidly increase I like when people buy stuff people like when they buy stuff too. So, such and such good quality, a good price in the past.
Michael LeBlanc
Do you think customer expectations, Ryan, have gone up down or sideways in,
Ryan Urban
I think now people want sometimes want to get stuff in an hour. Your expectation for food delivery. That's been a big change. To like now every brand you can order food. Like in New York City, we've been ordering food at 3am all the time. And now a lot of brands available. I think expectations for how that arrives, the quality of x, quality food though that's kind of a lot too.
I also think that's a that's tremendous for restaurants having that opportunity now. And in New York, that you have all the places open up outside. That's cool, too. It's very more opportunities for for restaurants as of locally as well. That's, that's been one of my favorite things New York's best I've ever seen now.
Michael LeBlanc
Interesting, Seth, you know, I was speaking to a global strategist Roger Martin, and he described, I was asking him about basically the same question and he said, you know, you probably should think of consumer behaviors as a decaying asset on your balance sheet. In other words, what they did before isn't necessarily what they're going to do post COVID. And we really didn't see a circuit breaker on consumer behavior like this for a while, but again, not a history lesson. But as we look forward to what looks like a great recovery around the world over time, how are you seeing the retail environment? And how are you seeing gearing up for the opportunities? And how are you thinking about the future for UrbanStems?
Seth Goldman
I will build on what Ryan said, I think, really, we think about it through the lens of what we do. And there are a couple of big questions that we can get the answer those right can help us accelerate our business. The first is what Ryan said about that same day delivery, that became less important during the peak of the pandemic, people working from home, they were home to receive packages. They saw things from Amazon taking, going from same day or next day to 2, 3, 4 or 5 days, certain things being deprioritized during the pandemic. I think, as Amazon shifts back to speed, it'll be interesting to see how the consumer adapts and becomes more demanding, again of that, that is important for us to recognize as we think about building those same day operations, how much does it matter that your flowers can get there in three hours versus tomorrow? or the next day after that?
Michael LeBlanc
It could have gone the other way, right, Seth? I mean, it could have been consumers, saying, 'Well, I didn't really need it that fast after all, like I my life continued, and I didn't need it that fast'. But you know what I mean?
Seth Goldman
A lot of things you don't, right, but Amazon gives it to you at that option value, you'll take it especially since they've eliminated so much of the cost in there.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah,
Seth Goldman
And you can like I always thought, could I start up a company that shipped things directly from China but you have to wait six or eight weeks. There's just not a lot of enough costs to strip out of the system that the consumer is willing to take that trade off,
Ryan Urban
I think it seems a less price sensitive now. And the price of Amazon or not, Amazon's not the cheapest price for was anything more. So, I think quality, quality is getting, is getting way more important. Which, which it should.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, I've heard that before that. I've talked to other retailers who see and this was a trend pre COVID, but that may have been accelerated as well as is kind of a drive to quality versus a drive to mass, right. That kind of differentiation and retail between, you know value in and, and luxury and experience and efficiency, right? Those kinds of things.
Ryan Urban
Look at this call, like that podcast have turned where there's a video element to it, and it can be put on YouTube. It's awesome. It's way more contexts it's way more meaningful that we're, as a business, we can, all of are calls are blind, so regular calls now their video calls. So, now we're have that in addition to being in person. It's gonna be way more human.
So, I really like this brand now, like UrbanStems, could, some of their best customers, especially the business customers, they can have video conversation now when it's more meaningful, I do WhatsApp video voice memos for people. I did them a little bit pre-pandemic. Now, I do them very regularly. So, it's a, it's like you play chess you leave someone a video voice memo, they email me back. It's, it's really nice, you feel connected to everybody. So, I think this is, being remote forced us to come ways to be more connected. And then, we're, as you kind of joined together in person, you keep all those things we learned from being remote.
Seth Goldman
Yeah. And I would build on that, I'd say that the remote concept is the second big game changer. We are hiring people that are not in our two core cities, we are allowing people to work remotely, likely indefinitely to some degree. We are, we're all facing that. And I think that those are the things that require services like UrbanStems. Whether you're buying flowers, or another gift on someone's first day, getting something from an,
Michael LeBlanc
Oh interesting,
Seth Goldman
Shipped out there in person can make a big impact. When you are, I think there gonna be a lot of companies that are no longer flying to go pitch their, their services. So, I have no idea., Ryan, I don't want to put you on the spot here, but, I could see certain sales calls, going permanently to Zoom as opposed to someone getting on a plane and flying to meet the customer. Maybe for you guys, you're, you're not there yet. But I could certainly see especially,
Ryan Urban
Oh, there's a lot, the way you can, you can get a lot done. And then in addition, like hey, then maybe a kickoff you do, you come in person, you meet them, you know, you have dinner, you get to really know them deeper, but maybe you don't. The feel like before maybe the salesman would be in person, the kick off five things. So, I actually had to do the kickoff in person. So, I think that, that, that changed that up, you're talking about like kind of working, working, kind of adjustments be remote.
Like on Friday afternoon, no one wants to take Zoom calls. So, we want to, having a policy that we want to kind of changing our operating hour guidelines from a lot of tech companies 10 to 6, some are 9 to 5, we went to ending Friday at 1, which means the internal meetings. And we add an extra hour Monday to Thursday. So, Monday to Thursdays is 9 to 6 as operating hours, and Fridays are 10 to 1.
What we're looking to do is, there's three, kind of key areas for us. One, is one, is Wunderkind people. So, it's like one metric will be what percentage of Wunderkind's referred by the Wunderkinds. Two is the value of our products which we like to sell revenue growth. So, how much revenue is our product driving for our clients. And then three is our clients, our client growth rate. So, we want to see our clients growing and growing with us. So, looking at our client growth, looking at the revenue we're driving and looking at kind of Wunderkind referrals, when we hit those three metrics, we are going to eliminate Friday and we're just going to be Monday to Thursday, 9 to 6 and then,
Michael LeBlanc
Interesting,
Ryan Urban
Just like some people want to work at 7 or 8am, those are optional times, after six optional, Friday will also be an optional day when we earned that. So, and I think once, once we do that a whole bunch of other companies will do that. I would say in two years, a good percentage, probably north of north of 10% of technology companies will be Monday to Thursday.
Michael LeBlanc
I mean, what you're both talking about is more cultural than it is technological, right. And, and Seth, it feels like a lot of retailers would hesitate to hire role, senior roles remotely, but yet it opens up a vast talent pool is, is, is that evolved? Is your thinking on that evolved over the past 18 months? Or were you always kind of oriented to finding the best people wherever and however, you could find?
Seth Goldman
I think it's absolutely evolved and evolving. We don't really know the answer yet. And I think we're trying to still be a little slow in not making decisions that are harder to reverse. But, I think the reality is, we want to get the best talent, we want to give them the best experience, though. And it's that trade off. What I think it did do is force us to revisit the goal of an office. And we came to a conclusion that you know, used to be everyone has had an office 18 months ago, that was it.
Michael LeBlanc
And that's where you went, that's where you went. Yeah, yeah,
Seth Goldman
Yeah. And to some degree, I think tech companies are a little bit ahead of the curve, whether it was outsourced or just people that they hired around the world, because a lot of those roles were able to be highly successful. But, now we're sort of saying, Well, what was the goal, the office? And we came to a conclusion, it's about a few things.
First of all, it's pure social interactions, people going out for dinner, drinks, after work, getting to know each other on a personal level friendships. If you think about younger generation, work is so important to them, it's where you spend a ton of your time, a lot is asked of you at work. So, you're creating bonds of friendship at work. And that's very important to people.
The second is what I call that sort of work social, where you don't want to have just a call where you get on the phone, someone says I need these three things from you, and you get off. So, building those non transactional work.
Ryan Urban
Yeah, that's it's a good point. That sounds good.
Seth Goldman
And then the third one is this sort of creative brainstorming element, where you want to get a group of people in a room either from the same team or cross functionally, and you're just gonna have better ideas come from it. And that's, that's certainly when I talked to my advisors and investors who are from an older generation, what they're saying is the biggest value that they think we're missing by not being in the office, is that collaborative ideation.
Then the question comes up, if those are your three goals of the office, one I think is how do you measure that? I think that's a little harder to, how do you accomplish that? Is it going back to the traditional office? Is it having an office that's set up all for collaborative work? Is it renting out space? is it doing off site activities? So, I think we're still in the process of figuring that out. But we're trying to solve for those goals, rather than just going back to the old status quo?
Michael LeBlanc
You know, it's a great point. And what I hear from a lot of retailers is they say, well, let's not take the old way of working and force it into the new reality. Maybe it's more offsites. Maybe it's collaborative. But you know, work between teams is, it's hard, teams seem to be cohesive. But team to team is struggling a little bit, you know, beyond your exact close team.
Ryan, I want to get, I want to, last couple of questions, I wanted to touch back on something about your career path, because on this podcast, we'd like to talk about the people in their careers. You went from one side of the table to the other side of the table, right? You weren't Bonobos, you, you went from agency to client side, client side to agency side. What perspective is that given you and, and is that advice that you would say everyone should do, at least in their career, they should be on both sides to kind of walk and,
Ryan Urban
I think there's, there's, there's things that, that people want to do sometimes like, say, on a commerce side, I don't call it eCommerce I call it commerce. As I think in person, the retail will be more and more important ever. I think some people like they want to work for a brand, and be a part of a brand, and be a component in the hive there. Some people want to represent a brand that's more like a head of marketing, a CMO and a CMO really should be a brand for 10 years, honestly. It's like you're gonna represent a brand, you're going to really represent it. Some people want to start a brand. So that's,
Michael LeBlanc
A lot longer than longer than the average, the average CMO tenure right.
Ryan Urban
We're gonna fix that, that's gonna evolve. And then some people want to support a lot of brands. And then some people only want to be really ambitious, has a vision and, and do some things that ecosystem scale. So, I think it's, if you want to do any of those things, you should work at a brand. And you should try to represent a brand and get a feel for that, understand how it works on the inside. I mean from like product and service, supply chain marketing, advertising, you should really understand all those things. That's really important. That's your university. You're not, I'm not an advocate of going to actual University. If you want to become a marketer, I would go at 18, go, go be a marketer. Don't take marketing in school, go, go work at a brand or two, and go, go explore that. That's, that's what I do, I'd recommend without a doubt.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, let me follow that thread for a second. And, are you, you know, whether it's college or university, there's a lot of other organizations that are certifying roles. And is that something you're open to when you hire at Wunderkind, you're not looking for,
Ryan Urban
Anyone I'm saying who's dropped out of college and started working has a serious advantage over anyone's going to university. If you are going to become a lawyer or doctor, that’s obviously you're gonna go to school for that. Accountant, those are things that you're going to do, that if you want to become a, like a software engineer, you definitely should not go to school for that. And you're not, that's not going to be appropriate thing.
Ryan Urban
There's many (inaudible) academies that are also amazing. They what they learned in three months will dwarf what someone learned five years in school. But generally, it's people who have been programming since they were Middle School, doing stuff, and then working for companies and honing their skills. Learning Skills is the important thing.
So, anywhere where your learning skills are high skills, also, every single person in society is capable of high skills. And I know, my company and any other company that's doing well, will hire basically infinite high skill people. So, a lot of, a lot of people, including (inaudible) are surprisingly worried about automation take away jobs. There's infinite high skills jobs, and everyone's capable of learning how skills and people can learn high skills in six months and really hone them.
So, looking forward to kind of high school and things evolving to really teach high skills in different areas. Even sales as a, is a high skill. This development will always be a high skill. I think there'll be more employees in retail stores than ever once they have better technology. Once you have the technology of what someone's really browsing online with looking for. You can what, and you can have technology and power, kind of more human stuff and recreation, you're gonna see way more people in store working there. So, it's, I look forward to the high skills training.
Michael LeBlanc
So interesting. Well, listen, if it's so fascinating speaking with both of you last kind of question, Seth, where can folks go to learn more about UrbanStems and experience, it's urbanstems.com, I believe? and where can,
Seth Goldman
That's correct,
Michael LeBlanc
They learn, get in touch learn more about you? You're on LinkedIn.
Seth Goldman
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I don't know my exact URL, but Seth Goldman, UrbanStems, I think will get you pretty close. And,
Michael LeBlanc
Great,
Seth Goldman
And urbanstems.com is our URL, and we'd be happy to have you send me a message and we'll get you something special.
Michael LeBlanc
Fantastic,
Ryan Urban
The product's tremendous. Everyone, please go to wunderkind.co, we have a lot of really amazing open roles in our offices. So, we're really, really hired for everything if, if you and you know, some talented people, that's a good place, a good place to be from checkout. So,
Michael LeBlanc
Well, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us on a Conversation with CommerceNext. Great discussion. I look forward to to hearing more from both of you. I wish you both continued success and once again, thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Seth Goldman
Yeah, you too Ryan. Thank you so much.
Michael LeBlanc
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Conversations with CommerceNext. Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast platform, where we'll be sharing career advice and marketing strategies from eCommerce and digital marketing leaders, have retailers and direct to consumer brands, each and every episode.
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Have a fantastic week everyone.
If you're enjoying this interview, you may want to join us for CommerceNext IRL on September 28, 29th, at the New York Hilton Midtown. Some of the speakers you'll be seeing including Noam Paransky, Chief Digital Officer Tapestry, Ekta Chopra, Chief Digital Officer at E.L.F Beauty, Matt Gehring, GM of eCommerce at Everlane, Alex Waldman, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Universal Standard, Jennifer Patrick, Global Branding and Packaging Director at Patagonia and many more. CommerceNext IRL will cover themes such as the resurgence of brick and mortar retail and its impact on eCommerce and how to prepare for a cookieless future. We can't wait to get the CommerceNext community together in person and hope you'll join us. Learn more and register now at commercenext.com.