028 | Eric Erway | Lessons from Magento: product, shipping, and innovation

Welcome to Commerce Famous, the biweekly podcast all about ecommerce and retail. In each episode, your host Ben Marks cuts through the clutter and takes you straight to the stories and experiences of those who shaped digital commerce as we know it today. While their names and faces might not be recognized on the street, each of Ben's guests are famous for commerce or commerce famous. Without further ado, your host, Ben Marks. Hey, everyone.

Welcome to Commerce Famous. I'm your host, Ben Marks. And with me today is a, a dear, former colleague, and still, industry colleague as is often the case, my friend Eric Erway with whom I spent some time in the trenches, at a, at an ecommerce platform company, like, just before its acquisition, by a a large company whose name rhymes with Fladobi. Eric Herway, welcome to Commerce Famous. How are you, my friend?

Good, Ben. It's so good to see you and, you know, good to hear from you. So thank you so much for having me on. Yeah. Yeah.

We've you know, we spend a lot of time together, and so, so looking forward to, to talk a little bit more today and and seeing how how how your world is going as well. Yeah. It's been, what, many, many times, many continents. You know, it was, I think in our industry, it's always great to be out with your ecosystem, whether it's an event that you're creating or not. And, you know, well, I actually wanted to open up because you you've got a long history, in, you know, in and around this industry.

But before your time in in product at Magento, I know you were at, you were at Dell, and before that, you were at AOL. For those of you, who maybe have a little bit of of of salt in your peppery hair, that is, yeah, that's that's going way back. But I wanted to bring up something that I was actually just telling the story yesterday, and it it it I realized I tell the story regularly, talking about, the importance of connecting with an audience. And, I remembered you. Like, one of my I think my my my keystone memory for you is is seeing you on stage at at Magento live in Australia.

And I wanna say this is, like, '20 maybe 2015 or something or '20 mid twenty tens. Mhmm. And you were on you were on a small stage in a smaller room, kicking off what was gonna become a really important component of the event space, which was the merchant to merchant roundtable. And so you were on stage. You were kicking off, like, topics, sort of framing the general discussion.

And what we had was we had, you know, we had these big, you know, roundtables, conference roundtables, chockablock with merchants, of all varying sizes and backgrounds, you know, and then Everytable also had a person from the company there, you know, to to help with the conversation, but ideally just to listen and take notes. And, oh my goodness. This this, to this day, is is still one of the best initiatives I think I've ever come across from a product company because, you know, very quickly you realize that that it's weird when a whole bunch of strangers sit down at a table and then are asked to discuss something without really any, like, significant introduction. But, man, once we introduce people, like, well, I have problems. You know, we can't we don't our emails aren't going through.

So we think there's a problem with the platform settings, and then someone else will try, oh, no. No. No. We solved that problem. And then once that happens, the whole table just opens up and every topic was on it.

How did you know, were you involved with the conception of that? Did you know, you certainly were involved with the execution, and I'm curious for for these kind of events where you put, merchants with each other. You know, what kind of benefit do you see? Yeah. No.

That's I I I I love those times as well. I I've I've made reference, to those activities a couple times in the past, because, you know, reality is you're you're creating micro communities. You're creating groups that have really become powerful and in some cases, probably have more in common than, you know, more in common than they thought Yeah. At first. Right?

And so, you know, there was high demand for those in each and every events, the small events, the larger events. I can't take credit for the conception of those. Definitely actively participated in them, and I think it really countered some of the things we're doing on the product design side. And so we we had the merchant of merchant sessions, and we also had the design thinking workshops. Right?

And so we're, you know and that included merchants, partners, and developers. And we still had the same spirit of of empathy. So have the spirit of, of ideation, testing ideas, and really that group think exercise. And I think, in the end, I think people were always really impressed and surprised, at the end of that hour, two hours, or what have you on on on what they came out with. That they were very, very popular.

There was some sort of epiphany, handful of things they can follow-up on, a new friend, a new colleague, and that was the community. Right? And so I think it it you know, you know, we we kinda say this casually, but, you know, we started to realize very quickly that the community is the product. Right? And and and so so much of what we did in the product itself was a byproduct of what we gave away, which was the process and things like that, especially for merchants and partners that don't have those resources themselves.

But it's just the act of doing. Right? Anybody can get together, but you've you've created merchant to merchant tables. You've created materials. You've created workshops.

You've done these things. Yeah. You facilitate those, but, like, that that's really where the magic happens. So, yeah, I I I've referenced those a couple times in the past as some of the best moments, for sure. Commerce famous is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open source ecommerce platform for mid market and lower enterprise merchants.

More than 50,000 clients already processed over $25,000,000,000 in annual GMV through Shopware. Find out more about Shopware and the best value in ecommerce at shopware.com. Yeah. It it, again, you know, when you're when you're building when you're building for this broad, you know, audience, you don't have a a specific niche that you're just tweaking and optimizing, like, these just atomic or really hypergranular things. You really have to build that kind of connective tissue, that that puts you, you know, puts you in the product organization or even if you even underneath go to engineering that much closer to your actual audience.

And and the insights that come out of these moments are are great. Now your experience goes you know, so, again, you spent time at at at AOL. You know, now I think it's just strictly a media property. And then and then you Yeah. You know, around, the mid two thousands, you went, you found your way into Dell.

And and, you know, at Dell, you were, you were involved with the their web front end. And I remember, I mean, this was this was a period of time, you know, I think the February, I was you know, I actually I had a Dell. I was I was, like, one of the five people that bought a Rambus based Ah, nice. Yeah. No.

Love that. Yeah. I mean, it was like, oh, man. This is gonna be the future. No.

It it definitely was not the future. It was the future of me paying way too much for RAM, modules. Yeah. That was that was pain that was a painful lesson. Yeah.

Almost as painful as We all we all learned. Yeah. We all learned. Well, almost as painful as not buying NVIDIA, you know, a year ago. Mhmm.

No kidding. But what was you know? So if you look at at the at what Dell was doing, I mean, this is a complex interface with, you know, kitted products, lots of options and configurations, and, and it'll be and, really, you know, just a lot of information to present to various buyer personas. Right? Because you have some people, I'm sure, who just come in and they're like, I know exactly the specs I want.

And then you have other people going, I have no idea what I want. How what was that like, you know, as Dell came along? What was that like trying to, you're trying to to understand and then and then deliver against such a a broad set of requirements? I mean, it's it's it's almost as broad as trying to build an ecommerce platform for all sorts of people. No.

For sure. I I love this course. I haven't you know, it it's it's been a been a cup of coffee since I've kind of thought about the days days of those, but there's there's a lot of parallels, honestly, that's happened between those and even back at the AOL days where, you know, in the case of Dell, we end up you know, we had a design team, we had a product team, some of which actually went went over to that same platform we were just talking about, worked at, in the past. But it comes down to research. It comes down to empathy, talking to customers.

At one point in the earlier days of Dell, we said, hey. We need a user research facility. This is before Zoom, things like that. And so we said, what about that team room over there? What about those two teams over there?

And we created a research lab with a one way mirror between two team rooms that didn't exist for that. And so, it was pretty sophisticated, I would say at the time, and we spent a lot of time talking to customers. And Dell, to his credit, had a lot of data Yeah. Behind that. But in those earlier days, that data continued to support, you know, where you would have millions and millions of configurations for, let's say, your favorite laptop.

You know? It only really represented about 10% of anything that was yet unique, and so we had to spend more and more time making sure that people felt like they had the customization, what we call the configurator, back then. But Yeah. Really, making sure that it was simple enough so that we could fulfill that because, of course, custom, you know, custom, systems are you know, take time and cost money. Yep.

There's There's a lot of complexity in doing so. So there was constantly moving at both sides, but I think probably about the probably the biggest thing I worked on there was the I I think towards the end there was, was something we end up patenting, that involved, natural language search for even people talked about that and basically taking cyst symptoms, that people saw. So this is, like, in the support side. So you have a technical issue, seeing a blue screen of death. Yep.

And people didn't know what was happening. They said, I just have a blue screen of death. I don't know what to do from that, but it was a system symptom based approach that then allowed you to go through different channels of, like, talk to somebody at Dell or take a look at a knowledge base article or double check and see if they're in a warranty and start to look at the the decisioning and the trees, beyond that in a way that was almost like an app. And it was it was a bit of a bit ahead of its time, in many ways, but I was really excited about that. And there were some commerce applications to that, and we, a lot of research.

We flew around the world because Stells a global company, validated that in in, you know, places in Asia and, Europe and others, to make sure we had the right right approach for that. But, yeah, learned a lot, but there's a lot of parallels because it always comes back to always comes back to making sure that you're targeting customers. And even in then, they were also thinking about b to b and b to c. Yeah. And that was very, very, like, very apparent.

And this is gosh. Well, actually, it is I'm glad you said that. I'd completely forgotten about, you know, in o five. I was, you know, basically on round two of a, you know, of a consumer auto racing startup. And I remember having to, like, buy I was I had much more responsibility, you know, a couple years after the first iteration failed.

And so I was responsible for, you know, finding hardware. And then I remember, actually, I think, you know, there was a different experience if you were going if you're going after equipment from a a business buyer perspective rather than a consumer buyer perspective. No idea what that looks like. I mean, Dell always a little bit ahead of its time. I just actually reset I I just pulled this up.

I don't know if you've seen this. I'm gonna share this with you, actually. Let's see. This does nothing for anyone on podcast. What I'm doing is, there is a, there is a tweet from Michael Dell.

So just Michael Dell is his handle on on Twitter. I refuse to call it x. March 03/17/2018, and you can probably find it out there. But I don't know if you can see this, Eric. It is it is the tweet says the first financial statement for Dow.

The one I used to convince my parents that it was okay for me to not go back to college. And, I mean, if you look at it Yeah. I mean, two things stand out, like, right away. You know, one, this is 1984. You know?

So this thing is, like, is is typed out, like, for real typed out. A lot of the comments on there help qualify because I don't really I'm not I'm not the kind of person who is looking at at balance sheets, closely. A lot of people say like, wow. This is really well organized, you know, all the the the various line items and everything. But you see okay.

So, you know, for the for that first first quarter this this first quarter report, you know, sales of 900,000. Again, this is 84. You know, basically and and and the long and short of it, total operating expenses, 63,000. Earnings from operations, a $134,000, you know, in a quarter, four kid in college. In the in the eighties, that's a lot more money then than it is now.

Yeah. I mean, that's that's probably you know, you take a 134. This is probably a multiple there. What was probably, 0.25 where is it? Point $0.2.0.25.

Yeah. I mean, that's that's that's, that's substantial. It is. Wow. Yeah.

About 300. Yeah. So it's it's a good track. $303,100 k in today's dollars, you know, for a college kid. So that was a seems like a good incubator for someone growing up in a product discipline.

And you were at Dell for, you were at Dell for, what, 2006 to '2 it's, like, seven years. Wow. Eight years. Seven eight years. Yeah.

Wow. Yep. Now, eventually, you find your way over into the the wonderful, wonderful world of, the ecommerce platform side. How did that how did that come around? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, can't take full credit for that. And I think, you know, there were a couple of colleagues that I work with at Dell that started seeing this eco ecosystem. And at the same time, Dell was looking, you know, for looking to move to an ecommerce platform themselves. And so it was a bit of a bit bit of fate.

Right? Because, you know, we ended up not going with said platform because there was a bespoke system that just had so much you know, it it had to be custom at the time Yeah. Did all the analysis, etcetera. But in that process, kind of discovered something really, really special, with this other platform. And so a couple of us actually went over, probably six or so, both in the product and the design team, at that time.

And and, you know, it just, you know, conversation. I still remember it during Christmas. Hey. Come on come on over. I think you're gonna like this over here.

If you're ready for an adventure, let's go. And that was, gosh, that was twenty twenty fifth Twenty fifteen. Yeah. Or so. And, January 2015, here we go.

And, and so that was, yeah, I I fell in love with it from the very first time, both in what we did and how we did it. We're right in the verge of of of a major release, from that one, but it's back to the same fundamentals we did at Dell, much of which are the same people, things we did at AOL, which brought the, you know, brought the the customer, really, the user, front and center. And what seems very obvious is often the the the parts that get skipped. It's the same thing, like, if you ever watch someone else use a consumer product. Yeah.

The the the telltale example is, like, when you see someone try to use a a a Subway trying to get a card, use money, and there's, like, seven post its over there. You realize those seven post its are a sign of a a really bad experience problem. It's a bad product going on right there. And so you're just watching that. You don't work for the company.

You just wanna be able to share that with somebody who can make change for that. So when you're at a product company, when you're at this platform, you start to see these opportunities, and you're trying to create those post its notes. Right? You're trying to uncover those. And then working tightly with the product teams, a lot of which have moved on to some really great things.

Beyond that, you work on fixing those. Like, it's one thing about saying that we actually, you know, making making small changes and then starting to work towards something much larger for that. And so, yeah, it's it's started off with, I think, a lot a lot of what we learned in a kind of a big company. And, you know, to their credit, Dell Dell really had their .com division was kind of a small smaller outfit inside the larger company, which which I'd already liked, but then moving into there's a lot to kinda leverage and learn from that in terms of the fundamentals, how we did things into a community that's much larger, I think a lot more intimate, a lot more close, and and a lot more depth of history than I I'd I'd experienced before. I've I've never seen anybody with a Dell tattoo before, but Magento Gento tattoos were And and other places, there was that was I was like, wow.

This is this is real. This is getting real, for this. This must be something. Yeah. The the the cultural touchstone for Dell was like the the dude you're getting at Dell kid.

Yep. You know? I actually, but I wanted to underscore what you were talking about. The I love the idea of, like, the the IRL heat map, lab that you all had because this was, you know, this was before, gosh. What's the the Hotjar?

Wait. What are the what are the heat mapping applications? Digital Hotjar is a good one. We use that, yeah, we use that at Shipper right now, so we love it. And I wanna get to, of course, the the the salient feature of your career, at, with with Shipper HQ.

But, you know, you you know, so I I've and I've forgotten about your your, you know, your experience coming into the the Magento world at the time. You know, very mature ecosystem, you know, kind of, you know, right right around that, divestiture from, or separation from eBay into private equity, and you were coming in in 2015, the year of the infamous Magento two release, which, you know, you had the benefit of not being responsible for that, for that soft baked. Well, a little bit. Little bit, but not yeah. Soft but not as good as it goes.

But, you know, but in the end, you know, we had to had to had to work through, and then work in, you know, work after the transition to the acquisition by Adobe. And then and then from there, you, you you went over to, cart.com, which I think, you know, we and we had a we had a great sales leader that went from Magento over to cart, Gary Spector. He's kind of left the ecommerce world, but he's he's totally kicking ass at Servpro as their CEO. I mean, and anyone that's met the guy, like, this is this is someone I think if you can if you can find a way to work for him, you just do, because he is he is that much of a leader, and he demands a lot of his team. But I think it it pales in in comparison to what he demands from himself.

And I think that's just a great way Yep. To lead. What was what was your time? You know, you and I kinda ran into each other at a couple trade shows because I jumped over to Shopware. What was your time at Cart like?

You know, it was great. I, I was there for about, about a year and a half or so. And for you know, when I kind of step back and look at it, I, you know, I learned a lot more about, fulfillment and logistics. Right? And so I had a little bit little bit of that back in the the Adobe days.

But talk about a company that is really at the, you know, really at the the bare metal, really at where where fulfillment is happening. Learned a lot about that. Right? And so I think it kinda helped me helped me build that muscle a bit. Yeah.

You know, smaller company. So I think in many ways, I liked I liked the smallness of that and and really kind of owning our own destiny around, what a what was a particularly interesting problem, which was how do we integrate these, you know, eight to 10 properties at once? And so the you know, if you think about, you know, other companies have done this outside of commerce like a Zapier or an Alloy or something like that, how do you pull that into something that is a really special commerce product that can make a difference in the market where, maybe you don't need to pick and choose the various pieces of that? So I think the mission was always I think mission was great. Team moved really fast, but I think I look back, you know, I I learned a lot about moving fast, moving fast a little bit more on the on the fulfillment and logistics side and and really, like, continue to feel like like shipping and and and a lot of these experiences are some of the more underserved, in our market.

It's it's it's funny because it's it's kinda like other areas, but, like, literally, your first experience your first experience a lot of products is often the last model or first forgotten, and may not even be in the hands of that that retailer. It's gonna be with a carrier. It's gonna be with what have you. And so just being really crisp about that as it's it's very underserved. That's that's a word I use thought.

Very I, you know, I only I only know the space. I'm, like, familiar with with the space because of, you know, just the the natural the the adjacency there. I have to say that word, by the way, once a once a podcast. The adjacency, between between, ecommerce and, obviously, the fulfillment. Fulfillment, we we also know another great leader who's moved over into the fulfillment space, and then a great strategy person, Peter Sheldon, who may have even been responsible for the merchant to merchant session.

I don't know. That sounds like something he would he would come up with. It it does. It does. But, I would say, like, fulfillment logistics, like, that is the third rail of ecommerce.

Right? That is that is that is where you make or break the entire experience. I mean, you could say the the buyer journey from acquisition all the way through whatever their path, their funnel is into, you know, into the checkout. Like, that checkout experience, I think, is also that is a waypoint along the way to customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. But then yeah.

I mean, you could have the most perfect, targeting personalization, acquisition, everything. And then if it falls if if the the buyer does not get what he or she expects, in terms of, you know, delivery estimation, delivery costs, delivery condition, then, yeah, you you basically all of that work that led up to that is completely for naught. And then I think I think actually the the the the downside potential is much, much I would maybe if you could if you could quantify it, you know, an order of magnitude higher than just getting people what they expect on time. And I think I would say that maybe we have Amazon to thank for that because, you know, on my small island, I see, you know, 15 Amazon trucks. And I work in a windowless office.

So so, you know, they're out and about. They're always buzzing. You might get two or three deliveries in a day. And with that with those kind of stakes, you are now working at, the dangerous end of the knife or the dangerous side of the knife. So you took this, you kind of parlayed your knowledge, your experience from carte over to our dear friend Joe Baker's company, ShipperHQ, NEA, WebShop Apps.

You've been there for not even or just a few quarters now. Right? Yeah. For sure. Yeah.

I just started there the about the beginning of the year. So a little over little over So this is probably the part of the of the episode that's gonna be most interesting to people. What in the hell is it like, at this end of the business? You know, there there are a lot of but for me let me let me make sure I understand the sort of the problem space. Like Mhmm.

You know, shipper HQ as a as a as a product is there to give to basically expose and provide the opportunity for fine grain controls for store operations folks to say like, okay, hey, here we know, here's what the rates are gonna be, the services, the service level expectations. And under these conditions, we wanna present these options to the to these these sets of buyers. Right? And and anyone that's worked in ecommerce knows that, especially in a checkout flow, doing this right and doing this in as frictionless a way as possible is extraordinarily difficult. And I would say on your side of the house, it must be really, really difficult because you are dealing with a whole bunch of third parties.

Right? And you have to consume you have to consume what their output is. You have to figure out, you know, how to provide a seamless and consistent service, and and make everything basically seem a lot less complicated than it is. Is that is that a fair characterization? Yeah.

I think we're good now. And, no. It's, you you summed it up nicely. I think, you know, we solve a lot of problems on both sides. Right?

And so one way to look at ChipperHQ is that we're we're solving a lot of the complexity that happens in between the carriers and the platforms. And so we support pretty much any platform. You could imagine pretty much any carrier you can imagine and really nailing down that experience at the rate level. So that minute that you see a rate that, that is, you know, from carrier x, y, or z, is it the lowest? Is it the, most efficient as in a get there on time?

Does it represent, like, an optimal rate? You know, if you've ever sold anything yourself on eBay, you realize that, you know, something like dimensional, packing and shipping might be really helpful. Like, if you're, like, one of the, like, there was a a Quentin and other, in one of our key customers, bar displays back in January, we're talking about, like, stacking mannequins. And so, like, you might like like, there's there's there's a very expensive way to ship that, but if you kind of, you know, nest those in a way, that's you know, you're gonna save a lot of money in that. And so there's there's a lot of magic in shipping.

There's a lot of you know, we talk a lot about, optimizing shipping spend. So as a merchant, that's that's one of your primary costs for that one. But as a as an end shopper, that's one of your primary pain points. It's one of the reasons why people, and we have a lot of data support this well over half. And I think some in some cases, two thirds, to 70% abandoned carts, because of that shipping cost.

You're right. Amazon has has kind of reset the bar, of those expectations. They expect everything to be free. Yep. And that's absorbed, and they look at it in terms of volume and prime and things like that, but not everybody can play that game.

Right? And so it's about a matter of giving, you know, giving back that control to the merchants, to the shoppers, and, of course, the developers in between given the rich history of kind of where we've come from to make that possible and give every possible option to to make that work. But it really comes down to cost. It comes down to expectations, and we've got a really, I think, a really compelling set of, capabilities that help really a lot of those situations that I think a lot of people have heard of and and are familiar with. But as I've gotten to know it more, I think there's a lot of aspects of this, especially some of our new products that people would not, like, don't even realize they're there that can help their business.

So I'm excited to be here, and and I think there's a lot of lot of upside for it. Incidentally, stacking mannequins was the name of my college band. It's awesome. Stacking mannequins. Stacking mannequins.

I'm pretty sure I would not have had that on any bingo card. Yes. So I I I guess that brings up another point. Right? Because part of part of the job, and I mean, I think you have this kind of sort of, you know, your your customer cure market curation is even informing or making businesses aware of the tools and the best practices and every and and I guess in your world, it's it's maybe not quite as, quite as, dense or obfuscated as payments.

But, yeah, the ins and outs, I mean, people just know, okay. Hey. I throw this data at, you know, at UPS's endpoint, and I'm going to get back some some some kind of shipping cost, based on, you know, either, you know, dim weight. Right? So it is it's a Yep.

Dimensional calculation and then also weight calculation, and I'm not I'm ignoring, you know, like RTL and, you know, the the the bigger and more complicated things. Yep. So it it you know? And then I think beyond that, there's also the at the business to business, like, level, there's buy rates, there's there's, you know, there's the the sort of preferred rates that you might be able to offer as a platform. Like, do you all have resources, that help people understand this just, you know, just in general?

Or or or do you have resources that you recommend to help merchants, educate themselves about this? Yeah. So I I think, you know, I I'm I would say strictly from a product standpoint, I think the key to a lot of this has been something that the the team has been working on for a long time, well before I started, which is around our analytics. And so this idea where, and and this capability was just launched, for our high level plans advanced in enterprise in the past, the past, week or two. But this idea of, like, saying, okay.

This is great. And by the way, the tax reference, yep, very similar. I had the same observation because you we've almost oversimplified all the things that are happening to get you that rate. Right? And so on the shipping side, it's very much the same.

But in the end, you, as a merchant, are probably spending more than you want, maybe even overspending on what shipping looks like, and you don't understand why and you wanna make changes to that. You know, some merchants wanna use that as a way to to to to, to increase revenue. So you can look at shipping as a as a profit center in some cases, and some people are just learning what that means. And so there's a lot of lot of what we do, a lot of because we're so invested in the community, again, all platforms, for that matter, just educating people what that is. Right?

The mannequin example is perfect because it's a little extreme. It's a little bit, but it's memorable. Right? And so I still, you know, I still remember that talking. I think we we we did that at at, in New York even a couple months before that.

But you see the problems that we're solving for, you know, whether it's these types of problems or going back to, like, again, watching some poor person use a a subway card machine with, like, you know, six or seven stickies on it and go, we we can help, with that. But it's a lot of it is, like, you know, where can we help the most for that one? So we have a lot of resources for that, but I think as an industry, I think it's there's a lot that goes behind there that I think we can continue to to educate people around it, whether it's our site, our industry. I think there's a lot of uniqueness that we're doing, though, that is more than just a rate. But, yeah, we we have some.

I think it's but I think we we can even do more, for sure because we uniquely sit between those carriers and the platforms. That's why we're quite honestly, that's why we're as active in the community as we are because I think it's a very and I think, you know, helping merchants understand what they can do more, with shipping around that, I think, is super important for them as they get to understand it. What's the thing that that you would want people to know, more if if you if you even have a a thing that you would you wish customers would know or understand better when they when they you know, in order to work work the best with you all or have the the right expectations. Yeah. I think I think people know us in in the and the data will show up.

People people know us primarily from the days of of the, of the matrix work that we've done. So really getting accurate rates, optimizing those, and and the data will show things like dimensional packing and, delivery date and time being like what people know us for the most. But the reality is there's a lot of really there there are things that we solve for that I think once you get beyond that, I think, that are really useful. And so I think primarily obviously, buy them on pickup in store as as an interesting as part of kind of our enhanced checkout suite. I think, so I think that's there.

That's available if you use it now. But then also things like carrier backup rates. Right? And so this idea, especially going into peak, maybe there's an issue with the carrier. You don't wanna lose that sale, and so we have there's a because we are neutral to the carriers as well as the platforms, there's a resiliency to, like, adding a backup carrier, for that that I think people don't really aren't really aware of that I would want as a merchant just in case something something doesn't work out, then it falls back and rolls over to another carrier, another method what have you.

And so there's a lot of little things like that that situationally I think will help. I think our advanced enterprise customers start to get that more. And I think we've got a really greater story to tell around analytics, not just you know, we're not just doing AI and ML. We're solving problems, and in some cases, actually pushing this concept of and and we're just talking about this this week, like return on shipping spend. Like, we've talked ROAS has been around.

People talk about it a lot, but, like, this idea of, like, what does it mean for return on shipping spend? Has anybody Looked at that. Talked about that instead of that. But I've seen Ross. I haven't seen Ross.

You haven't seen Ross. And so yeah. But, like, it it's it's really important. It's such a like, everybody you talk to is, oh my gosh. You spend so much on shipping, but you do.

Let's like, so I think our products will help with that one. And it it what I like about it, it's it's attached to a problem that merchants face every day. It's not necessarily a solution like, hey. We've got this AI and then all thing. Like, no.

The problem is spent. The problem is optimizing that. And but, yeah, I think I think that's the big thing that we're working towards, but there's a lot of little things. I think if you, yeah, if you look at the various features that people don't I think people don't get, kind of see beyond the first, and so we've got trials and such out there to to encourage people to give that a shot, which is, which is good. So, yeah, that's sorry.

Longer answer than than probably not, but I think I felt the same way when I joined. There's more than meets the eye, as they would say. Now okay. Well, yes. I I think you probably could can do tons of work, you know, educating, and still, you know, still people are just not going there's just there's a lot there's a lot involved.

On that note, any any interesting things coming out? I mean, you mentioned, you know, because we kinda have to, you know, a l AI ML. I would assume the ML part is actually really big for you all. And you're also you're you're you all are are are talking with endpoints and and vendors who, for sure, for damn sure, are very big and, you know, probably have huge data lakes and, and and tons of analytics on that. Right?

Yep. Any any interesting things on the horizon, that you can that you can share? Yeah. For sure. So I think one of the biggest benefits of ShipperHQ were, again, you know, if you look at the face value and especially if you're not familiar with them in the ecosystem, oh, they're startups.

Not startup. It's, you know, we've got sixteen years of experience, but we also have sixteen years of data. So, traditionally, when you look at, like, ANML problems, to solve for, like, good data is is off it's like you can't just make that up. You have it. So we have a we have good data, as guard you know, as as kind of guardians and servants of that that I think we can see and help not only in our product development, but as we start to introduce new capabilities in addition to what we've done on analytics that start to get really interesting.

So, so, yeah, we've been very vocal about our, I think, our investment into analytics. We've got some really exciting things happening later this year on AB testing. So this idea where you might wanna test free shipping, you might wanna test, maybe let let's say, like, a delivery surcharge or specific set for specific, percentage, which is incredibly important for, like, larger customers that don't want just wanna flip a switch and see what happens. So we're interested in doing some experimentation later this year based on the analytics that we've done that I think we're really we're we're really excited about, and and so we're we're working towards that. I will say, I think beyond all of that, I still think, you know, some of the best work that's done, you know, that can be done that we will be doing is is is is really, around the insights and recommendations.

This idea where, you know, the the experience of our product is less so than than, like, pages and pages and pages of dashboards. It's really starting to get intelligent on making that recommendation. Ben, you've got and we're starting to see an anomaly here and there. We've made this recommendation. This is what we can do about it.

And so I think that's where as that's where we start to win for the merchants versus giving them another set of tasks, another tool, another, you know, another thing, another, to to to to work there. So that's that's that's where we're going in a kind of a short form, but we got some things happening here. See, like, the the hands off, you know, hands off scalable, you know, but sort of virtually attended, you know, curation recommendation. I mean, you all after all are just, you know, another partner in, merchant solutions for this interesting, product domain. Well, I, I think we're coming up on that time.

Are you come you going out to, any any events, this year? You know, they've always always remains to be open. You know, we did a couple events earlier this year. I'm eyeing, New York, New York in October. I think a lot of them start to pick up the beginning of the year, some of the bigger trade, trade ones, your your your n f NRFs and Chip Talks and things like that.

So I think those are very much in play. And we've had a couple in Austin. Right? We've got, we've got, we've got Summit, with another plat another platform, in a in a week or so as well. But we're we're everywhere.

Right? And I think we we kind of embrace that neutrality because I think we have shared problems in a in a in an ecosystem merchants to solve them for. But, yeah, we're we're always out there, though. And I think, but myself, yeah, it's just a handful here as we round out the year, but you never know. We do, you know, we do, join, and create some some small attend some small articles we've created over the past couple, couple of weeks as well.

Well, don't forget about Shopware's Shoptoberfest in, in New York on the September 17. Well, you know, that's that's something to consider. I I mean, I I'm a friend of anything, any fest Any fest. Yeah. As you know.

And so if there's a Shoptoberfest, then, that just sounds like a a cordial invite. And so I may, I I I'll have my people talk later. Have it. I'll be I will 100% be there in some later, Hosen. So and and not and not I know you won't hear it.

Cheap ones. Some people would get about that, but you won't. Not the cheap ones. Not the cheap ones. For sure.

Okay, my friend. Well, I hope you if you would give my best to the whole team there. It's a great crew there in Austin and around. Really, really great to catch up with you, Eric. It was it was nice running into you, in London, earlier this year.

Wonderful. And, I look forward to seeing again. Thanks. Thanks again for spending some time with me and for your insights. Awesome.

Hey, thank you so much again for having me, Ben. Take care.