Mason AI's new Flash Sales solution automates discounts, targets shoppers, clears inventory and boosts sales by 40%—helping brands win the holiday season.

SUNNYVALE, CA, UNITED STATES, October 18, 2024

Mason AI has launched a critical sales tool for brands today. The Automated Flash Sales engine is a new solution that empowers brands to set-up, schedule & monitor personalized, limited-time sale events automatically. Designed to boost holiday revenue by 40% and clear inventory 2x faster, this is well-timed for the high-stakes sale events such as Black Friday, Diwali, and Christmas

Flash sales are increasingly becoming a dominant choice for e-commerce giants like Amazon, Nike, Best Buy to drive quick conversions and efficiently manage inventory. Saldly for most brands, running a high-impact flash sale comes with high operating costs and complex setups that are often prone to errors & mistakes.

Automated Flash Sales from Mason AI eliminates these challenges by automating the process and enabling brands to launch behavior-driven flash sales in less than 15 minutes.

With Mason AI’s Automated Flash Sales, brands can boost sales by 40% while streamlining sales ops. Personalization drives 30% efficiency - we're bringing that power to you this season.”

-BARADA SAHU, CEO

Key Features of Mason AI’s Automated Flash Sales

Personalised Shopper Targeting

The new tool taps into customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history to deliver highly relevant Flash Sales tailored to the shopper’s needs and interests. This ensures that shoppers get the right offer at the right time, based on their browsing history and prior interactions.

Automated Stock Management

If a product goes out of stock during a flash sale, the tool automatically swaps out-of-stock items with similar products, so customers stay engaged with the brand and no sale is lost.

Custom Discounting Logic

Brands can set intelligent and flexible discounting rules—including real-time dynamic pricing and tiered offers. The engine ensures that every deal works for both the brand as well as the shopper.

Seamless Marketing Integration

It connects directly to marketing solutions like Klaviyo and WhatsApp, meaning brands can trigger alerts to shoppers instantly. This helps the brand get the the word out about their live sales through email, SMS, or push notifications—directly to where customers spend their time.

Tailored Sale Experience

The engine customizes not only product offerings but also the timing, discounting, and messaging of flash sales, creating a personalized shopping journey that resonates with each customer.

Integrated Measurement & Attribution Models

The engine also provides built-in tools to track sales performance and accurately attribute revenue to specific campaigns, enabling brands to measure the effectiveness of their flash sales strategies.

Why Automated Flash Sales Matter

Holiday shopping seasons are make-or-break for many brands, and flash sales have long been a favourite choice for top 1% brands. However the remaining 99% brands struggle to setup and run these sales, and monitoring the real-time impact gets even harder. With Mason AI’s Automated Flash Sales brands can now get the power of Flash Sales in a simple but intelligent solution. By automating the setup, targeting, and running of these sales, brands can run multiple campaigns with little overhead while maximizing their returns.

“Brands face immense pressure to deliver quick-turn promotions during the festive season,” said Kausambi Manjita, CPO of Mason. “Our Automated Flash Sales provide an automated, efficient solution—whether it's for clearing last-minute inventory or executing perfectly timed deals. Early results indicate a 40% sales lift and 2x faster inventory turnover during flash sales.”

Early Results

Brands using Mason AI’s Automated Flash Sales - such as Nasher Miles, Flower +more - have reported significant improvements in both sales and operational efficiency, with automation driving seamless, personalized sales experiences that encourage conversions. The solution has led to a substantial increase in revenue, particularly during peak shopping periods.

• SoftwareKeep ran a flash sale to introduce a new product. By leveraging Mason AI’s personalized shopper targeting, they were able to reach customers who had previously shown interest in similar products. The sale generated significant revenue and increased customer engagement.
• Sports and Fitness Exchange capitalized on Prime Day by running an AI-powered flash sale. By utilizing custom discounting logic, they created tiered discounts that encouraged customers to add more items to their cart.
• Nasher Miles ran a 48-hour flash sale on their popular Peso Collection, using Mason AI’s automated stock management and personalized product recommendations.

Results:

• A 40% lift in sales and higher customer satisfaction through automated processes.
• A notable lift in sales without increased marketing spend, thanks to automation and personalized targeting.
• Higher conversions, optimized stock management, and increased order sizes.
• Generated ₹2,45,912.06 within the first hour

Where You Can Get Automated Flash Sales

The new Automated Flash Sales solution is live now for all brands using Mason AI Shopping Engine. New users can onboard quickly and begin running Automated Flash Sales with just a few clicks, without the need for extensive setup or resources.

For brands looking to capitalize on holiday sales, Automated Flash Sales offers a streamlined, effective solution to achieve higher returns without the complexity often associated with flash sales.

Originally posted at https://www.wane.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/752815049/mason-launches-new-ai-sales-tool-to-increase-festive-sales-for-brands-retailers/

Deconstruct, founded by IIT Kharagpur alumna Malini Adapureddy, is a science-based skincare brand disrupting the Indian skincare space. Deconstruct offers facial skincare and body care products.  Launched in 2021, Deconstruct prioritizes transparency, offering 14 evidence-based formulations for skincare. Boasting a 50% repeat purchase rate and an annual run rate of $2 million, the brand focuses on consumer education and plans to expand globally.

Optimizing customer experience is critical for sustained growth of any brand. This case study sheds light into how Deconstruct, a specialized skincare brand, overcame challenges of repeat purchases and website conversion rates through the implementation of Mason's AI shopping engine.

Meet Harsha, the D2C Lead at Deconstruct

Harsha Sinha, Deconstruct's D2C Lead, spearheads the website, marketing, and technical aspects of the brand. With a dedicated team covering development, marketing, and customer experience, Harsha aims to enhance key metrics such as sessions, conversion rates, average order value (AOV), and customer lifetime value (LTV).

The Challenge: Elevating Repeat Purchases

Deconstruct noticed a common challenge – a substantial percentage of their website traffic was first-time visitors. Harsha's objective was to boost the repeat purchase rate and foster brand loyalty by tailoring offers based on individual user behaviour.

We worked with a CRO agency before. And then Mason came along. we saw that a lot of people were coming on the website, but they were abandoning the Carts. Which is why the CVR, the Conversion Rate was kind of not as high as the number of sessions that we were getting. I mean, it was not proportional, the increase in the sessions and increase in the CVR.
Harsha Sinha - Marketing Manager @Deconstruct    

Leveraging Mason's AI Shopping Engine

To address the personalization challenge, Deconstruct turned to Mason's AI shopping engine. By leveraging Mason's capabilities, the brand sought to create tailored offers, improve conversion rates, and establish a loyal customer base.

Implementation and Initial Observations

Post-integration of Mason's AI shopping engine in August, Deconstruct concentrated on refining the conversion rate by minimizing abandoned carts. Initial findings showed a significant drop in abandoned carts, increased conversion rates for Mason-driven orders, and an uptick in AOV.

What I have noticed is that as we started working with Mason since August. And if I just looked at the data, the conversion rate for orders that came through Mason has been much higher than the overall CVR. The AOV has been much higher.
Harsha Sinha - Marketing Manager @Deconstruct

Key Features Utilized by Deconstruct

Abandoned Cart Plugin:
Mason's abandoned cart plugin enabled Deconstruct to directly engage users on the website, resulting in a noteworthy 9% CVR, surpassing the overall website CVR.

Product Bundles:
Deconstruct effectively enabled product bundling, encouraging users to make additional purchases with discounts, thereby invreasing AOV.

Bulk Buy Feature:
The bulk buy feature incentivized customers to purchase more of the same product, contributing to increased revenue.

Earlier we were missing to capture on the website saying that, hey, here's a 5% off. This is what you checked last time. Get another discount here and all of that. And then with the timer, that's where Mason has helped us. And it's there in the results to see.
Harsha Sinha - Marketing Manager @Deconstruct  

Results and Impact Metrics

- Conversion rate for Mason-driven orders consistently outperformed the overall website CVR.

- AOV increased significantly due to Mason’s strategic bundling and upselling.

- Abandoned cart rates had a substantial decrease, resulting in improved overall conversion metrics.

Deconstruct's partnership with Mason proved fruitful, with Mason contributing to approximately 8-10% of the monthly revenue. The positive collaboration, ease of working together, and proactive support from Mason's team prompted Harsha to recommend the platform to other D2C brands.

Conclusion

In India’s competitive D2C space, the success story of Deconstruct showcases the value of leveraging advanced AI shopping engines like Mason's to optimize critical metrics, enhance customer experiences, and drive sustainable business growth. As the partnership evolves, Deconstruct remains committed to staying at the forefront of personalized skincare solutions and plans to expand in the international market.

Word On The Street!

Oceedee is a high-end leather footwear brand focusing on the female demographic. With a pan-India presence, Oceedee has set a firm foothold in the luxury footwear market. Despite this success, the brand found itself grappling with challenges related to customer retention and conversion rates.

The Marketing Maze: Oceedee's Retention and Conversion Challenges

Stagnant Conversion Rates

Despite hefty investments in popular marketing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, Oceedee struggled with a conversion rate that barely touched 2%, like most of the e-commerce brands. This inefficiency rendered their marketing spend less effective and inhibited potential growth.

Inadequate Customer Retention

Oceedee faced the challenging task of not just attracting new customers, but also retaining them. High customer acquisition costs were not being balanced out by a strong retention strategy, leading to an overall negative impact on the brand's ROI.

By tackling these challenges head-on, Mason's innovative solutions set the stage for transformative changes in Oceedee's e-commerce strategy and performance.

Mason’s Strategic Interventions: A Recipe for Success

Unleashing the Power of Conversion Rate Optimization

Upon implementing mason’s application, Oceedee experienced a remarkable 50% boost in conversion rates. mason helped them achieve this transformation through data-driven growth experimentation and personalised incentives to convert users who browsed but did not buy.

“I recommend all ecommerce brands to use mason to improve ROI on paid ads and reduce CAC. It’s extra revenue lying on the table.”
- Shivam Verma, Senior Manager @Oceedee

Tailoring Customer Retention through AI Personalization

Mason's sophisticated algorithms personalized the user journey, creating a more tailored shopping experience. This highly personalized interface drastically improved customer retention rates and re-engaged previous visitors, inviting them back to complete their purchases. mason strategically used AI to identify customer dropoffs across the buyer funnel, and retarget segmented cohorts with personalised incentives.

“Average ecom conversion rates are at 2% and if you want to maximise sales from visitors you spend for, you need solutions like mason.”
- Shivam Verma, Senior Manager @Oceedee

The Financial Breakthrough: Skyrocketing Revenue and Lowering Acquisition Costs

Within just 25 days post-implementation, Mason’s application generated an additional 0.5 million INR in revenue for Oceedee. It also contributed to lowering the Cost of Acquisition, making each marketing dollar more effective.

Results: $7000+ Added Revenue in One Month

Mason's application has proven to be a transformative tool for Oceedee, significantly improving conversion rates by 50% and bolstering customer retention. As a testimonial to the platform's effectiveness, Oceedee strongly recommends mason for e-commerce companies aiming to amplify their ROI and customer loyalty metrics.

In a world where every click counts, mason doesn't just provide a tech solution; it offers a transformative customer experience. The compelling numbers speak for themselves, underscoring Mason's invaluable impact on Oceedee’s e-commerce performance.

Word on The Street!

Launched in 2018, Beanly Coffee started as a B2B-centric entity before pivoting towards a direct-to-consumer model in March 2023. With a manufacturing unit that serves industry stalwarts such as Blue Tokai, Third Wave, PVR, and Muscle Blaze, Beanly Coffee isn’t your average coffee brand. Their game-changing strategy involved offering a 249-bundled package of instant coffee with a frother—arguably a first in the industry. Despite these strong fundamentals, the move to an online sales model was fraught with challenges that necessitated a specialized intervention.

Unveiling the Bottlenecks: Beanly's Online Performance Metrics

Missed Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Opportunities

Despite a robust product portfolio, Beanly's online platform was not configured to tap into upsell or cross-sell opportunities. This resulted in under-optimized sales transactions, diluting the overall Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Cart Abandonment: The Silent Revenue Killer

With an abandoned cart rate of 76%, Beanly was grappling with untapped revenue streams. High abandonment rates often indicate friction in the checkout process or issues related to user experience that require immediate rectification.

High Drop-offs from Browsers

Elevated drop-off rates throughout the sales funnel are symptomatic of deeper issues, ranging from unconvincing value propositions to complex navigation paths. This needed an analytical approach to diagnose and rectify.

Mason's Precision-Targeted Solutions

Deep-Dive Analysis: The All-Revealing Website Audit

Mason’s incisive website audit was the first step towards a tailored solution. Utilizing advanced analytical tools and leveraging industry benchmarks, the audit uncovered gaps and potential avenues for conversion optimization.

Revenue Optimization: A Tactical Growth Approach

By aligning Beanly’s unique selling propositions (USPs) with in-store personalised conversion journeys, mason was able to achieve a daily revenue uplift of 10%. These changes were not just cosmetic; they were based on data-driven consumer behavior analysis.

A Quantifiable Impact: Direct Contribution to Monthly Sales

Over the last 30 days, mason's initiatives contributed to added sales worth $3600, and this is only growing every month.

“We have a really lean team and our hands are full. Mason contributed 10% revenue on a monthly basis.”
- Abhijit Dash, D2C Growth @Beanly

A Dual-Focus Strategy for a Complex Market

Understanding the nuances of the Indian market, mason implemented a dual strategy using our AI personalisation engine and recommendation engine with a brand-first approach.

“Lots of drop offs were happening on our website, and upsells were not working. mason came and changed that. My abandoned cart rates dropped by 50%.”
- Abhijit Dash, D2C Growth @Beanly

Conclusion: The mason-Beanly Partnership as a Blueprint for Success

Beanly Coffee’s digital transformation, guided by mason, stands as a testament to what can be achieved through a data-driven, analytically-informed approach. By mitigating persistent challenges such as high cart abandonment rates, mason has not only added tactical value but has strategically aligned Beanly's online operations for scalable, long-term growth.

For brands experiencing similar digital performance issues, the takeaway is clear: An investment in a strategic partnership with AI-first solutions like mason can offer unparalleled returns, both in terms of revenue and operational efficiency.

Word On The Street!

In the vibrant heart of Bombay, a revolution brewed silently, promising to redefine the landscape of home-based beverage crafting. As the world grappled with the uncertainties brought on by the pandemic, Bartisans sprouted in 2021 as a symphony of flavours.

With a rich array of DIY cocktail kits, Bartisans quickly captivated the discerning local market, offering a pallet of fresh and all-natural ingredients, opening the doors to a world of culinary adventure and excitement.

The Challenges

Carving a Niche in the Market

While Bartisans enjoyed experimenting with different flavors and offerings, not all were well-received. Finding the ideal balance between innovation and customer preference, and identifying the perfect market fit remained a persistent challenge.

Scaling the online business

As Bartisans grew, the need for an optimized online presence became evident. The initial website, although functional, lacked several features necessary for a seamless customer journey, hindering the potential for higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction. While customers loved the flavours, there would be frequent drop offs and cart abandons.

The Solutions

Leveraging AI Personalisation to Optimise Customer Journey

mason’s platform seamlessly understood customer preferences and concerns and catered to every nuanced need of the Bartisans customer. Through innovative segmentation and personalisation features, mason drove higher conversions for users already coming to the website.

“While some of the impact of having Mason is easily quantifiable, some of it is indirect, but we've seen a significant uplift in our conversion rate ever since we started using mason.”
- Aastha Desai, Head of Marketing @Bartisans

Optimising the website for conversions

Implementing mason's data-first approach to finding opportunities for high conversions, along with it’s powerful AI martech solutions, mason played a pivotal role in enhancing the website's conversion rate. The strategies not only make users stick but also significantly contributed to the brand's revenue within a short period.

”With Mason it became really easy to tailor and optimize the customer journey on the website even without a developer.”
- Aastha Desai, Head of Marketing @Bartisans

Mason’s Strategic Alchemy in Action: $1800+ Revenue in 30 Days

In its glorious journey, Bartisans has metamorphosed from a promising start-up into a formidable force in the DIY cocktail sector. A testament to the brand’s resilience, adaptability, and unwavering commitment to excellence.

Word on the street!

If you are an e-commerce leader aiming to enhance shopper experience & boost your sales, here's a game-changer for you - an AI-powered Product Finder. This isn't just a tech upgrade; it's a crucial tool that brings a high level of personalization to shopping journeys on your platform.

Prominent e-commerce expert Blake Morgan has quite aptly noted, "Personalization is not a trend, it’s a marketing tsunami." An AI-powered product finder is as an essential tool to fully tap into the potential of personalization.

What is an AI Product Finder?

Unlike a traditional product finder, an AI Product Finder works by understanding and predicting your customer's preferences, presenting them with product suggestions that align closely with their individual tastes and needs. In doing so, it shifts the way your e-commerce platform interacts with shoppers - building loyalty and raising the bar on overall customer satisfaction. This direct approach not only keeps your customers hooked but also significantly optimizes their shopping experience, turning browsing into buying.

The basics of AI Product Finders

Let's find out what’s under-the-hood of an AI product finder. Essentially, it's an intelligent tool that aids customers in finding products that align with their preferences and needs, by asking a series of questions connected with product attributes. This not only streamlines the search process but also makes the personalization feel genuine and nuanced.

👉 Mechanism of an AI Product Finder

Unlike a traditional product finder, an AI Product Finder operates with a clear understanding of your inventory & sell through data, aligning products with customer preferences through a series of well-crafted questions and options.

Under the hood of this simple and seamless shopping experience, there are several sophisticated components to an AI Product Finder. Here’s some of them elaborated →

1. Shopping Language Processing (SLP)

This component interprets and understands the language of shoppers, allowing the tool to comprehend and respond to shopper queries in a more human-like manner, hence making the personalization even more authentic.

2. Predictive Recommender

Recommender algorithms use shopping data & browsing data to predict customer preferences, suggesting products that are more likely to resonate with individual customers based on their previous interactions and purchase history.

3. Generative UI

An intuitive and interactive interface is generated on the fly to engage users with a series of questions and options, helping them find the most relevant products based on their preferences and needs in a fun and gamified way.

4. Data Analytics Dashboard

A dashboard that provides insights into customer preferences, popular products, and other relevant metrics, allowing for better decision-making and strategy formulation.

5. Behavioral Tracking

A component that tracks and analyzes customer behavior on the website, helping to refine the product recommendations and personalization strategies for future.

6. Feedback and Review Integration

An integration that allows the system to learn and evolve based on customer feedback and reviews, refining its strategies and recommendations continuously.

7. Real-time Update and Adaptation

The ability to update and adapt in real time, adjusting its strategies based on the latest data and trends, ensuring the most accurate and timely recommendations.

8. API Connectivity

An open API structure that allows for seamless integration with various e-commerce platforms and tools, facilitating a smoother implementation and operation process.

By integrating these components into an AI Product Finder, e-commerce platforms can craft a truly personalized and interactive shopping experience for their customers, driving increased satisfaction and loyalty.

👉 Infusing Personal Touch with Technology

You might be wondering how to maintain an element of human touch amidst this technological integration. This is where the AI product finder stands out. It enables the crafting of a shopping journey where personalization transcends algorithmic recommendations, fostering an experience where each suggestion feels handpicked and genuine.

Why Implementing an AI Product Finder is Crucial To eCommerce Growth?

Now, let's explore the vital reasons why incorporating an AI product finder should be a priority in your e-commerce strategy:

1. Boosting Sales: The ultimate goal of any e-commerce platform is to enhance sales figures. The AI product finder assists in achieving this by directing customers to products that resonate with their preferences, thereby increasing the likelihood of purchases.
2. Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: By offering personalized recommendations, the AI product finder amplifies customer satisfaction, fostering a loyal customer base that is likely to return for future purchases.
3. Streamlined Shopping Experience: The tool helps in creating a streamlined shopping journey, reducing the time customers spend searching for products and enhancing their overall shopping experience.
4. Data-Driven Insights: The AI product finder generates valuable insights based on customer interactions, aiding in the refinement of marketing strategies and inventory management.

What is The Difference Between a Traditional Product Finder & an AI Product Finder?

What is the impact of AI Product Finders on e-commerce stores?

The implementation of AI product finders in e-commerce platforms can have a pronounced impact on both businesses and their customers. Let's dissect the potential repercussions in several areas:

1. Customer Experience:

a. Personalized Shopping: AI product finders facilitate an individualized shopping experience, offering product recommendations that align with the customer’s preferences and browsing history.

b. Reduced Search Time: Customers can find what they are looking for more quickly and efficiently, enhancing their overall shopping experience.

2. Business Performance:

a. Increased Conversion Rates: By offering tailored suggestions, AI product finders can help convert browsing into actual purchases, boosting conversion rates.

b. Enhanced Customer Loyalty: When customers feel understood and catered to, it fosters loyalty, encouraging them to return to the platform for future purchases.

Marketing Strategies:

a. Targeted Marketing: With the deep insights garnered, businesses can develop more targeted and effective marketing strategies.

b. Cross-Selling and Up-Selling: AI product finders can identify opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling, enhancing the chances of increased sales.

In essence, integrating an AI product finder can transform an e-commerce business, offering a more personalized, efficient, and dynamic shopping experience, while enhancing business performance through insightful data analytics and optimized operations.

Implementing an AI Product Finder: A Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Understand Your Requirements and Set Clear Goals

1.1. Identify Your Target Audience: Understand the demographics and preferences of your target audience to personalize the product finder effectively.

1.2. Analyze Your Product Catalog: Conduct an in-depth analysis of your product catalog to identify the attributes that would be most relevant for the product finder to focus on.

1.3. Define Success Metrics: Set clear objectives for what you hope to achieve with the AI product finder, be it increasing conversion rates or enhancing customer satisfaction.

Step 2: Choosing the Right AI Product Finder

2.1. Industry Compatibility: Ensure the AI product finder is compatible with your industry and can analyze industry-specific trends and patterns effectively.

2.2. Integration with Existing Systems: The tool should seamlessly integrate with your existing e-commerce platform and other tools you may be using.

2.3. Scalability: Choose a tool that can scale with your business, capable of handling an increasing amount of data as your business grows.

Step 3: Configuration and Customization

3.1. Attribute Mapping: Work on mapping the various product attributes in your catalog to the relevant functionalities within the product finder.

3.2. Personalization Settings: Configure the settings to ensure that the personalization feels authentic, connecting questions and options directly with product attributes.

3.3. A/B Testing: Before fully launching, conduct A/B testing to ascertain the effectiveness of different configurations and make necessary adjustments.

Step 4: Monitoring and Continuous Improvement

4.1. Performance Monitoring: Once live, continuously monitor the performance of the AI product finder, focusing on the defined success metrics.

4.2. Feedback Integration: Collect and integrate user feedback to make continuous improvements and adaptations based on real user experiences.

4.3. Upgrades and Updates: Keep abreast of updates and new features introduced by the tool and incorporate them as necessary to keep the system optimized.

Implementing an AI product finder using these steps will not only streamline the customer's journey within your online store but can also lead to increased sales and a more personalized shopping experience, thereby fostering brand loyalty and enhancing your business's overall success.

mason’s AI Product Finder connects all these into a simple one-stop software.

Moving From Theory to Practice: Real-World Applications of Product Finders

To further solidify the importance of AI product finders, we will explore real-world applications and success stories that demonstrate its transformative potential:

Case Study 1: How Sephora utilises multiple product finders for customer satisfaction and sales.

Sephora, top personal care and beauty brand that hails from France, utilizes several cohort-based product finders for personalized recommendations, virtual try-ons, and skincare analysis to help their customer find the right products. It not only enhances customer satisfaction and engagement but also positively impacts conversion rates, cross-selling and upselling while fostering repeat business through data-driven insights.

Let’s look at their Find Your Perfect Lipstick Shade Quiz.

OBJECTIVE:

The quiz elevates your beauty game by discovering the lipstick shade that harmonizes flawlessly with your skin tone, undertone, and personal style.

INSIGHTS:

• This quiz embodies the essence of personalization, fostering a deeper connection between Sephora and its discerning clientele. It's not just a questionnaire; it's the gateway to a transformative and delightful shopping experience.
• While already a powerhouse in engagement, the quiz has room to bloom by embracing inclusivity in its full glory. Crafting an avenue for customers to share insightful feedback would set the stage for an ever-evolving, immersive user experience.

Second, the Skincare Routine Builder, that’s quite a hoot amongst Sephora’s customers.

OBJECTIVE:

Beyond the realm of mere product selling, this quiz is a treasure trove of skincare education. It's committed to empowering customers with a bespoke skincare routine, designed to address their unique skin attributes and concerns with precision and insight.

INSIGHTS:

• A ground-breaking initiative that melds education with product discovery, offering a rich and enlightening journey through the world of skincare. It's an invitation to forge a relationship with the customer, and doing so with informed choices and products that resonate.
• While already fostering long-term value and encouraging repeat purchases, the introduction of queries concerning ingredient preferences would catapult the user satisfaction to unprecedented heights, crafting a truly holistic skincare voyage.

Another favourite of Sephora users is the Fragrance Personality Quiz.

OBJECTIVE:

The quiz beckons you to explore and find fragrances that not only resonate with your preferences but become an extension of your narrative, given how personal are fragrances and perfumes.

INSIGHTS:

• This quiz is your passport to a personalized scent selection adventure, teeming with opportunities for gift purchases and fostering deeper emotional connections with your chosen fragrances.
• To amplify its enchantment, the integration of interactive elements coupled with offering curated fragrance samples based on results could escalate the sales trajectory while heightening the user experience to a larger level.

Case Study 2: A closer look at PYM - an emerging healthcare brand - that witnessed increased customer engagement and sales conversions through the implementation of a unique product finder.

In the rapidly evolving sphere of mental wellness, PYM has emerged as a trailblazer, collaborating with top experts to develop an AI-powered 2 min quiz . This tool, developed with input from leading neuroscientists and psychiatrists, seeks to simplify the journey to mental well-being through personalized routines.

OBJECTIVE:

PYM's 2-minute quiz intends to streamline the process of identifying the perfect mental wellness routine. By marrying scientific research with user preferences, it promises a personalized and empirically grounded approach, making the path to mental hygiene less daunting and more accessible.

INSIGHTS

• The tool provides tailored wellness plans based on scientific expertise, offering a credible and user-centric approach to mental health.
• With a simple 2-minute quiz, users can effortlessly embark on a personalized wellness journey, making mental hygiene more accessible.
• Including a more diverse question pool and integrating user feedback and professional resources can further elevate the tool's effectiveness and inclusivity

Conclusion: Navigating the Future of E-Commerce with AI

As we conclude this insightful exploration, it's evident that embracing an AI product finder is not just an enhancement but a necessity in the dynamic realm of e-commerce. It not only optimizes sales and enhances customer satisfaction but also streamlines the shopping experience and generates insightful data-driven strategies.

In the expansive world of e-commerce, innovation is the key to staying ahead. Therefore, it's time to integrate an AI product finder into your platform, steering

Upscalio, house of brands, is the name behind steering many D2C brands on the road to success. Backed by a significant $62.5 million in funding, Upscalio has acquired various consumer brands and helped them grow and thrive, including popular gaming chairs brand, Green Soul.  

Green Soul is India’s leading destination for ergonomic and gaming chairs and is probably the reason your seating hours are so comfy in the office. With a strong customer base of over 250,000+ customers from their website, Green Soul was focused on achieving profitability as a north star metric.

The Challenges

1️⃣ Rapid growth experimentation with cost efficiency

"For us, it was essential to move fast and we were looking for an easier solution, that was cost effective in terms of time, resources, and spends. The main problem we were trying to solve back then was cart abandonment." - Rohit Khatri, Director, Tech Product, Upscalio.

2️⃣ High cart abandonment rates

As a high-AOV brand, Green Soul has a large number of visitors coming to the platform on a daily basis, with a 14-day decision-making journey. Due to the prolonged product life cycle, exit intent is quite high.

3️⃣ CRMs helpful only once shoppers leave the website

The existing CRMs provide support only after users bounce from the website, leaving the issue of cart abandonment untackled.

The Solution

Upscalio was looking for an easier solution that would also prove to be cost-effective while not being too resource-intensive for their marquee brand Green Soul. 🔥 Enter Mason's data-driven Growth Program powered by the Shopping AI 🔥

🤝 Faster Go-Lives. Data-1st Approach.

"With Mason, everything has been stable in terms of performance, cost, and even time. The go-to live time is very low. The resources required to manage the platform are almost nonexistent. No developers, no product managers. Anyone with less understanding of technology can easily manage it."
-Rohit Khatri, Director, Tech & Product @Upscalio

💰 Carts Revived. Revenue Recovered.

Green Soul needed something to revive their high cart abandonment rates. Mason reduced abandonment rates significantly in a single month, and Green Soul was able to retrieve $10,000 in lost carts.

"Mason provides instruments to convert visitors while the user is still on the website, unlike other CRM tools that come into play once the user has left the website. With solutions that highlight the required product information, offers, and additional exit intent offers, great UX, all of this can be done without any development or designer efforts."
-Rohit Khatri, Director, Tech & Product @Upscalio

AI Shopping Engine in Action - $30,000 In New Revenue

"The best thing I’d say are the playbooks. You can directly plug them in without any back and forth, and they're ready and live on the store as soon as you click ‘install’." -Rohit Khatri, Director, Tech & Product @Upscalio

With 50+ revenue playbooks, Green Soul is no longer dependent on external apps, the development team, manual intervention, or tech bandwidth every time they want to launch, customise the website, market new offers, or even promote events.

Word on the Street!

Beyond CRMs. Global Ecommerce Knowledge.

“Mason’s team has been super helpful, and they suggested specific features that created a positive impact on specific KPIs.”
-Rohit Khatri, Director, Tech & Product @Upscalio

Ever wish your ecommerce store had a personal greeter? One that welcomed your customers, got to know them better, then pointed them exactly where they needed to go?

Well, we’ve added another gear to our shopping engine to make this dream of guided-selling a reality.

Introducing ModeMagic’s Product Recommendation Quiz: Suggest the right product, to the right person, at the right time. Every time.

But before we get in to why your store needs a Product Recommendation Quiz, here’s a quick reminder of what ModeMagic has to offer:

• Abandoned Cart Nudges
• Welcome Incentives
• SmartDrops
• Trust Badges
• And 30+ more playbooks designed to help you sell more, for more, more often.

(In case you missed it: We’ve also processed more than 100 million sales over the past two years. So, you know, we’re shopping experts. 😉)

Why you need a Product Recommendation Quiz.

Marketing 101: All customers are on a buying journey.

This journey spans channels, products, and brands. And often times, customers have lot of questing to do to before they reach their fairytale ending (I.E. the solution to their problem).

Ergo, your online store should be a one-stop shop. It should help a shopper:

1. Identify their problem;
2. Compare their alternatives;
3. Shortlist their options (Once they realize you’re BAE);
4. And lastly, of course, make a purchase.

You see, the customer journey can be a long (sometimes painful) process. So, what if we told you a product recommendation quiz addresses all four of these points?

…AND reduces time-to-purchase. 😱

You’d probably wonder why you haven’t added one to your store already, right?

Product Recommendation Quizzes increase conversions. Period.

We know, pretty big claims.

But, we have the shopping chops to back it up!

It’s all about being top-of-mind at every. single. stage of the buyer’s journey. And if you can make your online store sticky enough so customers start (and finish) their journey in one place, then the chances of making a sale increase exponentially.

After all, direct traffic tends to have the lowest conversion rate of ecommerce channels, sitting around ~2%.

You know why?

Because it’s a channel that (typically) lacks engagement opportunities.

And what’s more engaging than a quiz?!

How it works

The Product Recommendation Quiz initiates a series of carefully curated questions. These questions prompt customers to think about their preferences, styles, needs, and requirements—which they, in turnm reflect in their answers.

The quiz captures this data and uses its underlying algorithm to recommend the perfect product from the store's inventory.

Easy peasy!

See it in action 😎

Add Product Recommendation Quizzes to your store today

Head on over to the Shopify App Store and install ModeMagic for free (if you haven’t already).

Let ModeMagic’s shopping engine convert your browsers into buyers faster than the competition. ❤️

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of What's Next With V, wherein we invite experts from various industries through them, understand more about that industry, and then kind of in the end, figure out what's next in that space. Today we have a very interesting guest, uh, Mr. Barada Sahu. Mr. Barada, welcome to What's Next with V.

Awesome to be here, Vishal, and, uh, great to talk with you. Look forward to chatting up a little bit.

Awesome. Barada is a product and technology entrepreneur with over 20 years of work across various high tech companies, including your consumer and enterprise space. Uh, he built and sold his past startup to the FlipKart group, uh, which is obviously now Walmart.

It'd be great to hear that from Barada. And presently, he's the founder at Mason, an AI shopping engine for brands. Super interesting stuff that these guys do. It'd be great to hear about all of this in this episode. Uh, I'm Vishal Ramaswamy. Your host as always in 'What's next with V'? Uh, Barada Jumping right in, right.

Interesting story. You graduated from one of the top engineering schools in the country. Worked across high-tech companies, building consumer enterprise apps, uh, leading technology teams. You've been technology lead architect, uh, followed by couple of startups and one of them getting acquired by the flip card group.

So it would be great. I'm sure listeners out there would be nvis about your story. Uh, would like to know more about, uh, what you have done. It would be great if you could connect the dot better for us.

Yeah, I mean, uh, the way that I like to, uh, talk about this, you know, uh, al is that, uh, oftentimes you don't look forward building a career forward, right?

I mean, the career looks more like coming together once you start looking at it backwards. Exactly. Yeah. And saying that things start to, uh, the dots connect, uh, by itself. But you start more by saying that what things interest you and, uh, I think that's like more like a north star. What I usually like to lean in on.

So for me it was initial, in the initial days it was more about technology was really close to heart about what we started off building with, uh, is excited by the whole, uh, you know, back in those days, that was the first time that computers were introduced to IOTs. In, uh, when I was starting over there and it was the first time that you got e exposed to, you know, the halls having internet and what do, uh, kids do when they have internet?

They start playing games. So we got, uh, got this first wave of internet almost being introduced to the technology schools and post that it was, uh, part of it, last part of it is working together and learning in the first phase of what my career was. And there I actually learned from, uh, what I would say the best.

In some parts of the enterprise space, uh, working at a, uh, places like, uh, B M W Daimler, building out some of the supply chain systems. Uh, subsequently I worked on this, uh, Citibank rollout. I worked with this company called Coney, which is essentially a platform, uh, for building applications across the whole enterprise stack.

Um, uh, and, uh, This was those early days where we didn't have any of these cross-platform toolkits from React to React native and all of that. This was pre that. And um, uh, we built that and we rolled out this whole consumer application for Citibank across 25 countries. It was a lesson onto itself, how to do a large implementation, which affects maybe like a hundred million plus consumer globally.

Right. Wow. Yeah. At civic landscape and, um, Something that I really learned, uh, a lot working together with the team over there. That's when I actually jumped out. And I also saw that, you know what, we kind of lacked more of these kind of tools for more kinds of enterprises. We are doing it in the FinTech space largely, but there was lots more, uh, of these tools which are needed across the board.

Uh, and that kind of got me started out on this whole thing about, uh, I came together with a bunch of friends who are new from back in those days. And we started this thing called, uh, native Five, which is a cross-platform, uh, building tool. Uh, I think of it as the OGs for no coders today. Uh, and subsequently what the AI we has done, but, uh, essentially helping teams build applications across the stack.

So that was a little bit about how I got started off on this whole journey of, uh, building products. Making things, uh, that are exciting along the way. I try out a lot of different things from consumer apps to building out personal tools that was always close to heart, but, uh, this was my first foray into, uh, entrepreneurship by myself.

Um, and during that phase, it was a, a learning curve. We did that for, uh, uh, four years and, uh, we scaled it to a certain, uh, uh, size. But what we also realized is that it would be much better to join hands and do it in a space where we could add a lot more value. Uh, that's where incidentally the flip cut acquisition happened.

We spent a bunch of time, me and my co-founders spent a bunch of time at, uh, FlipKart, building out some of the revenue infrastructure over there. Made some great partnerships over there, uh, along with my current co-founding co-founders and my founding team. A lot of them back from, uh, the days that I worked at Flipkart and working on some of these problems.

So, so that was an exciting phase. Uh, yeah, so that was a little about how we got started off on this whole journey. Uh, happy to tell more.

Great. So whether I think presently you are, uh, building the next product with Mason, um, maybe it would be good to hear more about, uh, Mason. I think you pivoted also, you started off with something, you pivoted midway and what you're doing now was a bit different from what you started out with.

So it would be good to hear, I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs out there, um, especially during this phase, right? This people call it the funding winter. There's cost cutting. There's people are talking about profitability and all of that. So it would be good to hear how you started out, why the pivot and how is it going now?

So with Mason, yeah.

Uh, when we started out, uh, you know, incidentally, the story to going up to Mason and maybe there's a couple of jumps over there might be interesting for folks also, uh, who are kind of starting out. It's not a linear path ever to kind of get into that product market, elusive product market fit.

And because markets keep shifting, products also keep changing. Exactly. So, so it's got to, you've got to keep yourself nimble at the startup. That's really your core. Uh, what is a superpower in some sense, your ability to kind of figure out in terms of how the market is moving, what's going to be the right fit and not get stuck up Also too long doing something which might not lead to something.

When we started out initially, our, uh, and we were, uh, some of the folks at, uh, Accel, uh, these days call us as the OG in the geni space because we were like doing this back five, six years back when we were doing, um, A product like My Journey, uh, what it is doing today for MS. Synthesis, um, uh, or what runway ML is doing on video synthesis.

Essentially, we're building a creative engine, uh, generated creative engine, which helps you, uh, more focus on catalogs and e-commerce catalogs, helping you create catalog imagery, helping you create catalog videos and all of the kind, right? And bringing in all of these ability of segmenting images, being able to figure out which are the objects within them.

Being able to extract those and then create them into new backgrounds or create completely virtual, uh, content over there. Right. Uh, the challenge of course over there was this typically, uh, one was that the technology was not yet there and sometimes you've got to let it catch up. That was one of those things that had to happen, uh, because on one side there was a technology problem and there's a business problem.

And oftentimes when you're a startup, you only have. A limited amount of time and you've got to focus on one problem. You cannot take both of them simultaneously. Exactly right. True. Yeah. So, so what we, uh, realized that, and as we built out, was the initial technology problem needed for itself to evolve where some of these networks needed to evolve.

Some of those computing, uh, accessibility to, uh, chips itself needed to evolve. The GPUs needed to evolve, and they needed to become more cost effective to really access. And subsequently you could build out more products, which you could take to market. Um, and, and the adoption itself also needed to be more mainstream, to really have a market if you're too early into a market.

You can be spending a lot of time not only building the technology problem, but also solving out who are going to be those early adopters. Are they going to be around you? And um, so when we did Cubic, we realized that those early adopters were kind of really the design partners. They were not really at a stage where we could make a successful business out of it.

Whereas the technology was super promising, right? The lead design partners found a lot of value. But the, uh, large market was not ready for it. So what we did do is that we said that, you know what, we'll come back and see if there's something that can evolve further down the road. But right now, from a product standpoint, we need to see what is the real problem that most of these brands today are facing today.

And that got back to actually a lot of what we had seen back at the, in the flip card days and in the Mira days where we are building out. No, uh, one of those, uh, stories that I like to tell is that, um, It's become super easy for folks who come online, but harder for them to grow online business. Very true.

Because building has become more and more easier. Right, exactly. And, uh, this is becoming more and more real for brands. And what we had seen back then in those days was that, um, a large part of what actually made that scale difference for a lot of these brands on marketplaces was the understanding of consumers.

And being able to subsequently create the entire sales funnel, if you'd call it the whole browse to buy funnel for consumers on their stores. And that was kind of lacking for a lot of brands today. It is not just the ability for them to create content and put it into the store, but last part of it was understanding consumers and then being subsequently creating these uh, journeys for consumers on their own storefronts, helping them sell to them.

So that took us a little bit back closer again to, uh, understanding consumers back again looking at the real problem, which they were willing to pay for at that point of time. And that's really what became, in some sense, the genesis for Mason. Uh, um, this, uh, understanding of, you know, what, we had built out a fairly complex technology infrastructure for people to create content, but that's not the solution in itself for the market today.

The market needs the solution, which should help them grow their business. So we took some, some pieces of it. We pivoted the company a couple of years after we had kind of started off the initial product. We rolled it up into saying that, uh, we would bring in some of those core technology infrastructure, but really focus on the problems that merchants and brands are facing today about how to help them grow.

That's really been the journey to kind of get started with Mason, uh, and Mason is today in its third year. Uh, as we can speak about it, uh, growing fabulously, we are growing, uh, 15% month and month. Last year we grew by four x. Uh, and, uh, yeah, and, and this year we are also looking to the same, excited about some of these product offerings that you're bringing to life.

Cuz not only are we seeing the, uh, the realization of the product itself, but the acceptance from the market has been fabulous. Cause we see that real value coming from brands, coming from consumers, that that's always super exciting, uh, a product. Uh, oftentimes when it gets love. Uh, that's really the best way that you can see that product flourish.

So that's really been, uh, the story to

getting here. Awesome, awesome. But I think what you mentioned one point was quite interesting, uh, launching your company, you're launching your e-commerce is easy growing is is the challenge, right? You have so much competition, there's so much noise already. So I think tools like yours help brands to kind of grow big.

But I would like to maybe get a little bit more deeper here. I believe you have gone global. You have a lot of global brands, um, yeah. Who are using your tool. This would be good to, for listeners to understand how a, like how a brand benefits from this, like a particular brand, for example, based sort of us they use your tool.

Uh, what has been certain, uh, success stories. Some testimonials from customers. Yeah. What's the journey like for brands? Yeah. So, uh,

uh, you bring about some interesting points. One in terms of like, uh, how, how do brands realize that value, but before you realize the value first. I think it's like this understanding of the problem that brands face today.

You spoke about it rightly. It's easy to come online, harder for them to grow their business online, and a large part of that growing of that business comes from that initial insight. What you. Started to realize more and more this understanding of consumer is at the heart of selling any product or building any product.

Also, today's brands are actually waking up more and more to that reality of what they see. That Right? Uh, uh, in fact, uh, as, uh, at this, uh, Recent event where we're speaking with a bunch of brands from the Indian ecosystem. Um, and, uh, they were speaking about, you know, what our next generation of products that we are launching are actually, because consumers told us that they needed that product.

They were launching this product, but the, the product ne uh, was initially launched in the form of an oil and they realized that consumers didn't want an oil product, but they wanted to see them. And that only happened because they were very close to the customers. And they were very close to the consumers in terms of understanding the needs.

And so they completely converted the product in terms of the initial line that they launched and they converted to the new generation of the products. And that's really how product development is happening. The selling part of it is, of course, once you build products with consumers want, that's an automatic adoption of the the thing that's really what works.

And so for us, when we see about how those brands are finding value, it's really starting off by helping them understand these consumers. Uh, in depth by helping them with engagement tools that help them share their information As the consumers, you and I, you know, uh, we are also pampered by the likes of an Amazon.

And all of these marketplaces today, the convenience of buying, right? They really understand as well. They show us the right products of, at times they'll start off the journeys from exactly where we have stopped earlier from the browser, not bot to showing us deals that are ible around the products that we like and all these Addison products that they help us discover.

So we kind of also adjusted to these experiences. When we go to a brand site, it's almost like I'm anticipating that I'll have a similar sales experience, a one-on-one experience that I'm getting at the marketplace. That's really where the infrastructure bit comes to the table for most of these brands.

Is there the ability to understand consumers and subsequently create these experiences? These consumers on the fly. What we bring is a platform that, uh, connects the DOT and all of these today, helping them first understand consumers in depth, what they want, what they're engaging with, and subsequently create.

The whole sales experience for you, which is very tailored for you. Like what is buying maybe sh likes blue and uh, uh, I like gray and like showing us different sets of products which are tailored for us, showing us at different price points. We might be sensitive to different types of offers. So, uh, to showing us the kind of products that go well together.

For example, if I'm just buying a gray thing, they might suggest me a complimentary product, which might go really well. Maybe it's a black. Uh, genes that might go really well with this, or a blue pad that might go well with this. And so giving, almost like being that helpful assistant sales assistant that you'd expect in a one-on-one experience, bringing it to your store to life, that's really what we are kind of bringing to the table with.

Awesome,

awesome. I think this kind of technology, as you said, right? People are so used to Amazon and the other marketplaces out there. Uh, customers expect that on the brand site as well. Absolutely. Whereas when people on the brand site, there is a disconnect, people don't get that exact experience. So I think your, whether you're kind of in a way democratizing that entire marketplace experience for brands.

Yeah. They can just come plug and play, use your, uh, dashboard and kind of start building those experiences. But I want to just kind of take you back maybe in your previous startup, the past mm-hmm. Startup that you had mentioned. See for many founders out there getting acquired is like holy grail, right?

It's one of the, uh, kind of unanticipated, or they kind of prepare themselves to get advocate acquired or kind of raised. Go through an I p O, all of that. Right? So I just wanted to maybe dig deep a little bit more. Obviously you mentioned that, uh, it was into, uh, it was like a platform for building mobile and web apps.

Uh, just wanted to understand the acquisition story. How did Flipkart reach out? Did you reach out first? How did all start and. Maybe just some finer points would be, would be, be

for me. This was, yeah. This was back in those days when Flipkart also was making a lot of acquisitions, uh, I would say in the whole space.

And it was a fast growing company that made recently the mentor acquisition just, uh, a year or so before that. Okay. Case had moved to a new role at Flipkart and everything, and we had a good relationship where we had spoken earlier with Ish, also as part of the startup where we are trying to help. And so a lot of these dots kind of connected together.

Mm. At that stage in time. And oftentimes, timing is really what matters, especially if you're going through that whole acquisition process is about you need to time yourself, right? You need to develop your relationship. Acquisition is not an overnight game. You've got to also think about that when you are getting acquired.

You've also got to ensure that you're getting acquired to bring certain skills and bring certain things to the table over there for the other team, and you've got to be committed to that. So that's usually. The way that founders today, at least when they're thinking about going through that acquisition, should be looking at it.

Can I develop those relationships early on, which will help me subsequently? I might not be looking for an acquisition at this point of time. Absolutely right? True. But building those relationships early on is super important as you go through this whole process, right? Because you don't know where you kind of fit in in that whole story.

Secondly, I would say like this was one of those moments that I couldn't have planned for. Right? I mean, we weren't planning on an acquisition. We, I wasn't planning on Mason or Cubic later on, but it's been a fabulous story ever after, right? I built up my whole team. Subsequently, after I get into the group, I got got a whole new network of folks that I kind of connected with.

And none of these are things that you anticipate and say you go through it deliberately. So one is that Skype your relationships set up your relationships early. And then kind of commit to making things a success as you get in over there. So those are the things that I would like to kind of tell folks who are kind of looking to get acquired.

Uh, once you do that, I think, uh, you know, uh, uh, while most people tend to think that, uh, there is a, uh, bit of a tall poppy syndrome, Typically in emerging markets where if growing through too big, then people want to cut you down to size. But I also tend to find that we are in very exciting phase in our growth today as an economy, as a country itself.

And there's a lot more younger talent who is out there, who are hungry, who are ambitious in terms of making a big impact on the world around me. And uh, what I like to say is that if you can get that ambition in, but you can also collaborate with all these people who are also, you are well vicious, then you kind of really have big outcomes for yourself, right?

Because all of us are true, we do want to make the best. What do you want to do in our lives? Right. No,

absolutely. But I think a very interesting point that you mentioned, what I've heard from many entrepreneurs out there that none of them who have got acquired never planned for it. Yeah. They just did Right things at the right time.

Build those relation relationships ly and things just line up, right? Yeah. Like whenever you don't plan for it and it happens naturally, that's the ideal best win, right? For everybody. So I think that's also true, by the way, that's also very true about, uh, fundraising, uh, as it goes. You typically raise funds when you don't need them, rather than when you need need it.

Exactly. And so you've got to be planning for it and going through that whole cycle. Uh, true. Likewise. Yeah. So, but I call it the insurance mindset. You buy insurance when you don't need it. So that you, you're prepared always, right? Yeah. Great. Uh, brother, jumping into my next, next segment of this podcast is obviously innovations are happening on a daily basis.

Twitter, LinkedIn is filled with chat GPT gen, ai, uh, non-tech guys speaking these, this language, you see the entire, I don't know everybody. Like everybody's joining this bandwagon. I don't know whether all people know what exactly it is, but, but since you have been in this space and you have been OGs in a way, creating no code platforms in your first T avatar and then Gen ai, which when you didn't know Gen ai, that you were building gen ai.

So just wanted to understand what was happening in this geni space and at the same time, the infrastructure layer, like what's happening in India with the O N D C layer. I just would like to get your thoughts on this, these technologies, and is this, is it all kind kind of coming together for you?

Yeah, so one technology runs in all kinds of cycles right now.

Today we are of course in a hype cycle, of course, with the AI mindset. I mean, if you rewind the clock back like three, four years, it was all crypto. And web three, we went through that whole phase right. Until it kinda, uh, went on. But I think one thing that has been different, unlike the crypto wave, was that that was not building up for a while.

The crypto wave was like, kind of just, uh, went ballistics. But the AI wave has been building up and it has gone through some fundamental shifts on the infrastructure side that has really happened. Right. And which has enabled it at one point in time, intern who's really, uh, Gave birth to neural networks in some sense, because neural networks are pretty much dead.

Because before Hinton really showed that, you know, images could be better recognized handwriting, could be better recognized with neural networks than any of the other algorithms. Google and all had been doing that for years, and he did that out of a research lab in Toronto. And there were some fundamental innovations that happened over there.

During that phase of time, we had the ability to have larger cloud compute, which allowed us to create more sophisticated, uh, uh, networks, neural networks. And those really kind of enable these kind of algorithms to emerge, which should help us understand in some sense, first images. And subsequently now we text, uh, uh, understanding as well as text generation.

That has happened over the years. Now the big jump up that has happened is that as these layers. And fundamentally what we are doing is that in some sense we are trying to almost replicate the way that we understand our brains. We have come to realize is that it's like a very dense neural network of sorts.

And we are kind of trying to emulate a similar structure in the hope that we'll get to artificial intelligence, which can really understand things, uh, uh, around us. But while we are still a, uh, bit of a, we are away from fully a g i, as we call it. But what has happened along the way is that as networks have become bigger, they have come to, we have come to realize that they have got a fairly good grasping language today.

And that's really what we see, the whole explosion on the charge PT space itself today. Right. We have this ability to kind of ask it a question and all of a sudden it feels like it's answering back just like a human on the other side would do. Right. And for a lot of us, it's like, it's amazing. We suddenly feel the ca.

Does content writing go out of the way? Would, is there no value in writing anymore? Like if machines can just produce this content, does uh, art and design completely, uh, get described? Because machines can create, I think there is going to be some shift, but you know what? Uh, we've gone through all of these kind of waves much earlier.

If you look back at history, the industrial wave, in some sense, they said that, did it lead to the death of everybody who was creating clothes? No, it didn't. It just allowed those people to leverage that. We, of course, went through a disruption cycle, right? Some people will be out of jobs because they'll not be able to adapt and we'll go through that cycle.

But I think fundamentally it has kind of evolved where we've become better as a society because we are not doing the kind of job. Now, imagine if all of us had to handcraft our own clothes. We just be left doing that. There will be nothing else for us to do, uh, in our lives if we are just doing, uh, using looms, the older hand, uh, crafted looms of sorts, right?

So I also see a very similar emergence happening. Today's AI systems are getting better. I see that there's a lot of potential for us to adopt it in all kinds of workloads from the way that we write, from the way that we research. And the way that the best way to look at it is that, uh, think of it as an extension of yourself.

This helps you do better. Just like machines earlier helped you do things better. Computers help you do better. Yeah. It is now gonna help you do things better. So you are gonna apply your own intelligence a little harder. You're gonna use that to kind of create different kind of things. Possibly. We'll create different kind of movies.

Possibly we'll create different kind of art. Possibly we'll create different kind of, uh, uh, content. And that's really going to be what is going to be the future looking like. Well, today it's primarily in the content space, but we definitely see this having more applicability across the board for sure.

Uh, not just in commerce, but every industry I would say, uh, will, uh, have a fundamentally disruptive impact. Much like. The industrial age. So we are moving from what we call the industrial age to the digital age to now in some sense the A I and uh, I think we'll see more and more of that happening across the board for sure.

Great. Thanks Barada. Interesting thoughts there on innovation happening across, right? As you said, this technology can be used across domains and as you mentioned, right, machines can replace certain bit of your work. And as humans, we kind of upgrade to the next level of work. Absolutely. All the, uh, but they're going into my last, I think I introduced that concept there about O N D C.

I'm, I'm sure a lot of people are talking, A lot of people have taken snapshots of their orders versus their O N D C orders and showing, uh, There is a, a difference in pricing and, uh, this much better seamlessness in purchase experience and multiple stakeholders coming into one platform and kind of, uh, facilitating that, uh, buyer seller experience.

Just wanted to understand your thoughts on these infrastructure layers being created by by governments. Do you think it'll have an impact on, uh, e-commerce?

I, so one of those things is that, uh, if you look at fundamentally markets, right? Some of those areas where, uh, people have known to come to markets for, has been India, has been the Middle East.

Maybe these are where markets have really flourished. True. But you know, uh, we borrowed this concept of marketplaces from the west. Amazon incidentally happened to create this marketplace concept, right? And they always went into this concept of that needs to be one place held by a capitalist organization, which will basically ensure and control who gets to sell over here.

And that's really been what marketplace marketplaces are. Course flourished across the world ever since. But you know, as more and more marketplaces have come, it's also become harder for these sellers to really make a buck out of it. And for these brands really to make a livelihood, right? Because today the Amazon tax continues rising.

It's gone from where it was, uh, starting off with 15 to 20, uh, percentage points to right now people are paying between 30 to 50 percentage of their revenue to Amazon today. Right? And there's not much left on the table for you to do product innovation. So you get sold poorer products. Simple. Overall ecosystem does not grow.

What, uh, and I see that there is this, uh, here, there's a little bit of government intervention in some sense. But the good part about it that it's not just intervention, it's innovation that is happening that is ha uh, by the government. The government is providing an open platform today, right? And open markets are really what makes business thrive.

Really what makes everybody grow together, right? We just don't need large corporations. We need small businesses also to thrive, small and medium businesses to thrive. And India has been one of those hubs. We have had millions of small, uh, small businesses, right? And they cannot be kept hostage to large marketplaces deciding who gets to sell where, right?

Uh, and these kind of ecosystems I see more being the center of where these kind of innovations were necessary. They will also spread across the world what we call as fundamental open infrastructure. In some sense, we saw the open source movement, what it did for software. We see open market movement doing the same for commerce, open market, open payments movement, doing the same for commerce globally.

And uh, today, U p I, if you know it's already going to uk. It's already being supported in Singapore where you could use U P I to pay via, uh, pay now. And so there's a lot of these innovation which is spreading beyond our shows. We see India being as that next emergence hub in terms of where commerce innovation really happens today, because we are the ones who are closest to how small brands get created.

We already know this playbook. For a while, so this is good. Do I have a massively disruptive, uh, influence across the globe, not just in India For sure. And yeah, I'm pretty excited about, uh, what we're building around that, how we are helping, uh, merchants and o n DC go live, bring their shops, uh, to uh, to live and yeah.

Excited about what you doing.

Awesome. Awesome. I was just reading recently that, um, it's called DPI is what the government has given, uh, tack to a digital public infrastructure. And it seems that many countries have shown interest in kind of using the India stack, as they say, right? Yeah. Across commerce, payments, healthcare, all of that.

So I think I, I, I like to joke about it as the I P C stack. Um, the identity, payments and commerce. So like the IPC code, so this is like the IPC stack and Yeah. IPC can become i p c Edge. It can keep going on, right? Yeah. There's an agriculture stack as well that the, the government is looking at. So I think the list is endless.

I think every sector, um, can be, can. Government could provide that infrastructure wherein startups like yours, I mean companies SSEs, can kind of innovate over that platform. Right. So, uh, brother, coming to my last question and basically the theme of my podcast, um, is what's next? So, would like to get your thoughts, you have been in the ecosystem for some time now in the e-commerce space.

Would be great to hear your thoughts on how the next 3, 5, 10 years would look like in the e-commerce space.

Speak about three major maybe themes, what we see as emerging and maybe like that's at least the perspective that I, I see coming from us operating in the space for a while. Working together with brands, with merchants, with larger, uh, teams as well, and seeing how that's kind of shaping our globally.

We've spent a fair bit of time also across the world from selling to, in the us to selling in Europe and UK to selling in Southeast Asia. In India. And so a lot of these diverse markets that we operate in today, uh, and it'll speak about some of these larger trends, at least that we are seeing from on the commerce side, right?

One of those is that, uh, you know, uh, today for us as consumers, the behavior is shifting today, right? And that behavior, I will say is that as generational shift happens, that behavior is a, in some sense, we are all digital natives today. You would roll back a generation back. They were not because the internet kind of evolved with them, but we are all digital natives today, and every generation subsequently is today.

Right. And they require that, almost that instant fulfillment part for them. The internet is the whole commerce landscape. It's not just I'm going to a place and shopping. There I am. I want to shop wherever I discover products, whether it's on a TikTok, whether it's on Instagram, whether it's on Pinterest, whether it's on Facebook.

Whether it's on Twitter, right? I want to shop wherever I am. So discovery and shopping are essentially going to be more and more connected. It's going to be at the point of discovery shopping is going to happen. And so open markets really help in those, uh, spaces, right? Because now you can shop anywhere, right?

So that's, that's one major shift that I definitely see happening. Um, and around that theme itself is what I call us instead of closed marketplaces. We'll see the emergence of open markets. And you see O N D C playing like a big role in creating some of these fundamental infrastructure. But that's like one of those, uh, things that I, I see happening.

The second part that I see is that we spoke a little bit about this digital age to the a I h, uh, a little while back. Uh, and we also see the consumer interfaces changing today, um, because the internet's also become this very noisy space. We will have a way for us to curate the internet for us. And we see AI playing a big role in terms of how the relationship with the internet itself happens, how the relationship with shopping itself happens, right?

So we'll see more and more of these AI first. What you say, almost like, uh, what we call it is we had travel agents who would go and find the best deals for us. We'll have shopping agents, we'll go and find the best products, which are most likely for us. So we see that trend also kind of coming, ai playing a fairly disruptive role in terms of the relationship with how we buy, how we shop, how, how we start the internet.

Uh, and, uh, these are some of those motions that we kind of, uh, see in play. The last part of it is that, as. Things become more, you see the internet is becomes like this one place for us. There are these AI emergence. It becomes difficult also for brands to keep up with this, uh, pace of, uh, development. So that's also another part that we see on the commerce part, which is the infrastructure and enablement part.

People who have to think beyond setting up student products. Because today commerce is not about, I set up a store and all of a sudden, magically my business happens. It's not that today you've got to sell everywhere the consumer is, whether it's on a marketplace, whether it's on email, sms, social, wherever, whichever channel the consumer is, and you've got to connect the consumer by understanding the consumer.

So you've got to think beyond Sofa and builders. Some of these platforms of the older generation will not suffice. We'll see a new stack. And that's really where Mason really comes to the table Today we are building this new stack for you to help you sell everywhere. Wherever the consumer today is, making it a little simpler for you to run your business and grow your business.

But those are some of those, uh, what I say, emotions in the commerce space that we see more and more happening. Uh, happy to, of course, uh, things keep evolving. We keep learning, but these are definitely some of those things that we keep, uh, seeing in the days to come. Awesome. But I think quite interesting in sales as a customer, as a consumer, I feel excited.

Because it makes my life easy wherever I am, like example, I'm browsing on a website or an app, I can just click and I can buy. Everything gets, yeah, everything gets on the backend. Everything gets fulfilled for me. So, uh, another point that you had mentioned ai, right? AI coming as a shopping agent. And kind of figuring out, uh, like scraping over the internet and figuring out the best deal for you.

Um, likewise it can do that for the brand as well, right? Absolutely. So it's, it can work for both the stakeholders there and as you said, good to hear that Mason is part of that journey and, uh, helping build these innovative tools so that brands are always couple of steps ahead of the curve. Uh, Berda.

Thanks once again for taking our time. I think some super, uh, great insights across your acquisition days, your, what you're doing at Mason and your experience at various companies. Uh, Berda. I'm sure listeners out there would reach out to you, uh, I think for specific, uh, questions. So I think LinkedIn would be a good place to reach out to you.

That is correct. I'm on LinkedIn and, uh, please do, uh, uh, share out my handle. I I'll drop it to you. And, uh, yeah, I mean, uh, listeners can hit me up for any questions that they have around this. I sometimes am on Twitter, not always so much now, but, uh, I, I do respond back, so please feel free to reach out for any questions.

Hey folks. Welcome back. Today, I am delighted to interview Kaus Manjita. She is an award-winning founder and serial product builder. With over 16 years experience in the tech industry as the current CPO of Get mason.io. Kaus is spearheading the introduction of ai. To stores worldwide with a view to generating sales.

She's also a passionate customer evangelist, so let's listen to see how her AI powered engine works, the logic behind AI and successful use cases of AI live in the e-commerce industry. Kausambi, how are you? I'm super happy and excited to be here today more than anything else, and I'm good too. It's, it's very warm.

I'm in Bangalore right now. It's a little warm, uh, but yeah. But overall, a pretty good day. So it's 2:30 PM Irish time, so it's 7:00 PM with you. Mm-hmm. So, apologies for eating into your evening. Uh, you know, it's a great way to spend your kinda ease into the weekend with a, with a great conversation for It is.

It is, it is. Friday. Zambia, it's great to have you. I have been following your product for a while, and I'd say that you're sitting back with a smile on your face considering that you were thinking of AI before chat G p t was ever, ever launched. So I'm intrigued by what you're going to say. Well, I guess for me for a while it has always been about how do we leverage technology, but to bring something meaningful for someone on the other side who's gonna use that product.

Right. And very early on, my co-founder, um, actually, you know, notice that the kind of solutions I would say that we could add value to in retail, uh, couldn't leverage data, couldn't leverage machine learning, could actually do good with a lot of automation in place. And, uh, a great way to kind of reduce the decision fatigue that brand owners and founders have, and eCommerce managers and marketers have.

Right. And, um, I mean, online it's tons of data. You have to kind of keep looking at it to take decisions on how to, you know, sell to your customer how to increase sell through, but. The, the information's changing every single second. And, uh, AI was a great, I guess, way to automate that decision making, to make decisions in a more intelligent way, uh, without missing out, uh, you know, on data pockets, on patterns with human biases, right?

And, uh, so yeah, so that's how it started. But it was very interesting now that you say Keith, because. Initially we didn't really wanna save AI company. Cause you know, you go out to customer, they don't care like you, you're running a brand, Hey, you use ai, you use whatever. Like, what am I getting out of this?

Right? So that's the question. And for us, we never really wanted to kind of like hype. We learned it the hard way. I'm a second founder. My first startup didn't work out, so learned it the hard way that, you know, no matter how much technology you put at people in the end, they're like, What do I get outta it?

So we kept ai, no code or automation or ML and all of that under the hood because we're like, we help you sell better. Right? But, but it was very interesting that this year as Chad just took over, you know, the world actually, now you have brand owners asking you like, do you guys use it? I be like, Hey, yes, let's explain.

So, yeah, yeah. I do have a little bit of a smile. I, I agree. Yeah. But you mentioned two really important points. I've said this quite a few times. I won't repeat myself in every episode, but the amount of data even that a Side Hustle Shopify store is producing. Mm-hmm. Data in Google Analytics, data in the Shopify dashboard, data across social channels, orders, data, data in your email platform, Clavio or MailChimp, whatever email platform you're using.

I actually think it's become physically impossible for some people to understand all of that data. Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah. It's quite crazy. And then there are signals. Also from what people don't do on your store or what products they're not engaging with or what are, what are those things that people don't wanna do on your good points, on your right?

So, so there's data, there's missing data that's giving you some insights, and then there's data that's giving you insights, right? So, so yeah, absolutely. We, I guess more in retail, but it's true everywhere else, right? I mean, end of the day, all of us are not data scientists. We don't see the art behind the numbers.

Um, and there's a lot of times when we are just lost in number crunching, when actually we should be thinking about what are the insights and now what do I do with the insights, right? Like, what's next? I, it reminds me, Keith, of this like one of my favorite all time movies, finding Nemo. I just can't get over it.

Like, I love that one. And there's this like part at the end when all the little fishies are like in indoor, in their little. Water and they jump out of the aquarium and they're in the open seat, but they're still in their siloed little packets. And they're like all there and they look at each other and they're like, now what?

And I think that's what's, that's what's happening with data. You're looking at all silo data and you're like, now what? So what you need is actually insights and actionable insights, more importantly. So, yeah, I totally agree with it. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy up there. Your, your, your point about what people are not doing is actually interesting.

People, people obsess about this, the products that people purchase and then the experience after in a store, after they make that purchase, getting the order to them as soon as they can, communicating with them. But you just mentioned something really interesting, which I, I, I haven't heard it very often focusing on what people aren't doing.

So if you have a busy e-commerce store and something, a product isn't selling well, maybe. There's some data there that you could actually use to actually maybe not stock that product again. Is that the kind of direction of travel that you're kind of, you're looking at in terms of e-commerce and that people, what people are not doing?

I'll give you another fun example.

Customer calls. I, I love getting into customer calls, by the way. And I think these 17 years have just flown by working in product because it just goes by when you're like talking to people and you're listening to them because there's so many interesting insights that come out if you listen and not talk.

But there's this, uh, team, uh, it's a pretty big brand. I don't wanna name them because I didn't take their permission today, so I, I wasn't aware this conversation will come up, but, They're pretty well known offline brand now, getting online, um, over the last couple of years and, uh, like, like the rest of the world.

And you know, they, they're of course figuring out this whole e-commerce game and, you know, it's very different from running something on Amazon. It gives you your reports and then you have your own D to C store and you are like, wait, I don't just have my D to C score. I have like search and homepage and, you know, PDPs and checkouts and list pages and collection, like there's a bunch happening in there.

So it's not just like a very simple black box anymore. Right? And they have this very interesting nav in your homepage and a bunch of us too. Like you land your, introduce your new customers to your categories or subcategories on a homepage in a very nice and visual way, because they're home and furnishing.

And specifically for them, it's a lot of stainless steel furnishing, right? So one of their subcategories happens to be home letters. And, you know, they have, it's a fast selling, like people love that they're, they're well known in the LA home letter space, but their problem was that nobody clicks on my homepage now.

Like, what's happening? Why are people not clicking on my homepage now? Right. And the interesting thing over there, like, they just ignored it. They're like, you know, they're, they're doing tons of other optimization and we realize, like, over that call, I like, my quick question to them was, How are people searching for your ladders and how do you present them on your homepage and nobody knows what's a three step or a four step ladder?

No, I, I can't visualize the anything outta that. Like even if I have an eight step ladder, like, okay, sure. Like is a five step better. Like, I need to put something in my kitchen. Is five step the one the way to go or it. And so just that fact of people are not clicking on something in the homepage. How are people searching for your ladders?

Right? What are the search terms that are not any. Right. And they changed by the way. They, they analyzed and people think about it as more as kitchen ladders or library ladders or, or you know, like pantry ladders and stuff like that. And they changed their, uh, entire nav, uh, for the ladder category and shoot up.

People are really using and finding the ladders and buying more of it now. So yeah, that's an example of. What's not happening in your store? It's amazing the perception that some business owners have about their client. I often say that emotion takes over. Somebody probably decided that the navigation should be built a certain way when an actual fact it should be built on data, which is, yeah, again, uh, it's all about, I suppose, time to analyze and if you're using Hot Jar time to watch video, you know?

So let's chat about Get Mason with all of your experience. You mentioned 17 years. Eventually you create Get Mason. So for the e-commerce store owner out there, what does get Mason do? Very simple. We are promised and we've learned to distill it over the years. You know, a lot of times in technology we overcome complicate what we do, right?

We talk about headless or composable or we talk about APIs and, I don't know, web books and whatnot. But what, honestly speaking, what we do is very simple. As a brand owner, as a business owner, you need more sales. You need people to shop. You know your products, and we're a shopping engine. We sit on top of whatever store or platform you have, and we help you.

One, understand your customers, the data or lack of it, right? And we give you actionable insights on what to do next. It could be something as simple as changing, for example, uh, you know, your nav or something as complex as, hey, you need to have better frequently bought together algorithm, right? So we give you all these actionable insights within the product and a lot of it is very simple for you to use.

You can just. You can get it out there, uh, some of it might need, you need us to step in and help you out, but in the end, what it does is that it helps you get more people to shop. So our goal is to, you know, connect the brows to my journey today. It's all about how do I better understand my customers and get them to shop more on my stores over the next, you know, five years.

We also see that as we learn, as AI learns more, we are gonna be hopefully, help your customers shop better no matter which channel you are on. It could be Instagram and you know, Facebook or TikTok or even Amazon. But today we're, we are focused on helping you help your customers shop better in your store.

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Get your first month for free by simply replying to your signup. Email zombie. You mentioned headless. Okay. And you also mentioned ai, but is Get Mason is that two different products that do two different things? Can you ex, I suppose, explain the differentiator between the two? Yeah. And. We just have like one simple product.

They're very, it's a platform. So there's the whole shopping engine. It's Mason is a shopping engine. That's it. Now, under the hood, of course, right there are, if you are talking about shopping today, there are different ways that you can get your customers to shop. With you, right? Uh, when it's a new customer, it's a lot about, you know, how can I help you discover products faster?

How can I help you understand why you should buy my product over others that are out there? How can I showcase to you that this is not a, like a brand new brand? There are, they have been, we have had customers before, so we do have best selling products or stuff like that, right? For a returning customer, it can be, Hey, you left something in your card.

Right? Can I drop an offer and maybe, you know, excite you enough to buy this time? Right? Uh, can I show you, not just this specific t-shirt you're looking at, but maybe the trouser and whatever else that goes with it. Like the bundle, right? So, so there, they're different, different kinds of, I guess, micro apps I would call them.

So their entire platform has all these different apps and they're all shopping apps. Uh, they, again, you can, you get access to the entire platform depending on where your customers are not interacting or not shopping or dropping off in your store. Um, you know, bunch of these things get recommended to you and you can use it and, you know, see better returns.

We've seen customers who've got, um, you know, SMB segment actually doubled their revenue in just six weeks, and we've had, of course, more scaled out teams. Who've got 40 to 50% uplift in their total revenue and orders over six months. Right. And ka samie is, is that through something as simple as automated merchandising, or is it when store owners have started to use your product, have they made fundamental changes to the store based on.

The insights that you're giving them or I, is that as a result of simple installs of your app that just begin to work the minute they have enough data gathered? Yeah, that's a great question. And that's where the question that you asked me about, is it what's head, how headless an AI come into the picture.

Right. So it's headless because it actually connects to, let's say you're on top of Shopify, so you know, you just install it and it, it, it's, there you are on top of who or Magenta. It's very easy for you to just get it connected over there. You store maybe your, a lot of your customer behavior data in ga, right?

Yeah. Google Analytics. Yeah. One click you connect it. And so it's not just your orders or your, uh, you know, uh, product data, but also your customer behavior data quickly. One click you're connected. So that's where the headlessness of it comes, is essentially at the, you know, um, uh, under the hood there's.

All these APIs and you can quickly, you know, one click login, one click connect. If you have engineers and you have more complicated systems, you can actually get them to very easily use these APIs and open APIs and disconnect, right? The AI comes in the more important part, I guess the second important, important part, which is one.

All these different signals that you're getting, they need to lead to something, right? So the first question is, what is the decision that I need to take based on, again, all this different data signals that I'm getting? And then can I actually execute the decision? So for example, if I'm seeing that, you know, there's a cohort of customers, Are engaging with a product, uh, but they're kinda like hovering over the price and they're not buying it and they're dropping off.

Take, uh, keeping the margins in, in course UHC margin your product, dropping a 10. You know, get them to buy. So that decision making is also something that the AI helps. That the AI does, right? So you depending, so, cause you actually have a solution for that, don't you? You, you have a price drop app that has the ability to drop the price based on that interaction.

Isn't that right? Absolutely. You nailed it. And so that's, that's definitely one of the most, you know, it's a very recent drop, but we see like great results with customers and there's a lot of, of course, decision making based on. Different signals. And again, price drop is the interesting thing that I find about the Price Drop app and how we built out the Garth behind it, is that sometimes it's also about the intent, right?

Right. Where if it's a heavy weekday, no matter how much of impulse and like I'm dropping the, you are in the middle of a workday right there, it's more about trying to, um, make you understand why you should buy it remaining top of mind, right? So it's actually all these behavioral, uh, you know, insights.

The engine has been able to look at over the past couple of weeks and do better and better decision making. So yeah, price drop is one of the examples. So a bunch of these like sales, uh, engines, pricing engine, dynamic pricing engine, all of that of course also come into picture and the data that you're using for that.

Let's say we have a Shopify store that's doing a half a million dollars. The chances are that store has, you know, 15 to up to 25 apps, and we always recommend that people don't install apps unless they're absolutely really, really required. But are you plugged into as many of those apps as possible? Like are you plugged into their analytics account?

Are you plugged into their Klaviyo account? Like what is the source of your data besides obviously the Shopify api, all of the Shopify information, are you plugged into all of those other external sources for your AI engine then to make better decisions? Because obviously, The more data you have access to, the more data you have access to, the more sense that price drop suggestion will make.

Yeah. And, and, and yes, we do. We can, as I said, it's headless so we can, but also, I'll also step back and remember I mentioned we help our customers, our merchants understand that customers better, right? And one of a bunch of our discovery and engagement related apps actually come into, so there's like quizzes, there's, you know, product finders, there's your welcome incentive.

All of those, uh, you know, engagement or discovery apps also form a very integral part of understanding. So it's zero party data. So yes, the, the information that you're, there's third party data. There's first party data, which is essentially what's happening when you're stored, but there's also zero party data that's you are creating when you are deploying some of these, uh, you know, product finders or quizzes or stuff like that.

And you're getting to understand your customer even more deeply. The beauty is that today you might be doing that, maybe you have a spin wheel, right? But you're not doing anything with that data. You're just collecting a phone number, right? Yeah. But imagine if you could utilize that information, like what did, how did the people react?

Did the person click on a, uh, you know, uh, you know, something versus something else that was there on the spin the wheel. So all that nudges and information that you get, now imagine if you can package that and use it for. Or you can use it for a price stop. It just becomes such a more connected, better ecosystem where you're selling across your funnel better.

So we, you know, of course we connect with Clavio or Google Analytics as I mentioned, or your store in fact, any kind of CDP that you might be using for little bit of scaled out teams. Of course, they ha use their own CDPs and we, you know, as I said, we're headless, so you can connect it to the cdp, but you can also generate a lot of zero party data.

So customer signs up that you're given the dashboard. So are they given the option? Do you alert them to say, here's maybe a frequently bought together bundle that might work better for this particular product, and do you give them the option to automatically push it or do you send them an email to say, here's some new suggestions?

How does the, what is the customer experience from the dashboard point of view as to as to utilizing all of the decisions that. You can potentially make and potentially push? That's a great question. And you know what? That's also something that we learned over these last few years is on one side, I guess it's, it's human behavior When you're first interacting with something new, right?

It's something that you have newly encountered. You want to understand, you wanna feel a little bit more sense of control. And what we've seen is that usually, you know, our new customers, our new merchants, right, they definitely want to have a little bit more control. Over the system, which means that, you know, I want to know when you know, a price drop will be activated.

I wanna know when to activate a sale. Like questions like that, right? So we have full control. You can literally do bunch of these manually. Recommendations will come to you purely on you, whether you wanna go live with it or not. But what we have also seen is that as they continue to use it and they see the value and they trust the system more, and that's human behavior again.

Um, we have had requests where, hey, I don't wanna take this decision anymore. I know that decision's good. And so we also, that's where our shopping engine, I guess the pure, pure engine starts coming in. You just switch it on and you don't have to worry about it because it'll do, of course, based on your.

Scope, like you have to set your margins. That's very important. You don't want, you know, your cogs to be impacted. So you do wanna set like boundary conditions like that, but once you trust the system, it can actually run on its own too. Great stuff. Great stuff. This, this is a great conversation. Is there anything that you want to say that you haven't said?

Any particular area or any particular, actually you, you've made me think about it and goes back to, You know, this conversation I was having with our, with our team last week, one of our a, as I said, I, I kind of managed the product team, right? And a bunch of product and product marketing and all of that worked very closely with me.

And, you know, one of our sales team members actually was asking like, why do we keep saying that, Hey, first we help you understand your customers and then sell. Like, why, why is that core so important? Right? Can I ask a question then? So, Kabi, is it correct to say then that your service involves a consultative sale?

Like you're helping the customer get to know their own customers, but you have to get to know the customer before your solution makes sense? That's actually a good question, and it's not necessary. Because what we have seen, of course initially, yes. Right? Because three years back when we started, um, when we first launched a version of our app on the Shopify store, we are learning with our customers.

We are learning a lot from them. Right? But the beauty of. You know, the digital world is that, and especially when you add AI into the loop, the beauty is that the ai, the system and the engine starts learning too. So what we've, that outta the or Shopify customer actually just installs the product. On their store.

Right? The first thing that happens is that the system knows, hey, this is a fashion. It's about doing this much of orders maybe, and seeing these drops in the funnel. You know, like people are probably bouncing off the homepage and I understand. Over these last three years I've seen that when something like this happens, these sort of playbooks and apps really help, right?

So you can start seeing, you know, the uplift and the impact and the ROI of having a shopping engine with you on your side from day one. But the shopping engine, of course, keeps getting smarter because it's your own shopping engine. And so over time it keeps getting smarter and helps you do even better.

But yes, like, you know, it doesn't need to be that on day one there's has to be a, like a ton of analysis before you can even find value. Yeah, yeah. Um, there's a lot of learning that this AI bring. I love the fact that it's an application that that helps improve store sales. There's a only a small minority of apps that can actually stand over that, you know, at Zabi.

It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. I really, really like the product. We'll put all of the links to your good self in the show notes and listen. Thank you very, very much for your time. Thank you for having me, and I look forward to coming back again. Thanks for listening. All of our episodes are available on Spotify, iTunes, and Google Podcasts.

A special note of appreciation goes to our sponsors rewind.io, the leading backup solution for Shopify store owners. Get your first month of Rewind for free by simply responding to any welcome email once you sign up for your free trial On rewind.io if you are at Shopify user with an exciting story to today.

L. Reach out to the team on podcast milk bottle labs.com. Until the next time, take care.

As an entrepreneur, you’re either trying to sell something or you’re trying to sell more of something.

And at mason our mission is to simplify shopping and turn browsers into buyers faster than the rest.

Sounds like a match made in heaven, right?

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Access enterprise-level playbooks and algorithms with mason.

Smart Drops in action

• Smart Price Drops helped one mason customer increase their return user conversion rates by 15% in just 1 week.
• For another, Smart Price Drops contributed $5k in 5 day—13% of their returning usr revenues for the online channel.
• And this mason customer saw a 9% increase in return customer orders in the first week of implementing Smart Price Drops.

Want to learn more?

Get Smart Price Drops up and running on your online store in as little as 10 minutes. Book a demo today and watch your online sales soar.

As an entrepreneur, you’re either trying to sell something or you’re trying to sell more of something.

At mason our mission is to simplify shopping and turn browsers into buyers faster than the rest.

Sounds like a match made in heaven, right?

👉But what about those who don’t intend on buying anything? How do you make sure you’re only targeting the most-qualified visitors with your offers? (We get it—you’ve got margins to consider!)

Well, we’ve got you covered there, too.

Smart Price Drops, exclusively from mason

As the name implies, Smart Price Drops uses a combination of AI and machine learning to present the best time-bound offers to browsers who have shown an intent to buy.

Smart Drops is powered by our proprietary browse-not-bought algorithm. This smart little algo has observed, analyzed, and learned from more than 100 million+ sales in the last 2 years and today can determine buyer intent using a variety of signals like in-context shopping patterns, product category & sub-category, in-session behavior and more.

The importance of Browse Not Bought

Look, we’ve been building AI for ecommerce for a while now. Over the last last 3 years, we’ve taken every ounce of our knowledge, combined it with AI wizardry, and packaged it in an easy-to-use interface.

More importantly, Browse Not Bought is one of the most successful—albeit hard to create—algorithms in retail. Because a shopper checked out a product page twice, doesn't mean they have the intent to buy. What did the shopper interact with? For how long? Why did they choose one product over another? Where did the shopper come from before they landed on that specific product?

There are a LOT of signals, both direct and indirect. And as a brand, it may not be possible for you to build out a complex model that captures all these signals in-house.

But can you still access 25% more carts?

Heck yes!

Smart Price Drops packages this complexity into the ease that you’re used to with mason and ModeMagic.

Here’s how it works

• Simply select the products you’d like to enable Smart Price Drops for
• Select a “trigger” for the Smart Price Drops
• Anchor your margins

…and you’re all set!

And your shoppers start getting exciting, targeted drops right at the point of discovery!

No complicated installation. no coding required.

Access enterprise-level playbooks and algorithms with mason.

Smart drops in action

• Smart Price Drops helped one mason customer increase their return user conversion rates by 15% in just 1 week.
• For another, Smart Price Drops contributed $5k in 5 day—13% of their returning usr revenues for the online channel.
• And this mason customer saw a 9% increase in return customer orders in the first week of implementing Smart Price Drops.

Want to learn more?

Get Smart Price Drops up and running on your online store in as little as 10 minutes. Book a demo today and watch your online sales soar.

Jess is the Head of CX at Feastables and comes with over 12 years of experience in the field of driving meaningful customer experiences.

Today, she joins us at Mason to help you level up your D2C Game with Gamified Experiences that actually work!

Tune in to learn more 🚀

Casper is the Global SVP of Technology at Valtech, and Gordana is the Chief Revenue Officer at Vue Storefront. Both Gordana and Casper are part of the MACH Alliance as Executive Board Members - a global tech alliance that advocates for open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems And today, on our final episode of Shelf Season #1, we have them both here at Mason - to speak about MACH and the Evolution of Commerce with Composable Architecture.

💬 Key takeaways from the conversation

• The past few years have demonstrated the rapidity of change in customer preferences and the business environment. E-commerce has experienced explosive growth. Speed and agility have become essential elements for success in adapting to these dynamic shifts.
• MACH's manifesto emphasizes the importance of future-proofing enterprise technology and enabling current and future digital experiences.
• The choice between an API-first approach and transitioning into an API world has a significant impact on the implementation, speed, ease, and agility of solutions. Businesses must always consider the opportunity cost involved.
• It is also always crucial to understand the fundamental architecture that will best support and align with the goal of setting up the business for success in this fast-paced landscape.
  

🎙 Diving in...

Kausambi

Hey, everybody, welcome back. And today, I'm very excited because it's double the trouble. I have both Gordana and Casper with me. And we're going to talk about how to FUTURE-PROOF Your Business with Composable Infra.

Just a quick intro. Gordana (G) is the chief revenue officer of Vue Storefront and Casper is the global SVP of  Valtech -- and both of them are executive board members of the MACH Alliance.

And of course, anybody who's in e-commerce now knows what the MACH Alliance is all about. It's a global alliance, one of the first of its kind, and it advocates for open best-of-breed tech solutions. And it's trying to create an ecosystem that's meaningful for everybody, not just for individual teams.

We'll start with Casper. So what do you do, Casper? And why do you do that?

Casper

Nice to meet you first and foremost, and thank you very much for hosting us. As you're saying, we're here to kind of evangelize the important elements and the opportunities that MACH enables for businesses. My name is Casper. I'm the president of the Mars Alliance. And I'm also, as you said, the SVP of Technology of Tech.

I'm basically born and raised in digital commerce. Technology is my space and my passion. And just making businesses thrive is something that I care for each and every day. As a consultant, obviously, as the president of the alliance, I kind of co-lead the strategy of where we want to go and how we want to push the markets further.

And then about tech, I lead our strategy for MACH and composable and also participate in the journey of some of our most important clients in this transition towards future fit and flexibility and agility.

Kausambi

That's awesome. Thank you so much for being here and G over to you. What do you do, and why do you feel so passionate about what you do?

Gordana

I love tech and I love really solving business problems with tech. I had a little bit of an interesting journey having started as a software engineer, but then went into business and spent majority of my career on the business side. So leading the go to market team at U storefronts and I have really lived in the Mac composable world for years now.

Prior to this, I was on the headless side. So really got to understand what the backend and the headless approach and in that whole process I realized that the head is getting quite complex and somebody needs to take care of that also for merchants. And so I joined the storefronts and as the heads, right, the solution that brings all the headless composable together.

And we really help both business and tech teams in merchants by providing tools to get differentiating experiences at the door much faster and at much lower cost than usually, and help them really innovate and practice really at speed. So which is really important these days, just competitive on the brand side.

Kausambi

One thing that you mention, so I think so fundamental to everything that's, you know, for us coming from, I think a wider mid-market SMB kind of perspective and you coming from maybe more enterprise and mid-market, but still at the core of it, it's about speed and agility, right?

Tell us a bit about the alliance itself. I think how is it helping teams globally to make this kind of like paradigm shift almost from being monolithic to composable first?

Casper

Yeah. So first and foremost, MACH is a not-for-profit organization that we found it back in June of 2020. Our purpose, like you said, is really to evangelize for open enterprise fitting technology that unlocks a more future-fit ability for businesses going forward.

Meaning we want to make sure that technology is an enabler and never a limitation. And that is also why the awareness and the enablement of markets is so important to us. We help teams in many ways, but at least the three most important ways that come to mind is that we certify what is and what is not.

We are this gatekeeper to the marketplace and the potential shortlist, and the span of opportunity that exists. And this is, of course, where our members really fit in across three categories. In particular, we have the software vendors, like the storefront which is represented. We also have sites that are system integrators like this could be consultancies and agencies, which is what I represent.

And then we have enablers like some of this common tech that truly accelerate and also align the implementations of these architectures under the brand side.

Another pillar of our organization is really the ambassadors. This is where a lot of the practical experience comes through in our messaging and in our thought leadership. I always say that our ambassadors really brings the scars and this practical experience to life.

Kausambi

In your experience as one of the vendors that are kind of certified, I would say benefits. Do you see how has this changed more than just being able to reach out to customers better or be a part of an alliance? What has been your observations on how things have changed once you've joined the lens?

Gordana

Yeah, so I have been actually in MACH Alliance with my last company too and one of the founders, so I can actually believe it's been three years only. It's amazing journey and really the essence of why we even started talking about the alliance or this body a couple of years ago is to a demystify this new architecture that was emerging and to purify, to really separate the pure play as well as size, MACH versus maybe some of the more traditional technologies that we're trying to work towards magnifying.

It's built on a modern architecture, modern composable technology, and you can And so kind of separating from those that are not pure. And that's really the biggest benefit of just having. And this is why when we get when we work in the alliance, we do remove our commercial hats because we're all really passionate about helping merchants just understand and navigate these waters a little bit easier than it might be, except when they're just kind of doing the research.

Kausambi

Yeah, that's the thing about positioning. I mean, it's it's words and it can be copied and sometimes it's about uncovering that and understanding what lies behind it. Why is it so important for a merchant, whether a technology stack that they're evaluating or even the architecture that they're planning about -whether it's API-first versus if it's something that's moving to an API world? Why is that demarcation so important?

Gordana

Yeah, well, it is important because the fundamental architecture of these solutions are going is going to dictate really how they're implemented, how fast or implement, how easy and how agile they are. Because we talked already about agility and that's where pretty much everybody is after these days because we have to innovate fast on the technology side, on the merchant side, how do you set your business up for that?

And the technologies that are not pure-play MACH, will still struggle in those areas. They have opened some of their technology, but it is not as agnostic, it is not native fully to the cloud, it is not the APIs may not be as mature and all of this is going to ultimately slow down the development of new experiences that every merchant is is looking to do out there.

So it really does make a great difference in the fundamental architecture of the solutions that are being used.

Casper

And if I may add, one of the areas that are quite interesting, too, is that the scope of the market is also constantly expanding. Like if you look at it from a value chain standpoint, clearly being a commerce company as an example, you're generating a lot of value across the entirety of the customer's lifecycle, right? But the scope of the market is also constantly expanding.

Now when we're starting to see companies potentially starting to innovate with regard to supply and planning, companies are starting to innovate with regard to fulfillment and delivery. And we start to see these additional pillars of commerce almost emerging within our own portfolio, and thereby the scope of our architecture is becoming much broader than it has been historically, and that than I think any of us ever imagined when the balance was formed.

So I think it's really interesting to also see that the market's not as binary as it may be perceived, because clearly, as a company, as a business, you can't modify your entire stack on day one. You need to figure out where do you truly want a differentiated where is there value in being agile as a company? Meaning what are those must win battles or those big bets you want to make from a business strategy standpoint?

And that's what you need to unlock and enable because it needs to coexist with some degree of traditional thinking too.

Kausambi

This is a good segway to the next question. What could be some of these? If I'm a brand and, you know, I'm looking at adopting a more composable or swappable architecture today, what could be some of those major drivers for me?

Casper

So one clearly stands out, and that is the glass ceiling that a lot of companies see. Best suite types of approaches, right, where it's a one size fits all, and it's potential when you reach a certain degree of digital maturity, becoming a limitation to what you can do as a business and what types of opportunities you can react on which typically see that a transition to mass and I need to emphasize the word transition here.

It's a journey for a company. It's typically not a migration that we see being done over the course of a day, nor over the course of a year, because it's something that's constantly evolving. Just like the architecture would be. We see a lot of companies starting to, for lack of a better word, decompose their existing monolithic setups and the existing monolithic systems they have by starting to actually put in place technology in the places again where they want to increase the speed to market, where they want to increase the degree of agility, where they want to unlock the commercial opportunity to. We also see, in general, that a lot of brands are starting from a customer experience standpoint. Clearly headless is a prerequisite for this type of an architecture.

So it's really about the question of how and in what sequence as well. You want to facilitate this transformation with this transition.

Kausambi

And you know, I think it's common knowledge and I was reading in some reports sometime that today on an average, the consumers interfacing with a brand like 7 to 9 times before they actually make a decision to buy. And that really ties in very strongly in the omni channel and connecting the dots in customer experience.

So do you see any early hiccups or drawback that a brand might have to keep in mind and be cautious about as they're moving to a more distributed architecture versus having like a cool platform that manages everything into it?

Casper

Yeah, for sure. And I just want to challenge you for a second because I would even ask the question, has there ever been that single platform? Because if you're thinking about the customer's journey and its entirety, you're talking omni channel, you're talking about the breadth of interaction that customers are going through.

There is no single unicorn platform within that mix because of the breadth. And what we can do now with Mass is to actually orchestrate all of the systems and all of the types of capabilities and services that goes into serving that customer through a single type of technology architecture across. So I don't agree necessarily with the statement of a single platform or a single throat choke because I think by nature it has been a very distributed and extremely fragmented architecture.

You need to choose the best, best of rates for you. You need the right tools for the job, the right types of capabilities that fit the opportunities that are ahead and initial compose your own solution. And it also means that the stack that you're going to work with doesn't prescribe or influence the types of features. Now that all comes down to a business first type of a design, meaning you own your own destiny.

And that is something that potentially can be fairly complicated if you don't have a grip of who your customers are or what they actually want from your brand or where your brand is different and where you potentially can simply use commodities in order to solve for the indifference. So going through that business first type of a design process, at least, we typically see being a potential hurdle or at least a process that we need to support the business to go through to make sure that they simply compose their own solution to and don't just end up expecting that the features are being prescribed by the actual vendors that they choose to bring in.

Kausambi

And one point that crossing my mind is that a lot of times when you read about Mach in general, composable architecture in general, it just is almost like this kind of a, you know, a mental model that people get into that this is pretty much my last major replatforming effort ever. I can come to this level of my ecosystem, my own business and whatever sense they need.

Do you think this is a super tall claim or is it something that is really, really fundamental to the default movement?

Gordana

Well, I mean, I think that's exactly the idea. Right. The idea is, is that a business doesn't stop business, innovate, market changes. Right. And every business needs to be able to to do what's right for them at that time. And so really, what this composable or swappable in this case architecture allow is for businesses to continue to choose the best solutions for them because as the needs of the solutions may be different right.

And you were kind of talking earlier about even going from a smaller business to mid-sized business to large. Right. As companies grow, their needs are going to grow. What shouldn't change is the fundamental architecture. They shouldn't have to redo everything every time it kind of at every juncture of their business, they should be able to adjust those parts that are changing and do that in a in a quick fashion.

Casper

And there are just certain types of qualities of also the engineering that you need to put into these types of architectures that allow for this never re-platform notion like the fact that you approach integrations through a decoupled approach that is event-driven naturally allows for much more flexibility in what that source or destination system is. So while you can embrace and create a monolith, we've also seen some of those.

Unfortunately, there are just certain qualities that kind of enable you to also grow with the architecture. And as I previously said, the scope of the architecture is also expanding, meaning the way the architecture looks today, the principles are static, meaning it looks common, but will grow in the range of the types of digital touchpoints, of the types of digital capabilities, of the types of processes and people that impact like that will constantly grow.

Kausambi

I love that. It's almost like you're getting your hands on something that not just grows with you as a business. You know, from when you start to tell, you grow across multiple brands, multiple regions, multiple segments of customers, trends, etc. But it's almost like it's something that empowers you to sell anywhere, anytime and to anyone without really having to worry about what's following that anymore.

Casper

And that is really where this notion of Agile comes from, right? Like appreciate the uncertainty that exists in this world, meaning who knows what the customer's needs and wants are in two years time, none of us were able to predict that two years ago.

Kausambi

Any final words or advice that you would like to share with brands who are kind of on the verge of re-platforming, the composable architecture and they're kind of at the cusp and wondering whether to take the plunge or not.

Gordana

Yeah, I think that's I would maybe turn it the other way. Writes, in looking at this decision, I would ask, what is actual cost of the status quo? Right. Because we talk about replatforming and so on. And for folks that may seem like a major body of work, but not being able to innovate at speed. How much does that really cost the business?

Right. Not being able to engage with customers on all channels, not being able to experiment really with with new revenue streams. A lot on the backend, right. Even the smallest things, things taking weeks or months to accomplish. Right. So all of these things kind of adds to lost revenue and that's every time that we go through this exercise of understanding the cost, the status quo far outreaches, the efforts and the cost of moving to composable.

And you know, that seems to be what a lot of projects are starting. But yes, I would as people are sitting on this decision, I would just really look at what is it cost not to do something, and I think that would be far greater.

Kausambi

Yeah. Is there a simple test for people to actually, you know, identify the cost, evaluate the cost without having to go through a lot of brainstorming and kind of soul searching?

Casper

The opportunity cost.

Like there are benchmarks, clearly, like we're bringing omnichannel benchmarks in place, for instance, when we need to quantify, quantify that, that opportunity cost, the cost of missing out. So there are certain benchmarks that companies can leverage for what is the impact of actually driving commerce across channels and being omnichannel enabled. And those are simply benchmarks that you can apply on top of your existing commercial and revenue models to see what is the potential, the uplift potential from it.

Kausambi

Perfect! Thanks both - I learned a ton, and that was great talking to both of you. I would love to bring you back at a later point again on some episodes as we go through the journey of learning a lot about how different companies and different brands are adopting and how they're, you know, what are some of the challenges they're facing and bring you back again to kind of address that at maybe next quarter.

So thank you so much again. And yeah, that's a wrap up for today.

Morten is the EVP of Technology at Bluestone PIM. He is also the Head of the MACH Alliance Tech Council, which advocates the use of composable architectures for modern enterprises. In this episode, we break down the possibilities that a modern composable stack can bring for growing brands during peak seasons — let’s say, Black Friday Cyber Monday - and how it’s so exceptional in handling traffic and other storefront challenges during such as high-traffic seasons.

💬 Key takeaways from the conversation

• The industry is undergoing a significant shift towards composable solutions, which is seen as the future for many industries.
• The goal is to provide a consistent customer experience across all channels, which is why the concept of headless architecture is important.
• Headless architecture facilitates maintaining a uniform look and feel across different channels and enables easy implementation of small front-end changes.
  

🎙 Diving in...

Kaus
Hi, everybody. We are with Morten, who is the EVP of Technology at Bluestone PIM.

And for me, it's super interesting because it's not every day that you get to talk to someone who has really deep experience in e-commerce - more than 20 years in ecommerce and technology. So very exciting to speak to you, Martin. Thank you for coming to the show with us.

Morten

Well, thank you for having me.

Kaus

And we'll dove right in into the very interesting topic we're going to talk about today - The role of modern commerce during peak seasons and during higher revenue days.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Morten

Well, as the technology, I am responsible for our product and also the roadmap of our product. I'm also often involved in late stages of the sales process and I help and guide clients setting up composable architecture, often involved in the guiding the clients with the with setting that up. So that's very briefly. I like the EVP role that I have.

It has been a fantastic journey. And for us as a as a like in this context, small PIM company, it has been life-changing really because we've always known from the start when we started making the product that we were very technically strong, but it was very hard to communicate that to the clients and the alliance is definitely helped us explain to clients why it is important to think like this, why the future is composable.

Kaus

I think this, even post-pandemic – read like the last two or three years – have seen an interesting shift suddenly from the pre-pandemic era to during the pandemic and then again from the pandemic to post-pandemic. Do you think this whole quick shifts in the way the industry had to adapt to really different kind of, you know, consumer behavior in a very short, accelerated amount of time?

Morten

So it has definitely changed and that has changed for also the clients a lot. And that has made us susceptible to too new technology. And also, that means that you will need flexibility.

So it is a different game than it was both on the B2B side, which was I was talking about now. But but also on the B2C side, right.  You see all about, you know, social commerce or commerce everywhere. These things, you know, the hunger for flexibility is definitely there.

Kaus

Yeah. You know, speaking of flexible body and innovation, right. People are talking about the modern stack for e-commerce and for retail. And then, within that, the modern stuff for e-commerce. Could you help our audience kind of understand what do people mean when they say, hey, here is the modern stack for e-commerce?

Morten

So well, let's start with the legacy stack or what we have had. We're like the monoliths of the world where you had like everything into one system and that was great for a lot of purposes. But the problem was like, like we talked about now the flexibility of these solutions they were usually or they are, they are still great for their purpose, you know, but they are very big, very expensive and very low in flexibility.

That's that's sort of the problem. That's the interesting part here now, because we have sort of a perfect storm now where we have like I said, the tech monoliths are not flexible enough. You have all these new needs, social commerce, commerce everywhere, all these needs that. So you need fast moving, best of breed solutions that are customizable and that are able to handle this, these new needs.

And like I said, what we have now is the perfect storm, because now we have global cloud providers that are also ready. They're mature enough to have integrations with low code or no codes. It's much easier to integrate between best-of-breed systems. And that's really what the Mac Alliance is also all about. They we're thinking in the same way we are based on the same technology thought, and that makes it very easy to integrate.

So that brings us to what the new stack is, and that is what we call composable commerce, which is a whole universe of composable parts or best-of-breed solutions that you that are fit for purpose exactly what you're trying to achieve. And like I said, we have a perfect store now where like the technology is there, the integrations are ready, and now we have vendors also providing this.

Kaus

Yeah. And leading on from that there's actually and shows is very relatable for a lot of what you just mentioned very relatable for a lot of folks who have been running high revenue days for a while, and they have probably seen this shift in mindset and that's about your store, for example, as a channel, brands have multiple touchpoints today. What is an example of this role that, you know, composable or headless systems actually play in ensuring that this experience across different touchpoints and across the different channels are also seamless for brands?

Morten

Yeah, I think that that touches on the heart of this because what you want is that the customer-facing channels is the same as the same experience. No matter where you go. This is exactly why we have headless, because with the monoliths everything is connected to everything and it takes months or years or whatever to make something new happen, right? And it's not fast enough.

So you need a thin layer on top. And that's what the headless layer is in a composable world. And it's made for being like making it easy to have the same look and feel across different channels and also very easy to adjust and easy to, you know, do a, B, testing and do yeah, do all these small micro changes that you need to do in the front end.

And I think that that's the biggest difference is I think that maybe that's even where this came from because you saw that you had this huge need for quick change on the front end like any channel and that was connected to the back end. So that was very cumbersome and very hard to do. So I think that that's maybe one of the things that initiated this whole movement of, you know, breaking up what makes sense to break up.

Yeah, it's really one of the key differences is that you will with the headless solution, you will be able to very quickly change your frontend and make it uniform across all channels.

Kaus

That leads me to another quick question. What are how do brands, who looks at it, have decided that we are going composable? This is the right time for us. We don't want to wait for our eventual future and we're going to take the plunge today. What advice would you give them to ensure scalability and being able to use such a modern stack to its best?

Morten

I think that the key here is, is the competence in the people. If it's internal, that's great. But at the least external help if you don't know what what this is, because it is with this as with everything and there is no free lunch. You don't like, you don't just buy something and then that solves everything you have to understand.

And especially, I think with market architecture and systems, you have to understand what you're doing in order to take full advantage of it. We've seen a lot of examples of that, people just buying one component and not understanding the power of that. And there is not really any power in that. If it's just a standalone. The whole point is that it's composable, it's made to work together with other moving parts.

Kaus

That definitely is a great, I think round-up of our conversation. Any Parting Thoughts awards that you definitely want to share before we close for the day?

Morten

We see a big shift in the industry moving towards composable, and we feel very strongly that this is the way forward for many industries. And yeah, it's just exciting to see how this idea is catching on. And also what I love about the MACH Alliance is there are a lot of competitors within the alliance, but we're working together.

Like 15 years ago, if you saw a competitor, you were just eyeballing them and just, you know, and now it's like we're working together for a common goal in the same groups and stuff like that. It's just a shift in the mindset that is just fantastic. It's just much more open, and everyone is working towards the same goal.

And I love that.

Kaus

Thank you so much for it. It was super interesting. And also, I love that we kept going back to the same analogy, but I think it sticks, and we should definitely reinforce more of that. Thank you so much for your time, and really lovely talking to you. We hope to bring you back again some other time and dig down into a little bit more into MACH Alliance and all the different, you know, parts of it and message and what does allow teams can leverage all of that but for today, that's a wrap.

Thank you.