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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
You can check out our daily blog post and signup for our newsletter here https://talk-commerce.com
[00:00.4]
I am Chet Silverman. I've been selling etao for 25 years now. I am known as Mr. Etow. I created the name myself, of course, around five, six years ago. And I sell the sponsorship for the show, and I've been selling it since, 2001.
[00:24.0]
I did not do the first show. The first show was in 2000. It was in New York City. City at the Grand Hyatt, which is attached to Grand Central Station. And this is the best part. In 2001, the dot com burst and I got hired right after the Internet crash and they hired me and I had to sell the E Tail show where nobody was in business anymore.
[00:53.2]
So that was my first experience with E Tail, basically calling companies that were out of business. Have things changed over 25 years?
[01:05.4]
Well, let's see. You know, what was funny was like, it was always like, what was the hot, kind of category, like in the beginning of E Tail, it's like color of the products. And we would have these companies that basically Scene seven was one name.
[01:25.7]
I think IBM or Adobe. I think. I think Adobe was Scene seven. They did, like, moving the pictures on the screen. Like, how do you turn a couch around? And there were a lot of those companies where you could turn a picture360 so you can see the back of the couch.
[01:42.3]
Like now, like when you're on Amazon now, you get to see lots of different pictures. But, you know, and then, of course, fulfillment was in the beginning. I mean, if you can't get the package to you, you know, we had shows all about fulfillment in the beginning. And then of course, search.
[01:59.3]
I mean, I still remember calling up Google for etail Boston 2002 maybe. And, you know, back in those days, you just call the headquarters. Yeah. Like to speak to the marketing manager. And they put me through and the guy's like, I never heard of Etel.
[02:14.8]
And I go, that's okay. No one's ever heard of Google. And I convinced Google to exhibit at the show at etail Boston 2002. And they did the show for a couple of years. You know, this beautiful white booth with the colored Google name.
[02:29.8]
And then of course, they realized they don't have to be the show alliances. Right. Straight down there. Can't miss it. Straight down. And then of course, they did the show three, four years in a row. And then they realized they don't have to do any show because they became Google.
[02:46.9]
Like, you know, so I knew Google before they were Google. Yeah. No, and then they became Google like the biggest company in the world they never had to sponsor ever again. So yeah, it's interesting to see all the different technologies that come around. You know, search and email were of course gigantic and we created a search day and an email day that we still have today.
[03:07.1]
You know, that, that still has legs. You know, a lot of technology has kind of disappeared. You know, when CRM was huge, you know, oh, mobile shopping was the biggest, right? Oh my God, a mobile phone. You can buy things on your mobile phone.
[03:22.2]
But then of course everybody can do it now. So we don't really even talk about mobile shopping anymore in the show. Social commerce is big. In the beginning it wasn't big and we were talking about it, but now it's one of the biggest.
[03:37.8]
You know, with all the influencers and the tick tocks and you know, the Snapchat and all that stuff. So it's really interesting watching and what's what I find interesting is watching companies grow up in Etail, you know, where they come back every year and they get bigger and bigger and bigger.
[03:56.8]
And Etail's a big part of that, you know, and then watching them and get bought out. Like for example, Omniture. Remember when web analytics was the hottest craze? You had website story, you had Omniture, you had core metrics. And then I think was it a Google that just basically gave away analytics for free.
[04:15.8]
And then of course everybody was so upset. But I remember Omniture being bought out by once again Adobe. And I was kind of proud, you know, because Josh James, he grew up in Etail. You know, I used to negotiate with these CEOs when the companies were small and now they were massive.
[04:37.2]
So it's nice to see companies growing and I love new companies. We make it a point to bring on brand new startups all the time and sometimes if we have to give them free passes to come, we'll do that because we want them to see what they could do.
[04:53.2]
And then eventually they get bigger and they start sponsoring the show. So it's fantastic. You think that is not going to be the thing next year is just going to be like, just like mobile shopping. I think what's going to eventually happen is every single sponsor will be able to offer you the retailer.
[05:12.1]
I now they can't because there's a few companies that are doing it and I can tell what's going on. I will be big next year. It might look completely different and maybe in two years there'll be that consolidation But I've never seen.
[05:27.6]
I'm getting inquiries from dot AI companies and I go to the LinkedIn and I always look up who it is and it says founder. And it's like three months. I'm like, I just guy start a company like three months ago, you know, like. And I've, I've never seen that.
[05:43.4]
So there's so many AI companies popping up literally in the last month or two months. I mean, listen, the money's flowing and I. We're going to bring them to the show. A lot of them will be taken over. You know, a lot of them will probably go by the wayside.
[05:59.9]
But every single, in my opinion, sponsor, every single technology company that is working with retailers will be able, to one day offer you an AI solution. It won't be so brand new. Just like mobile shop, you know, everybody can.
[06:15.8]
Oh, just like apps. Everybody can do apps now, you know. So, want to give us the elevator pitch? Why should they, why should a company sponsor. Well, a, company should sponsor Etail specifically. First of all, if they want to grow as a company.
[06:32.5]
You know, let's take pre Covid. Before COVID you're a salesperson. You can literally call up the J. Crew headquarters in New York City, wherever they're looking. Let me speak to the director of E Commerce. And they would. You would go They would send your phone. Sometimes someone would answer, leave a message.
[06:48.7]
If you call three or four times, maybe you get a call back. But since COVID that same person doesn't work in the building anymore. So unless you have that person's cell number, which you don't, the only way you're going to meet these executives now is at a conference, because they all work from home.
[07:07.4]
Covid has changed the way you sell, especially in this industry. So you have to go to a show to meet them. And etail, after 25 years, we've got a great reputation. We're not a trade show. And, we always say we're not a trade show.
[07:23.8]
To us, it's about the quality versus the quantity. Our ratios are usually 50, 50, meaning 50% retailers, 50% solution providers. You will never see that in an e commerce show. Not going to mention names, but just look at the other e commerce shows out there.
[07:40.8]
They're flooded with vendors, and it's not easy finding those buyers. At Etail, you find them all the time. Because we kind of. We sell out. We. We're not going to keep selling because then it defeats the purpose and we don't want to dilute the show.
[07:56.7]
That's why we do twice a year. So you can go to Palm Springs in February and then you can go to Boston in Austin and that's a great different. That's a great timing because that's right before the holiday season. August to us is the last time a retailer can leave because they have to be locked down and they kind of do like, like they do the last minute shopping. Right.
[08:17.3]
They do that in August and then when you come back to Palm Springs then it's about what went right, what went wrong during the holiday season. That's what they love talking about Here at ETL Palm Springs everybody has their war stories and the retailers love to talk about what was great.
[08:34.0]
They load up on solutions once again. But etails about education, lots of education. The sessions are amazing. We've got a lot of smaller kind of summits that the retailers love to go to and we allow our sponsors to participate as well.
[08:49.8]
We do not keep them out like a lot of shows do we want our sponsors in integrated into the retailers as well so they can share their stories and show them. If you buy this solution or if you do this with me and my partner, you're going to sell more online and that's what it's about.
[09:08.7]
Yeah, it's a big family. It's a family. It's a community that we've created and we've called like every six months we have a family reunion in Palm Springs and then in Boston. The beautiful thing about this show in Palm Springs is it kicks off the whole E commerce season of shows.
[09:28.1]
We're the first one. The NRF is not E Commerce. NRF is national cash register. You know, that's the in store. But ETEL is the first E commerce show of the year and then, then all the other shows follow.
[09:44.7]
So it's great, it's great timing.