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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.
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Brent Peterson (00:01.294)
Welcome to Always Off Brand. Still rolling. Still rolling. Let's try that again. Let's take two, three, two. Welcome to Always Off Brand. And Talk Commerce. Wait, am I supposed to do Talk Commerce? You flipped it. I did flip it. All right, I'll do Talk Commerce. And still rolling. Three, two. Welcome to Talk Commerce. And Always Off Brand. And today we have Hani from Adorama.
Hey guys. he get it right? Yes he did. Fantastic. So I'm Scott Ohsman that's Brent Peterson. He's Hani from Adorama. So I gotta start off with this Hani. We met you earlier, had a nice chat. How did your speaking engagement go? I still have to go on. you still have to go on? I'm sorry. Okay, I am okay. That's fine. You know what? Everybody's having a hell of a time. You put enough beer people and it's amazing what happened. Yeah. What is Adorama?
If somebody is clueless and doesn't know what it is, it be me, tell us what it is. Alright, so I like to tell people that Adorama is the smallest big company you've never heard of. And it's partially true. They say there's an element true to every joke. But what it is, is it's the premier destination for all things professional audio, video, and photography. That's what most people know us for. If you're a creator, podcasters such as yourself,
That's like a 99 % chance you've heard of Adorama. I had heard of it. was It's like water with sugar in it. But what's interesting is what was... Hold on, let's wait. Give me two more minutes and then that joke's gonna get to me. Hold on, still waiting. Sweet water. Yeah, sweet water. I was trying not to mention a brand. I was gonna say, that's a competitor, isn't it? Yeah, but they're better. In a way. In a way. mean... In a way? In a way. Okay. So Adorama...
we were not for that we will never done were working on finalist you know what this is going well i'm a consumer first absolutely
Brent Peterson (02:07.904)
I love great experiences and the water with sugar is a good experience. They've been around for a long time. 50 years this year. Holy shiboygan! That's a 50 burger ladies and gentlemen. Good gracious, that's a long time at this. It's a long time and says we kind of know what we're doing.
I think so. in that too though, there's come a lot of changes in the way people buy things, right? So you've gone from no internet to internet. yeah. I mean, my favorite story about Adorama is when it first died out on 34th Street in New York, I mean, it literally was one of hundreds, hundreds of businesses like this back in the day in the 70s, right?
The that Adorama has survived this long and really there are really only two players out there in this space that dominate this market and I won't mention the other companies. They should remain nameless. They shall remain nameless. that. I call them my friends to the north just so you know. wow like Ohio State does to Michigan.
Thank you, Brent. So we've been around for a lot, long time, right? And what's most interesting about us is we evolved from a single physical store on 34th Street in New York to going down the catalog business for years and years, which led to organic growth for multiple brands under the Adorama umbrella. So today Adorama actually has six companies under its umbrella. Most people still think of Adorama, the photography, audio, video company. beyond that, we're in so many other spaces like Scuba, scuba.com.
Leisure Pro, which is outdoor camping, hiking, lifestyle, sunny sports. Professional printing, professional rentals, and a B2B division that caters to large enterprises, local, state, federal governments, and equips everybody from law enforcement to federal agencies. Let's just say that. Ooh, is that some top secret stuff? Yeah, think Adorama was... Wait, wait, hold on. Spies?
Brent Peterson (04:16.679)
I mean, they do need audio-video equipment.
getting them to subscribe to things, to join the program, get discounts later because you get so many loyalty points. You're ahead of the curve in terms of how you're doing your e-commerce business. Yeah, mean, you hit the nail on the head, right? mean, the whole value problem of Adorama has evolved since when it started to what it is today. I would like to tell people that Adorama went through this journey where it was known as a very transactional brand.
came to us for a great deal, the best prices possible. And that still holds true, because people as far away as Australia buy from us, because it's still cheaper to buy from Adorama right here New York and have it shipped all the way to Australia than it is to buy the same gear in Australia. That's amazing. Sad but amazing. It is amazing. But at the end of the day, what the company has done in the past, I'd say, five plus years.
It it started a journey of being more of an experiential brand. One that understood its core customer, which we saw as not just somebody who wants to buy a camera or a flash or a microphone, but rather we recognize our core audience to be one that is creators. And in a world where you live in where everybody either aspires to be an was just going to say, you hit the mark there.
or a content creator or one of the above, right? Because that's the beauty of the world we live in. We all have the means to tell our stories, create content that lets us connect with other people and share what we enjoy or love to love, right? Because there are folks out there who just love to bake and they want to bake. And it's just accidental that they want to then point a camera at what they're doing and then share it with the rest of the world, right?
Brent Peterson (06:25.717)
Aramaic.
In my opinion and in our company's opinion is that company that is now their best friend. We are the guys who You're a good retailer. This is my whole point, my whole rant about, this is happening to them in the market and these big retailers are getting big. No, no, I've been through the Great Depression. What was the next The Great Recession. I was through the dot com bust. You know what? The good retailers survived.
You know what? Because they were good at what they do. The shitty ones aren't around and it's natural selection in that regard. And you guys are around and still doing well because you're great at what you do. Yeah. I mean, that's really it. Our secret sauce, as I like to tell people, is the fact that we get our customers.
where we don't want to just sell them shit, we want to enable them. We want them to be better at what they do. And I just met you, but I'm going give you 100 % credit. Don't you run the place? I don't run the place. But you know what the best part about it is, even though I don't, the way our company works, each and every one of us is empowered to be owners and drive change and make the business better. But more importantly, most importantly actually, it's to deliver.
the best damn experience possible for our customers.
Brent Peterson (08:13.046)
job at that, tell us, maybe give us a little bit of insight on how you're kind of helping to always bridge that gap. Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, listen, what is the best part about our physical in-store experience? And I'll tell you what it is. It's the people who are there. It's the experts who have the, who are professionals themselves, who have a passion for what they do and they just happen to work with us. Yeah.
They love the job because it allows them to do what they truly have a passion for, creating content, being out there. But they also have the access to all the gear, all the resources that Ramo has to offer. So that's why they're there, right? But then when our customers walk in through the door, in a physical store, they have the benefit of leveraging all of that expertise, all of that knowledge, and it's a very intimate experience, right? Customer intimacy is important to us. It's about us educating, empowering, and we have an event space, a beautiful event
in our store in Chelsea on 18th and 6th. Come check it out if you haven't been there. And we hold all sorts of events that helps people unlock that next level for them. Because when somebody invests all that money in whatever gear they may buy, they want to learn how to get the most out of it. We're very good at that. That's in the physical world. What we've done really well as a company, I like to believe, is that we've taken all of that knowledge.
all of that expertise and made it even more accessible to folks who do not live in New York. That's the key. And so today we have over a million subscribers on our YouTube channel. have hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Instagram. That's just impressive. All right. Thank you.
outside of New York. And the passion. And the West Coast. on. wait one second Brent Peterson, there's other places in the country other than New York City. And the West Coast. And the West Coast. I actually love the middle of the country quite a bit. I've been discovering it now. That's what they call it, the flyover states.
Brent Peterson (10:28.802)
Back to you, honey, and what you've created. I love that because that's seamless. I came up in the camping outdoor space with REI and they were doing very events and community. where, you know, they're doing a better job today, I'll say, but where the break was is internally, honestly, they weren't communicating to the customer. They weren't doing exactly what you just said. You're taking that physical experience, you're doing the best way to digitize that and not lose the DNA of who you are. Exactly.
And I wouldn't say we figured it all out, right? We're still on a journey. We're still evolving. We're still translating that physical, what made us special in the physical realm into the digital realm. But we're making some great renditions. And the beauty of the digital realm is it allows you to do things you could never do in the physical realm.
You got a hallelujah like about in 1974, year after Blazing Saddles was made. good reference. Yes. Badgers! was completely, the whole world was different, right? And you evolved in that world. Extremely different. That is incredible. 1974 is when it started. See, but that's adapting. Yeah. That's just so lovely. It's a company of survivors. Yeah.
And the ownership, which is still privately owned company, it's their survivors. Okay, so what's new? What's talk about today? Tell us about what's new and then tell us a little bit about why you're here at Shocktoberfest. Shocktoberfest? Shocktoberfest, sponsored by Shopware.
This is just, honey, sorry. This is an ongoing bit. Ongoing bit. Ongoing bit that we just. I already read in. Brett thinks it's hysterical and he can't stop himself. anyway, tell us about that. It's quite simple. mean, listen, one of the things, first of all, why are we here, right? We're here because we're all trying to learn from each other. We're all trying to just share what works, what doesn't work.
Brent Peterson (12:33.198)
I don't know if I have anything better than any of the folks here and there's some really smart people in this room today. But what I can tell you is what we've been doing that I think works is we continue to be an innovative digital first company. So 95 % of our business is e-commerce. Yes!
But beyond that, what we've been doing is we continue to look at how do you make it better, right? How do you cut through the noise that exists? How do you beat the big guys, as you called out earlier? And the way we think about it is it has to be to go more bespoke, to be more customer intimate, to be more customer first. And hopefully all of those things add up, right? Because not any one of them.
This is a new business or new customers. Brian, can I ask a question? Yeah, please. This wasn't on the pre-scheduled script. There wasn't one listener. Shocking.
I love this because what I'm imagining inside of the company and inside of the communication and all your different stuff is there's kind of a no excuses. What I get tired of, well we can't do this because so and so's got it on this and we can't do it. It's just like come on use creativity. It's a lost art people. Am I wrong? How does that work inside the walls of Adorama?
Simple. We are David. We know it. You accept it. We accept it. You lean into it. yeah, we lean into it. And the way we lean into it is we mean our sling is technology. And it's the message. Those two things combined is our sling that helps us beat Goliath.
Brent Peterson (14:21.614)
Right, But yeah, how can you compete with Amazon? How can you compete with Guitar Center? Guitar Center, that's probably not too hard. No, not. How can you compete with, I don't know, who other ones? I mean, let's just be honest. I mean, how do you wake up every morning going, you know what, we are who we are and we're going to be the greatest at We keep thinking about how do we use tech to make that experience. When they come to us, I'll give you an example, right? I love examples. Brent hates them, but I like them. Everybody talks about, in this industry, for how long have you heard words like personalization?
what that even mean to people anymore? threw up a more custom banner on the hero page because you know I knew he liked Canon so I'm gonna show him a Canon product. Yeah, all I get is Canon products. Right? But that's not it.
Personalization speaks volumes to us. It's about how we present to the products. It's how we understand who you are, where you are in your journey. What is the next thing you potentially could be going for? What is the right thing to enable you? And it doesn't always have to sell you something. Sometimes it's just the post-purchase experience where we you piece of advice, the right guidance, the right article, the right whatever. But more importantly, what we've been doing is
We've been doubling down on first party data collection for a better part of five years now. We prioritize projects internally like knowing our customer identity across all of our different brands. So now we can actually, someday, not too distant future, can identify opportunities to cross sell across our different brands because the way we look at it is we cater to a community of creators and adventurers. And what's interesting is there's actually an overlap between the two, a big one.
because folks who have a camera with a landscape.
Brent Peterson (16:15.232)
appropriate lenses and got sit in their apartment in New York City and take pictures of their dog they're gonna go out in the world and write pictures of landscapes right and we know that right we know what the lens is capable of and vice versa that person who's buying their camping hiking lifestyle gear from us yeah isn't going to just someday we'll realize their iPhone as great as it might be isn't the best thing in every situation they may want a drone they may want a telescope drone hey now we sell most some
We are one of the largest sellers of drones in America for both commercial and consumer users. Damn, that's a great... I myself am a drone photographer. Are you really? Yeah. think you're just cool stuff.
But the point is, by investing in those things, these are building blocks for something more. And I know we all talk about the world of generative AI and what does that mean? How are we going to use it? There's a million use cases, but it all starts with knowing who your customer is and having every attribute you can get on them across multiple brands, because first-party data rules, right? And then beyond that, thank you. You're welcome.
And then beyond that, what we try to do is we're already laying the building blocks for how do you use all of this tech. And tech is cool, but it's shiny objects. We don't want to be taking another shiny object. We're trying to figure out the right use cases where it actually adds value and enhances the experience. So whether it's in the product discovery realm or whether it's in customer service, we are thinking about how do you take all that knowledge and information and turn it into something meaningful for our customers so you unlock that next level experience.
to that store, right? All that experience, all that knowledge. Guess what? Who's better at regurgitating all that wonderful original human content, generative AI, and then adds their own little flavor and can do it much faster, better, cheaper than hiring 100 humans to sit on the site and answer chats and stuff. First line is those guys, is the AI chatbot that's smart and understands your product and your industry
Brent Peterson (18:28.944)
and can make recommendations and can have a conversation. We're leaning into those experiences as well as continuing to build the knowledge base internally and have the smart people, real humans available to them both in the store and online. So you can call and talk to someone in our company. You can chat with them. We offer those experiences today. So that's how we do it.
Perfect. Yeah, that's, you're also, looking at those AI, the generative AI as far as the first line of customer service or what have you, but you're probably listening to the customer and you're very in tune with what they like, what they don't like, what is working, what's not working, and is it easy to use because if you get rid of friction, you've won a lot of games.
So that's that's your talk is coming up and tell us again your topic. Yeah. are you are you to title your talk? Blow it right here. This is coming out next Don't tell us about it but just tell us the topic. Don't tell us everything. What are you talking about? The topic is simple. It's adding value beyond pricing or something like that. Unlocking unlocking value beyond pricing. Something Something like that. So. Unlocking value.
I'm Hani from Outer Rob. Let me just tell you how this is gonna go. How you guys doing? I'm talking about something, I'm not really sure, but unlocking something. What's the title of this? give us a 10,000 foot view of your talk. Only 10?
about thirty thousand you know it was important he's talking about the state of the whole i'd say okay i agree that it's it's a it the topic is simple it's as and again electronics industry highly competitive
Brent Peterson (20:10.766)
The value is usually defined in terms of price and deals, but we think there's more to it. Yes, those things are still important and that's a deciding factor for the consumer's shop, but I think for us it's also the whole package of knowledge enablement.
the experience, the ease of discovery, the ability to find the right gear that you need to unlock whatever idea you have in your mind when you want to create something. Those are the elements that we are doubling down on that breeds loyalty.
gets them to come back and think of us as something more than just another retailer. That's kind of the gist of what I'm going to talk about. We'll get you out of here on this. How's business honey? How's business? Listen, it's you know, I'm not going to take credit. A friend of mine said flat is the new up. I think we're going to be better than flat. There you go. And then all your planning and projections for 25 are probably, you know, getting close to there's a lot of work on 25 already this time of year. the work is starting on 25.
and you know I'm in the I'm in the optimist camp I think 25 holds a lot more promise for us. Fantastic what a pleasure what a no what it's so great to meet you. Pleasure meeting you both Scott. another beer. It's getting harder as we go along. It's been such a good conversation. has been so great and you know what go shop Autorama. We're at Shoptoberfest sponsored by Shopware.
Talk to you later, bye bye.