My name’s Chris. I’m out here today, in
the fucking pouring rain making content for my fixed gear blog, that you’d call my shop. My question is,
lots of my fans are under 18 years of age, and don’t have credit cards, and can not pay for shit
that they want on my website, that they express
what they want. Do I pitch to retail, and if so, are there any
special tactics or ways that I should go about that? Thanks. – Chris, if your demo
doesn’t have credit cards, and that’s what’s stopping you from selling direct to consumer, your answer shouldn’t
be, how do I go to retail to go to my consumers? Your answer should be, how
do I get money from my demo to make my transaction,
meaning, whether it’s Venmo, or PayPal, or virtual currency, you know, there’s a much
bigger lift, my man. One of the great things
about the world, today, is that all of
us entrepreneurs can create a Shopify account, or Magenta,
or whatever you want to, and go direct to consumer. Do you know how difficult it
is to get retail distribution? Do you know how much
they’re gonna hose you? Do you know that you’re gonna
make 50 cents on the dollar? Do you know that you’re gonna, they’re gonna ask you for
things like trade dollars, which is if you even
wanna be in our store, you have to
pay us for the right? Do you know that if your
product doesn’t sell well in the first 30 days,
they discontinue it? Do you know that you’re
gonna spend 94% of your time trying to knock on doors and
get into the retail shop, instead of actually
building your community, and building your business? I think that if, you know,
I think at the highest level, for so many of you,
going back to the well, instead of fixing the sink, which is an analogy I use a lot, maybe your whole business
is broken if you can’t get the money from the people
that you wanna get money from. Right? A lot of people try to target,
somebody pitched me like, I’m gonna sell to
12 to 14 year olds, and they’re gonna
make the decision. That’s the worst zone,
because that 12 to 14 is exactly when kids are
in-between their parents buying them everything, but
them not being able to transact, and so, I would spend a lot
of time trying to figure out whether, what way you can
collect money from them, including things like, I’ve always thought a fun
tactic would be, instead of an add to cart button, an alternative
button to that audience, which is, send the email
to your parents to buy it. So, you have add to cart, but there’s also send
the email to your parents to buy this for you, and you
click it, and it’s got like four different templates, like
the sorry one, the happy one. You know, like, what’s the
angle, depending on your parent, with a transaction
link right there? You need to hack
how to get the money direct from your consumer, not how to go down the
traditional path of retail. – This one’s from Richard.

Kevin Widdop at
Kwiddopia on Twitter here. At the Masai Mara,
Kenya’s world famous Safari destination. Here a lion. My question this week is, in a market such as this, even here,
everybody has a smartphone. Huge smartphone penetration, twins with very
early stage social media development and promotion. What type of content
driven online business would you advise to set up? Thanks very much. – I don’t know the market
in Africa and Asia, as well as I do the
rest of the world but, I’m very aware of
the phone penetration, payment through phones, lack of… Did you see that? That was amazing… Something just dripped. – [DRock and Staphon]
Oh, the pipe. From my pipe… (laughter) That’s amazing. That was so cool. Did you see that? Did you know about that? Are they gonna fix it? Eventually. (laughter) I would say that, I would reverse
engineer the audience. So, what I would do, is would spend months
in the Africa market, figure out what
people wanna buy, and I would start
an online business that worked in
the U.S. or Europe, that’s around psychology. Not just because it
was the U.S. or Europe. Certain things are
tried and true human. Certain things are contextual to the neighborhood, the country, the cadence, the pulse, the slang of a marketplace. I would use my best of ability of understanding what’s human, what’s innately human. E-commerce, you know,
buying stuff, water needs, whatever it may be. Whatever the
market’s interested in, and try to build around that. To me, it’s understanding the users, with those phones, what they’re doing. I would look at what
they’re doing now. Whether it’s gaming
or music downloading, or things of that nature. And then try to project, what needs do they have that they’re doing in a traditional way, that the phone could solve. And I would look at the
progressive phone markets in Asia and the U.S., to see where they’re two
or three years ahead. I think a lot of
people have looked at the U.S. market
and have tried to replicate that
in their market. And some have
been very successful and some have not. And I think some things are inherently U.S. centric, and I think some
things are human-centric, and that’s what
you need to decode. And I think I’ve
done well with that, in social networks. Something are just
human based like, if you get big
enough group of people, they’ll drag other people into it. Snapchat, that’s why those are easy
for me to predict. Great, very serious show.

“biz from the ground up,
what trend would you “be paying the
most attention to?” – Justin, this is
a silly question. All of them. What do you mean “what trend”?
All of them. How people are shopping on
mobile, how bricks and mortors are still very viable. Health and wellness,
meditation, technology. There’s no one trend
to pay attention to. I’m not going to give
you, there’s no secret. There’s no episode 201 maybe
Gary will answer my question and give me some incredible insight.
They’re all in play. All the trends matter,
mobile commerce, people shopping behaviors, real time delivery
and then all the genres of things you could
be selling, right? Just a million things that
people are in to like tea and yoga pants and I don’t know. This question is kind of
exhausting and I’m not mad at you, Justin Novello, it’s just it’s a silly question
because they all matter. I pay attention to everything I
can as much as possible, Justin. As many things as possible. They’re all data sets, they
all can lead to opportunity. You know, that’s what I
would pay attention to. There’s a million
things going on. There are 75 different pillar,
core things that are going on in retail. The lack of people
traveling to malls. Postmates same-day delivery. Downtowns and cities
emerging again and the gentrification
of neighborhoods. Fashion trends. What people are
drinking and eating. Sneaker swag. Accessories on cell phones. Everything that’s happening in
Asia that one out of every seven times happens in the US. Like, I don’t know, all of it. – [Voiceover] Melita asks,
“If we aren’t good with numbers,

“sell direct consumer?” – Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think yes. I think Amazon is going to be a
player where they’re basically selling directly to consumer– – AKA with their private labels
or when they’re selling Pepsi through Amazon? – I think they’re going to use
Amazon as a mechanism to sell direct to consumers but the
question is will eventually people like I want Pepsi I want
to Pepsi.com or Pepsi’s Facebook page and just get
directly from there. But that’s not really direct
to consumer because it’s going through Facebook so I think
you still need to use these platforms to go direct consumer.
– Got it. I would say that Amazon is far
less direct to consumer than Facebook because Amazon’s
actually a full-pledged retailer and very honestly I think a
scary one for these guys and gals that are running these
businesses because Amazon’s got real data. In the CPG world, retail and
brands the scariest thing is when a retailer is
gets too much leverage. The biggest brands in the world
are paying for placement in Walmarts and Albertson’s and
Costco’s and Safeway’s that are very expensive. This is not the way
was 30 or 40 years ago. The retailers didn’t have
leverage, the brands did. – Yep.
– And so that got expensive. Direct to consumer is inevitable
the problem is the following big brands like Dove or Pepsi can’t
go direct to consumer because Costco and Walmart and Tesco are
going to say what are you doing? You’re not cutting us out. The second those companies show
a move to wanting to go direct to consumer the big retailers are
going to drop their product from end caps to the bottom shelf
or kick them out of the store. Which then would affect them in
a 90 day period because their sales would collapse which
then would make the stock price collapse so they’re
basically caught in what’s called channel conflict.
They can’t do it. So what’s gonna happen? Here’s what’s going to happen. India and her mom are going to
invent the best peanut butter you’ve ever tasted and they’re
going to start going direct to consumer and they’re going to
sell on Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and quietly but
surely because that’s where the attention is all of a sudden
their business is going to do $40 million not four
or 1.4 or 400,000. – Yep. – And then, what’s a
big peanut these days? Peter Pan peanut butter?
– [Margo] Laura Scudder’s? – What’s that?
– [Margo] Laura Scudder’s. – [Gary] Laura Scudder’s?
– Smuckers maybe. – [Gary] Smuckers right.
– Jiffy. – [Gary] Jiffy, Jiffy,
there we go. Go ahead. – Well I like grinding
the peanuts in Whole Foods. – Let’s use a soda as an analogy
then Coke and Pepsi are going to be like wait a minute
what’s this new craft soda? That’s doing real volume and
then they’re going to be stuck because they are going to
get squeezed from both sides. They’re going to get
squeezed from the up-and-coming entrepreneurs that actually now
have scale and use things like Uber and Postmates or whatever
for distribution and use social media and this for awareness and
they’re going to get pressured from the retailers for
then not to do the same. Pepsi can’t make Pepsi Gold
the direct to consumer at scale. They can do a little one
off, a little holiday thing. Tough. – Starbucks is an interesting
example because I just went to Seattle and I just saw their
new kind of innovative space. – Okay. – It seems like what brands can
do is develop or create a new product that people don’t
actually know is part of the brand and sell it direct to
consumer and see they kind of have the backup. – No, no, no.
100% they can do that. Here’s the problem, it doesn’t
matter what the consumer knows, the retailer. See the thing is most people
don’t get is the number one competitor to the biggest
brands in the world are their retail partners. – Mhmmm. Mhmmm. – So they can’t again at the
highest levels on a board at Walmart they’ll say look
what Coke just did today. They created Scmoke or Chugabuga
– And they’re selling it. – And they’re selling it and if
it gets big that’s a problem for us because it’s going to build
the cadence and the ability and the data to remarket to
those people and they’re going to cut us out. – What do you think about
the future of the store? Do you right now all the brands,
even Birchbox I know or Warby Parker, who are
disruptors, right, are like they all want stores. It’s actually the best marketing
mechanism in the world. Do you think these retail stores
are going to be the place where conversion rates are
going to happen the most? – No, I think if you look at
e-comm it chips away every year. 11 percent of the market,
13 percent of the market, 16 percent of the market. E-comm will continue to
grow especially with this. Especially with our
impatience, I want it right now. – And through
social channels too. – And whatever, right and were
not even factoring in it’s going to take 20 years for what I’m
talking and by then VR will be there so are we literally living
in a virtual world and shopping in a virtual store and it’s
actually being physically delivered within an hour? There’ll always be disruption
but here’s what I will say they’re not going away. Stores are not going away.
Stores, they’re not going away. Do I think they’re
emerging better than ever? No. Just because Birchbox
and Warby Parker have stores right now. Let’s talk about another thing
when the shit hits the fan and I mean the collapse of the
valuations of these super companies and these unicorns
that are rhinoceroses and I don’t think Birchbox is. – What’s a rhinoceros?
I know unicorn is a billion. – Yeah a rhinoceros is what
these things actually are. They’re actually rhinoceroses.
You like it? – Yeah. Like it a lot. – Anyway nonetheless I think
that too many people who watch this, too many people in
our zeitgeist-y kind of love we think things are binary that
e-commerce is coming and there will be no stores. I mean I made these
mistakes as a kid. There is no absolutes.
– There’s no absolutes. – Right? – You gotta do everything
it seems like today, right? – I would say you’ve
got arbitrage everything. If you can get a store location that
you don’t pay too much rent on, that does great branding
and awareness and your selling stuff, Mazel Tov. If you can figure out a
Instagram campaign that, you have to be agnostic.
– Right. – You have no emotion
to where it happens, you just want it to happen. – Well, how do you
afford all that though? – You don’t. You don’t.
Which is why– – I would rather have Ralph
actually do the real jobs than having him just work on social. – I get it. I get it. – It’s allocation of resources.
– That’s exactly right. – I’d rather have
Ralph do everything. He’s very capable.
– Yeah, he’s the best. – Show Ralph, Staphon, come on.
Let’s wake up here, Staphon. You saw what Kobe did.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I think that that’s why
strategy is so interesting. That’s why love to do
what I do for a living. – And you have to
keep reinventing. Now you’re all about Snapchat. – I’m only about attention. Snapchat just
happens to have it. – Yeah. Are you loving it?
– Love it. – [Voiceover] Matt asks,
“The average amount of

“Tips for getting up and running?” – This is interesting. This is very much deja vu 20 years ago. Yeah, first and foremost you need to find the right kind of infrastructure, backbone, CMS tool to really get you guys to launch. Contact management system CMS. Magenta or Shopify or one of these platforms that can get you up and running in the retail capacity at a low cost. I would also highly, highly think about how you’re going to promote within your store to drive people to the .com. I think a lot of people
forget about that aspect. Obviously you have to learn how to do Google search ads, SEM, and you’ve gotta work on search SEO, and organic. You gotta figure out
how to use Facebook ads targeted within a two
mile radius of your shop, and a different kind of
marketing campaign for the 15 mile radius. If you’re going into the delivery of it. I think that what you have to really do is I’ve given you some
tactical stuff off the gate. Here’s some more high level things. First and foremost, you
need outrageous levels of patience. It is going to struggle
over the first 12 to 24 months because in general, it’s a high friction area. Obviously with Instacart and Fresh Direct, and there’s plenty of thing going on where people are thrilled to order but a family grocer to
become an internet player is a tough haul, and so patience I think is going to be an
incredibly important part of your success as you
go through this journey. I would make sure that every bag that you have at the store has a flyer in it with some
sort of creative call to action with a coupon that is online only as kind of a cherry to drive acquisition. I would also try to make sure your POS, point of sale system at the store is tied into the .com so that people can use club cards or you
can collect data there and remarket to them on .com environment. Email marketing is going
to be an enormously substantial part and
backbone of your success. I think a very strong
strategy of what to sell on a daily or at worse case every other day basis on your email service is quite important to muster up excitement and most of all, do not create friction. Make it valuable for people
to join your .com environment. Don’t force them into it, and so those are some
of the top line thoughts. It’s nice when you’ve done it before,

and then you get to fire away my friend. – My name is Dave Zhang
@drzhang on Twitter. – (mumbles) nice!
– Might as well do it. – Don’t worry Zhang, if you watch the show
it actually pops up here it’s gonna get linked up.
– [Zhang] Ding! – Yeah exactly. (group laughs) – My question for you Gary is 10 years from now, – 10 years from now. – what industry will be going
through the most disruption? So what is it going to be like in the media industry 10 years from now? – So, 10 years from now, so first of all, and I
like to say this a lot, I don’t think I’m Nostradamus. I don’t like to predict. I will tell you this, I’m gonna take your question
in a different place because I don’t really,
I mean, all of them, which is really where
I’m gonna go with this. I think that Uber, Airbnb, you know, these companies that are
really disrupting markets. Like the hotel industry is
really disrupted by Airbnb. If you’re in the limo business, your shit’s in trouble
because of Uber, right? So, these companies I think most of us, most
of the people watching think that these are anomalies, right? We call them unicorns
in the tech, VC world. And I think people think
they’re so special. I actually think they’re the preview. I think that every single company that is in existence today, that is not 100% software
technology based first, is massively vulnerable. And I think 10 years might
be a little bit too early but if you told me 20, 30 years from now, like E-com I think is much
smaller than people realize it only represents 12-13% of all commerce transactions in the U.S. That means it has, oh I
don’t know, 88% to go, right? So I think there’s a lot of industries, I think on-demand dynamics, right? Like laundromats are I think in deep shit because I think I’m gonna press a button and somebody’s gonna do my laundry. You look at what Shyp is doing
and picking up people’s stuff and shipping it for them,
which I think bodes poorly for the FedEx store. I think you can really
kind of go on anything that hasn’t been disrupted by technology really going that route. And so, I think the last 10 years so much has happened, right? This didn’t exist 10 years ago. This literally didn’t exist 10 years ago. I think the next 10 years will stun people and I think people are
grossly misunderstanding the exponential growth of
technology and software eating up our society
and breaking the norms that we’re just accustomed to. I’d also throw one other thing, I think higher education I
think is stunningly vulnerable. And I don’t think it will
be disrupted in 10 years but obviously we talked
about this in a prior show, I think once the parents stop caring that their kids go to Harvard and Yale, which I think is only one
or two generations, again, I think education is an
interesting place to look at. – Great, thank you, thanks.
– Nice shirt, man. – Cool man, let’s go!

“What is the one thing that is
still missing according to you “in the ecommerce space?” – This time it’s answered, Yuvraj. So I think the one thing missing in ecom right now. There’s a couple things
that are, not are missing, but I’m very curious
and completely obsessed with who’s gonna be
the first ecom player that is mobile only? Or like, disproportionately mobile first, comma, then, I mean, I almost want
their desktop ecom site to almost be broken, like in the way that people
were broken on mobile two or three years ago. I think there’s a play, and a way to disrupt Amazon or other players in niche spaces, where you are so natively mobile, as all the behavior goes this way, maybe even mobilly this way, that the thing that’s missing is, in the way that Twitter
and Instagram became mobile for social networks, and really had a big win in that way, a Snapchat, I do think there’s an
evolution of ecom players that are mobile first in their attack, and so I’m excited about that, I think there’s going to
be a player that emerges in the next half decade that is very mobile-centric, and mobile only, maybe, even, which I think would be a big stance and an interesting stance, and one that, you know, would almost be a marketing ploy that doesn’t work on desktop, if you really wanna bet
on three, four, five, six, seven years out, which I believe ecom
behavior on mobile devices will be extraordinary, so, the thing that’s missing is the opportunity at hand for that mobile execution in ecom. – [Voiceover] Ryan asked, “What environment is best for you

and I have a question regarding platforms to sell your merchandise online. I run an online community designed to help other sellers succeed
on platforms like eBay, Amazon, and tree systems like Amazon FBA. Just recently, probably
the last six months, there’s been a lot of talk of
eBay really going downhill. A lot of sellers are
fed up with their fees, and they’re really disliking
the path that eBay has taken. My question for you is,
if eBay doesn’t innovate, if they don’t change,
if they don’t get out of this old school mentality, do you think they’ll become irrelevant in the next five or 10 years? Do you think places like
Amazon will completely take over the entire market, rather than just owning a
majority of it right now? – Name? – [India] Michael. – Michael, great question. I’m an eBayhead. Taught AJ how to be an entrepreneur
by going to garage sales and selling on eBay. eBay’s become more Amazon-like than what it originally started out, which was sell Pez dispensers and bobbleheads and Beanie Babies. I actually think there’s
a huge white space, so I think eBay’s doing the
right thing, believe it or not, competing a little bit with Amazon, and I do think resellers
are struggling with it, but manufacturers and people
at scale are enjoying it. I think what eBay is doing
is they’re recognizing there’s no alternative to eBay
in the world, so ironically, I think the white space is, I’m gonna make a prediction here, in the next, and I don’t
like doing predictions. I always say I don’t make
predictions, I just follow, but I’m gonna make one, and I failed in a startup
called Yardsale, mobile eBay, and I may be wrong, and I
actually feel pretty weak about this prediction, but
I’m gonna make it anyway. I do think that in the next 10 years, somebody’s gonna build eBay again. eBay is so much not eBay anymore, that when you look at it,
it’s all new products. I still think there’s enormous
commerce in used product, and so Etsy took its own
kind of crafter mold. Ironically, Etsy just
went public yesterday, so interesting timing. eBay is eBay but is evolving
more towards Amazon-like, Overstock retail! I think there’s a huge
open space for somebody to build a billion-dollar company in literally just becoming eBay again, and I mean restrictions. No new products, everything
on the site is used. You know, used. I just, I think it’s a huge play, still, especially with mobile
and smart tech, so much, I’m curious where that goes, so, do I think Amazon can be
the entire marketplace? No. Do I think that eBay’s
gonna go out of business in the next 10 years? No, I actually think what eBay is doing is actually smart for their business, until this alternative
comes, which may never come, thus, I’m pretty positive on their direction, and so, I think if you guys are resellers or certain type of niches,
I mean I’ve been saying, me and my homies that sold collectibles said eBay was finished, not
as good as it was, in 2005. Like, “Oh, eBay’s ruined.” That was 10 years ago, so that’s my answer. I’m so into eBay. I need, everybody’s got one,

“and they are slowly
letting in biz accounts. “Are you optimistic?” – Jeff, this a great question. We haven’t talked enough about Pinterest on The #AskGaryVee Show, so
I appreciate the question. Good job, India of picking that out. I’m a huge believer in
Pinterest’s product. You might have noticed very
recently that they’ve made it a term of service that you
can’t do affiliate sales. My belief is that means
that they are now going to turn that on for themselves. If you start thinking about
the amount of commerce that goes on, on Pinterest, even if they 5% of every transaction, they could right away be one
of the top five to 10 companies in revenue in the digital space. I’m a big believer in the business, and seeing what’s going on with Faithbox, Willie, the CEO of the
company we’ve incubated at Vayner/RSE, just like $4 in
ad spending on promoted pins. Some of the stuff we’ve
seen at VaynerMedia, the stuff I’m seeing from Wine Library, I’m massively bullish. I actually think that
Pinterest’s ad product, a year from today, let’s
call it 18 months from today, we will recall this video, somebody make a note,
(ding) put it into your calendar
18 months from today. We will make a video
or a piece of content, however we do it in those days, 18 months from now, to talk about this video
where I make this claim, which is that Pinterest’s ad
product is a major competitor to Google AdWords for
e-comm businesses that are digital focused. Enormously passionate about
Pinterest’s ad product and I highly recommend
everybody watching this. If you’re selling something on a dot com, that you get very serious about
understanding what’s going on in the Pinterest environment, bullish would be an understatement. Super bullish, super bull like I’m into it. (laughter)

How do we take that
same level of experience and put it online? – You know, I think you guys at team Human Cry need to
really think about what people want in a retail store, so
you’ve figured that out, and I think the way you do
it is through a survey monkey or a survey, or some data
of what do people want in an online experience? It’s about delivering
people what they want, where they want it. A lot of times people will
try to impose the old world to the new world, meaning, okay. On our website we’re gonna
make a video for everything, or we’re gonna put a live person app, or we’re gonna put our
toll free number, call net. You know, I and everybody
in this room wants good UI, UX. I want it to be fast. I want to get in and out, and speed matters to me when I online shop more than. It’s funny, I actually
and listen everybody has different behaviors, but
actually this will be fun. Steve, I’m gonna make a statement, and I wanna hear your version of it. Actually, I hate shopping, but if for God, I guess Jets shirt. I’m trying to think, I just
don’t like shopping, but I was about to say, in online shopping, but I can’t even order on like Seamless. Well actually I do order on Seamless. Do you know that I’m not
capable of calling a restaurant and ordering food for myself? That it is literally one
of the three or four things that cripples me the most. If Lizzie just said, can
you call and order dinner? – [Steve] What did
you do before Seamless? – I had somebody else do it My wife prior to that, A.J. prior to that, my parents prior to that, girlfriends. I would just never, I never did it. – [Steve] Was it just you would choke? – It just suffocates me. The notion of being on the
phone to order something suffocates me. Yeah, anyway, Seamless
worked for me, the app. Where I was about to
go was in online stuff I need fast and offline site,
I can schmooze a little bit, but then I realize, no I don’t. I only value speed,
because time is the thing that I like the most. India, do you like shopping? – [India] Yeah, once in awhile I guess. – [Gary] Okay, are your
habits different online than they are in real life? Will you spend 40 minutes
in a store looking at stuff? And will you spend 40
minutes looking at stuff on a website? – No, usually on a website
I know exactly what I want, so I’m going to get it. – [Gary] You’re more surgical. – Yeah, but then shopping in person I’m just kind of like browsing. – [Gary] Do you use
Pinterest or other things in theory that are
getting you there online? – Yeah, Pinterest. Definitely have bought
things because I found them on Pinterest. – That’s where it gets interesting. I think there’s something in there, and that’s where my intuition is. Even though I’m not a
shopper, I understand shoppers which is why I led the
questions, if you paid attention very carefully. I think it comes down to realizing that people wanna
be surgical and execution oriented on your site, and
you as a marketing engine need to be great at creating discovery across the whole web, and then funneling it to surgical execution on your site. That was tremendous advice. – [Voiceover] Andrew asks,
“if you were to tragically die