foreign [Music] retail and Retail tags to shape the future of retail hello and welcome to a special season 2 episode 10 part 3 of the retail razor show this is the third of our multi-part series recorded live and in person at the NRF 2023 show in January I'm your host Ricardo Belmar and I'm your co-host Casey golden welcome to the retail razor show retail's favorite podcast for product junkies Commerce technologists and everyone else in retail and Retail Tech alike and once again this special bonus welcome NRF fans to our hot take hashtag NRF live miniseries so Casey We are continuing our special broadcast crossover event with Jeff roster and the this week in Innovation podcast we recorded this series live at in person at the NRF show in the fabulous lounge space our good friends at avanade graciously allowed us to use overlooking the main Expo floor special shout out to our friends and sponsors at avanad for giving you and Jeff such an amazing space absolutely so let's Jump Right In okay see this episode is one that is near and dear to your heart it is all about web3 and taking the complexity out of it for retailers and consumers you'll love it I'm a big fan of a Velvet Rope strategy so naturally I'm an advocate for gated Commerce experiences and more efficient ways to manage VIPs and loyalty in general well you are going to love this discussion Jeff and I had with Max kasho co-founder of ZBOX Max talks to us about how ZBOX is enabling so many use cases for retailers from gated content to nfts and loyalty programs in a way that any consumer can participate in not just as Max calls them crypto enthusiasts and for the retailer wait until you hear what some of the Special Sauce Max has cooked up for them to make everything web 3 as easy as pressing a button very cool and I know our listeners have to be dying to get into the discussion I agree so let's jump in and listen to our interview with Max kesho co-founder of ZBOX soon to be everyone's new web 3 best friend looking forward to hearing this one [Music] hey everyone we are back at the NRF 2023 show continuing our bonus series um Ricardo Belmar and I'm here with a special guest host Jeff roster from this week in Innovation how you doing Jeff I am tired it's like I don't know I was gonna say which day it is but I lost track I just know it's the last day it's the last day well actually it's well some of us we have meetings we're still meetings on Wednesday so I can't even say it's the last time I am exhausted but I'm elated yeah exactly fantastic show fantastic energy I'm with you on that just an amazing amazing celebration of retail and the the energy in the startup Community the energy and the the the tech landscape fantastic yeah I agree well and and to that end we have one of those Tech Stars with us today so I'm going to introduce Max kasho co-founder of z-blocks Max how are you you very good great to meet you thanks for hosting me absolutely thank you for joining us so why don't we just start and Max I'm going to let you give your own introduction tell us a little bit about yourself about Z blogs how z-blocks came to be and what it is that you're doing for retailers absolutely so thanks for the opportunity so I'm Max from ZBOX I'm one of the one of the co-founder at z-blocks and I've been in the tech space and Enterprise space for more than 20 years and uh what z-blocks is about is about making blockchain adoption easy for Enterprises right so we come from an Enterprise and Tech background at z-blocks together with the co-founders and what we realized more than a year ago when we started z-blocks is that there are many barriers for Enterprises to add a blockchain and we have created a platform for them uh running on Azure that give them the ability to build blockchain application quickly and easily without the complexity so we're abstracting that complexity for them so you're taking the complexity out of blockchain exactly so where you that's a very bold statement we want to be the easy button for web3 exactly easy button for web three well you know what okay you can be I'll be your guinea pig because I'm trying to do web three and there there's zero anything easy so I'll be your guinea pig to see there are many barriers for adoptions so we look at solving them so okay so let me back into that a little bit then talk to us a little bit about what are the the most common complexities that hold retailers back from being involved in a web 3 project that that would speak to what you're simplifying essentially so I'll give you challenges that are applied to retailers but also other verticals right I'm seeing five key Challenge and these are like the five barriers that we saw them inside it right so number one you have a lack of blockchain developers right they're hard to find they're expensive blockchain programming language are complex number two web free world is different from the web to wall I mean we're talking about crypto wallets you need your private key your public keys and retailers and others are used to email ID so how how do you reconcile it right number three retailers are looking at building in blockchain but they want to connect to their existing systems right so how do you do that how do you connect the tours together right and then a lot of them are looking at blockchains and seeing different Protocols are available you have multiple layer one right and which one should I choose for what use case can I build once and deploy another right and finally when you talk to their CFO it's I don't want crypto on the balance sheet right so you need to solve all these buyers for them and make it easy for them to help right and that's where we come with our with our platform so give us an example of what that would look like so one of the vertical use case that we built on the platform is a solution leveraging nft or digital tokens that give them the ability to engage with consumers and they can engage with consumers in acquisition in retention and leveraging this digital token for loyalty program retention and we're seeing a lot of potential of the nft technology for such use cases right because it's becoming harder to acquire customers for them so using web3 using blockchain for retention for loyalty has a lot of potential and we're seeing a lot of very interesting use case around that and we're helping them in that space give me an idea when you have this conversation with a retailer around loyalty I'm thinking of and I'm I guess it is the example here is you'd be talking to a retailer who wants to add value into their loyalty program Beyond you know let's say just offering someone discounts which so many loyalty programs do yep but you're I'm guessing your message to them is if by leveraging this technology you're going to have something much more tangible to offer in a loyalty program yes yes so we're we're not telling them you know to throw away their existing program what we are telling them is hey if you add this additional layer leveraging the saturation layer of blockchain there's some very interesting use case that you can do right so if you look at for example the utility that you control with digital token you can provide gated access to certain contents so it could be a website where I'm giving access to VIP customer to a pre-sales event right and only the nft holder are able to access it right it could be an nft or a token that give you access to and even in real life or in a digital right so so on the very interesting use case around utility the transferability right it's one of the key property of these tokens makes some very interesting business cases right so you could have a membership that I can transfer to friends that I could potentially resell you could potentially collect royalty from the resale of that membership right so there's some very interesting use case around the transferability what we're seeing as well is around customers that are creating Collectibles and they are rewarding with these customers with the Collectibles and there's a gamification around this collectible that can be exchanged traded the way to engage your existing community of consumers as well I like this concept of you know the ability to offer the Gated access to things or use that as a token to access things in in in real life events do you have some examples of retailers that are are pursuing that and how they're you know what's the impact of them doing that is what I'm curious you know for example when you have this conversation with the retailer will they ask you how do I measure the impact of offering this how do I know this is going to create more loyalty with my customer versus what I'm doing today yes so that's that's definitely a quick key question that they have right who is going to bring some move the needle versus my existing web 2 program so in many of these cases it's very new we might not know in advance right so what we do is that we're able to connect these nfts and that's blockchain solution to the existing CRM and marketing tools so they have the ability to do a b testing and compare what is the engagement of of this token right so for example we're giving them the ability to Mint nft that can be dynamically updated with different offers and push notification and token gated access and they can provide some very interesting you know token-gated access to these customers right the token-gated access that we see that makes sense is access to special offers Ecom website or access to a special community room where you can meet other consumers that have the same interests as you so that you get a sense of community ownership as well so that's also an interesting use cases that we're seeing there how much work does it take to do that so in other words let's say I'm going to watch the San Francisco 49ers win this Sunday yeah and it's just it's such a logical thing to say if I'm going to go to that game why don't I just have coupons programs unique content related to that game and why don't I send it out why don't I brand that why don't you know Levi's Stadium is in Silicon Valley Intel's all over it why wouldn't they create programs or something specific to that event how hard is it to do that so we're making it very easy for the brand or the retailer to create this campaign right so starting from one click minting right so you just upload the content that you want the nft is being maintained very easily we can distribute that across different channels and we make it easy so that hundred percent of consumers are able to claim it right so I don't know if some of you have been trying to claim in nft it's quite complex because you need to set up crypto wallet and keys so here we just do one click I have claiming never never tried to claim an nft for exactly that's exact complexity so here exactly so here that's what we looked at because when we talked to Brands and Retail you say hey I want to engage 100 of the customers I don't want to talk to the crypto enthusiasts so we're making it very easy it could be a QR code on a big dashboard it could be a a text message anything and in one click with the social media ID you're able to get the nft it arise in the wallet you might not even know it's blockchain just look like a coupon as a consumer why would I care you don't care right and and we're able to update that dynamically so we provide them with the platform to build these use cases right and then based on what they want to do how they want to engage a consumer we give them the ability to remotely update that token and provide different experiences while getting all the analytics from these experiences from the blockchain back to their existing marketing tool right so back to the a b testing how can I compare that versus my web to marketing campaign what is the click-through rate how are people engaging are they taking the offer are they are they transferring it or not so what is working what is not working so this analytics is really important for them and we provide that to them as part of the platform so in that scenario fully built out when would I get that nft when I walk in the stadium do I scan a barcode does it come to me via text do I have to give how do I how do I actually start imagine you arrive in the stadium there is a big Jumbotron there's a big QR code you scan that the curriculum and the German Throne then one click access you log in with your social media ID it could be Instagram Facebook Gmail Outlook series 5. you get the nft derived in a wallet the wallet gets automatically created you don't even know you are in the blockchain so you have that token and it will be a branded wallet that is made available to the brand and that could also be made available as part of the existing app so we have a way to integrate with any existing mobile application from from the customer right so the inboarding is seamless uh like a web to experience right because we want to have everybody on board we don't want to lose anybody right so we're not only talking to the crypto enthusiasts there and the verification is in the social media login or the idea the social media login and then what's interesting is that suddenly you can see from your CRM hey I have all this person who logged in their social media and now you have a direct relationship with them so you can further engage them right so you can engage him during the event after the event they can receive an additional ft that is memorabilia of that even that he attended which could be a collectible we will have value because that was an important event there could be a video of the event tied to add right and then they have the possibility to upsell you and engage for further events right so it's really we're talking from a cheat from CRM to orm ownership relationship management where orm yeah owner owner relationship management owner relationship I can't say that I have that's it I'm paying attention here I'm learning we got a new one yeah in the future brands are going to need to have a direct relationship with the wallet of consumers right in the past you had to connect with the emails but more we're missing many of our emails today not everybody's reading emails by Design actually all right yeah by Design exactly my friend right so in the future so having a connection to the wallet of consumer is going to be very important right the direct consumers without the platform in the middle right having first body data in that direction with your customers and also getting them the ability to choose what they share with you and how they engage with you I mean I have garbage 95134 yahoo.com that I give to retailers because they've proven to me they are not trustworthy with not spamming me so you're telling me I I now I'm gonna give access to a wallet so so I can't get rid of them that's yeah from a consumer that's a concern yeah but you will you will accept to claim that nft or that digital token because there is a utility needed right if I'm a retailer and I'm just minting and distributing nft you need to provide goodies right so if you are not providing value to that consumer and with the roadmap of features that provide benefits to them they're not going to be interested to engage with you right so that's super important okay interesting okay so from the consumer's perspective on this if I go through I'm engaging with a retailer I've done this I'm not a crypto Enthusiast so I I'm thrilled at all I don't have to know anything about that right in order to engage in this manner I'm curious what so what happens as that same consumer goes to another retailer do they know that they have this crypto wallet at this digital wallet that's been created are they taking that with them does that sit with the re with that retailer they got it from or how does that part of this work for the consumer yes so typically what we provide we give the ability for the retailer to Mint and distribute these tokens very easily to any consumer and when you click on that link that you receive either on social media or via text message or via email right or in a jumbo troll on a QR code that you see on a product right one click you have a wallet that gets automatically graded this wallet is a branded wallet right so it will be a retailer branded wallet and it gives the ability for the retailer to engage you through that wallet right so it's like a direct connection between you as a retailer and the consumer right as a consumer if I'm a crypto knowledgeable person or I already have a wallet I could potentially transfer that to another wallet where I have all my nft or tokens right but another retailers would not know that a retailer sent me that token right so there's no sharing right of this data right so so how many wallets will I have hundreds you could have multiples you may have you may have if you love The Brand you love the retailer you may have that that wallet for that retailers like you have different loyalty card today right in your wallet okay so you could have different different nft wallets with different experience at the retailers are providing nft wallet by store or brand or possibly right yeah wow interesting the key is for the the retailer really to provide utility to keep you engaged right there needs to be a benefit for me to come back being part of a community getting coupon discounts invitation tokens points that I can exchange so this is really the the key for the retailer to engage service right how far off do you see Mainline adoption you know maybe 30 40 percent of retailers doing something like this so I think in this year we're going to see definitely a lot of movement in that space so you probably have heard about Starbucks so Starbucks have an amazing web to loyalty program and they decided to revamp that and basically add a web 3 layers to provide new experience to the consumer so this program called Starbucks is going to be launched this year and everybody's looking at that there's still some Secrets here on that but I think it's going to be Lighthouse for many retailers and many b2c Brands many of the the brands that we're talking to they are really looking at creating token based loyalty programs right Airlines hotels so it's happening across the ball in the b2c space right because it can allow you to create new experiences that are not possible in web 2 today and it also provides an additional layer of security again the transferability of these tokens make it very interesting in terms of new use cases as well so okay all right interesting it's a pretty pretty aggressive uh prediction we'll see yeah yeah okay you're watching that but we need a Satya narella was saying a few days back we need a chat GPT moment and we think that's uh right that's a pretty that's a pretty high bar to get over though I think the use case the use case that we're seeing where there's a lot of interest is really around the Loyalty around the experience that you can provide right so how do you engage consumer differently how can I get first party data first party consumer engagement so there's a lot of interesting things we're discovering every day I'm discovering new ways of using the technology so every day so there's a lot of use cases that are being brainstormed right now so it's a fantastic space to be so sounds good where am I going to bump into your technology cool yeah which any examples today that I can use yeah you can use it for we did recently campaign an empty marketing campaign for a major Retail Bank in Asia called access bank and what they wanted to do is to Target younger audience gen Z Millennial so they maintained thousands of nfts and this NFTA gave you the ability to enter into contests and win the tickets for a World Cup right so the more you share the token and talk about it on social media you could increase your chance of winning the tickets right thanks thanks for the warning on that one yeah and they were able to see click-through rates were much better than the existing web to marketing campaign interesting and very interestingly the quality of data that they go back to their CRM was very interesting because they were able now to engage directly with these consumers younger audience it tried to convert them as customers so that was a very interesting nft marketing acquisition in this case the other use case that we're seeing is are on the Loyalty space so brands that want to reward consumer with experiences so again the token gated access is very exciting around that so okay interesting well I guess definitely something we're gonna have to be watching out for Jeff yeah boy oh boy and there's love use case one that I didn't talk about as well is the digital passport certificates we're seeing a lot of retailers looking at this either in the fashion or in white goods so our token being a digital passport certificate of your product where you can have your warranty proof of purchase you could have all the maintenance if it's a white goods for example if it's a fashion nft you could potentially wear it in the metaverse in the game where some people are spending a couple of hours per day so they saw some very interesting use cases there so I I guess the one last question I have for you on that is triggers from as you were describing that is there a particular segment or segments within retail that you think are more inclined to be the early adopters here you know what you do you expect to see it more in fashion versus luxury goods versus home goods and so on are there leading segments that you expect to see this this year yes so we're seeing a lot of traction in luxury in fashion with retailers that also produce their own product right so not not pure retailers but designers and retailers because this token can have all properties right it could tell the story about the brand who created this where did it come from was it responsibility sewers or made right what is the story it becomes like a proof of ownership proof of authenticity it could be a token that I transferred to someone else when I'm reselling it and to the brand is like super important because you can then engage with the secondary Market customers so for these type of retailers fashion and luxury it's a token that you can use from cradle to recycling for the full life cycle you have very interesting use cases that are being explored by by those Brands right so interesting my first NRF I worried about point of sale devices and here you are now waiting for which retailer is going to go dive into web three yes point of sale devices and Merchandising right and in 22 years we've come from that which was cutting edge technology at the time to where we're talking about this and some of the other things we've talked about in the last two or three days really just an amazing acceleration of what we're talking about absolutely absolutely yeah well Max thank you so much for joining us today this has been a really Illuminating discussion for me I'm actually kind of excited to see where this is going I think they've described a lot of interesting use cases and scenarios that would let retailers do new levels of Engagement I think so this is going to be really fascinating to watch yeah thank you thanks Jeff thanks Ricardo so very excited so what's going on our pleasure thank you [Music] one so are you as excited as us to watch how retailers and Brands will use web 3 and blockchain to transform their customer experience it's truly more than meets the eye hey wait a minute I thought that was my line I thought I'm the one who's supposed to make all the 80s pop culture references as soon as I said that I knew at least you're a good influence Ricardo 100 100 so I have to say I came away learning a lot more about the challenges retailers are facing implementing web3 and blockchain from listening to what Max told us but most importantly now we've all got an easy button for this thanks to Zbox absolutely while Ricardo as amazing as this episode was I can't wait to hear what you and Jeff come up with next who do we have to look forward in the next show yeah Jeff and I have yet another Super interesting person to talk to coming up next time we are diving into what I'll call a new take on micro fulfillment that you might not have expected so believe me it's the one that nobody wants to miss super but now it's time to wrap this episode [Music] if you enjoyed our show please consider giving us a five-star rating and review on Apple podcast remember to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss a minute want to know more about what we talked about today take a look at our show notes and handy links for more Deets I'm your co-host Casey golden and if you'd like to connect with us follow us on Twitter at KCC golden and Ricardo underscore Belmar or find us on LinkedIn be sure and follow the show on Twitter at retailrazer on LinkedIn and on our YouTube channel for the latest updates and content I'm your host Ricardo Belmar thanks for joining us [Music] remember there's never been a better time to be in retail if you cut through the Clutter until next time this is the retail razor show [Music]
2023-03-19