1 Commerce - How to Win at Omnichannel Without Losing Your Mind

Ramon Vela (00:01.838)
Welcome back everyone. We have an amazing show. Let me introduce you to Eric Casper, who is the founder and CEO of One Commerce. Welcome to the show.

Eric Kasper (00:30.852)
Thanks, Ramon. Happy to be here. Great to share my story with the audience. I'm really looking forward to it.

Ramon Vela (00:38.99)
Yeah, well, I have to say that you and I had an opportunity to chat in our pre-interview and I was really excited. We were talking also about a partnership, but I was just really blown away by the value that you bring. I was so excited after our call. I was just thinking like, wow, like what he told me, that's what I'm hearing. That's, he's...

He's solving and dealing and helping brands deal with some of the issues that I hear all the time when I'm doing interviews and I do lots of interviews. I do three to four interviews a week and that's every week, days, practically 52 weeks a year. And I listened to a lot of stories and I was just excited. So I'm really happy that you're on the show and we can kind of go over a little bit of that with the audience. So why don't we start off first though with

My favorite question, is, this is more of a, it's a little bit, we're not gonna be, we're not gonna talk about brands for a second, or we could, but we're gonna talk about gratitude. And this is my signature question. And I know it feels weird for me to ask this question sometimes. people, people love it mostly, but I know sometimes it may like, hey, you're a brand show or you're a product show or you're an e-commerce show. Why are you talking about this? It's really simple.

Eric Kasper (01:45.23)
I'm

Ramon Vela (02:05.39)
I want people, the listener to realize that there's real people behind these brands and these partners and these companies that we feature. It's so easy for people to see a company and think, oh, wow, it's just some business, it's a conglomerate, it's faceless, whatever. I like to make sure that they know that there's real people behind these companies who care deeply about their community, care deeply about their customers and the services and the products they provide.

and that they are really trying to solve problems for people. the best way for me to do that is to sort of humanize this process. And one way of doing that is by understanding what people are grateful for. So if I can, we can find a little bit of what Eric is grateful for, that'll, think people get to know who you are. And then by the time we're done with this, we're gonna, we have lots to talk about. I think they're gonna have a great idea, not only of who Eric is and why he does what he does,

but who One Commerce is and why they provide so much value to brands. So let's get started. If you don't mind, can you share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision, or your potential?

Eric Kasper (03:18.766)
Yeah.

I'm sure we'll get into this but in the story and how One Commerce came to be but in my previous journey prior to One Commerce, you know after everything fell apart I got a message from a former team member and it was simple and it just said whatever you're building next I'm in.

No pitch, no ask, just belief. And that really stuck with me and I actually received a lot of similar messages and it really helped inspire and motivate me that we were on the right path, that we were doing the right thing.

when people choose to follow you after a storm, you know, not just during the highlights and the high points, that's when you know that one, you had a great mission and that your leadership mattered a lot to them. And that was just a huge moment for me that made me extremely grateful for team members and just people in general.

Ramon Vela (04:41.112)
Yeah, I mean, that is really, and we're gonna go over that in a second because I think that's really important. That moment in time is a really important moment for the listeners to understand in terms of your backstory, but also about how One Commerce came into being. You and I talked about this a little bit in our pre-interview and you you...

You mentioned it was, you also had this 2008 moment because I shared with you that I had a moment in 2008 that was really like a huge disaster. was like, you called it a storm and mine was, felt like it was a, you know, five level hurricane or something like that. It was really bad. And it was, it was probably the worst time in my entire life. And, um, interestingly enough, I think because of those times, I am the person I am today.

And in some ways, I'm almost grateful now that some of that stuff happened because I just have so much, I have so much more now. I'm not talking just about money or whatever, but I'm talking about just me, like my personality, my character. I just feel like I'm just much happier now. And it's kind of weird to say after experiencing something like that.

But why don't we share a little bit about what actually happened around that time? You don't have to, you can give us a shorter version because we've got a lot to talk about, but it is interesting just to let the listener know. So you were scaling a pretty nice business, $100 million, correct me if I'm wrong, business. And then, but there was challenges and then obviously problems along the way. Walk us through a little bit about what happened.

Eric Kasper (06:25.338)
You know, I learned in 2000, end of 2003, know, that success can be fragile when the foundation isn't fully aligned, especially around investors and governance. And when things shifted due to investor dynamics, you know, I was forced to basically walk away and start over. And this was a business that I had been building since 2003.

when I started in e-commerce, right? And that experience taught me that how you build is just as important as what you build.

very similar to what I'm sure that you experienced when we kind of chatted about in Euro 8 moment. But the biggest lesson that I learned is that you can rebuild. mean, 20 years, know, hurricane category five, right? mean, moment for me at the end of 2003 and 20 years just gone.

And what I learned, you can rebuild. And when you do it with the right people, values, and structure, it's even more powerful the second time. 2024 forced me to pause and reassess basically everything. When I wanted to, who I wanted to build with, how I wanted to lead.

Ramon Vela (07:38.71)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (07:50.296)
and what kind of company I never wanted to create again. It reminded me that business isn't just about strategy, it's about trust, ownership and alignment. I was fortunate to bring back some of those people who believed in the mission and we didn't just wanna rebuild, we wanted to do it smarter, cleaner structures, more transparency, real culture of accountability and...

grit isn't just about pretending things are fine. It's about doing the hard necessary work to get back up and go again. And for me, that moment clarified my purpose and I'm here to build companies that last with people who care deeply about the mission and the outcomes.

Ramon Vela (08:36.972)
Yeah, well, I love that and I 100 % agree with you and for a long time afterwards, I didn't want to rebuild anything for a while, but after a few years I did. I guess I got that bug again. But to your point, I kind of felt like, now I know what not to do.

Eric Kasper (08:51.194)
Hehehe.

Ramon Vela (08:59.884)
Like now those items, those things are off the table now. Now know what specifically what not to do and what to avoid and how I wanted to build something and what I wanted to build. And it's color tainted my perspective now in terms of like what I want to go forward. So I 100 % understand what you're saying. And you mentioned a lesson there and I'm sure there's lots of lessons.

Eric Kasper (09:00.986)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (09:29.688)
But I love what you just said about, if you wouldn't mind repeating, because I only caught half of it, you said what was so important was it's not just, it's how you build, not what you build. Is that what you said?

Eric Kasper (09:41.676)
Yeah, it's with the people, right? It's about how you build it, building it smarter. You know, it's about...

Eric Kasper (09:58.327)
you know.

Eric Kasper (10:02.412)
really to me it's about working with the people that believe in your mission. Learnings for me, I learned in the first organization, politics and basically, you know, lot of the dynamics of scaling and how to do it quickly and effectively and how to pull people along. But where I got off track was not

ensuring that all of the people were aligned at the top in the mission that we were going for. And it kind of created these subsets of the organization. And I let that go. mean, that was a mistake on my part. And I really focused with this new team that we don't do that and that we are truly aligned in what we're building and how we're helping our customers, which...

We're all extremely passionate about here, and I think we'll cover some of that as we go through. But we really love helping brands solve the challenge that we went through for 20 plus years scaling our own business.

Ramon Vela (11:17.184)
Hmm. Yeah, you know, it's funny and there's a brand and I can't remember the name of it right now, but they're like a kitchenware type brand. But I remember her saying exactly the same thing you just said about the alignment and how important it is for alignment. And she actually made a point of it when I asked about her advice, she actually used it. You guys just use similar words like right now, I got that deja vu, you know, and I was like, I got to introduce you guys because I think she

Eric Kasper (11:42.586)
You

Ramon Vela (11:47.04)
she would find that you could have that thing in common. So walk us through around the moment, the moment of conception, the idea. At what point did you determine, because you had people telling you like, hey, whenever you're to build something, we want to be a part of it. But I'm assuming at that point, maybe things weren't 100 % crystallized for you.

When did you get that moment that I need to build? Like you found, you had the idea and then you thought, okay, I need to build this.

Eric Kasper (12:28.058)
So the idea came basically from continuing our mission, right? mean, so 2004 was the crystallizing period. I decided that one commerce and the goal that we had previously would be

We needed to finish that mission, basically. That idea came from basically a customer of ours or a vendor of ours in our retail business came to us and they're like, hey, you got to sell a lot of product. We're getting squeezed on our distribution. We're getting squeezed here. losing sales outlets. How can we sell more product? And it gave birth to this idea to basically create the platform.

And, you know, watching brands struggle to scale because they were piecing tech together, warehouses, their marketplaces like duct tape. You know, I lived all of that firsthand and I knew the missing pieces wasn't more tools. It was getting a unified system that actually thinks like an operator. And that's what OneCommerce was. was, how do we take...

Ramon Vela (13:38.658)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (13:48.672)
all this technology and how do we take all of our retailer and operator experience and growth services and knowledge of just the space in general and piece it all together in one unified platform.

Ramon Vela (14:09.454)
And what would you... So I see the value in what you're like from a high level, let's bring it down to a slightly more ground level with the brands. So I understand from a high level and it sounds really good.

but how like on a practical level, explain it like maybe like an example or a case study of like, how does that work in practice? How does it work on a tactical level?

Eric Kasper (14:47.054)
Yeah. So, you know, I'll give you a couple, a couple stories to show the depth at which we can help companies. One of them, $10 million Shopify store approached by Nordstrom. So selling on Shopify is a very different experience than selling inside traditional retail or even marketplaces in general.

So they're approached by Nordstrom and it's a very exciting day for these brand owners. And they're like, wow, our products are going to make it into shelves. We're doing really well. And Nordstrom's like, hey, we want you to sell on Nordstrom.com and we want you to sell in store. Well, a lot of people don't know that's two separate platforms. Two places you have to manage inventory, manage POs, fulfillment, product data, pricing, et cetera.

whenever you go to sell with a retailer, there's a thing called retailer guidelines. These can be hundreds of pages long, basically, that you have to work through. And so they started through that journey in China with their manufacturing. They're like, hey, we want to follow these guidelines. We want to get our product in Nordstrom. And it was increasing their cost. They actually missed the

Ramon Vela (15:53.111)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (16:10.222)
the timeline to get on Nordstrom.com because they were trying to figure out how to navigate this experience. And eventually what happened was they came to us and they're like, hey, can you help us? And we're like, absolutely. So we said, go back and focus on what you do really well, which is marketing your brand and building great products and connecting with your customers. We'll take over all the rest, everything you've been struggling with, with how to label your product, how to get...

Basics like real UPCs how to do Fulfillment to a major retailer how to do dropship. We have all that covered for you Just introduce this as your technical contact and we'll have you set up and over the span of about Six months we actually ended up taking him across eight different retailers. They grew their sales by 60 % and they did not have to think about

any of the underlying pieces and parts and how to do it. Our growth services team and our account managers guided them through the entire process and hand-held them all the way through it. And it was a very successful experience. On the other end, we took $250 million, primarily in the medical space of B2B distributor and

Ramon Vela (17:25.346)
Yeah.

Eric Kasper (17:37.346)
we help them enter direct to consumer. So you can picture a B2B seller, right? I mean, everything shipped by pallets. They ship full truckloads of goods. They don't know anything about shipping a wheelchair to person's door. They ship it to Walmart, right? So they were like, hey, we have a problem. need, we can't get cost increases. Our costs have gone up. How can we get to consumers directly?

Ramon Vela (17:41.164)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (17:50.614)
Thank

Eric Kasper (18:06.69)
and we went in, it took us about 90 days to get them fully integrated across their 1.2 million square feet, three distribution centers. And we had them shipping direct to consumer within 90 days. It actually grew to about 20 % of their business in a year. And they had a whole new channel for them to go out and test products, sell product direct.

improve their margins. And then a side effect was we were able to take the products that for instance, Walmart wasn't buying, put them on Walmart marketplace, show Walmart buyers traction and increase their shelf space, which was just a massive win. So not only are we helping our customers with things like the direct to consumer shipping, we're actually helping them with overall strategy for how to

how to grow their business as a whole.

Ramon Vela (19:09.804)
Yeah, and I think that's the part that also excited me the most is that you have this experience, you have this experience and because of your background and you can apply what you've learned and of course learn from other customers within One Commerce and apply it from a strategic fashion or yeah, in a strategic fashion to other clients and help them move faster.

get up to speed faster, you know, get to their objective faster. Like the example, the B2B example you just gave right now going from B2B to D2C, you can, that's the, that's an extra value that I found really appealing when we had our pre-interview. Because I think, I think companies, think brands especially, and I think every company is this way too. When there's, when they need assistance, of course they,

What's the phrase I'm looking for? They believe they understand what they need. And that's what they're searching for. It's like, I think we have this problem, so I'm searching for that problem. But what's always really great is to find a partner who can say, yeah, you know, that is a problem, but what really is the issue is this, or what really, you you need to look at is this, the rest of this component here, or...

Yeah, we can help you with this, don't forget about all this other stuff. You know what mean? It's like, because you have that experience, you have that knowledge, you're willing to kind of expand and assist your client from a, it's almost as if like, yeah, we do this X, Y, Z, but we really care about you. We want to help you with some of the other alphabet letters.

Eric Kasper (20:54.522)
Yeah, and that's the key is we really do care. We actually have our partners work directly with other partners as well for their own mutual benefit, right? So, you know, we have partners that are liquidators for us and they'll actually help our other customers relieve some of their inventory.

Maybe it's damage returns where most 3PLs, it's just garbage, right? We actually help with recovery value and return and selling these damaged goods through other customers within our platform to basically help connect and build this ecosystem. We'll actually help customers cross-sell between different stores. So maybe you're a barbecue spices company and we have another...

a customer that does, let's say, grill tools. Well, that's a really nice product to add to the spice company on their site. So then we're helping drive in these really unique ways of like, we're always thinking, how can we help this customer reach more customers and improve their margins? And we come up with all kinds of different strategies to really help, because it's not just us.

connecting everybody within our network to help each other.

Ramon Vela (22:22.018)
And it's interesting. One of the reasons why I was so interested in speaking with you is I have had a lot more conversations lately with, not just lately, I would say probably in the last year or maybe two, with a lot more companies who traditionally may have spent most of their time on the retail shelf and

maybe had a smaller side of it that was D to C. But since the pandemic and afterwards, they've noticed a change or not a notice of change, but they've realized that some of the retail partnerships are not as profitable as they would like. Some are harder.

to deal with and of course there's somewhere capital intensive and this and that. There's a lot of things, issues with inventory. And I had this one conversation with this brand owner and he was telling me, I'm reducing the amount of doors that I have on retail, but what I am gonna do is I'm gonna take all that resource and really focus on the marketplaces like Amazon.

And it took them a while to kind of figure out Amazon and kind of work it and so forth. But I've noticed that I've had that conversation with people is that they're focusing more, they're expanding. I mean, we've always talked about omnichannel, but typically it was like direct to consumer or in retail, right? And that was kind of it. And then expanded a little bit more. Now we're talking about Amazon. We're talking about Walmart marketplace. We're talking about there's other marketplaces. Then we're talking about TikTok shop. We're talking about

all these different places. there's truly like an omnichannel and people are really, you know, they, they know that they need to be in some of these and maybe they choose one or the other, but like Amazon, for instance, I had a brand just the other day tell me that, you know, they're coming, they're expanding to the United States and they really want to, they really want to make a bigger footprint in Amazon. So you have these people who are interested in joining these marketplaces, but these marketplaces are really

Ramon Vela (24:32.494)
can be difficult. They're like a different animal. You got to understand them. There's an algorithm. There's a how you label the products, how you describe the product. I I mean, you know, I don't know, but I just know that there's a lot to kind of deal with. And so I realize that people are doing this. And so that's what I found so much so interesting with someone like you is that you understand this world, you know this world and you understand about

this omni-channel approach. So I'm really just curious, are you seeing people really expand their omni-channel presence the way that I am? Have you been talking to folks around that, around Amazon or Walmart and whatnot?

Eric Kasper (25:16.442)
We have been, it's a priority. mean, businesses are trying to figure out, how do we grow our revenue, right? How do we reach more customers? That's always at the top level mind of your executives and these brands. What I find is they don't know how, they don't know where to start, right? They typically pick.

I'm going to go to Amazon because they have 40 % of the market or I'm going to stick to Shopify because I don't want my brand on Amazon for whatever reason, right? Or they try to dabble or maybe they'll go, okay, I'm on Amazon. Let's go to Walmart. They're the next leader at 7 % of the market and they'll take their, you know, 10 top selling SKUs from Amazon.

and they'll put them on Walmart and they'll go, I got a few orders. That was a waste of time, right? They try to run the exact same playbook that they run on Amazon on Walmart and it's not, it's completely, it's a completely different strategy. It's a different customer base. It's sometimes there's even more opportunity than what you would expect on some of these marketplaces. I mean, you take the Nordstrom.

customer I was talking about earlier, they were cold called by Nordstrom because of their success on TikTok. Right? So it's about getting exposure and then how do you thread the needle to connect all of these opportunities together? Right? The more distribution points that you can get, the more customer touch points that you can get, the

Ramon Vela (26:42.094)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (26:59.002)
better you are as a brand. And that's always been my belief and that's how I've been so successful in scaling my own brands and helping others scale their brands. You know, it's like the old retail days, like, you know, back in the...

Ramon Vela (27:09.431)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (27:16.26)
you know, late 1900s, right? What were companies trying to do or what were brands trying to do? They were trying to figure out how do I get into Sears? How do I get into Kmart? how do I get into Saks? And they would start in one place or they'd start in independence. And then they, you know, maybe they could get gained some traction and then they'd work their way in. their objective was to get to all of the places that their customers were shopping because they had the eyeballs. And that's the playbook that we run today is.

We basically look and say, if we can get you on Target Plus, we have a pathway to get you into Target stores if we can show this type of level of traction. Or maybe you're already in Target stores and you're not on target.com. So now we can put you on Target Plus, so then your customers, whenever they're shopping on target.com, you're visible. And we try to bring all of that together.

It, is a true benefit to being in retail today and in store today. it drives brand awareness. gets customers searching. So if you're a retail only brand that isn't doing direct to consumer, we were just talking to one of these and now they're like, okay, how do I margin up? How do I reach more customers? How do I control to your, your point? Ramon is, you know,

my costs are too high with some of the retailers. I need to margin up. I can't get cost increases. And we help navigate that entire process for them. And if they're already successful in store, means that they've got search traffic. It means that they're going to have an easier time launching. And we just try to monopolize on what brands have already built and expand that.

Ramon Vela (29:07.502)
And for those brands who have not really emphasized, like let's say Amazon. And I think there are a lot of brands who still have really not gotten into the Amazon world for whatever reason. And I noticed that some of them, it's either people who they're on Amazon, but they're not really optimizing it, or they are on Amazon and they've like,

Eric Kasper (29:27.544)
It's

Ramon Vela (29:36.824)
put all the resources into it. There's not a lot of like in between, know, there's, you know, there's people who are really into it and see the value and they've invested like in some resources or maybe they work with an agency or whatnot. And then there's the ones, the most, think the majority of people are like, they've got a presence, but they're not really like optimizing it per se. They just, it's kind of like, I know I have to be here and so I think I'm going to be here.

Is there anything that you would, any advice you would give to those folks, like anything for people who just started dipping their toe in the water or, or interested in dipping their toe in the water.

Eric Kasper (30:11.79)
Yes, it's not, Amazon is not like it was even five years ago or back when we started in 2003. It is not listed and it'll sell anymore. It has become a pay to play type of environment. However, Amazon has this very unique focus on customers, which is amazing for all of us as consumers, right?

they do use your customer reviews and your product feedback to drive the search results and your advertising costs that you pay. So you can't just take a poor product, like a low quality product, and spend a bunch of money on Amazon and...

take all of the sales. Amazon won't allow that to happen, which is very unique to their environment, unlike Google, where you can advertise whatever you want and on the first spot. Amazon's very unique. The tip I would give people just starting on Amazon is to review your competitors within your price point. Don't panic.

if you're maybe launching a candle and you see Yankee candle at 17 % of the candle market, selling them for $12 and $14 and you have this premium product, don't panic, go look at the other premium brands, analyze what percentage of market that those premium brands you have so you can understand the opportunity and then work with your agency or on commerce or...

however you want to accomplish it and come up with a plan to capture that market share and ultimately drive down your cost and rank. But just listing the product today won't work. And one really good tip is if you bid on keywords that you want to capture from your competitors. So let's say it's luxury soy candle.

Ramon Vela (32:24.536)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (32:25.004)
If you bid on that and you're successful at converting and maybe you have to lower your price for a while because you should come at this from the approach of I'm launching a brand. It's gonna I'm pay to play. I'm launching a brand but maybe you have to lower your price for a while to convert really well. What Amazon will do is reward you and rank every time you convert.

So eventually you won't have to pay as much to own that search place. You'll work your way up in inorganic rank, which is a huge way to build longevity on Amazon for that soy based keyword that, you know, is getting a hundred thousand searches a month. You can really capture traffic that way.

Ramon Vela (33:09.23)
Wow. I love these sort of like these little tips. and, uh, cause it gives people a good idea as to like, even if they're, if they don't know how to do that, or they, they are still wary of it, you're giving them an aspect of something where they, feels like, okay, this system is, uh, is capable of, being worked. You know I mean? Like, think a lot of times people see overwhelming. They're like, Oh my God, there's so much stuck on

I gotta do this and that and so forth. But when I hear people like yourself and think you give those tips, think like, ooh, this is what expertise looks like. This is what experience looks like. And I'm glad you're on the show because you're sharing some stuff that is hard to come by. Like this kind of stuff isn't just like a.

You know in a manual or something. I mean, it's like this is the kind of stuff You really need someone like yourself. So thank you for that Last time we were talking a little bit about Walmart and and you mentioned I think to me about Walmart you said That it's not fully developed like Amazon but it's kind of like where Amazon was a few years ago and I think I think you you mentioned that there was optimism in that there's there's it's harder. It's hard right now, but it's it's there's some

a lot of potential upside to it. And then it also made me think about other channels as well. What are some of the channels that people should be looking at? Should they be looking at Walmart from a marketplace standpoint? Should they be looking at, or what channel should they be looking at?

Eric Kasper (34:48.302)
Yeah, to me it's wherever your product would have a customer base is the channel that you should be looking at. And that's why I'm so passionate about what we build at Long Commerce because we make that possible, right? You know, a lot of companies don't have the teams or the expertise to go focus on.

Target Plus at one and a half percent of the market. But our system makes it extremely streamlined and it basically does it all for you. You put the product in our system, we handle it, we handle the fulfillment, it makes it so you can have that marketplace. And then our team and our technology through AI and actual humans and growth strategists are helping make sure that your content's right, that your strategy's right for Target and we're executing that for you.

So to me, it's about just how do you get your product listed and then optimize it based on the strategy for that marketplace. If you take Amazon, they've got about three million active sellers. Walmart has about 300,000 active sellers. What does that mean? Yes, there's way less traffic, but it's growing, but there's also way less competition.

And by getting in now and building your ranks and building your search placement and building your exposure to customers as Walmart continues to reach on that platform is just great for your business and your brand. And a lot of companies just don't have the resources or the expertise to go focus on this, or they do a list it and forget it, which...

100 % doesn't work and, and and Walmart has real people behind, like we have account managers, we have real access to category managers and we do this at Amazon too, but you can actually work with them on like you could back with Amazon 15, 10, 15 years ago. You can work with them on search placement. You can work with them on email campaigns and we do all of that on behalf of our, our customers. So we aggregate.

Eric Kasper (37:02.954)
all the product and brands and selection that we have through our customer base to really develop our relationships with these marketplaces. So maybe you're coming to us with 10 high performing SKUs in a category. Well, you know, we might have 10,000 additional performing SKUs across that category that allows us to basically help.

Ramon Vela (37:27.246)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (37:30.148)
boost these products that you're bringing to us and get additional exposure. Yeah, to answer your question, get where your customers are shopping because if you're not, we just did this study for a stroller brand. They're not on one of the major marketplaces and you'd be amazed at the amount of money that is going directly to their competitor that has bid on their brand name. I mean, it's millions of dollars.

Ramon Vela (37:39.662)
Thank

Ramon Vela (37:59.308)
Hmm.

Eric Kasper (37:59.864)
that this brand is losing and just directly handing to our competitor because they have a negative perception of the marketplace. So it's a negative perception worth the fact that you just handed your competitor over $10 million.

Ramon Vela (38:10.166)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (38:16.962)
Well, and how do I mean, that's a very compelling case to make. And I wonder, like, do people like, do they react positively to something like that? Do they take action? mean, that's compelling. mean, someone using bidding your name, you know. Yeah.

Eric Kasper (38:22.564)
the

Eric Kasper (38:32.73)
Yeah, they're shocked. They're shocked when they see the real data and they see what's happening. They're actually shocked and yeah, they action on it almost immediately. Or they come up with, okay, well maybe we should rethink the fact that, hey, we didn't want to be on.

Walmart because of brand image or things of that nature and then we show them their competition and how their competition is positioning on product. It doesn't mean, you know, just because you're maybe doing Walmart or Groupon or eBay, it doesn't mean that you have to discount your brand or not position your brand correctly. It's all in the strategy and we're very upfront. I mean,

If you bring us something and you're like, you know, here's a $5,000 black t-shirt, nothing special about it. And we're not going to advertise it. We're not going to do anything with it. We just want you to list it. We're very upfront. That's probably not a great strategy and probably won't work for either one of us. Right.

But if you come to us and you really explain to us what your value proposition or your brand is, what are you trying to accomplish? Who's your target customer? And I mean, we will do all of the research for you. And we don't charge for any of this. Like we will sit with you. We will go through basic strategy. We'll tell you what your competitors are doing. We'll tell you where we think that there's opportunity, where there's gaps.

and we'll highlight it you and we'll show you exactly. did a study for a brand the other day. They'll be onboarding with us soon and they did not realize that there was an entire nother holiday season for their product. So they were heavy into the Q4 side, like that's a very obvious holiday. But their competitor actually

Ramon Vela (40:30.67)
Hmm.

Eric Kasper (40:37.678)
goes up to 40 % market share at a much lower bid price and advertising costs during the summer months in this particular product. And they hit almost the volume that they do during the Q4 gift season for a fraction of the cost. And this company didn't even know that that opportunity was there.

Ramon Vela (40:51.918)
Bye.

Eric Kasper (41:02.4)
And they didn't realize because that competitor that spends way less in the summer, then they have really high conversion. They spend way less in the fall than this brand is during the fall to then compete. we help highlight all of that for our customers.

Ramon Vela (41:14.925)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (41:19.03)
Wow, that is amazing. Everyone should be meeting with you guys because I feel like you guys can uncover so many other things. And I remember now in our pre-interview when we talking about Amazon and Walmart, you did emphasize that every marketplace has its own playbook. And again, it's kind of like people like you who...

have that playbook and understand it and know it. this playbook is really only gained by this experience that you guys have had both as a brand, but also now as OneCommerce in dealing with all this. I wanna talk more about the actual system itself and more specifically like how to do business with you. But I remember one example that you gave, I would love if you talk about it briefly.

And I don't remember, I think you refer to it as, I think it was a Crayola or the Crayons and the virtual bundling. Can you walk us through that example? I thought that was a really good one.

Eric Kasper (42:19.47)
Yeah, Crayola. Crayola, this is fascinating just in general and something that people and I think brands should always keep in mind is pricing power and what consumers are willing to pay for convenience and just getting the product in front of the customer sometimes is good enough to get them to convert. So Crayola sells 100 pack of crayons inside Walmart for $7.95. Crayola.com sells

Ramon Vela (42:45.612)
Hmm.

Eric Kasper (42:49.08)
the same 100 back of crayons for 20 plus dollars. And they sell tens of thousands of units a month off of Crayola.com. Over convenience, right? So that is just fascinating whenever you come into pricing strategy, but virtual bundling for Crayola involved taking...

Ramon Vela (42:53.006)
Hmm.

Eric Kasper (43:15.29)
in building gift sets to basically drive up the basket size. So everybody will understand this. If I sell an iPhone, it's $1,000. If I sell a Timex watch, it's $30. It costs the same amount of money to ship that $35 watch as it did to ship the $1,000 iPhone, right, as a percentage of revenue.

So what you wanna do in e-commerce is try to figure out how do I increase my basket size? How do I increase the offering to the customer in a way that makes them converted a higher value? And how do I do that in a cost-effective manner? And with Crayola, they sell a lot of lower cost products, markers, crayons, notebooks. And what we help strategize with them for

was basically building like back to school bundles or Easter bundles where we're taking and bundling these already existing SKUs in a virtual manner in our system and building an unlimited basically product catalog for them where you can then take and buy this Easter gift set where all the components together, the fulfillment costs and everything might've been prohibited or required this really high.

asking price like the 100 pack of crayons and we were able to basically drive the average order prices up to over $65 by building these really nice bundles for them which is a huge win and it didn't cost them any extra work besides what our team did which was creative content and

Ramon Vela (44:35.086)
Hmm.

Eric Kasper (44:57.934)
doing it all basically virtually right within the system and then whenever the fulfillment would occur our system would automatically unlike having to kit things manually put the packages together put the barcodes on the this manual pack kit our system would just Pick it all as independent put it together in a bundle form and then ship it out the door So it allowed them to create basically unlimited skews and shelf and take up unlimited shelf space

Ramon Vela (45:27.244)
Wow. I love that. And I think that's actually a really great segue.

into talking about the platform and the system. Because at this point, I kind of feel like people are really interested. I think you've proven this vast knowledge that you have and these little tidbits and these examples that you've given really are great and they provide insight as to like what the kind of value that one commerce brings. So at this point, I'm imagining someone's listening to this and thinking, okay, well, this is pretty cool, but

Tell me about the platform. Tell me about how you work with folks. Tell me about onboarding. Tell me about who you do business with. Am I too small? Am I too big? Is there an average order value? All these different questions. So let's bring it down to the basic level. Walk us a little through the platform itself, and then we'll back into like,

who you work with and what onboarding looks like and all that good stuff. But walk us through the platform itself. So like when someone starts using it, what does that look like and what's available to them at a high level?

Eric Kasper (46:45.434)
Yeah, for sure. So the major components of our platform are product information management, order management, warehouse component, which basically if you own your own fulfillment centers or do your own fulfillment, you can utilize our warehouse system directly inside your warehouse. And a very

complex data and analytics suite. So your typical journey throughout our platform is that you create products and our team will help you create your product listings in our platform. And our team will help you throughout this process as well as our tools and our AI generative content will help you create the product listings. So you start with your product and you do it in one place and all the data is structured for our

backend integration side to basically be able to publish it to the marketplaces channels that you select. So you build your product and your listings, you help create your media. And then we decide, okay, what is the strategy? Where do you want to sell? And most companies already selling somewhere. So we'll either integrate or connect directly or Shopify store to their Amazon set up.

And that'll be live. And then it becomes, okay, how do we do the expansion? Where do we want to go? Do we want to go to... Ideally, we go to as many places as at once as possible, right? But do we want to go to Target Plus? Do we want to go to McCarter Libre in South America?

And you basically go in and you're like, okay, I want to go here. I want to go here. I want to go here. And our system does that for you. It takes, if you're going to McCarter Libre, it does automatic translations for you to list your content and get you the baseline start of being listed in McCarter Libre. And if you want to go to TikTok or TikTok, it'll go ahead and put you in the TikTok store. If you want to be on

Eric Kasper (48:52.666)
Target Plus or on eBay, it'll list everything for you. And then there's some really neat features and this call would go on probably for 24 hours if we went through everything right. But let's take Kohl's. Kohl's has a female-based customer and maybe you're selling a body building supplement that was originally targeted at a male demographic.

Ramon Vela (49:04.076)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (49:21.198)
Well, our system will automatically, if you choose to have the content rewritten to the customer profile of the marketplace that you're selling on, and then it will monitor your conversion rate for you to tell you if it's working or not. And then it basically can optimize your content across these channels. Also, it's just really nice from a user management standpoint. In the past, we had a customer that was on 75 different platforms.

Ramon Vela (49:37.614)
Hmm.

Eric Kasper (49:50.348)
I kind of mentioned that Nordstrom had two just to sell direct via customer design. So you can imagine managing orders, inventory, fulfillment, feeds, tracking, all of that. Our system just does that for you. So if you change your product images, you want to change a title, you can choose to change it across all of them. You can do an override and say, okay, for Target, I just want to do it this way. And it'll do all of that for you from one platform. And then...

Ramon Vela (49:52.376)
Yeah.

Eric Kasper (50:20.238)
From there, you'll start receiving orders, then we start doing data analytics for you. We start telling you where your orders are coming from. We start getting into your skew net profitability. And this all comes from our retail background, right? You'd be surprised at the amount of customers that come to us and they'll show us their 3PL bill, they'll show us their Shopify revenue, and they'll show us how they decided what their income was, which was...

Ramon Vela (50:41.486)
Thank

Eric Kasper (50:48.398)
take this, take this and minus this and look what I made, right? All they don't know was I shipping this microwave at a loss? Was I shipping this widget at a loss? What's my price opportunity? And basically we get all the way down to the nitty gritty, what is your profit level of this? And these are real conversations that we have with our customers. It's like, okay, here's how you're trending. Here's where your fulfillment costs are. Here's where your marketing is.

you know, how can we optimize this? What opportunities do we have? We have a competitive price engine, allows you, which ours, in my opinion, is extremely unique. Most price engines are based on Amazon. Our price engine allows you to basically, it'll take, and you can set a recovery cost or like a margin return. And then it'll take the fulfillment, anticipated fulfillment,

you know, our revenue share, the channels revenue share, and it'll come up with a price. And then you can set a maximum price. And basically it'll change dynamically between the channels that we have price data for automatically for you. So you don't have to think about pricing and maybe you have a better opportunity over on eBay because the average commission rate is 8 % versus Amazon at 16%. And it'll actually price independently on those channels for you. That's a pretty cool.

cool little feature. We do demand planning. Once we start receiving data in, we'll be on a forecast for you. We'll be able to tell you. And instead of logging into that one company with 75 different platforms or trying to pull it into Power BI and, okay, my Shopify says this, my Amazon says this, pulling it in and trying to figure out, okay, well, how much do I need? Our system is looking at your business holistically and saying, okay.

We're seeing an uptick in the Walmart revenue. We're seeing an uptick in Amazon. We're also going into peak season. So previously that typically meant that you're going to do about a 2.5 X increase in volume. Here's what your demand will be for October, November, December. And we'll provide that information directly. We have inventory aging because we're doing your fulfillment, right? So we have inventory aging. We have automatic markdown capabilities.

Eric Kasper (53:15.0)
I guess that I could go on forever.

Ramon Vela (53:15.692)
Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, there's so much stuff you have there. And I love some of the stuff like the pricing engine that you mentioned and just being the ability to do to have these conversations around profitability for for folks, because that's so important right now. I mean, it's always been important, but right now, especially beyond beyond all this, like what you're saying, there's a lot of stuff going on. It could be overwhelming, but

You know, when we did our pre-interview, it sounded a lot like, you guys, and we talked about this earlier actually too. You guys are not only offering this platform, but you, it's not like you leave them to their own devices. Like you're there to help them. You're offering strategic advice. You're guiding them, guiding them through the onboarding through, I think you mentioned quarterly business reviews and all sorts of other things like that.

Eric Kasper (54:00.559)
Yeah.

Ramon Vela (54:13.77)
And you really built this whole model to be successful and for their success as well. Walk us through some of that. I think you've already kind of talked a lot about that now, but you are there for them to help them through this, right? So you're going to onboard them. You're going to make sure they understand how it works. And then you're going to be there for them to offer them quarterly or as needed advice and consultation, correct?

So it's overwhelming as all this might sound to someone listening to this. And it sounds good, but it sounds like, well, there's a lot of stuff here. You're there, right? You're there for them and you're offering them strategic advice as well.

Eric Kasper (54:48.43)
Ha

Eric Kasper (54:53.882)
Yeah, 100%. So, you know, we're your growth partner. Every brand gets a dedicated strategist from day one. We align on goals. We map out your channel expansion. We handle everything from listings to fulfillment. And, you know, our QBRs aren't just vanity metrics. They're working sessions. You know, what's working, what's not, where do we push next?

you know, is Prime Day coming up, is Walmart Day coming up, you know, how do we plan inventory for that? It's truly a shared mission. And, you know, one thing that's really unique about us is that we're a revenue share-based organization. So it's very much you win, we win. We're in this together.

truly on the same mission, which is to grow your revenue, help you manage costs, reach more customers. And that's, that's the practicality. mean, a lot of the features I mentioned are, happening in the background, right? It's just like ease, right? And a lot of times our account managers will do a lot of the, you know,

Ramon Vela (55:55.512)
Hmm.

Eric Kasper (56:02.298)
data sets and processing for you to basically help you get through it. yeah, mean, the system is extremely streamlined too, just from how do you add a product, right? Instead of having to go and manage your product listing inside Coles and inside Target Plus, it's one page for you to do it.

Ramon Vela (56:26.22)
Hmm. Yeah. You know, it's kind of funny to side note. It's one of the things that they never tell you is that all these retailers have like their own portals and stuff like that. And like, have to learn how to use them and figure them out. Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. This has been fantastic. I want to be respectful of your time, but there's a couple of more last sort of questions I wanted to ask.

Eric Kasper (56:35.996)
I have three of them sometimes.

Ramon Vela (56:53.088)
I want to close up our conversation around the platform in a second, but I have to add something that we, I don't know if you and I talked about this during our pre-interview, but I want to just bring this up just because it's the topic of the day. You know, you guys, I'm assuming that you guys are also like working with people to solve like tariff issues right now, or at least figure out how they impact.

Eric Kasper (57:16.122)
Yes.

Ramon Vela (57:18.35)
So do you have anything? I know I'm putting you on the spot here because I know we didn't really talk about this, but I don't know. feel like I can't leave any conversation nowadays with a brand or a partner like yours and not talk about tariffs because I'm assuming your customers are worried about them. And everyone's just trying to figure it out. And I realize there's a lot of uncertainty right now. Like they're here today. They could be gone tomorrow. Who knows? But how are you guys dealing with this right now? Like how are you guys, are you working to...

Eric Kasper (57:18.671)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (57:47.85)
show people what the impact is of different scenarios, for instance.

Eric Kasper (57:52.427)
We are. We're actually helping customers import products from overseas. We've come up with above.

above board ways to minimize tariff impact as a service provider for our customers. And we're able to basically help protect their margins throughout this process. It is definitely on the top of a lot of companies minds, a lot of brand.

brands are struggling. And we did come up with a solution to assist our customers specifically. And we're moving a lot of containers now.

Ramon Vela (58:36.78)
Yeah, well, I mean, I know that everyone's kind of trying to figure out and dealing with that, but we'll leave it at there. And if anyone's interested in understanding what that solution is, call Eric and his team and Sam and any of the others. Because I do know like it's also a moving target. So you've got to be on it and things are changing all the time it seems.

So, so thank you for that. And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot there, but thank you for answering that. so, let's end this on a, on a real high note. I love everything. Like I said, my first conversation with you, I was really excited about all this, the, this experience, this mix of platform and the features and the things that it does. And then your, plus your experience.

and not just your experience, like what had happened to you, but how that has tainted and how that has impacted how you've built OneCommerce. And I don't know about you, you were talking earlier about our commonality in terms of my 2008 moment and then your moment. And I have to say that it has made me more humble in how I approach business. And is also, I think,

You know, you, we talked about this from my end. Like I was telling you that, I always have trust issues. Like I really want to, whenever I recommend to refer anyone or even have a partner, I always want to make sure they, they can do what they say they do and are good partners to work with. And, and those kinds of trust issues I think are born out of the problems that I had. And I just want to make sure that, you know, that we're doing a great job. Like, and I, and I feel really confident.

based on our conversations that you guys really know what you're doing. And I appreciate you sharing right now because you have that mixture. It's like a great platform is you have your unique experience and how you're building the team, which I think is important. You mentioned like how you build it is important. And then of course you have all this experience that you and your team have on these individual channels and platforms and whatnot. And you're bringing it all together to help.

Ramon Vela (01:00:50.562)
help these brand owners and these B2B companies, by the way. So to me, it's just hugely impressive. What new exciting things can people look forward to with One Commerce? Is anything coming up, anything that you want to, any new features, any new things that you guys are doing that you want people to know about?

Eric Kasper (01:01:12.186)
Right now we're ruling out expanded warehouse capacity in key markets. We have some exciting new AI tools that we are testing internally that provide a way for you to converse with all of your data inside One Commerce.

So, I mean, the thing I'm excites me the most is giving brands the ability to run a truly integrated omni-channel business from within one system. That is what I am probably most excited about.

Ramon Vela (01:01:59.756)
You know, and I always ask this question, especially during our pre-interview, I always ask people like, what are you most proud of that consumers don't know about and isn't easily available on your website or your social media or whatnot? But if you don't mind, kind of, I want to just answer that for you. And maybe I have this wrong, so I'm going to give you a chance to answer, but just based on our conversations, I just kind of feel like it.

it's centered around how you're building this business because you and I have had, have experienced a pain, a very painful moment in our lives around business that took its toll on us and was just really devastating. And we've both been able to kind of like dust ourselves off and continue and move forward.

but it wasn't easy and it was difficult. And we didn't even really even talk about like the emotional impact that it had on me or yourself. But we're able to use those experiences in a way now that where we can be helpful to people. And I kind of feel like that guides me and it may even guide you and your team. I don't know. Does that have something to do with what you're proud of, most proud of?

Eric Kasper (01:03:21.082)
It does. mean, it does. mean, the 20 plus years of experience and then going through that time and that period.

allowed to get really focused and get a lot of clarity and really think about how we wanted to do this. And I think that that is well captured, Ramon.

Ramon Vela (01:03:52.974)
Yeah, I mean I can sense it about you and I and and especially the terms that you use about like, know earlier on we talked about like it's how important it's so important how you build not just what you build Because I agree with I agree with you Alright, so last question and then I'll let you go Because of your experience because of what you've done because of all the you know this, you

I effectively always tell people, you know, that as an entrepreneur, you always have these like nightmares about like the worst that can happen. And I always say, well, I just think you just put it this way, like all those nightmares about the worst things that can happen. Like I've already experienced them. So I already know, I already know like all the worst part that could happen. And, and so that's how I approach it. Like whenever anyone gets asked me for advice and whatnot.

But there's a lot of people struggling right now. So there's a lot of people kind of maybe not facing exactly what we're facing, but feel very nervous, feel uncertain, feel maybe they're challenged right now, maybe they're struggling with their business, who knows. Any last piece of advice you want to give to those people given everything you've experienced?

Eric Kasper (01:05:10.554)
Yeah, don't chase vanity metrics, chase cash flow, nail your unit economics, especially for brands that's critically key. Own your customers as much as you can and build optionality into your channel mix.

Diversification is very powerful. It also creates a flywheel for your brand to accelerate, right? Being able to accelerate maybe your in-store distribution because now you're across every online marketplace. You start to get calls from in-store or you're proving out that you're doing well on Lowe's.com. Now you can move your way in-store.

Ramon Vela (01:05:56.93)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Kasper (01:05:57.346)
The market rewards operators who can adapt quickly, not those who blindly grow at all costs. And we help adapt quickly in a very reasonable manner through our revenue share.

Ramon Vela (01:06:14.028)
Hmm. Yeah, all great advice. And by the way, that that strategy I've been I've been noticing that more often about the started at the store, the online store online version before moving into the store. And I love that advice that you gave earlier about like being able to prove

You know what your product can do first on the store before you go into the physical store. So I love that. This has been amazing, Eric. I really appreciate your time. You gave so much really great advice in terms of so many different areas, not just in your story, of course, too, but really just not only, like I said earlier, you have a very unique marriage of this unique experience that you've had as a founder.

and what you went through and why you can now really relate to the challenges and struggles that founders have out there. But then you also have built a system because of that, and these are all like stacking on top of each other. And then you have the system that you've built because of all the challenges you've met and the desire to help people build and grow their business by solving these unique challenges that they have.

with an inventory over within these channels and shipping, cetera. And then, you've coupled that with bringing all sorts of other people on board to really gain their experience. And so it feels like just a win-win situation that you've created and I appreciate it. I love talking to people who on a sort of a last note, I don't remember exactly the saying.

but there was a movie that I watched and the character said something like, I don't trust people unless they've lost everything at least once and had to rebuild. And so that's kind of, feel like with you, like where you have this commonality, like I don't trust people unless they've really like hit, you know, like they've had an Hale and Song, like, if you're over the edge, you know, and then rebuild after that. To me, like that's like,

Ramon Vela (01:08:24.078)
Yeah, that's a true founder and I appreciate you taking all that knowledge and that wisdom and really applying it to help people. thank you for that and thank you for sharing with all this knowledge with us.

Eric Kasper (01:08:37.122)
Yeah, thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to share with your audience, One Commerce, my story, and I'm looking forward to anybody I can help or give guidance to.

Ramon Vela (01:08:52.94)
Yeah, actually that should be the last question. Where do you want them to go? If someone's interested in all of this, where do you want them to go? And if there's someone specifically to contact and then websites that you want them to visit.

Eric Kasper (01:09:09.304)
Yeah, so 1-commerce.com. There's a quick form there. And you can learn a little bit more about us in the platform. Also, you can contact Randy Ray in our sales team, or you can contact me directly. My email's.

eric.casper at one commerce one hyphen commerce.com or randy randy.ray at one hyphen commerce.com

Ramon Vela (01:09:44.152)
Great. Excuse me. Pause, one, two, three. So this has been fascinating. Like I said, I really enjoyed this conversation and I highly recommend anyone out there, know, they are willing to kind of talk to you and look at some of the data and all this really good stuff. And, you you can see, get a taste for what their experience and their expertise is, but it doesn't hurt you to go out and visit them and give them a call.

especially if any of this that we've talked about is of any interest to you because I'm just fascinated by their knowledge and I feel like they've been a lot of value to the industry. So if you're a brand owner or a B2B, because I know some of you guys listen to the show, please give them a call, check in with them, see if there's anything there for you. We're going to have the website as well on our podcast description and I'll even put their emails in there as well if you want to reach out to them to.

Randy and or Eric and and then I would at the very least I would sign up for their newsletter on their website just to keep up to date on what they're doing. You need every little bit of an advantage that you can find in this industry especially nowadays and I think you can find that if you visit Eric and his team at One Commerce so go check it out. Beyond that everyone stay safe, stay sane, stay healthy and one last thing.

We've all been going through something really difficult with the pandemic and then now we're dealing with the economy, with tariffs, with geopolitical wars, with politics, with all sorts of stuff going on in the world. Let's just do ourselves a favor and let's just remember that everyone is going through something. It could be just frustrated with news events. It could be anxiety because of, you know, worried about their jobs, whatever.

Let's just do ourselves a favor and remember that everyone is going through something. Let's just be a little kinder to each other. And I know we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.