Pricing Isn’t Broken - it’s Blind, with Meghan Stabler

Pricing in retail still isn’t where it needs to be.

In this episode of The FODcast (and the launch of Season 8), we sit down with Meghan Stabler (Co-Founder and CMO at AI-driven, contextual pricing platform alentr) to explore why pricing remains one of the most complex and underdeveloped areas in digital commerce.

Drawing on her experience as former SVP of Global Marketing at BigCommerce where she helped scale the business through to IPO, Meghan shares a clear and practical perspective on the gap between performance metrics and pricing strategy - and what businesses need to rethink.

We cover:

•  Margin vs conversion - why strong performance doesn’t always mean pricing is right
•  The reality of discounting - easy to implement, harder to sustain
•  AI in pricing - where it adds value and where it still falls short
•  Static vs dynamic models - why many businesses remain reactive
•  Pricing guardrails - protecting margin while staying competitive

If pricing is still being treated as a periodic review rather than an active, strategic lever, this is a conversation worth your time.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Speaker 0:04

Hello and welcome back to the podcast, The Future of All Things Digital Commerce. Today I'd like to welcome Meghan Stabler, co-founder of alentr and former SVP of Global Marketing at Big Commerce. Welcome to the show. James, how's it going? All good. How's things with you? All good. Things are good.

Speaker 1 0:22

Really good. Yeah, happy and excited about 2026.

Speaker 0:24

I first met Meghan at the e com expo last year. Almost immediately felt she was someone we needed on the show. So it's great to get this session locked in. It's taking a little bit of time as we break down what's changing in retail and where you should be investing in 2026. Before we jump in, do you want to give a quick intro of your background, Meghan?

Speaker 1 0:42

Yeah, well, you put part of it out there. So I'm formerly SVP of global marketing at Big Commerce, which has re-rebranded itself recently to commerce.com. And that includes the three brands of e-commerce, feedonomics, as well as MakeSwift. Prior to that, I've worked for a lot of uh enterprise software companies. So CA Technologies, which is now Broadcom, before that, BMC Software. I've been CMO of another company called ThriveCut. And then stepping forward as you did the intro, you know, I'm currently a co-founder of a company called alentr based here in London.

Speaker 1:14

Excellent. Do you want to say a bit more about alentr?

Speaker 1 1:17

Sure. Thank you for that opportunity. So we believe that pricing is the last frontier of any digital transformation project. So let me unpack that a little bit. Pricing in its essence is normally a static price, right? In the world of commerce, your price is probably stored inside of an ERP or loosely coupled into some kind of PIM. And then when your loyalty promo e-com site needs to use a price for a SKU, let's say that that jacket that you're wearing right now, it plucks it out of the ERP or that goes along with the PIM. And that is the price that is generally sold as to every consumer that's coming to your website or you're offering a promo to. But what is missing from those prices is all the context that goes on to create that price and therefore the margin that you're actually going to need to deliver to be profitable as a company. So there's a lot of work in enterprise retail that goes on behind the scenes with finance and merchandising and category managers and data scientists to look at historicals. How many of these jackets did we sell last year? What was the cost of goods sold, cost of goods landed, inventory storage costs, shipping costs, et cetera, heating, electricity, whatever it may be. Let's figure out that that jacket is, let's say we we we believe that at a minimum we have to sell it for 100 pounds because that's our cost of goods, or your let's or your sneakers, right? You know, you've got sneakers out there, so 200 pounds or 100 pounds per prepare of sneakers. And therefore, we want to make about uh 10 pounds profit on sneakers. We're gonna sell these for 110 pounds. That price gets plugged into the ERP, and then the loyalty promo e-com sites plug that price out, offer it up, but occasionally you need to sell more. So somebody says, let's do a 20% discount on these sneakers right now, on these trainers. And so 20% of 110 pounds is 22 pounds, right? You take that off, you're actually at 88 pounds overall in terms of your cost. So you're a negative two pounds on your margin. So that guardrail gets ignored. What we're bringing is contextual awareness. We're using AI and machine learning to take all of that data input. You know, we call them uh internal value factors, external value factors, competitive uh weather, environmental willingness to pay with all the internal factors. We create a pricing envelope through our machine learning, and then we pass that envelope on to all the other systems, the PIMs, the loyalties, the e-commerce. Why do we do this? Because we believe that having a guardrail and knowing where it is enables a brand or a retailer basically to drive growth at the end of the day. Um, if you go back to 2023, a 1% boost in margin for US retail would have put back into a retailer's pocket $57 billion. So think about it as an enterprise retail. Let's say you're doing a billion pounds here in the UK, and we can give you a 1% boost in your margin, what that's worth worth, or are you 2% or a 3% or a 4%? So we work with all the ISVs, the partners, and we'll think of this as a middle layer out there. And uh we're a startup here based here in London.

Speaker 4:18

Given the uh the pressures retailers are facing right now, um not only on their margins, but also on customer attention and putting the right promotions and offers in front of their customers, to me, it sounds like a very good product. And uh almost as a retailer, it's a bit of a no-brainer to have as part of your uh your ecosystem. So I'm really excited to see how the market takes as you guys uh sort of build out your presence in the UK.

Speaker 1 4:43

Yeah, we're having great conversations today, but your comment there about challenges for retailers, right? They're being challenged by other technology. So agentic commerce is gonna bring a real challenge for any retailer today, because you or I could sit at home on our iPads, on our phones, wherever it may be, and say, hey, go find me the best price for this pair of trainers, right? Um, and you give the description as to what you're looking for. If you're on some online device, it's probably gonna offer you up a visual of it. Maybe you can fly in, twist it, see it, pick the color you want, and buy it. It's good for you and I as a consumer wanting to go ahead and buy something online, but it's really bad for the retail because they're losing a lot of insights and control. And yes, they're still gonna be the merchant of record at the end of the day that has to do and worry about do I have the inventory and the stock? Can I deliver? What is the shipping fees going to be and all these other things? But they're gonna lose insight on pricing. And here's why. Because if you have multiple retailers or outlets that sell the same kind of sneaker, they're all going to be competing for you, the consumer, at the end of the day, and offering up the best price or the discounted price or a promo price to get that sale. So it could end up being for retailers, it's a race to the bottom, so to speak, of I'm gonna sell it to you for 110. Don't worry, I can sell it to you for 105. No, I'm gonna do 102. No, I'm gonna do 150 pence. No, I'm gonna do 99 pounds, right? To go through it. And your cost of goods at that point goes out. Your margin is completely unknown. And as much as your e-com folks, loyalty folks, and others will go, hey, isn't it great? We offered this promo, we got through a Gentic AI, agentic commerce, we've sold a thousand of these pairs of trainers over the past week. Finance is going to turn around and go, yeah, you sold a thousand of these things, but guess what? We made zero in terms of margin profitability. So in a world where retail is squeezed, and the last thing you can really work on is pricing, uh, because your supply chain is wanting more, they're costing more, because manufactured is costing more, shipping is costing more, right? Expectation of URI as the consumer to get it tomorrow versus next week, uh, is there so higher expectations, increased costs. What can you do as a retailer? Focus on pricing guardrails and let a lenter come in, work with you to make sure that you've got these guardrails in price, because sometimes it may be worthwhile you're saying, hey, I'm not even going to sell it. It's not worth me selling it because if I sell it, I'm eroding my profit margin. Or you make the decision, say, hey, I'm going to sell it at a loss because I'm hooking in James as a new customer. And I believe that James has a propensity to buy more. And therefore, I may make it up in future sales to him. But at the end of the day, it is about margin and profitability. And I think that's the pressure that's going to come on retailers is this technology space that is changing so quickly, that is trying to be ubiquitous, um, is going to cause problems at the end of the day when you're accounting for what you've got and what you've sold. Ubiquitous. That is a new word to me.

Speaker 7:44

What does that mean?

Speaker 1 7:45

Everybody, right? You know, a AI and a genetic commerce is going to be ubiquitous. Everybody is going to have access to it, whether it's on the MacBooks, laptops, iPads, smartwatches, whatever it is. Look at this, it's not a smartwatch. It's a bright one. Well, smartwatches over there. Uh, but you know what I mean, right? It everybody's gonna need it, right? Like a mobile phone is ubiquitous nowadays compared to 30 years ago when there were a few mobile phones, but not many people had it.

Speaker 8:09

Yeah. And that's what fascinates me about this space. The the evolution of technology the last two or three years has been insane. Yeah. And that's why I love these conversations with people like yourself who are at the forefront of these technologies that are disrupted in the industry every single month. Um so um, yeah. Look, it's uh for me, this is gonna be a really interesting conversation as we we a lot of it's gonna be focused around the challenges retailers face, the pace of technology evolution and kind of where we are now versus where we're gonna potentially be in 12 months. And it'll be interesting to sit down later on in the year and see how uh how how that kind of pans out, really. Because I'm sure you probably agree that it's very hard to predict that far ahead at the minute.

Speaker 1 8:48

Um yeah, that's why that's why it's laughing. It's like it is it is so hard to predict it, right?

Retail Last Year And 2026 Pressures

Speaker 8:53

Yeah. Um well let's let's get started. Um before we jump into kind of kind of the challenges they face in more detail this year and a bit about tech, let's have a quick recap of last year because last year seemed like it was uh the first year in which we started to move forward again after a couple of years of stagnation. So, how would you describe the retail landscape last year, Meghan?

Speaker 1 9:14

Depends again whose perspective you're trying to describe it from. If you're talking to a retailer, or you know, there's a retailer that that I take a retailer's position, you're still trying to compete on price, you're still trying to compete on acquisition, you're still trying to compete on loyalty, you're still trying to think about conversion. And we should put a pencil in what I mean by conversion, because I think conversion is also a uh false hope sometime for retailers at the end of the day. So retailers are still having a tough time. There were still supply chain issues, there's still cost issues, right? You have the tariffs uh from that person in the States that uh came across. And it's, you know, regardless as to where you are, they are gonna impact you and you have to plan for it. And planning means you've got to think about what it's gonna be like. And unfortunately, this sort of haphazard approach to to tariffs is is a very hard thing. So I think retailers have had a tough time from the sector that that we play in, is you know, in the e-commerce space, I think it's been tough depending on who you are. Uh, e-commerce platforms, uh, like the one that I came from beforehand and others, um nobody's gonna be replatforming. I don't think anybody wants to replatform, and you're not gonna see a lot of uh brand new startup enterprise level retailers go, hey, we need to have an e-commerce platform, right? That there's not gonna be a lot of those. There are a lot of enterprise retailers out there, but for them to say, hey, we need to go from big commerce to Shopify or Shopify to Salesforce or Adobe to Shopify or, you know, it's not gonna happen, right? So I think the e-com platforms are changing. Agentic AI and agentic commerce is going to change everything for enterprise, uh, sorry, for for platforms too, because whereas now the desire has been up until a year ago to come to your website to find the goods, to all the search and merch and stuff that you've got, throw it into a cart, convert it, use a payment method of my choice, you know, PayPal, strike, whatever it is, and then a shipping method that's gonna get it to me 24 hours next day, delivery, or you know, I'm prepared to pay less and get it in a week. It's no longer gonna be that interface. That interface is going to be your chat bot or your chat friend or your Amazon Alexa or Siri or whoever is out there, right? It's gonna be driving it through. So that's gonna change the landscape a lot more for e-commerce platform vendors because they become basically a cart checkout, if anything else, right? Um, so people are still gonna buy online. I'm not saying that nobody's gonna go to a website. Um, investment in Martech, such as marketing promotion loyalty engines, that's gonna continue. So the clavios of this world, about sherifies of this world and others, uh, they still have a very strong place to play as long as they enrich data uh with people, your information, my information. And then you've got the DXPs and the CDPs that are trying to look at the whole user journey going through it. So I think what I'm trying to paint here is last year has been the first word that was came into my head was destructive, but it's not. The last year would be hyper challenged for many vendors and hyper challenged for the retailers as they try to figure out what the world is going to look like. And as you open up the podcast, the FODCast, right? You talked about how you've turned into 2026 and you're seeing more good things beginning to happen, or at least people starting to think about things in a different way. So I hope that as we look forward now to 2026, that there is a little bit of stability in what's needed instead of the hype and overhyping of things. Um, but it is all going to come down to um economics. How much is it gonna cost to go ahead and acquire a new customer? How much is it gonna cost to go ahead and convert an existing customer? How much is it gonna cost to promote what I have to existing customers, loyalty groups, whatever it is? And am I gonna make margin on the deals that I have? And if I can't make margin, it's a lost leader. If I don't make profit, my business is gonna be defunct.

Speaker 13:11

Lots, lots there to uh to uh unpick, right? Destructive is a is a big bold term.

Speaker 1 13:19

Uh yeah, that's why I pulled it back. It's what I thought, but uh it's it's it's it's not what I wanted to use. Because I I don't think it's I don't think destructive is saying it, because destructive means you just basically ripped it all down. We haven't ripped it all down. We're adapting to on the technology space, we're adapting to the new technologies like AI, machine learning, um, big data pools, right? Intelligence, smarts. Um, and we're trying to combine it with how we can build and code with vibe coding and how we can get something out faster than our competitors. So we're we're we're we're we're running very fast, maybe without a complete vision on what's out there. Um and you've got to really pull it back to understand what is the market gonna need, what is the consumer gonna need at the end of the day. So I think in 2026, we'll firm up as being a really good year. Whether or not it ends up being a great year for retailers depends on how they're addressing their pricing, right? Their margins, right? I'm gonna hit margin so often because how many times do people think about the margin of their goods, the margin of the trainers, the margin of the jacket, the margin of the headphones that you're wearing. It's about margin. And you can acquire at a lost leader, you can acquire for negative margin, but is it worth it? You should be focused and squeezing as much juice out of that limit as you can do and providing that insights and then using and leveraging technologies like machine learning and AI to create that contextual pricing that really helps you get the right price to the right channel to the right person and convert them.

Speaker 14:52

The margin point is so prevalent as well. And in the last sort of 18 months, we've had a few guests on from uh a variety of different vendors focused in the loyalty and promotion space. And whilst coming at it from a slightly different angle to yourself, um the underlying message is the same. And it's like companies have have so often previously just chucked out a discount code to try and attract customers without really thinking, okay, yeah, we might sell that at 25% off, but what does that mean for our profit? And as you said, it's all it's all been a good selling as a loss leader, but you need to be able to then further engage that customer in the future. If you're selling it to a customer as a loss leader and they never shop with you again, it's a completely pointless transaction. In fact, it's a negative transaction because you've lost out. Um and I feel like what we can do with technology now is is so greater to be able to understand that potential customer up front and then engage with them and then sell to them as a repeat customer moving forward. So I find that really interesting.

Speaker 1 15:49

Yeah, and so what we're doing at Atlanta, enriching that loyalty um platform with contextual information so that better decisions can be made by the retailer. We're enriching a PEM with more contextual information. And this is down to the SKU level, right? So it's not about big, let's just make more profit, don't offer a 20% discount across everything, make it a 17% discount. No, we're not saying that. We're saying at each individual SKU level, there are guardrails as to what you should be pricing for. That guardrails think about as being a sort of red, orange, or red, amber, green. You can stay in the red if you want, small margin. You can go to the amber, make a bit more, you can go into the green, you can go to the high green. But if you go into the high green, you're probably not going to convert, right? You offer more and more discounts. So just, just, just, you've, you've just got to bring that science and the logic. And it it couldn't happen to now, right? You've had dynamic pricing for 20 years that has been out there, right? Um, and this isn't surge pricing. This isn't, oh my God, it's raining. Go sell an umbrella. And guess what? We can jack it up 300%. Um, this is not bad. It's not dynamic pricing. This is contextual because the the retailers have been sitting on this mountain of information today in spreadsheets. And they've been the ones that have said the price we can sell this SKU for is X. And then it's been plucked out by the ERPs and the PIMS and the e-comms and the loyalties and the promo engines and showed to you, right? Maybe in a loyalty group gets a better discount or something like that. But that's how it's been done without the insights and the guardrails. We'll we're saying bring it all together rich through a pricing envelope down to the SKU level, and maybe in the cat in the group level or the loyalty level or the VIP level or the V VIP, they all got different things. And also take into account returns. Let's say you love that jacket and your other half says, Oh, I need to get him some of these. I'm gonna buy him five for his birthday. And you go, these are great, but I only like this one, and I'm gonna return four. Well, what do you do with that excess inventory that you just had returns? Do you restock it if maybe there's some damage? Do you just bin it? And so it's that needs to be accounted into the whole cost, right? So you know what you're winning on and what you're losing on.

Speaker 17:55

You must like that jacket, eh?

Speaker 1 17:58

Well, or shirt. I mean, you see deep white shirts, right? Um, you know, I did a drunk buy once of three pairs of the same trainers, which I still have because I I like them. And so I just threw out one pair because I've like I've worn these now for two years and they're getting pretty manky. I went straight to the box, pulled it off the shelf, and now I've got you know the same pair again, but looking pretty sweet.

How AI Changes Consumer Behaviour

Speaker 18:15

Well, happy days. There you go. That's another two years sorted as well. So one of the questions I had down to ask you was uh what fundamental shifts did we see in consumer behaviour last year? But I think given how the conversation started and how the um the agentic commerce uh hype has really come into play in the back end of last year. I want to rephrase that question to do you see 2026 being the year in which we really see consumer behavior change? Are we gonna see more people using uh Chat GPT as an example to do their to to source items? Because I don't think we were last year.

Speaker 1 18:50

Yeah, we weren't. Um This is gonna be controversial. Uh and I've got to choose my word, I've got to choose my words carefully. Humans are lazy bastards. If we can find a fast way to do something, we will find it, right? I mean, that's what we're in business for, right? How do I make things more productive? How do I put processes in place? I remember when I started as a systems programmer, programming in uh IBM uh many, many decades ago. Mine was to find and build routines so I didn't have to type the same thing again and again and again, right? I think people, humans, and I'll take that, the take back the Bastard thing that I put out there, I think we want to find ease, right? We want to find an easy way to do things, right? Um, we don't like the hard things because they're painful. We want to be happy and pleased. So I think when it comes to consumer behavior, I think the the more that Chat GBT is adopted, especially with the younger generations, um, the more people are then going to use it for, well, why can't I do this? Or why can't I vibe code to do this and build a routine for me so I don't have to do this all the time. So, yes, it will become, as I said before, ubiquitous, where it's part of the thing that we have. It's like having Google Maps or or Apple maps, right? Or using Waze, right? We're used to, even though we may know the direction we want to go in, we may still plug it into the map, into our car and drive and see what road conditions may be or traffic buildup. So I think it will. I think consumer behavior, though, unfortunately, because of the way economies are feeling, is still gonna be a little bit stagnant. People still want to get the best price at the time that they need it. I still believe that people in 2026 are gonna be cautious about discretionary spend um on things that they'd like to have versus must-have. Right? They're gonna be doing a lot more research. Chat GPT, a Gentec Commerce is gonna allow them to go find out more information. I'm sure you use Google today and the stuff you're gonna find out of information, use Wikipedia to find, you know, facts and stuff. Um, people are gonna use more of that before they go ahead and make probably large purchases. And of course, you're seeing it in a grocery store today. If you're in Waitros or Singingsbury's or Tesco's, people are definitely looking at the price of things and saying, hey, do I want this? You know. Um so that will continue. So from what we need to do, meaning we as in retailers, is to find that person where they are and make sure we're not hammering them with messaging, but we're meeting them where they're at. And that means getting a lot more information and data on them. How often do they shop? What do they like when they shop? What do they buy when they shop, and then trying to offer up and serve the promos, the discounts, the loyalties, the rewards, but also do it in a way where um we're not eroding our profit margins. So I I think consumer behavior is going to be driven by the economy, the ability to to afford and to spend things and then the necessity of buying things. That's uh it's not gonna change.

Speaker 21:53

I I'd I'd be inclined to agree. Like you said, with with we've been seeing that now for twelve months. The cost of living isn't going down. Can't see it going down anytime soon either, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 22:06

Yeah, and it's not just the UK. It's the US where I have a house. It's France where I have friends. It's Spain where I have friends that move to the from the US to get away from the administration. I mean, everybody is looking at the cost of living. And that is going to impact, you know what? Do I really need to replace that right now? Or do I really need to buy something new right now? That's all.

Loyalty Data And Brand Differentiation

Speaker 22:28

Yeah. So let's flip that then to the retailer then. And you already mentioned um they need to be to uh extract and then access more data for their customers. Yeah, I guess how how outside of that, or let's deep dive into that, if that is the primary um primary mission for retailers of this year. How how does the current economic condition and um sort of shape the retail strategy for 2026?

Speaker 1 22:57

Well, I I think it is about, as you mentioned, it's about data, right? It's about um creating groups of people. I mean, you see it when you go into um, you know, you I go into Waitros or Sainsbury's or Tesco, right? You've got your nectar cards, right? It's trying to offer me up some discount on something. Um, it's not randomly coming up with goods that I may want to potentially purchase, right? I think in nectar, you only get like 10 different things that it's offering you up. It knows what some of your shopper behavior is, and that's why it's trying to get you to go back in the store because they know that if you go in the store, you are likely to buy other things. You know, saying any of us go into a store and say, I'm just going in to purchase this. Often I go in to purchase something. I'm like, why the hell did I get these other things? I can't remember what I bought them for, but they're on the shelf. So for the retailers, it is about um really exploring, interrogating, and prosecuting the data that you have on consumers as part of a brand strategy. Why should people buy from you versus buying to the other, buying from the competitor? What is it that you offer that is a differentiator, which isn't always on competitive price, quality, right, endurance, all these other things. And how do you turn those users or consumers into loyal users where they're repeat, come back, right? And they they know that they can trust you. It is like John Lewis's never knowingly on the sold, right? So you want to create that brand where people have a trust level with that brand or that retailer uh at the end of the day. So retailers now have to look at that volume of data, the signals as to where they can buy. They have to look at that digital transformation of do we have the right marketing stack or tech stack uh here that's gonna help us beat the competition? Because if you're not doing it and you don't have the latest technology that is fitting with inside of your environment, but your competitor is, and they're executing and prosecuting on that, then they are going to win at that, right? So you've got to look at your tech stack, you've got to reinvent it. You've got to move fast, do your test and your learn, your A-B testing, but know when to pull back or when to accelerate. Um, now is not the time to pull back. Um, I think we've, you know, you've gone through a couple of turndowns in economies. I've been through probably several more than you, right? And we've always said um marketing tends to be the first thing to have the budget cut sometimes when you're not bringing in the sales. That could be the worst thing because if you're not in marketing and you're not promoing, branding, you know, doing all those things and you're cutting your budget from that, there's less cycles on you as a company. And so people are going to be buying less, which means you're gonna have to cut budgets again. So it's so again, a race to the bottom, so to speak. So brands, retailers, especially in the enterprise space, will need to be focused on customers as intently and intentionally as they can be.

Speaker 25:42

You started that off by speaking about Sainsbury specifically and the nectocards. Um as someone that shops in Sainsbury's regularly, I must admit the uh improvement in the nectar card uh over the last 12 to 18 months has been astonishing. And um, all of as you said, there's only a handful of offers, but they're all relevant, they're all products that I would have bought in the last two or three shops, and they're all maybe 20 to 30 percent discounted. Um I also love the fact when you scan your necktar card on the scan to shop, it just puts all the offers on there straight away, which is massive because there's nothing more frustrating than getting to the till and then being like, oh, not scan my card or whatever it might be, and you end up paying a premium for products that you you wouldn't normally pay for. So I think that in my opinion, their business that's leading the way when it comes to um customer experience, which obviously stems down to how they've um how they've utilized the data that they've been receiving now probably for the best part of 15 years.

Speaker 1 26:35

Um yeah, you I mean you you have just given an example as to what I said. You've got to double down on that brand and because you want to create those, you know, when I when I was working for commerce stuff in the States, right? I'll talk about you've got to create brand ambassadors and free brand ambassadors. You just do a great thing for um for Saintsbury's, right? Now, if there are people at Waitros doing their loyalty program or people at Tesco's who also have one, you know, you've got to test and look at your competition. What are they doing that we're not? Let's map to that and do the same. And then what could we be doing differently? Could we be doing something in the store? Because if we I hate to say tracking phones and stuff, but if we have RFID, we've got trackers, we know who's some just walked into the store. Maybe we can just ping them with an offer right now. Maybe that's a little bit too much for the for the UK uh audience to think that their phones are gonna be pinged when they walk into a store. But you know, get what I mean? Offer something up, there's a little bit more, that then says, Oh, you know what? I used to love Saints Brees. Now I love Tesco's because I could do all of these things.

Speaker 27:33

Yeah, well, it's interesting. So I remember speaking in the season one of the show when we were talking about the future of the high street and and retail slightly more uh uh generically. I actually remember speaking to a guest around uh supermarkets and their loyalty cards in particular and how use useless they were. At that time, there was no benefit for swiping your cards. They must have had millions of data points, and it seems like they did absolutely nothing with them. So it's great to see the evolution. Whilst I'm a nectar card holder, I understand that the the schemes within like Morrison's and Wake Trows, Tesco's, you name it, they're all of a similar standard, right? So uh I think it's good outside of uh grocery retail. Uh Meghan, just really quickly, is there any other uh uh retail brands that are doing a good job of this, in your opinion?

Speaker 1 28:18

I think some of the uh sports brands for experiences, Kestore and stuff and others, they're doing pretty good on creating a brand and the experience as well, um, and combining both online and offline experiences for you. So it it is, I think it's been a uh a hangout that we've had since uh lockdown and COVID, right? Where everybody was like, oh my God, we've got to force people to buy online, everybody's gonna buy online. Then it was like, well, how do we, now we're post-COVID, how do we get people to come back to the store and buy in store, right? Because we know that people are likely to bore more buy more things in a store, uh, in a retail store that they didn't need in the first place, right? You may go in to buy a pair of trainers, you've got to come out with a pair of trainers, a pair of shorts, and a pair of socks or something like that, right? So it is about creating the experiences. So I think some of the sports brands have done that very well. If I look at the B2B space, um, you know, spoof fix here in the UK, tool stop, I like as well, uh, from their brands and and who they're catering to to get people in and through the doors. So I think there's I think it just it just differs by segment category that you're in. Um, but everybody should be thinking about doing it. The buying process um is not unique to one type of retailer. You've just got to continuously be thinking about the competitors and what are they doing differently that we should be doing too, and investing in that. And that is the hardest thing, James, because if you're in a world where margin is so low, right, especially in uh fashion retail sometimes, alcohol is a little bit different. But if you're in in fashion retail, your margins could be terribly low at the end of the day. And therefore, you've got to invest, you know, like speculating in the stock market to be able to go ahead and grow your business. So you've got to make the right decisions. But if you don't make them, continuously don't make them, and don't pull back on bad decisions, then you go like a BHS or a Debanums, right? You know, it's it's you you you you're a lost leader and eventually it's just a race to the complete bottom.

Upgrade The Stack Without Replatforming

Speaker 30:14

Yeah, it's a it's a it's a fine line. And I guess there's so many, particularly now, there's so many areas that businesses can invest. Um so we don't have bottomless pockets. Um there are any areas you see retailers continue continue to kind of overinvest in, um, which in your opinion is kind of a waste of money.

Speaker 1 30:34

Uh to be honest with you, I've not really thought of that as a question to retailers to overinvest in. I mean, the only thing I could probably come back on is opening up new stores or box stores, right? Um for traffic, right? You want to gain, but is it in the regions? I I I don't know. I I what have you what have you seen? I I I don't think I've seen anything where I'm saying um you've you've overinvested too much. Um, you know, it could be. Um let's talk a little bit about MS, right? Several years ago, MNS won the decline. They had to take a major investment into right, re rethinking about their fashion lines. And it has done extremely well for them at the end of the day, right? And that the back into their business. They've also leveraged the media. Mark Suspense is at Christmas when they're trying to figure out the latest Colin the Cat of the pillar and stuff like that. There are other retailers that are probably overinvested in trying to have one of everything in the store, right? You go, you'll pick on your Sainsbury's. You go into Sainsbury's, you're gonna find all of the fairly low-cost fashion you could have. You're gonna have your home decor in there as well. It's like, are people really gonna go shop there? No, that they're really there just for the low-hanging fruit of people. Well, let's just have a look at this. Oh, I like that funny sweatshirt. I'll go ahead and buy it at 15 pounds or 20 pounds. So I think it's sticking to your core business is more important now than ever before, and not trying to deviate from that and be everything to everybody just because you're trying to get that that traffic either through the physical store or through a virtual store. Okay.

Speaker 32:08

Yeah, it's not a it's not an area that I've put a lot of thought into, uh, to be honest with you. So I it's hard for me to add comment on there, at least a comment of substance anyway. I wasn't sure if uh someone who's probably uh speaks to leadership professionals across retail brands on a regular basis. I didn't know if there's a a recurring theme. Maybe companies are still chucking hundreds of thousands in certain technology areas where it's just legacy and it's not necessary or what have you, but but maybe not.

Speaker 1 32:35

I mean, there is there's certainly some of that into legacy tech. Um, but you've you've also got to think that when they're replacing a legacy tech, um, what is the cost to replace the old statement of if it isn't broken, don't fix it, right? If it's still working, keep it. You still have I talked earlier on about I used to code on uh IBM uh stuff, right? You still have AS400s running things around the world. We start mainframes, obviously. I mean you still got AS400s. So there is a place for older tech. Is there a place for older legacy systems? Maybe. But that, you know, we can have a whole conversation on the composability of technology, the Mac Alliance, right? And and that's why, you know, go back to how we've decided to build Elenta is that we are a plug-in and augment, not a replace. So we don't replace what you have today. We're here as an enabler um to enable you to do the things at scale and at speed that you've been unable to do today, or to take the um manual processes, right? That data stuff on the left, um, and plug it into machine learning and AI, into our glass box ML, and then create the guardrails, but then we feed it into everything else you have. So we're not saying go replace your loyalty, go replace your e-comm, go replace your ERP, go place your PIM. We are enriching because we're a middle layer that sits inside of it, uh, sits on top of it, that either directly integrates or use an iPass service like patchworks to go ahead and or iPass.com to go ahead and push things through. So um I I don't believe there's a place to rip and replace. And that goes back to an earlier statement I made, James, about e-commerforms. Nobody's nobody really in their right mind should be replacing an e-commerce platform. It's it takes too long, it's too costly. The benefit does not outweigh the cost in my mind. You're still gonna be using it. There will be still good stuff. You could still use big commerce, especially the B2B stuff, good stuff. You're still gonna be on Salesforce, good stuff, integration into your CRMs and service cloud and everything else.

Speaker 34:35

Um, so it's probably a good job. You're no longer the uh the SVP of global marketing for big commerce with a statement like that, eh?

Speaker 1 34:42

Well, yeah, but but if I was, um I'd be talking about feeds and channels. I'd be talking about the benefits and the true benefits of feedomics, right? Um, and there are other players out there, channel engine and stuff, um, that that compete. But how do we enrich the data you've got that's feeding through to Agentic Commerce? Well, that's something that feedonomics can do from commerce.com. How do you build and launch and grow and and and stand up stuff faster? That's with MakeSwift and the stuff that they've got. But at the end of the day, Shopify is the big behemoth. Shopify is a great innovator, right? They were the anti-enterprise for about a year and a bit before Toby and the team changed and said, no, we're we're we're everybody that you want to be. And they are the ones to scale. They have the 2,000 plus developers to throw it at, where many of the other brands and many of the other enterprise platforms don't have that. That's why you've seen, you know, hybrids is still around, right? You're not gonna have you don't get yeah, but but yeah, but you don't see that, you know, you don't see people going, I've got to be on SAP Hybris, nor do you see people that often leaving a hybridist, but they don't have a ton of developers over there doing things. Oracle Commerce, right? You you still have Oracle out there as well. You've still got WebSphere somewhere. I think it's owned by HCL. So the platforms haven't died. Yes, that they're they have a few cuts and they're beginning to bleed, but at the end of the day, a retailer who goes, so let me get this right. You want me to spend X amount of thousand pounds of dollars, spend the next, you know, six, nine, twelve plus months replatforming to get exactly what I've got today, that doesn't make sense to me. Uh I I wouldn't be calling on that. I'd be looking for things like a lenter, like voucherify, like um beatonomics, right? Like Clayview, um, um, to go ahead and enhance what I've got by giving me richer context and information that I can now use to convert James into a customer and hopefully a repeat customer.

Speaker 36:36

I agree. I agree fully in terms of looking at uh specific areas where you can make a change in a relatively small period of time, something that's possibly cost efficient and uh CROI. I guess I'm looking from a non-technical point of view. My understanding is that if you're on legacy tech, let's take an older version of Hybris as an example. How easy is it to just add in a component in a particular area? My thing is you would maybe migrate to something like a newer a newer version or a Shopify because you can then plug in via an API and it's far quicker. Um yeah.

Speaker 1 37:15

Well then and that that's what that's why we have APIs. I mean, you know people got upset with me once when I said AI is nothing new. It is just um algorithms at scale. We've been using algorithms for as long as I've been programming, right? Um we've been building APIs through buses and connectors for as long as I've been programming. So APIs, right? Um, if you open up the platform of hybrids, you're still gonna have some APIs that you can plug into. And it's about data flow, data flow back and forth, right? Data feeding, data enrichment. Um, but you're right. I mean, the the the shop somewhat open and extensible. Uh uh Magento Adobe, a little bit more. Commerce tools, brilliant. Um Scale, I think is gonna be another one that uh people should look out for as well with their middle. Um Spriker as well has done a good game on that too. That if you want to go fast and flexible and be able to replace the bricks in your tech stack just like Lego bricks with different colors, different size bricks, you know, composable commerce allows you to go ahead and do that. Um, but all of what we talked about, James, depends on what a retailer's strategy is, right? What is the what are the outcomes they're trying to drive to? What are the OKRs, KPIs, what do they want to achieve? What needs to be different for the consumer? How's data gonna flow through all these systems back and forth? How's it gonna be enriched? How's it gonna be used? Is it gonna be done securely with uh GDPR and all the other controls that we have to think about that are in place? Is it gonna be secure? I mean, all of that has to be part of a strategy. And then, which is why retailers get worried about it, it's cost, right? To do that strategy is gonna be how much and maybe how much consulting. I mean, we've we've also built a lenter. And I think I think I said at the beginning, this is not a plug and play. This is not a, hey, I'm just gonna download the app or download a lenter.com and away I go. There is a consulting piece to this. So the the you know, PWCs, the Deloitte digitals, the poopo sapiens, right? There is a business opportunity for them when it comes to pricing transformation within sort of enterprise retailer, because all of that secret source that goes on, and all that secret source that we have in the black box has to be aligned so you can create these pricing envelopes and the flow through. And yeah, it does come with a cost. But if you are going to make a hundred million dollars in profit boosting through your margin, it's probably worth spending another five million to go ahead and get that change done, or a million dollars to get that change done if you're trying to drive with a hundred million revenue.

Quickfire Picks And Final Advice

Speaker 39:47

All right, thank you. Now I'm conscious of time, uh, we've got to wrap this up very soon. So now you're you're uh you're you're back to the next one. Um so really quickly, I do like to fire across some uh sort of quick fire questions um just to wrap things up. Um so there's two or three here that I'd like to run past you. Um first and foremost, uh, if you had to pick one area retailers should invest in right now, what would it be? You know I'm gonna be biased. Pricing transformations.

Speaker 1 40:15

Think about google contextual pricing. It has to be an area that you can drive profit in today with very, very little, well, faster time return ROI on it.

Speaker 40:29

Okay. Gotta say it. I knew that was gonna come. Let's remove contextual pricing from the equation. What would the next area be?

Speaker 1 40:37

Uh I think it would be ensuring that your loyalty users are loved on at every stage of their journey. Excellent. Love that one.

Speaker 40:47

Um what is one retail brand uh we should be keeping an eye on this year? One retail brand to keep your eye on.

Speaker 1 40:55

Why did you do this to me, James? You know, no, well, I'll give you one that I'm very biased about because they have transformed themselves. Um, as you may or may not know, I am a watch lover. I don't like the Rolexes, I don't like all the big fancy name watches. I'm a Brightling person. I got five Brightlings. Um, they have transformed themselves pretty significantly over the past few years with digital, with design, with their store experiences. Um I don't have to be biased and say it would be Brightling. If I was to say it was in-store, it'd be it'd be brands like Olo and others, right? Where I like their clothing and the fit and the feel of these things. Um other than that, look, every brand has got an opportunity to succeed. And I've already gone through a schmoggers board of those retailer brands that that that we have here in the UK. Fashion brands, um, hey, it's just personal preference, what you like to wear, what you don't want to wear.

Speaker 41:52

So no preference. All right. Well, um Brightling and and Omo, did you say? Not familiar with O. OLO. Oh, Olo. O L L. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Not familiar, then I'll check them out. Um check them out.

Speaker 1 42:04

Oh, well, I'll tell you what, I'll go back. Castor, I'll tell you castor, I do like the brand.

Speaker 42:08

Yeah, nice. Last question then. One piece of advice that you would give to uh a retail leadership team ahead of this year.

Speaker 1 42:16

Uh have a vision, but be in brace position. Awesome. Because you don't because you don't know what's going to happen, right? Just as this agentic comes came out of left wing. Um you don't know what may be next for technology. So have a vision and a strategy in place, but be in that brace position for when changes happen or when new opportunities arrive that may not be of your own making, that you really have a committee and a plan to to think and consider it.

Speaker 42:44

I like that being braced position. We know that there's going to be change multiple times this year. So uh yeah, I'm excited for it.

Speaker 1 42:52

Seat rests up, three tables in the upright position, brace position.

Speaker 42:56

Let's go. Lovely.

Speaker 1 42:58

There we go.

Speaker 42:59

Thank you for joining me, Meghan.

Speaker 1 43:00

My pleasure. Thank you as always, my friend. Good to see you.

Speaker 43:03

So look, if contextual pricing is on your roadmap this year, then Meghan is certainly someone you want to be speaking to. When this podcast is released, we'll make sure there's links to Meghan's profile and alentr if that is uh something of interest to you. But for now, thank you for joining me. And I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks again.