Spieckerman Speaks Retail
Spieckerman Speaks Retail
Seamless, Shoppable, and Swift: Eitan Koter’s New Rules of Video Commerce
In this episode of Spieckerman Speaks Retail, Carol Spieckerman explores the convergence of commerce and media with Eitan Koter, Co-CEO of Vimmi. Eitan shares Vimmi’s journey from a media and entertainment technology provider to a leading video commerce platform.
The conversation delves into Vimmi's sales acceleration platform, which seamlessly integrates shoppable video across multiple channels, from diverse social media platforms to brick-and-mortar stores.
Carol and Eitan discuss why multi-platform video is a must-have in modern retail marketing and how the "TikTok-ification" of content has transformed best practices. Eitan will have you rethinking your approach to video and challenging the "quality over quantity" standards of the past. He provides step-by-step guidelines for creating authentic, high-volume content that aligns with business lifecycles while tackling customer pain points. Eitan busts the “brands are dead” myth and expands on the power of storytelling to onboard new generations of shoppers and accelerate conversion.
The discussion hits on the rise of retail media networks and how Vimmi's solutions optimize retailers’ in-store digital aspirations. Eitan shares his thoughts on the future of retail, highlighting the causes and concerns that will drive consumer engagement.
Key Takeaways:
- Quantity Over Quality: How flooding the zone and adjusting on the fly make engagement soar.
- Founder-led Favor: How to leverage authenticity and origin stories to differentiate in a crowded marketplace.
- Rapid Iteration Hacks: Why narrow-lens innovation, lean launches, and live-testing are the ways of the future.
- Data-Driven Domination: How advances in video analytics optimize content and campaigns in record time.
Part crystal ball, part strategy session, this episode offers valuable insights to retailers and brands looking to harness the power of video commerce and navigate the retail media landscape. Are you ready to turn up the volume?
Guest contact information:
Want to be a guest on Spieckerman Speaks Retail?
Contact team@spieckermanretail.com
Check out more of Carol's retail insights and updates
Follow Carol on LinkedIn
Follow Carol on Twitter
EPISODE INTRO
Hi, this is Carol. Welcome to Spieckerman Speaks Retail, where we navigate retail from now to next through my latest retail trajectories and interviews with industry experts who help us chart the course.
A little over a decade ago, I predicted that commerce and media would collide, retailers would become media companies, and an explosion of new content platforms would create revenue streams that transcended bricks and clicks. I called it the “transmedia transformation” and started using the term “transmedia” as an alternative to multi-channel and to the shiny new term at the time – “omnichannel”. Now all of this was pretty controversial at the time. Plenty of folks just didn’t see how it would happen or why it would need to. Why would anyone need to look beyond “channels”? But here we are in 2024. Retail media has become retailers’ favorite profit center, commerce media is very much a thing, retailers ARE media companies and media companies are enabling and conducting commerce.
I sure wish I had known my guest back then. Because it turns out, we were talking the same language even though we were over 6,000 miles apart and operating in what at the time were considered different industries.
Well, better late than never. I was a guest on Eitan Koter’s Ecomm Pulse podcast a while back. The conversation flowed then and has ever since. I learn something every time we speak. Eitan isn’t just scary-smart with an almost eerie knack for seeing around corners, but he’s also one of the most down-to-earth and giving people in the game – always ready to share what he knows and elevate others. Eitan is the Co-CEO of Vimmi, a leading-edge SaaS company that brings seamless, shoppable video and live shopping solutions to retailers and brands across an impressive range of platforms. Eitan and his team have accomplished the near impossible by turning what used to be passive engagement across channels into monetizable moments spanning bricks, clicks, and social platforms.
I know you’ll want to hear what he has to say so let's dive in!
Carol Spieckerman
So, Hey, Eitan, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for joining
Eitan Koter
Wow. I'm really super excited to be here. Thank you so much.
Carol
You bet. We had a great conversation on your podcast, not that long ago. I was really excited to go a little bit deeper and learn more about what you do. And get your perspective on the industry and a lot of the changes that are happening.
So much of the chatter in retail right now seems to be very negative. It's all about who's behind the curve and who's not keeping up . That's one of the reasons why your story really stood out to me, because it's really a story of intentional reinvention versus reacting. I'd love to learn more about that. And if you could share more about the changes that you saw coming that led you to make changes in your business and really, to transform your business and make some really big bets that a lot of others weren't making at the time.
Eitan
We just celebrated 10 years. So for Vimmi, initially we started from the media and entertainment side of the business. We've developed technology for mobile operators and content providers to launch their own direct-to-consumer video services, similar to Netflix, Disney Plus, and all these over the top or online video platforms.
We were working with a lot of mobile operators and content providers, TV stations, broadcasters around the world, and providing a kind of white-label Netflix type of solution. And this worked for us very, very well in the first years, but then we saw something crazy starting to happen in China with the use of video and specifically live video, to sell products so. And this was before COVID. We had all these building blocks for video management, video preparation, video streaming, video players, and analytics. So, the potential of video merging into commerce. I’ve been in the media and entertainment business since 2000, so we always discussed these two megatrends colliding or converging: media and commerce. What we see today is media companies are becoming commerce companies and E-commerce companies are thinking about merchandising and retail. And also we see that retailers and brands are becoming media companies.
I decided to pull the company towards these types of use cases and industries and initially people had some difficulties adapting, but now everyone understands so the ratio of businesses investing in marketing is increasing dramatically.
One of these video activities is obviously shoppable video, live shopping. We already had customers before COVID in video commerce and then COVID hit and brick and mortar was closed and the general Ecommerce explosion happened with Shopify and all these companies that had to go online. The way for them to sell was obviously through video. And we were there with the right timing for that.
Carol
Wow. That is wonderful. Really good timing. So it sounds like there were some intentional actions and you were sort of reading the tea leaves and then maybe a happy accident or two.
Eitan
Yeah. And it's, something that we believe in a lot. And I've been bootstrapping for the last 13 or 14 years already. And I believe in the experimental mindset. Go there, try things and kill the non-working things very, very fast, lose early and test the water. If it makes any sense, and there's good feedback from the market, just evolve and take it from there. We've been able to implement very, very fast. You'd also need to develop a product to support that use case, obviously,
Carol
Yeah, definitely. So you mentioned video. And of course that's so core to your business and it's core to retailer's media strategy these days. I think every retailer and brand knows that video has to play a bigger role in their marketing mix. Some aren't as far along as others.
What do you say to somebody who comes to you and says,
“Hey, Eitan, where do we start? How do we get our arms around this opportunity?”
Eitan
That’s probably the main question that we hear on a daily basis. We don't need to educate the market. Everyone knows that video works. Conversion rates are higher, bigger, there’s increased engagement and brand loyalty. But where do we start? And there are so many different video use cases, obviously, like influencer marketing. A lot of companies are doing influencer marketing, and they know that it's most cases, it's very viable and it works, but let's differentiate before the TikTok era and after. This is a major shaping event in the industry, the “Tic Tok-ification” of things.
What Tik Tok introduced is this very low production, authentic, high quantity content strategy versus longer forms with high production values. Polished videos. By the way, this triggered the entrance of Gen Z to the purchasing, ecosystem. They can spot fakes and overproduction in one second so being more attentive and being close to your brand differentiation and origin story is very important.
What I usually recommend is to start creating short-form videos that are 30 to 60 seconds long and that solve a specific problem. Create content that fits your current stage in the lifecycle of your business. Are you just launching your business or launching a new product line? Or are you already converting and just need more content to help convert?
Different types of videos are relevant for each one of those stages. But the idea is to start creating videos. No one cares how you look. People are looking for authentic stories. People are looking for what's unique and what's real in the way you present your company.
This is why I see brands and retailers going back to their roots, even talking to their founders, who may have left years ago, and try to understand the origin story
So, it's important to find the right messaging statement, and start creating content very quickly and high volume. I recommend taking two or three months, posting every day, creating a huge list of problems and pains that you are solving.
I did this exercise and in probably 20 minutes, I created a list of hundreds of problems that I hear from customers and partners. Anyone can do that and create video once a day about the pain point and how you help with it. It can be the brand owner or one of the store managers. It can be internal people creating content or external creators or influencers, but start posting every day for two to three months to see what's working and what's not. And once you find your sweet spot of the type of videos that are working, you can then create more of this type of content.
This is on the shoppable videos side. I also recommend doing a weekly show where you go live and do live shopping – this can be done on the Vimmy platform. Our system also provides reccomendation about the types of videos, best lengths, time of the day, style of scripting, and more.
It's all organic, you can find your path in the noise based on the analytics, but you need that volume at the get-go. And videos that are performing well, we usually push with advertising and paid media. And we're achieving amazing growth that is really unique in the industry.
Carol
Wow, that's really great advice. I may have to steal one of your words now, “Tik Tok-ification”!
The big takeaway that I got there is it's more quantity over quality.
Eitan Correct. Quantity first. Daily, four or five times a week for two or three months to figure out what's on. But let's talk about the quality. For me, the quality is related to the life cycle of the campaign, business, or the product launch. Getting those pain points and helping with them. Helping customers with pain makes them choose you versus your competition. Provide more product information, pricing, and try to align the types of objections that you get in each one of the stages of the life cycle of the business or the sales cycle and do this alignment of objections and pains for each one of the stages.
If you're just launching a product no one knows you. Let's say you're a new brand or a new business and just launching. It doesn't help if you provide the feature sets of your products. People want to buy from people they know and build some kind of relationship with them. They have common ground and some kind of an emotional connection between them.
The way to do that is just post really valuable information. One topic every day with a nice hook that triggers interest. And once you get to that level where your shoppers are trying to evaluate between alternatives, that’s when you need to provide comparisons. Maybe a feature set and some of your benefits and values. And when they are ready to convert and purchase, then provide more detailed product information, pricing, all the free trials, free for life, whatever. The product or bundles you’re trying to figure out. Align objections with lifecycle and create content around it.
Carol
That’s a great formula. I think some of what you're saying points to a lot of what I'm hearing in my business, which is companies saying, “Hey, we don't want to just be vendors or people who just sell stuff. We want to be thought leaders”. I also heard that there's an opportunity to integrate that thought leadership piece and use it to take them through the sales funnel.
Eitan
Correct. 100 percent agree. A very, very good comment.
The way to differentiate today is not by product or by feature set or pricing even, it is a unique story and what I call a “founder-led growth” story. People want to hear from the owners, people want to hear from the leadership team. They want to understand why you're doing what you're doing. What's the uniqueness and the value you're bringing to the market? I think we're in a completely different era. What worked in the past, obviously is not working today. So it’s about messaging and going back to your roots and trying to understand what's so special about your company.
Carol
You called your platform a “sales acceleration platform.” and you were just talking about taking people through that journey and how you can do it through content. But can you tell me more about that sales acceleration piece and how Vimy plugs into it?
Eitan
Yes. Our North Star when we developed the product was to help businesses sell much more with much higher probability. And we thought, Okay, how do we do that?” Because we've seen that it's a very complex era that we're in where it’s very difficult to acquire new customers and difficult to sell.
The trend that we saw is that brands and retailers are willing to sacrifice their margins and share it with other channels. Marketplaces, affiliates, social networks, like TikTok et cetera, but it's going to be very challenging and complicated to work around any of these channels, because each channel has its own sets of rules, APIs, and so on. It’s complicated to manage. Big enterprise customers have dedicated teams to manage TikTok and another team to manage Meta and another team to manage YouTube or maybe Twitch.
You need to manage and focus on each one of those communities like a whole ecosystem, like a sphere that you need to be part of and understand. For the medium and small companies, they just need to plug in TikTok, Shopify, or Facebook.
It's just the beginning because those APIs are changing even on a weekly basis. And allocating inventory to these channels and making inventory shoppable on all these channels is a big lift for any brand that is busy trying to sell and optimize inventory. So we had a few targets. One is to help customers sell more, but a second is to do it in a seamless, easy way. So, the way we work is syncing your product pages to our platform in one click. It can be on any type of platform, Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, any of the E-commerce platforms. One click syncs all of your products. The second step is to associate videos with the products. So, a certain video might have multiple products, which is fine. And then, with the next click, these videos are deployed seamlessly on all the channels and we enable shopability of these videos and products on every channel.
It could be social networks, marketplaces, or affiliate partners. So we do that in a few ways. For TikTok, for example, you must check out through the TikTok shop. So we build product pages on TikTok. We also do that on Instagram. You can tag products and redirect to different landing product pages.
For your own website, you might take the embed code from our platform and enable interactive videos with video checkout functionality. We also turn all of your product pages to interactive automatically. Because we know which product is assigned to which video, we can automatically allocate videos in your Ecommerce platform to every product page. If you install the simple JavaScript on your Ecommerce platform, we can help you sell with shoppable videos. The videos can be short-form or long-form video on demand and are pre-edited and pre-produced. Or you can go live on all the social channels, even Amazon Live. Anyone who has a storefront or a website to stream, like your affiliates, can embed this live shopping with the chat system already in place and enable video checkout from within the video player on all the platforms.
Carol
That's incredible.
Having a solution that addresses all the different platforms and the fact that no two retailers are taking the same approach. It used to be a retail organization looked a certain way. They all did the same things but just sold different products and had a different brand out there. But these days with so many options available, including a lot of great third-party providers like Vimmi, retailers are spoiled for choice. No two have the same platform. No two are using the same combination of DIY solutions and partnerships.
So it's a twofold challenge, for you guys, not only managing all the different social media platforms, but also meeting retailers where they are. And plugging into their unique ecosystems and the platforms that they're using.
Eitan
Yes. We are a SaaS platform and we have a variety of packages. You can start with a free-for-life package and grow from there. But we also have enterprise customers and bigger retailers that are all customized. They want to implement live shopping in their own brick and mortar stores and use their internal teams to go live. We do a lot of projects that are very customized because we are very good at execution and we tried to create a platform that requires zero integration so that it's just one click.
Whether you're on a Google Merchants account through an RSS feed or just your Shopify ID or other platforms, it’s one step to sync products and on the other side, connect all your social networks. And that's it. Everything is done for you automatically and seamlessly. It's a really a breakthrough in the industry. And if you work with influencers, they can also connect their social networks from their platform under your account. And you can manage publishing the videos on the influencer account from the same platform. You will also be able to add more social networks in the future.
We've invested a lot over the last 2 years to make it a seamless SaaS self-service, zero-integration implementation. And, for our large enterprise customers, we have a dedicated account management team with statements of work so that everything is structured in a mature B2B enterprise style of engagement. We are happy with these two efforts.
Carol
You alluded earlier to the analytics piece. How do you get your arms around, what's working or not working and how quickly are your customers able to react to that?
Eitan
That's a very, very good question. Video gives us so much more information than text information posts or even a picture. We know everything from which device they're using to when they start watching a video, when they stopped or paused. We know where they are redirected to and which connectivity they have. There's so much information that helps us understand engagement and conversion but engagement comes first.
For example, in a live shopping situation, if you want to chat, you need to log in to the to the live event. So, we have your credentials and we know that you reached the shopping cart. We also know about abandonment and can retarget you and give you more incentives. The wealth of information that we have from video is huge, and it's an engagement period between the retailer, the brand and the shopper. The shopper is watching the video and we know when he swipes up or if he stayed there and clicked to purchase. Because we aggregate, we work with all the channels and of course, we work with a brand’s or retailer’s website and its affiliates and partners. We aggregate all this data right onto one database which we are enriching with a lot of different processes using machine learning models. The dashboard gives our users a lot of insight into what really happened, but it also provides recommendations about products and about creating additional campaigns that are much more personalized and targeted.
So, even if you had a success and a product was purchased, an AI recommendation will suggest a push notification with another product. If you didn't purchase and abandoned the cart, you will know based on the segmentation of the audiences and their behaviors, which reach-out to suggest, like a coupon code or some other type of incentive.
We provide recommendations about scripting. We have an AI tool that provides scripting recommendations using best practices from successful events that we already have in the database. For live video, we can determine the best time of day and video length.
It's very easy to measure the performance of these engines because we have KPIs of how push notifications lead to a purchase for live events or short-form shoppable videos.
Our qualitative and quantitative data helps our customers make smarter decisions and make continual improvements to their campaigns using our system.
Carol
With all of those different data points, I'm sure it would be tempting to go down some rabbit holes, maybe going places where you shouldn't. So, you obviously provide guidance as to which metrics are the most important – which ones they should really be paying attention to.
Eitan
A hundred percent. And those are related to products, prices, video parameters, scripting, and also which business KPIs are important. The information that we provide needs to be absorbed and implemented in a very, methodical way, ignoring what the competition is doing. It’s easy to copy what the competition is doing because there's a lot of hype and buzz around that. But that's not the best way to do things. You have to trust the data. It’s fundamental to everything. Even if two companies have the same products and are competing for the same market, the consumers have different sentiments about each brand and different emotions about the whole campaign. So you need to analyze on your own and come up with your own unique campaigns rather than trying to copy the competition.
Carol
I couldn't agree more. I've been saying there are no templates these days and again, with retail organizations being terminally unique, copying somebody else really doesn't make sense. I love it that you've made several points reinforcing that brand does matter. You talked about founder stories and unique brand attributes. And all of that really does go counter to the “brands are dead” mantra that we keep hearing. Also, with the focus on AI, the business gets talked about as though everything is becoming completely automated and mechanical, so I love what you're saying about that other piece – that storytelling has probably never been more important.
Eitan
A hundred percent. People understand that AI is helpful in the daily operation of any business. It saves time and cost and AI tools are definitely doing a great job on the analytics side where attribution is becoming so difficult. But at the end of the day, for consumers, especially Gen Z, they can spot mechanized or AI-driven processes and they react in like 0 to 7 seconds. That’s the span of time that we have to get attention and at the end of the day, we are social creatures. We have emotions. We need to meet people. It’s about building relationships and crafting unique stories. You win business because you built a storytelling narrative. This side of things is stronger than ever and a major area of differentiation,
Carol
That's great. We talked a minute ago about the retail media opportunity and no conversation in retail these days is complete without addressing that in some way, because it's become such a huge profit center for retailers and has very quickly become the rule rather than the exception.
Retailers are either building these capabilities internally or cobbling together different solutions to make sure that they're on top of this opportunity. And at the end of the day, it’s another platform monetization play. Retailers have all these different assets on their platforms, and they're starting to wake up to the opportunity to monetize them and take their business beyond just selling products. In this case, it’s first-party data.
How do you integrate with those efforts or do you, how does Vimmi play in the retail media space and commerce media? And do you have any thoughts on where it stands now and where you see it evolving?
Eitan
Sure. Definitely. We are deep into the retail media space.
Retailers obviously want to sell their inventory to the highest bidder. That inventory can be an advertising spot on their website. This can be very basic text or pictures, but we started adding video, and making those videos shoppable.
So, think about a retailer working with multiple brands. The brands are creating videos, uploading them to their branded websites, and redirecting to their product pages within this. Let's say if it's an Amazon, for example, these videos are originated by the brands. The retailer is facilitating the activity. We have very good case studies around enriching those inventory spaces with interactive video.
Another example involves brick-and-mortar stores. Think about the displays that are available in every physical store. Since we know exactly where that “buy now” button is on shoppable videos, we just replace it with a QR code. On the big screens, people can purchase by scanning the QR code. If it's a live event, then we stream it. If it's a retailer use case, we will stream it across social media and websites, but also to all the physical stores. With the expansion of in-store digital screens, interactive video, and QR codes are a great use of that space.
A third example is what retailers are doing with CTV. With the big ones like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Disney, you see the merger of media and commerce. If you go to Netflix, you’ll see product recommendations and you can scan it through the streaming of the video itself and it will wait for you as an email or in a dedicated area in the application. We’ve started to see growth in shoppable videos going to big screens and CTV.
And we know that the CPM on CTV is very high compared to anything out there, and it's a huge opportunity right now. We came from a media and entertainment background and we're still there. It's still a substantial part of our revenues. Over-the-top (OTT) providers, including the new mobile and telcos that have launched TV or video services, they are thinking about how to monetize with products, how to integrate Ecommerce into their workflows, and create checkout experiences in video apps.
This is how commerce is integrated with media and how media is integrated with commerce. We are creating and publishing videos that drive conversions around all these retail media scenarios including online storefronts, offline stores, and CTV.
All these startups are talking to retailers and they need content. They need demand-side advertising. This is one area where I also see major growth. When you talk about retail media, particularly in the US, it's Mainly Amazon and Walmart, right? But there is a very long tail of retailers from there that are moving slow because the jump from managing efficiency and profitability for a storefront to becoming a retail media network is a really big one.
Carol
You've mentioned stores. Two of my top retail trajectories are all about the store. I've been saying that the store is the core in 2024 and that bricks have new tricks because retailers are realizing that stores are a great place to test all of this new technology, and so much of the new technology is going into stores.
It’s why you see all these remodels and reconfiguring of stores. It sounds like you have solutions that address the store opportunity and, going back to retail media, it’s becoming very much about the store and the ability to track in-store activity and navigation, which I just talked to a guest about in my last podcast episode.
So do you look at brick-and-mortar opportunities as a completely different environment or do you look at it as part of the total opportunity and total ecosystem?
Eitan
Part of the total ecosystem. A store is just another, what we call destination. Like TikTok, Meta, and Amazon, that store is another destination. We just need to connect to the local, operational system of that store through digital displays.
We can be a channel with a playlist that runs automatically or it can be ad hoc. It can be a live show or a specialized video but it is all QR code based.
I totally agree with you about the opportunity with the store. In the US, Ecommerce is increasing, but it's still less than 30 percent of the entire retail business volume. Maybe 26 or 27%. In China, Ecommerce is 80 percent of the entire retail business. So there are two different sides of the spectrum and below 30 percent is not going to change. That means people want to buy from people. They enjoy the experience of getting out and shopping. We see the evolution of the store. It's amazing and, with digital shelf screens, it’s so interactive. It's sometimes overwhelming but video of all kinds will be a big part of it. Of course, there are other immersive experiences like A. R. And V. R. But initially, you want to give the guest the ability to get special deals if they walk in certain aisles. I’ve seen lately that retailers are trying to increase the width of aisles to accomodate queues inside the aisles because of digital displays. It’s really fascinating and definitely a major opportunity in the US.
Carol
That immediately created an image in my mind of people waiting in line to look at a digital display. I guess that's probably a really good problem to have!
Eitan
Yes. And people are popping up their smartphones just to scan the QR code. And then, whoever's doing the first five QR scans might get an additional 5 percent discount. Wow. That's great.
Carol
You've always got that hat on, don't you, Eitan?
Eitan
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Carol
We talked about testing and the ability to test and quickly react and one of my newest trajectories is all about this shift away from what I used to call “test and launch” to “launch and learn”. It's a really disruptive dynamic that I don’t think is being addressed for what it is. Retailers used to try to perfect technologies backstage to work all the bugs out and they wouldn't even think of launching until it was ready for prime time. Now we're in this launch-and-learn mode where retailers are pushing things out before the training wheels are off. And it can be problematic because in some cases, consumers are still in that mindset that retailers have attempted to perfect any technology consumers are interacting with. So when there are all these bugs and annoyances happening, they're like, “Wait a minute, this is a terrible experience!” And retailers are saying, “Well, it's intentional because you're a guinea pig and we're testing it on you and trying to get input to make it better.”
I know you're a big advocate of moving fast. But what do you think about this launch-and-learn mindset? Are they striking the right balance? And here again, can you share some best practices based on your experience on the best way to launch new technologies and new capabilities. How to stay on the edge without breaking too many things?
Eitan
You need to move fast and break things, right? That's, that's the mentality that everyone needs to have right now.
There are lower budgets and less time for big innovative projects now. But even before that, I always believed in a lean launch mentality and taking an MVP type of approach. The way to do that is, instead of designing and developing this big, wide product with so many feature sets and launching it to the market, do it the other way around. Be laser-focused and determine the minimal sets of functionalities, limited features, and a narrow customer segment. Try to break through with one or two functionalities.
You need to iterate fast because you will get quick feedback. Daily iteration is best. The entire process should take no more than three months. Be honest that you are launching something new. If it’s small enough and innovative enough to make a difference, people will be more accepting of bugs. Try to go very narrow, get immediate customer feedback, iterate, and bring results immediately. If you're successful with that process, it will create positive word of mouth so your marketing budget will be zero. Friends will bring friends and the network effect will initiate.
Once you are there, implement, land, and expand on that small feature set. Add another feature set that the customer has asked for. Not one that you think is required, but one that customers ask for, and do that very, very fast as well. That’s how you create a market from zero and build a strong community of advocates that really fall in love with your products and you as a brand. Grow and expand from there and don't overthink it. I hear a lot of founders talk about this amazing vision they have of a huge feature set of products that will change the world. Fine. But then I ask them to choose their first version, their MVP, and one, two, or three features that are a must. It's not easy. It's very difficult, but that's the way to grow. This is the mentality that I've had for the last 20 years and I know it's working for brands as well as with physical goods and products.
These days, we need to grow with narrow innovation mindset.
Carol
I got so much out of what you just said. And it's interesting because I see a pattern developing that goes back to what you were saying about content, where it’s about quantity over quality. At least initially, you're trying to get to the quality by increasing the quantity of experiments and what you put out there.
Eitan
Yes. Brainstorming is overrated. It's a waste of time. The only thing you need to do is go out there and get feedback from real users. But don't invest millions of dollars to reach that phase. Go out there with a prototype, with an MVP, that is viable and iterate from there. It’s a solid, less risky, less money, less time type of approach. And I liked your comment about the content. Yes. No one knows what type of content is going to work for you. No one, Even if it works for your competitor. We don’t work that way but we guarantee that within two to three months we will know everything you need and we will tell you what needs to be done.
So, we need to get to this ramp-up phase. Again, two to three months is perfect for both for content and product launch. That was very nice observation. Thank you for that.
Carol
I think we created a new evolution pattern here from test-and-launch, to launch-and-learn, to your term “land-and-expand”.
Eitan
Yes. Nice.
Carol
I like that very much. This has been such a great conversation, Eitan. I learn so much from you every time we talk and I know that everyone who's listening is as well. It's great to be able to tap into your experience.
I'll ask you the question that I end every interview with for you to answer any way you like. What's next, Eitan?
Eitan
I'm very optimistic and very positive because I think new generations of shoppers expect something different than what used to be. And we understand what's coming. Consumers today care more about sustainability, about the social ecosystem, about climate change, and other topics that everyone needs to be aware of. This includes a new management style that is more empowering. Instead of “Just do that” it’s “How do you suggest we do that?”
Video will be a critical vehicle for the future of marketing and sales, because it’s a way of building a relationship very fast. Just like you're doing a podcast. Two people are talking and, within one hour, we have a feeling that we can do so many things together, right?
In terms of what's next for Vimmi, there are plenty of things on our roadmap that we will announce very soon and new products will be launched. We will launch very fast and iterate very fast.
When I started my career, we could develop a product that could sustain 10 years. Now 12 months is considered to be a great success, right? So you always have to reinvent yourself. That's something we all need to remember.
Carol
Are these new launches based on some things that you're seeing in the market and opportunities that you think can be addressed? Will they take you in a completely new direction?
Eitan
Yes, in terms of the foundational platform, it's much easier to sell products. On every network and in every channel, it happens in one click, right? The list of channels are going to expand dramatically, not just social marketplaces. For every brand, there is a B-to-B environment, a wholesale environment, a licensing environment, a publishing environment, and affiliates added on to that.
We have a plan to increase the breadth of channels that we can deploy. And, by the way, this will also work for cross-border brand opportunities, for international.
We will deal with the biggest objection that we have right now which is “Hey, Eitan/Vimmi, this is an amazing platform, but how do I create all these videos? How do I start? Who will create them? Who can guide me? Who can coach me? Who can help me select the creators, the UGC, the influencers? We are creating a white glove service package that will launch soon to help with this. Bringing authentic, high-quality video that will improve over time as a service in addition to our technology platform. A lot of customers are requesting that we bundle this and help with video creation. They might want a hundred videos per month that we publish three times a day. We already do this for some of our customers because we are a sales platform. They don’t even approve the videos because we know from the data what needs to be done and we can expedite and enhance the offering. We believe we need to focus more on the offline side of things right now and more on omni-channel integration for retailers. So these will be our major focus for the next six months.
Carol
Well, that's exciting!
Thank you so much, Eitan. It was such a pleasure speaking with you and continuing the conversation. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and sharing your story. I really look forward to following what you're doing next and hopefully having you back on the show to get your latest thoughts on where things are going.
Eitan
Yes. It was a really exciting episode for me. I've been doing this a lot, right? As a podcaster and also as a guest. This is definitely a one of the best because I spoke about the right topics and what is most important. It was very structured and very well prepared. Well done.
Carol
Thank you, Eitan. That's really nice and it’s high praise coming from you, one of the most prolific podcasters out there!
Eitan
Thank you so much.