In this episode Kent Allen, Principal of The Research Trust and Co-Founder at Global eCommerce Leaders Forum puts on a master-class in understanding the issues, mechanics, eco-system and complexities that is the reality of cross-border global eCommerce.
In this episode Kent Allen, Principal of The Research Trust and Co-Founder at Global eCommerce Leaders Forum puts on a master-class in understanding the issues, mechanics, eco-system and complexities that is the reality of cross-border global eCommerce.
Mark you calendars and JOIN us for GELF ACCELERATE: A GLOBAL GROWTH SUMMIT Thursday, March 25th – from 1PM to 5PM ET as the GELF community dives into a series of engaging keynotes, actionable panel discussions and fast-paced workshops and breakouts.
If you liked this podcast you can subscribe on Apple iTunes, Spotify, and now on Amazon music podcast channel or your favourite podcast platform, please rate and review with a five star rating and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the retail and cross-borders commerce industry.
I’m Michael LeBlanc, Founder and President of M.E. LeBlanc and Company Inc. and you can learn more about me on www.meleblanc.co, and you can learn more about the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum and continue to keep up with the latest on cross-border commerce online at https://www.globalecommerceleadersforum.com/
Until next time, have a safe week!
Michael LeBlanc
Well Kent, we're back together on our own podcast, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks. And just you and me, Jim and, and Scott are busy wrangling and corralling up, guests and folks to come join us on the 25th, March 25, coming up real soon. And you know, it's interesting days, and of course, e commerce, you don't have to talk about how much that's accelerated from an adoption perspective in North America and elsewhere in the world. What is interesting, and I want to get you to start off getting your perspective on is, you know, we're in an unusual time where there's no tourists in really no international tourists in either of our countries, either in the US or Canada, and which means either you're setting up shop in China or Latam, or Europe. Or you're engaging in global e-commerce. Are you feeling that momentum when you talk to retailers and the people that power that connectivity? Are you feeling that growth that I suspect is happening?
Kent Allen
Yeah, I think that the short answer is yes. I mean, certainly there’s, you know, the boom in e-commerce. But there was definitely an echo boom in cross border. However, you know, one of the things that we're talking about at our spring summit on March 25, we call them GELF Accelerate. Again, it's a virtual event, unlike the live events that we've been doing, is the idea that plenty of people did have to put their, their international, I would say their ambitious international ecommerce expansion plans on hold a little bit. And, you know, there were a couple of reasons for that. One was simply they just didn't have the product that they needed to be able to, you know, feed all the mouths out there.
So, you know, I know, we've got Greg, from Fender, that's going to be speaking about how their dealers, which are, you know, hugely important to them, you know, some of the challenges around, you know, how can Fender sell stuff direct to consumer and not be able to, you know, provide the same products to their, their dealers. So they,
Michael LeBlanc
And when you say Fen, when you say Fender, you're talking what I think you're talking right is, is guitars, right? Musical instruments
Kent Allen
Exactly, yeah. So, you know, obviously, booming business. I mean, you know, there's, there's dogs and guitars, you know. That might be the, you know, the takeaway from the pandemic.
But sometimes, you know, but before I get back to that, you know, something you mentioned, you know, that the timing was great. Actually, the timing of when we started focusing on cross border, you know, we actually kind of missed it. We were too early, we thought back in 2008, or so that, you know, it was time, you know, people were just starting to get their stores and their e-commerce teams to play well together. And we were like, well, you know, what about global, the whole world wide web is all about, you know, extending the reach internationally.
And, and so right after we did our first international study, boom, along came that, I guess, what we call the Great Recession, you know. Knocked the wind out of not just retail, but e-commerce as well. And, and, you know, by the time we started recovering, and we hope people would start refocusing on or focusing to begin with, I should say, on international growth, along came the, you know, the iPhones and all the money in focus and strategy went into mobile commerce, you know. The silver lining there was that, you know, they started to see all this, this traffic coming in from around the world through mobile devices.
So, by the time we actually finally started the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum, you're right, we were, are timing was better then. But yeah, we've been looking at this international stuff for 12,13 years now. And, you know, it was, it was interesting, too, because, you know, with, with the whole kind of Trump and the, you know, America first stuff that wasn't exactly promoting open borders. And, you know, so we felt that there was some friction, you know, from the trade wars and things like that. Although, to be honest, you know, watch what the consumer does, the overpowering trend was the fact that you've got a lot of young people on social media and stuff shows up on their phone, and there's a “Buy” button, and they push the “Buy” button, because, you know, influencers recommended it. And, and you could you could argue this went all the way back to the bulletin boards and things like that.
But bottom line is just, you know, cool products are found out a lot quicker. And the people that are buying them aren't thinking about, you know, the fact that it might have to ship halfway across the world. They don't think about the borders and the barriers and things like that. And that's a lot of what we've been working with the GELF community to kind of understand and overcome over the last dozen years now.
Michael LeBlanc
I guess, I guess that's that piece, that ecosystem that makes it all happen, right? That, how do I get a product from point A to point B, and then if the point A is America and the point B is China, or the point B is Brazil? It sounds simple, as you said, the world wide web but it's vastly complicated, right. And it's getting, do you feel it's getting more complicated with the platform's? I know, I was talking to you, and I've spoken with and no one, a big supporter is Flow, who helps you know there's more of these people come along that understand the complexities of moving product around the world, are you finding it getting easier for brands or harder or just, is they’re lost in complexity?
Kent Allen
Yeah, I mean, it's there's, there's, you know, 15 questions pop up when it when I think of them of how to respond to that. I mean, it is getting easier for brands, but then the question is okay, what do we mean by brands? I mean, when we started GELF, it was mostly retailer. So, I would say, you know, let's say retailers are the people that sell the branded products. And it's gotten harder on the retailers to be honest, internationally, I should say. In many cases, because the brands are what are globally known. So, you look at what's on Tmall all, you know, it's not the Macy's of the world. It's the people, you know, the brands that are sold at Macy's.
So yes, it's getting easier for brands, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy. Because in many cases, these brands have been used to selling through wholesale partners. And I mean, we just did a study a couple years ago, that we're kind of firing back up again this summer that looks at how digital is disrupting traditional wholesale, international distribution. So, you know, the takeaway from that was as brands I mean, big brands, started working more with marketplaces like, well, predominantly Amazon, but you know, also Alibaba, they started to see these digital platforms as really more of a global distribution platform than just a marketplace. And that's a, you know, to your point about ecosystems, we're actually arguing that we've already moved from multi-channel to multi-platform and, and the next leap is into ecosystem selling.
And you look at all the acquisitions that Amazon has. And all the different tools that you know, somebody like a Tencent or Alibaba can bring to the table. Those are massive ecosystems. And you know, live streaming as part of that, omni channel.
So yeah, this, this question of is it easier, there's definitely much more complexity. But I think from a traditional, you know, kind of channel disintermediation or channel friction perspective, a brand, it's easier for a brand to go direct these days than ever before, at least strategically, because either their traditional wholesale distributors. Or, you know, their, their heads are in the sand, and they're not, they're not digitally savvy, they don't look like a digital marketing agency, which is what I would say, most international distributors need to look like this day.
Or they’re, you know, big wholesale retail partners, you know, some of them probably going out of business. So, you know, in some ways, the whole acceleration of the digital disruption brought on by the pandemic is, has made it easier, but at the same time, a lot of the big brands and even the digital native startup brands, you know, they don't necessarily always have the team and the focus. While I should say that the big traditional brands are just building their digital teams. The, the digital natives have been typically, you know, kind of digitally led or global first. So, you know, that's why you're getting so much traction.
Michael LeBlanc
It's interesting, because I remember you and I chatting about how the evolution of e-commerce, you know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, even. E-commerce teams are were small and, you know, poorly funded sometimes. Particularly in brands, because the brands were still trying to get their heads around channel conflict and direct to consumer. And then they found out thanks to the pandemic that these DTC teams were held up and keeping the company afloat. And they're like, you know, we should probably add, Bob and Sue. We should probably take him out of the out of the back room and give him some resources. Are you finding that that kind of graduation, so to speak, where you've now got an established e-commerce team. But now you need an established and start growing take those same idea, take those people out and have a professional growth, with resources behind it, e-commerce cross border team? Is that what you're discovering?
Kent Allen
Yeah, I mean, we often you know, when we kind of introduce what we do, we talk about the early days of e-commerce when there was one person on the retail team looking at e-commerce. And today there's one person on the e-commerce team that's looking at international so right. Yeah, you're exactly right.
I mean, you mentioned the, you know, the guys at Flow and, you know, want to give them a shout out because they are one of our sponsors for our upcoming event. But, you know, they are a great example of how, you know, kind of this, this next generation of cross border platforms has emerged and developed and, you know, I really don't think many e-commerce teams can do what they need to do from a cross border or global expansion perspective without these platforms.
So yeah, definitely, the tools are there. And these platforms are growing. And, you know, you're seeing more of the kind of headless approach coming in. Where it's, you know, not just one monolithic, you know, potentially overpriced, hard to integrate type, you know, sub commerce platform that's focused on cross border, like we saw, you know, some of the first-generation platforms out there. So, yeah, it's definitely there are definitely more tools.
In fact, we're, you know, we're seeing some of the shipping and logistics companies really get it together as far as being, you know, operations, you know, getting your operational house in order is job number one, when it comes to serving international clients. I mean, you've got to be able to screen for fraud and provide payment and you know, do the harmonization and understand the tariffs and give them a, you know, a trusty landed cost. And then you've got to ship it internationally. And ideally, you've helped them track that product, you know, that product from carrier to delivery agent to final mile. So, yeah, there's a lot of integration and things like that, and we're definitely seeing the logistics guys, you know, maybe be a little bit late to the game. But you know, there's a big part of that this whole kind of post-order customer experience is probably something we talk more about at GELF than just about anything, you know.
That being said, you know, I started in this space really kind of covering a lot of the online advertising and the digital marketing folks. So, we're always hoping that they'll, there'll be more and more focus on international marketing and, you know, ways to connect with the next generation of, you know, kind of shopper out there that may be coming from an emerging market is the, you know, the global middle class, you know. Quite literally comes online, but, you know, there's a lot of work ahead. There's a lot of localization, a lot of marketing and things like that.
But I think that's one reason that we see a lot of social, because social covers a lot there it you know, I would argue the social has always been what has fueled the, the word of mouth and the viral nature of e-commerce. It was, you know, it wasn't until social media arrived, that we really saw this lift in international. And I think social, you know, especially the folks like Facebook that joined us last fall, as they launch their discovery commerce, this idea of, you know, as stores are a less and less reliable source of product discovery, it's going to happen online. And what we're seeing is it's happening on social.
Michael LeBlanc
And let's take a quick step back for those listeners who may not be steeped in this idea of marketplaces, global marketplaces. I mean, you named several the big powerhouses in Asia. I know, we've talked to the folks in Mercado Libre, in, in Latin America. And, and of course, Amazon. Many North American consumers would know, or even folks in retail would know about Amazon and you know, 70% of their, their work is marketplace of their sales. And now you know, Walmart, Best Buy, many are starting marketplace, but how do they where do they sit in the ecosystem?
Like if you want to sell into China, or you want to sell into Latin America, I guess you have a choice, right? You could try to set up your own website and try to market and go there yourself. Or you go through these marketplaces? Or is that even a choice anymore? These are, these are both those places marketplace so marketplace dominant, that you've got to figure out how to work with these marketplaces?
Kent Allen
Yeah, you asked the question at a good time, because I'm working on kind of a cross border guide right now for the, for the Canadian government, that their trade team is doing a great job of providing e-commerce, backing and resources for, you know, anywhere from small and medium sized sellers, to bigger companies.
But yeah, so I mean, the framework, if you will, and I'll try to sketch you a picture here. But you know, we've always looked at three predominant models. So, the cross border model, which is, you know, essentially taking advantage of your domestic operations. So, you see all this traffic coming in from countries around the world. And you basically figure out how to accept the order and, you know, screen for fraud, make sure you think people can pay, and then you ship product, basically, from your own, you know, US based distribution centers. So that's kind of the cross border model in a very simplistic manner.
You know, the bigger brands maybe, you know, another model, of which we call the regional build model. Which is essentially, where big brands have maybe built localized sites. And, you know, there's some, there's some innovators out there that are making it easier for people to build, you know, local sites internationally. Shopify has actually done a really good job of helping company build, you know, a Spanish site, a German site, or something like that.
What they need to work on and they're working on now is, you know, providing more of the cross border, you know, functionality, but the marketplace piece is probably the most dynamic part. So, what we often see is that people will, you know, realize that they need to start serving these international shoppers. So they'll adopt the cross border model, in large part because, you know, everything's in place, you know, they work with the UPS or FedEx. Or if they're, you know, more advanced, maybe, you know, different, you know, shipping lane carriers and things like that, that maybe you haven't heard about to get the product there quicker and cheaper and things like that.
But the international marketplace is often you know, maybe where they graduate to or more accurately, they broaden their, their focus to the marketplaces. In many cases, the traffic that they get to their US site, if you will, the cross border traffic, is really organic traffic. Again, you know, we'll say driven largely by maybe social or word of mouth or things like that. But when it's time to really get serious, you know, a lot of times they'll embrace these marketplaces.
Now in China, they don't really have much of a choice. Yes, people will keep their, you know, e-commerce or their China sites or brand sites live. A lot of times people are like, yeah, we want to make sure we keep the lights on just in case, you know, you never know what's gonna happen in China. But for the most part, China's dominated by the marketplace model. And in many cases, we see that in Latin America as well. Mercado Libre it's just been killing it.
You know, we do have a session at GELF Accelerate, you know, next Thursday, the 25th. That's going to look at Latam. We've got one of the marketer guys, Matteo joining us. So, we'll be diving into that. But,
Michael LeBlanc
I love talking about Latam, because you know, it's the funniest place closest to us, that is just a massive, massive opportunity. And it's not as thought out. But I mean, you and I had had a great discussion on the global e-commerce tech talks panel with some folks from, from Latin America, and it just really opened my eyes to the scale and scope of the opportunity. That is that is right on our doorstep, in a matter of fact. And it's as you're saying, it feels like it's structured more like, you know, marketplace, which is, which probably makes it easier to go after, right?
Kent Allen
Yeah, I mean, the marketplace model is easier. Now, you know, that being said, there's, there's, you know, The Marketplace is going to take a cut, and they're going to own the customer. So that, that's the real challenge. And, you know, it's not for everybody, you know, luxury brands that want to control the experience, you know, have shied away from Marketplaces. You know, in a second, I'll jump to this whole kind of how we're seeing the cross border in the marketplace experience start to converge.
But before I get there, you know, I'll tackle Latam. And in many cases, when you're not super comfortable with a country or a region, it's best to work with a partner. So, you know, certainly that's the case of why Tmall and Tmall Global have done so well. The JD folks are doing well in China, Latin America, same idea, I just I don't, you know, I'm not as confident. So, I want that strong partner and I want a partner who's built this, this Marketplace stack. So, all the technologies and so forth and whatnot, that, you know, yes, you can get that from your cross border platform, whether it's a Flow or a Global-e or, you know, some of the other folks out there. You shop world and things like that, that have all been big supporters of ours over the years.
However, you're not always going to get it from your commerce platform partner. So, you know, Shopify is, you know, honestly, probably behind a little bit on being able to provide cross border support, you know. The demand where folks salesforce.com, Commerce Cloud, folks like that have done, you know, a good job, but, you know, they're working with the big guys for the most part. So, this Marketplace, not only kind of provides you the technology and the know-how and the local partner, in many cases, you know, it's a fish where the fish are type thing. And, you know, that's where the customers are going to be.
Now, the challenge is, of course, you're going to get, you know, you start selling on up, Mercado Libra or Linio, or something like that. Down in Latin America, yeah, you're going to get sales and all, but you know, you're not necessarily going to own the customer.
We did an interesting study actually looking at marketplaces in Europe last fall. And, and that's an area where I think what you tend to find is that, you know, the Amazon properties are far and away, you know, where US retailers go first. But you know, we've got the Zalando people speaking at GELF Accelerate next Thursday, and they're making a big push to move away from just, you know, kind of supporting large European brands to helping smaller companies. And, you know, I think there'll be an opportunity for US sellers to get more involved with the Zalando. We, we did some work with Fruugo, which is another kind of UK based marketplace.
So yeah, the marketplace space is you know, really interesting now, specially when you start looking at social commerce and, and we tend to think of the social commerce platforms, you know, we put them in the Marketplace bucket, if you will.
Michael LeBlanc
So that's interesting.
Kent Allen
A lot of stuff going on there for sure.
Michael LeBlanc
So you're seeing and just kind of the last thoughts, you're starting to see. The social platforms, I'm starting to see it certainly in terms of, of influencing sales and stores like never before. People are, aren't browsing and shopping the way they used to, during the pandemic, they're going, you know, they're going to a store and they're getting out. So, these social platforms become the tip of the spear in terms of being able to influence product purchase.
It sounds like you're you, you know, the next logical step is for them not to just be referral but for them to have Marketplaces themselves, which sounds like what you're, what you think is
Kent Allen
Yeah, exactly it's you know, it's getting rid of the friction, collapsing the, you know, collapsing the distance between discovery and the buy button. And that's exactly it. No, there's more to it. I mean, you know, if you're interested, if you go to globalecommerceleadersforum.com and you can find, you know, some of our content from last fall's Oktoberfest and, and again, like Jake Bale and his team at Facebook, you know, did a great job, just kind of explaining what they're doing. And there's more to it than just, you know, hey, social works great. You know, in many cases, it is that simple. You use influence, you know, instead of searching and discovering on your own, you just have a trusted influencer too. And, you know, whatever they say, yeah, that probably works, hit the buy button on the, you know, the Facebook or the Instagram page and off you go.
But there's more to it too. And I think part of what's going on and, you know, again, think of the backdrop of, of what's going on with Apple and Google, you know, the, you know, the retirement of third party data cookies, if you will. And the priority of first party data, a part of what's going on with discovery commerce, is this idea that there needs to be more machine learning, or, you know, if you want to sprinkle some AI dust on it, you can. But the reality is, you know, you got to get better and smarter with your targeting, and there's a ton of targetable data that has been shared, you know, with the social platforms, you know, kind of a first party scenario.
Michael LeBlanc
So, so what you're saying is, is, as, you know, as cookies become less viable in terms of tracking and understanding, the data from social media takes its place? is that what you think is going to happen?
Kent Allen
That is a way of looking at. I mean, again, you're gonna have to, you know, it's gonna have to be, opt in and first party data and things like that. But, you know, the reality is, you know, for all the scrutiny that that Facebook has gotten, you know, it hasn’t impacted the usage or, or the growth or anything like that people, you know, there's a lot of conversations going on in the beltway that, you know, are irrelevant to the rest of America. But that's probably a whole podcast series for another day.
Michael LeBlanc
The next upcoming event is March 25th right? For you guys.
Kent Allen
Yes, yeah, Accelerate is, you know, to be honest, it's replacing our west coast event that we do every year in the first quarter. You know, we've been getting together mid-February in LA for the last five or six years. And we're going to really miss, really miss the, you know, the face to face stuff this year. You know, we were fortunate to get it in last year before, you know, kind of everything, you know, kind of went to hell in a handbasket, I guess.
But, yeah, this year, so we're calling it Accelerate. We've pushed it, you know, from mid-February to Thursday, March 25th. We'll be going, you know, we start at 12:30, I think we are supposed to wrap it up at 4:30. But you know, the prep time, right?
Michael LeBlanc
Eastern time right? ET?
Kent Allen
Yeah, Eastern time. Thank you. Yes, I'm in California. So, I'll be getting going bright and early in the morning. But yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, we've got some great speakers. And so, you know, probably stretch for 35, something like that.
But, I mean, the big picture is, you know, again Accelerate, why do we call it that? Well, you know, we've heard over and over again, okay, the pandemic has accelerated all sorts of trends and that, you know, certainly no more, none more so true than then the growth of e-commerce and the echo boom, and in cross border, as we're calling it.
We are kind of starting off the day by, you know, starting with a real super strong panel. Got Elizabeth Kraus from Speedo and Tassie Christopher from, who is the VP of International at Paula's Choice. And Kelly Swanton who's the VP of International at Reformation. And Jody Watson, who serves on a lot of boards is, you know, kind of been a real e-commerce leader over the years. She's working with a company called Smart Canister now, and again, she’s on a lot of boards.
So we're really kicking off and, you know, there's, there's a real thing, four things we really want to kind of accomplish with that, you know, that first kickoff panel. Which is just helping people understand, you know, obviously, the impacts of, of the pandemic and how it's changed their plans.
You know, we are talking a lot about how people are reprioritizing different markets. I think one of the biggest trends we're hearing is, and, you know, in some ways, it just follows the, the pandemic, their path of the pandemic. You know, the Asia markets came back online earlier. And, you know, obviously, China and Southeast Asia were places where people were putting a lot of time and effort. Tassie, he's gonna actually talk about some of the stuff that they're doing in India. Which is great because we don't get to you know, don't get to have case studies on India quite as much as we'd like.
Michael LeBlanc
Yea, big market, eh, big market your trying to crack.
Kent Allen
Yeah, so there's a lot of you know, a lot of complexity and things like that as well. So yeah, this just idea of how people are reprioritizing. I think right now you know, much like we see the lockdown and the resurgence in Europe, you know, we're hearing a lot of people are pulling back from Europe for lots and lots of different reasons.
So, Latam we’ll have a session on Latam, where we're looking at cross border opportunities there. That's something where we're seeing, that we've been seeing a lot of interest in Mexico.
And you know, we're not doing a Canadian session. I'm sorry to say, Michael. We, we appreciate you helping us out this past fall with the Octoberfest one. But we will talk a little bit about you know, how folks are overcoming operational friction. So, we'll talk a little bit about some of the opportunities with the, as we call it the USMCA but I know you guys call it something different up North.
Michael LeBlanc
CUSMA, CUSMA.
Kent Allen
Yes, the CUSMA, which always gets me hungry for some reason.
Michael LeBlanc
I always think of the Village People when you call it USMCA, so there.
Kent Allen
You got me, you got me. Yeah, now I'm going to have trouble getting that vision out of my head when we talk about it, but
Michael LeBlanc
That's all right.
Kent Allen
Yeah, I think, you know, this whole idea of how we're reprioritizing global e-commerce opportunities where we're starting. You know, we're pleased to have the folks from Flow join us for, they always do a great job on cross border case studies. This time, they've got a cross border case study with the founders of Made In. Chip Malt’s going to be joining us. And they're going to discuss how their cross border opportunities, or how they're taking advantage of cross border opportunities by working with Flow, and, you know, we'll have Flow’s CEO, Rob, back with us, again. Who always does a great job of really just helping companies understand that, you know, there, there is a process and there are steps and there are challenges to overcome. So, you know, it's been great that those guys can support us.
Another sponsor, Passport Shipping, you know, kind of a newer, a newer player in the cross border space, but you know, just got a really nice round of funding and, and they've really kind of focused on these digital natives and direct to consumer brands that are, you know, really global first out of the gate. In many cases, they're kind of social and global out of the gate. So, you know, they'll help us understand a little bit of not only how they're helping folks, you know, kind of with their Canada expansion plans, but how overcoming some of the chaos in, you know, kind of UK, Brexit, EU and, I mean just actually,
Michael LeBlanc
I mean, you mentioned chaos, I mean, I've been doing some work. And I mean, almost every node of the supply chain is just, it's just in, it's just so challenging from congestion, to can't get containers to Brexit to. So, I can't think of a better time where you really need a strong partner, right? Somebody help you figure this stuff out,
Kent Allen
You're spot on about that. I mean, I think I just heard on CNBC, that, you know, some industries, there's just no ships available. And you know, without ships, you can’t
Michael LeBlanc
No containers, no ships
Kent Allen
Yeah, you just can't go there. So yeah, it's like, and in fact, we're wrapping up the day, you know, with a session we're called Reaccelerating Global E-commerce and, you know, we're being, you know, kind of realistic with people. We're talking to some folks that actually joined us at LA last year, and they were talking about their, you know, ambitious international programs, and some of those programs got, you know, put on hold.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah they went sideways, yea they went sideways right?
Kent Allen
Yeah, and, and the reason they got put on hold, again, was largely because of supply chain constraints and things like that. So, you know, you can't, you know, really make a big push into the UK or into, you know, other, you know, kind of hot markets internationally, if you can't deliver the goods.
So, you know, they're very realistic, you know, constraints out there today, and, and they're not going away, you know, anytime soon. So, you know, the good news is yes, e-commerce is booming cross border is, you know, right there in its wake. But, yeah, you know, there's challenges. So, I think some of the, some of the growth that we're seeing is, is going to be hindered, to be honest, by just the lack of availability. Now, you know, some product categories are less impacted by that than others.
Michael LeBlanc
So, if you had to kind of summarize the, your, your event coming up on March 25th, what are the kind of the three big things that that folks would go there and would kind of expect to take away from the day?
Kent Allen
Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing is, you know, the key takeaway is, it's okay if you've had to slow down some of your ambitious global e-commerce plans, you know. You got to take care of your neighbors, first and foremost. You got to look out for your family first and foremost. And, and that, in many cases has meant, hey, you know, we've got to focus on our domestic market.
So, you know, we were talking on a prep session yesterday about how some of the global plans, you know, the resources got, you know, diverted to making sure that, you know, in store pickup and ship from store and some of those type of projects that have been on the to do list, but, you know, have been just kind of moving along, you know, taking their own good time. Well, boom, you know, had to have that.
So, I think that's one, you know, this whole kind of re-reprioritizing and re-accelerating growth, what does that mean? In many cases, it's, you know, there are, you know, HR issues as well. You know, how do you grow your team? You know, what do you do? What are the tough decisions that need to be made? Especially when it comes to, you know, kind of the extended members of your team. We'll, we'll spend some time throughout the day talking about, you know, a topic that's been very popular at GELF recently, which is this idea of, of the big marketplaces and the, the large, you know, global e-commerce platforms that are in some place, you know, they're displacing traditional distributors and things like that.
So, I think this whole idea of, of how you get product to market internationally, you know, used to be through international distributors and wholesale partners and, and that's changing. I mean, we had one, one guy talking about how you know, the pandemic has just, you know, really impacted parts of Europe, which had fought really well or, or had basically, you know, fought the chains the big global chains. And, you know, in deference to mom and pops, but you know, the mom and pops have been wiped out by the pandemic. So, you know, suddenly there's no mom and pops, and there's no chain stores. And you know, so there's,
Michael LeBlanc
There's just brands, the brands are losing distribution, basically.
Kent Allen
Yeah, exactly,
Michael LeBlanc
Is what
Kent Allen
I think the last theme is, is just this idea of, you know, operations, you know. There's friction everywhere, we talked a little bit about the supply chain stuff, but, you know, there's still all sorts of, you know, friction when it comes to regulatory and you know, all sorts of payment issues and shipping issues and things like that. So, just getting your operations in order from a cross border perspective, you know, something we've talked at since the beginning of GELF, but you know, it's not going away.
Michael LeBlanc
Congratulations on bringing the community again, back together again, at least virtually. And always an insightful, insightful afternoon. So again, it's where would I go to register and learn more as usual kind of spot, GEFL, globalecommerceleadersforum.com.
Kent Allen
Yup and then just look for the motorcycle, you know, rolling down the road, getting ready to head around the next corner and hit the, hit the “attend” button, and we'll get you registered. It's free for everyone to attend. We just really want to kind of keep the conversation going. And, and again, want to thank everybody in the community that's been helping us out. Especially the speakers who, you know, are super busy, and they've been able to take time out to kind of help us and really appreciate that.
Michael LeBlanc
All right, well listen, continued success with GELF events. And of course, we'll be back here on the podcast, which gives us the ability to kind of do this chit and chat inbetween thought leadership events. Share a little thought leadership. We have lots of great guests coming on, coming up in the months and we'll explore all these indepth. But until then, Ken fantastic to spend a bit of time for you. And I look forward to seeing you on the virtual stage on March 25th.
Kent Allen
Yes, well, as always, thanks for your aid and assistance. And thanks for helping us get the word out.
Michael LeBlanc
Mark your calendars and join us for GELF Accelerated Global Growth Summit, Thursday, March 25th, from 1pm to 5pm ET, as the GELF community dives into a series of engaging keynotes, actionable panel discussions, and fast paced workshops and breakouts.
If you liked this podcast, you can subscribe on Apple iTunes, Spotify, and now on Amazon Music Podcast Channel or your favorite podcast platform. Please rate and review the five-star rating and be sure to recommend to a friend or colleague in the retail cross border commerce industry.
I'm Michael LeBlanc, Founder and President of, M.E. LeBlanc Company Inc. And you can learn more about me on www.meleblanc.co and more about the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum and continue to keep up with the latest on cross border commerce at www.globalecommerceleadersforum.com. Until next time, have a safe week.