How Shopping Moves From Websites To AI Agents — Kumar Senthil | Why AI Agents Change Shopping, Why Brands Must Join The AI Commerce Shift, How To Enable Agentic Commerce, Why Real-Time Data Matters Most, How To Sell Without Engineering (#478)

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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:05
Unknown
Hello and welcome to another episode of the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast. Shopping is changing fast and many brands are falling behind right now. It's no longer just about your website. Today, people discover and buy products, inside chats, social feeds, videos, and even iTunes. But here's the problem Most e-commerce set ups aren't built for this. So what's really going on and how do you keep up?

00:00:23:07 - 00:00:41:16
Unknown
To break this down, I'm joined by Kumar Senthil he is the co-founder and CEO of Firmly Kumar led global product teams at Samsung helped launch Samsung Pay and scaled Samsung's e-commerce business from 50 million to 1 billion. So he knows exactly where systems break and where things are heading. Kumar, great to have you on the show. Thank you.

00:00:41:17 - 00:01:09:14
Unknown
Thank you. Let's dive into it. So most brands still think their website is the main store front. Is that still true? That is fast changing, especially not the people most, but around for a while. Then, you know, when the internet came on mainstream that thinking, why do I need an online store? I need just my brick and mortar store and I can grow my business by just driving people to my store.

00:01:09:16 - 00:01:33:01
Unknown
And then, you know, within a few years, they realized, oh, my God, I mean, unless I may have an online store, I'm not going to be around forever. You know, it became obvious that I need to have an online store. Now, the transition next to transition is about to happen. It's happening as we speak, where people are going to discover products in different places, different shopping agents, different destinations.

00:01:33:03 - 00:01:56:10
Unknown
And as a merchant, you really want to be present in those moments. And if you are not, obviously you're going to get left out because shopping is changing and people aren't buying that. A lot of they find that inspired, they discover. So you really want to be as a merchant, be present in all of these different places. That's going to be inevitable.

00:01:56:11 - 00:02:17:01
Unknown
I mean, people can say, yeah, I just can't drive my traffic to the site. But yes, that is one of the challenges. But that's going to be the only time. Mm hmm. I think a lot of merchants and brands out there are just overwhelmed on how fast things are changing and how many options are coming up. And just keeping up with it feels very, very difficult now.

00:02:17:03 - 00:02:42:13
Unknown
Let's talk a little bit on where people are actually finding and buying products right now. Can you give me an overview from your site what you think is the most important channel to focus on? Sure. I mean, the £800 gorilla is basically the large yellow labs viruses. Geminis have royal chads. The beauties of the world are the primary place where, you know, people are discovering products.

00:02:42:15 - 00:03:05:23
Unknown
And most of the merchants we speak to tell us that they get a lot of traffic from diesel alarms. And then as they are going to enable shopping within their platforms, how do we be present? And that's main aspect. However, what we do see is there's a lot of new upcoming shopping agents that are coming up which are focused on shopping.

00:03:06:00 - 00:03:34:00
Unknown
They're building a lot of curated shopping experiences where people are going to go into those and then start shopping. So in such cases, you know, as a merchant, it's almost impossible to go and do bespoke integration with all those channels. That's from the merchant perspective and also from those channels. They are also going and working with individual merchants is almost impossible for them.

00:03:34:05 - 00:03:58:19
Unknown
So how many merchants can they go integrate and how many merchant There are legal contract and whatnot? It's a very difficult proposition for each one of them. We're basically solving the problem for both sides, for the merchants, as well as for the shopping agents. Right. They don't have to scramble around. But the beauty is for the merchants, our real problem is very simple.

00:03:58:21 - 00:04:20:19
Unknown
You don't have to do any engineering. That's very compelling value. We offer you have a e-commerce website. Great. We will connect to that. And then we just enable all these destinations. We give you a choice. And as a merchant, you decide where you want to sell them that you don't want to sell. And based on that, we'll just enable.

00:04:20:22 - 00:04:36:01
Unknown
It's pretty simple and straightforward. Let's talk about a little bit about agents. That's a bit of a fuzzy word for a lot of brands out there, for a lot of small and medium enterprises that might be just overwhelmed and say, Yeah, I've heard it, but actually do not really know what it is. Can you explain it in simple terms?

00:04:36:03 - 00:05:00:22
Unknown
Yes, definitely. Before this agent ecommerce came into existence. Typically the products are discovery. What's happened to search engine? You go to Google or Bing or one of those search engines and you search for a product. They show a bunch of links and then you click one after another and you go spend an hour or two or even longer do the research by yourself.

00:05:00:24 - 00:05:31:20
Unknown
And then eventually, you know, you may end up buying something. However, that research period is now, you know, produced by you're going and searching whatever you're looking for. And that I'm looking for running shoes for my marathon, upcoming marathon, or whatever that may be, or I am going for a party I want to dress for. So you're just looking for a product now in a more native language, you're searching for it.

00:05:31:22 - 00:06:03:04
Unknown
And then the system understands that because, okay, you're looking for a dress for this party and what type of a party it is and what not. Once you answer those, it's able to recommend a specific product. So that my research time has shrunk from lowest to a a very short period. And once they identify the product I want to transact, we should make it easy for the customer to buy because they are in spite of that moment.

00:06:03:06 - 00:06:26:17
Unknown
You really want to close the deal rather than putting them through a process where they lose the momentum. And then, you know what? Let me not bury it. But it doesn't matter. Address and then move on. So that's where the industry is going and the merchants have to be ready from it. Mm hmm. I think it's quite important that you highlighted that the search behavior has changed a lot.

00:06:26:19 - 00:06:49:08
Unknown
So you stay on whatever The other end was such a big deal, Gemini. And you do not go to other platforms. And this multi channel multi-step purchase process is really shortened now. Now, I think real time product data is very important there. You want to make sure that you have the right data on all of these platforms. Can you talk about this and how important that really is?

00:06:49:10 - 00:07:10:18
Unknown
You know, you are hitting on the right point because traditionally what happened was there is a catalog fee that's provided to the search engines and then they show the product and then it's like you go to the website that you get the real time status of the product, what the actual prices are being readily available to all of them.

00:07:10:20 - 00:07:35:15
Unknown
Now, there are few providers that are providing that feedback, but it's not useful just by the feed itself. You need to know when when I see a product. Okay, this particular address I chose in there. Lalama, I like it. Then I just need to know what is actually price of that moment? Is that a discount? And also, I want to know whether that's my size is available.

00:07:35:17 - 00:07:57:17
Unknown
Right. And that information from is able to provide real time pulling it from the Web site to the agent. That that's something that's a very specialty for a family were able to provide that without merchant being any initiating. So I can proudly say that when the company is able to do a treadmill compact or any other player in this market, they're able to do it.

00:07:57:19 - 00:08:14:20
Unknown
Yeah, it's about data all the time and being in real time and providing the right data. Which brings me to the next point. Once you're in and you found your product, obviously you want to check out as quickly as possible. So and I think that's a very important part of this whole process. How do you deal with that?

00:08:14:22 - 00:08:36:16
Unknown
Exactly. And that's another important aspect, saying, okay, now once I had the product, got the price and got the inventory and we need to close the deal. Right. So we enable, you know, when when the customer wants to purchase, we get real time and they come to the cart on the merchant site and we real time place the order of the merchants as well.

00:08:36:18 - 00:09:07:20
Unknown
So that's what our transaction, the interactions that are happening between the Al-Alam and the merchants is all realtime. That's the tag we provide so that the more importantly, there are two parts to it. One is as a merchant, they know how to operate the website. So now as we expand, you know, there's a number of channels you don't want to add operational burden by managing inventory or price of catalog separately for each one of these channels.

00:09:07:22 - 00:09:35:17
Unknown
Right. So I've done in the past and it's it's a nightmare if I were to, you know, manage separate inventory feed for this type of inventory for separately for some channels, while I have to operate my website separately, if I have to do that already, it is a lost cause because it's very difficult for a merchant to keep this inventory in sync and then the price changes, you know, three times a day.

00:09:35:19 - 00:10:03:24
Unknown
How do I keep in sync with this? Another system that I'm setting up for my kids and e-commerce and whatnot. So that is where we start from the get go. We built this product primarily focused on merchants. How can I make the merchants life easier By making sure there's no operational overhead that is not engineering overhead. Make it easy for them and keep the merchant as the merchant of record.

00:10:04:01 - 00:10:35:02
Unknown
That's where our focus was. And up until today we had to do that, that goals. And we've been able to make any merchant work without any engineering work. So that's been a real, true success that we've built. I think it's important that you mentioned that all the data is in one point and then gets distributed. I totally can relate to the feeling that you have to maintain more than one platform with all the headache that comes with this, as you said, inventory prices and so on.

00:10:35:07 - 00:10:55:17
Unknown
And I think a lot of our listeners can relate to this as well. If they're selling omnichannel. In the past you had to do the same step like five times just to make sure that you're up to date on every platform. Now, for me, that sounds that is a perfect solution for small teams that want to launch about many channels, others, the integration work.

00:10:55:17 - 00:11:21:15
Unknown
How do I get my product? We are firmly on different platforms. Great, great question. So what we do is the recently launched this from the Connect platform where you just come and sign up as a merchant, and then once you sign up, we give you a choice. Do you want to sell your entire catalog or partial catalog? So some merchants want to just sell on you that first part excuse.

00:11:21:17 - 00:11:41:06
Unknown
So some are saying or cancel everything I have, right? So it depends on we give the choice to them and once they decide, then we give them menu option. Like, you know, if you go to an app store or a play store, you can choose what app you want to install and you can see how the features look like.

00:11:41:06 - 00:12:01:17
Unknown
And right now my product is going to show up. That type of experience we provide for a customer, for a merchant so they can come and choose, okay, I want to sell Intangible or Gemini or or whatever that maybe we have a bunch of channels, not just the chat boards. We, we do have publishers, we do have marketplaces.

00:12:01:19 - 00:12:24:20
Unknown
So all of the options that are available for a merchant, so then they can choose. Okay, so these are the times I want to sell it. Once they choose, they are in full control, right? As a merchant, they make the choice that they want. So we don't automatically enable anywhere. So once they choose that, then whatever channels they chose, we enable all of them.

00:12:24:22 - 00:12:47:23
Unknown
And they don't have to make any engineering work. There may be some config they may have to make. For example, for UCB, they do have to make a config. It's very simple change. I mean, you step by step instructions on how to make that config. Once that is done, then they're going to go like similarly in some of the channels they don't do that to do anything other than just opting in.

00:12:48:00 - 00:13:20:07
Unknown
So, so depends on my channel, but mostly it's just a configuration work. Worst case. Mm hmm. I want to know a little bit about reporting. Obviously, if you're selling on many platforms, you want to get a bit of an overview of what's happening. Where where do you make the most sales? Is that something that have solution providers? Once you connect to that from the Connect platform and you go like we provide a dashboard which kind of shows you end to end, which channels are producing, how many orders and what products are selling.

00:13:20:09 - 00:13:43:04
Unknown
All of that. There is just how one view across the spectrum, and then they can see, okay, certain channels are working great for me that I want to double down on it or I want to see why certain channels are not performing well. Is there something I need to do to make that work better? Because I like those type of audience in that channel that I'm there.

00:13:43:06 - 00:14:10:00
Unknown
So how do I target them? All of those tools will be available for the merchants so that they can continue to grow that business across different channels. And then also we do provide some insights for the merchants. I'll give you a very interesting example. So we pull the catalog from different merchants. We know the availability and whatnot. And when I looked at the availability data, I was shocked.

00:14:10:02 - 00:14:16:01
Unknown
Close to 45% of the SKUs are stuck.

00:14:16:03 - 00:14:38:09
Unknown
I was like, Wow, this is incredible. So I'm not sure how much the margins are aware of what's going on with their business and whatnot, but I do want to expose that type of information to them saying, Listen, we were able to aggregate this. Here is how you're losing some of your opportunities because of this lack of stock or whatnot.

00:14:38:10 - 00:15:03:13
Unknown
It might help them in their supply chain planning and whatnot. These are the type of help we will be providing for the merchants so that they can grow that business as well. This is a very, very important insight to know what's on stock and what not. I just had a interview yesterday about this topic and there's surprisingly a huge number of stores out there who carry a lot of products on their catalog that are actually not in stock.

00:15:03:13 - 00:15:35:01
Unknown
So it's a very common problem. Can you share some success stories or case studies of businesses you've worked with and what kind of results they saw? Yeah, sure. I mean, there are many stories. I got maybe a couple of them. One was we enabled furniture dot com, which is a vertical marketplace primarily focused on just furniture vertical. And initially they were considering to be a merchant of record themselves as a marketplace and expecting the merchants to integrate into their platform.

00:15:35:01 - 00:16:00:10
Unknown
Or are they going to be the merchant or not? There was that initial plan, but then when they heard about us, they came to us and we shared our platform regime and whatnot and they said, This is unbelievable. This is great. And then within a few weeks we are we became partners and and and then now the entire marketplace is powered by us.

00:16:00:12 - 00:16:24:11
Unknown
And we bring at least five merchants a week for them, meaning they identify the merchants they wanted to bring in. They negotiate the deals with the merchants, but then they say, okay, these are the merchants you want. And every week there we're going line with four more merchants a week and their business is steadily growing. And we could see the businesses growing every day, which is great.

00:16:24:14 - 00:16:51:06
Unknown
So it's actually keeping the merchant as the merchant of record is merchants are happy for and you got commerce happy. And it also saved almost 78% in GMV from cost perspective, because if you are a merchant of record, you correctly sound great percent of GMV for credit card fees, fraud fees, luxury bags, fees and whatnot just adds up.

00:16:51:08 - 00:17:23:02
Unknown
And now they don't have all the costs, but then they have different costs. That's, you know, their margin, whatever insignificant, you know, now our case now they can use that margin for marketing and other purposes so they can grow the business elsewhere. So that's basically a really big success story because they are also building a generic experience, not saying that, okay, if I'm looking for furniture for my living room, recommend something is sort of a thing and then it would recommend the products.

00:17:23:03 - 00:17:50:12
Unknown
Okay, here are the things. And they're constantly innovating on that space, which is really great. That's it's story from again because it imbibes more both the gigantic shopping experience as well as browse as well because you know furniture you don't even know what you're looking for. So you really want to have some sort of a browse experience. At the same time, you really want no matter, don't search quickly and find the product.

00:17:50:12 - 00:18:32:23
Unknown
So it sort of gives. Best of both worlds then. That's a good value for our product being like that. And then another product partner for us was it was ELLE.com. It's a shopping agent primarily focused on shopping. They actually what they're noticed as they have to experience is one is, you know, if you find a product you can link out the other one that's buying natively within that platform, buying natively within their platform, they're seeing more than two x conversion, higher conversion than linking out, which means, you know, if you have customers inspired, they want to buy, make it easy for them to buy.

00:18:33:00 - 00:19:04:24
Unknown
And that's something that they're actually very happy about that. And we're now scaling with more merchants and the platform as well. And similarly, where there's many of their shopping engines are going to go live soon as well and have been also working closely with our large that allows they will all start in the coming weeks and months. We will add merchants and start going like, okay, now it sounds like a perfect solution to be visible and available on a lot of platforms and to get there in a very short time.

00:19:05:01 - 00:19:26:21
Unknown
Now tell me who's your perfect customer? Just gave some examples, but who's your perfect customer from merchant side? I mean, we love every merchant and primarily right now we're focused on retail, large merchants, mid-sized and small merchants as well. We don't discriminate. We are the issue.

00:19:26:23 - 00:19:58:09
Unknown
But I mean, obviously, you know, we wanted to help the merchants. That's our mission, to help them be successful, help them products today. Don't we know how difficult the market is and be present in all these channels is a challenge and the cost of operations is a challenge. So we tried to keep it minimal cost, but also give them, you know, larger opportunities to be visible in different times, different audiences not breaking their bank.

00:19:58:11 - 00:20:21:24
Unknown
That is basically that very important value we offer for the merchants. Mm hmm. Is there any kind of homework that the merchant needs to do before they can get started? Oh, that's a great question. So for them, no homework is needed, so they just come with an open mind saying, okay, family's offering me a solution that I can enable selling my products in different channels.

00:20:22:01 - 00:20:48:22
Unknown
Right. Let me explore it. Right. So they can just come on and just sign up. It's free to sign up so they can sign up and then try to play with it. And they will realize that it is unbelievably easy to to participate. And in these times, it's very, very pleasantly surprised. A lot of times merchants saying, I don't believe it until they see.

00:20:48:24 - 00:21:16:16
Unknown
Right. So Best Buy is a great example. Right? So they are a merchant market merchant. Is that what you guys are saying is not believable until we really see it and then we have very sharp integration with that? Oh, yeah, Universal definitely sounds like a great solution. I'm seeing it is believing it now before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there anything you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

00:21:16:18 - 00:21:38:11
Unknown
I would love to say that, you know, this is gonna sit in the sidelines as a merchant. If you are a merchant, come work with us. We're happy to help you. I mean, it's easy to experiment without having a large engineering business to be put into this, having a big map to enable an intense ecommerce. It's not that complicated.

00:21:38:13 - 00:22:20:09
Unknown
I mean, it is complicated, but we make it easy for you as a merchant, right? So that we can enable pretty much any platform you want. That zero Internet that's real value property are offering. And you would be pleasantly surprised how many additional channels we will be enabling for you so that you can try different things. And then also, as I am one of the merchants we've been working with, said, Hey, there are a few other shopping agents that are knocking on the door, We want to really we don't want to go bespoke integration, so we're going to recommend you work with them to that, will welcome our merchants, bring those type of challenges to

00:22:20:09 - 00:22:42:21
Unknown
us as well. Really happy to take it over and make it easy for the merchant. Basically one way if merchants are successful, that will be commerce. So we want to do everything possible to make the merchants successful. That's that's obvious. You know, that's a good promise. Where can people go and find out more about you firmly that, hey, I f I am l y okay.

00:22:42:21 - 00:22:59:06
Unknown
Yeah. Okay. I will put the link in the show notes and you're just one click away. Come on. Thanks so much for giving us an overview on what's happening in the world of eCommerce right now, and I hope a lot of people will reach out and I think it's a no brainer to check it out because you can just multiply the channels that you are visible and available on.

00:22:59:12 - 00:23:23:12
Unknown
So for our listeners, go on the website, check it out. I think it's a good solution. Thanks so much for your time today. Thank you, class. It was great meeting.