41:42
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
zorro, products, partners, customers, e commerce, tracy, manufacturer, sales, b2b, easy, b2b space, search, distributor, talk, buy, people, supplier, bit, orders, week
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Tracy Buelow, Curt Anderson
00:00
Happy Welcome everyone. I’m going to get us live here on LinkedIn and then we’re we are going to be rolling. Rolling. Right on time for Dan bigger want look at that 32 after the hour, whatever time zone you’re in. You’re great on time demon. Yeah. Good videos just gonna finish in a second here. Welcome everyone once again to the manufacturing ecommerce Success Series. We’re just happy to be here on Friday. I’m Damon Pistulka, one of your co hosts. I’m going to turn it over to the other co host and this partner in crime brother from another mother Kurt Anderson.
Take it away my friend, Damon, love you, brother. So thank you for everything guys. Damon Pistulka live coming at us from Seattle, founder of exit your way so Kurt Anderson here, guys. Man, I’ve been looking forward to this for months. This is a blockbuster I know every week is a great week. Boy. This is a special one. Our dear friend and I’m going to see this correctly. Tracy Tracy below. How’s that? Tracy? Welcome to the program. Happy Friday. Thank you. I love the energy. This is awesome for Friday. Love it. Great way to end the week. We just absolutely love being here. So Tracy we have a ton unpacked.
So guys, I just want to do a quick little intro on our friend Tracy. And I’m dropping her LinkedIn profile right in the chat box. Guys, as always, every week let’s connect. If we were in person, we’d be handing out business cards. Drop your LinkedIn profile in the chat box, please connect with Tracy. So guys, Tracy is the Senior Director of Business Development at Zorro. And for all of us in this b2b world Boy, you know, Zahra, what an amazing incredible manufacturing ecommerce success story that Zorro is. Now Tracy, it’s talking about you for a minute. It’s all about Tracy today, right?
So you have an amazing, incredible background, not only fortune 500, you have a wealth of Fortune 100 experience 12 year veteran from Kimberly Clark, you’ve managed $115 million contract Center at MIT with manpower. So talk a little bit about you know, coming out of college and how your path of into marketing and how you kind of shifted into industrial, sir. So I would say when I’m talking to anybody about my background, I always say on marketing and sales in b2b and b2c. And that kind of summarizes the majority of my career. So started at manpower in marketing, a lot of sales support activities.
So I actually specialized for a long part of that time in contact centers. So reducing turnover training and finding the right people who can do call center work all day long. And then transition to account management roles to actually support clients who had big call centers, they were they were standing up around the country, then made the transition into consumer packaged goods at Kimberly Clark and really started working in that space and traditional brand management and brand marketing worked on probably my favorite brand of all time Kleenex for many, many years.
So I hope everyone on this call you Yeah, yes. So um, but yeah, worked on that we’re kind of couple other brands while I was there and did some great things in brand marketing, but also transition to the sales organization for Kimberly Clark too, and, and ran some grocery teams as well as some specialty teams, which specialty for Kimberly Clark was like home improvement and office and gas station convenience stores, things that probably aren’t carrying a lot of paper products, but still need some in their assortment.
And then I transitioned over to Zorro the About two years ago, and I’ve been in this role for that period of time and really just looking for an opportunity to move into e commerce on a regular basis. But also to work in a smaller organization. manpower was huge. Kimberly Clark was huge. I knew it would be a different development opportunity for me to work in a smaller organization more nimble, growing really rapidly.
And so I’m learning a lot loving it. I think it’s great to see the trajectory we’re on and what we’ve been able to do and really excited about what we have in our future as well. That is awesome. And so yeah, so our Friday show is very strong Wisconsin bound. You know, we have our friend Aaron, we have Chris Harrington we have so a lot of Kevin, a lot of folks pop into our program. Yeah, a lot of love for so yeah, we’ve got all the programs done. We need to do. We have a lot of connections for you, Tracy, and of course our dear friend Gail in Canada.
We have Vale, Patrick in Cleveland. So let’s talk about the team at Zorro for a second. So I’ve had the honor and privilege I know a couple folks from Zorro been put you know I we strongly promote Zorro demon. I do a lot of workshops. We were just talking about this before the program. We were at Youngstown State University this week and I think my dear friend say that she was at our workshop this week at Youngstown State University so welcome say it up and she’s a power tool company and we’re talking about how important Zorro is. But when when Patrick
05:00
I know Sherry Oh, Riley, the passion and the enthusiasm when you work with a team at Zorro is really unrivaled In my opinion, talk a little bit about what attracted you to Zorro. And that, that dedication to their customers or vendors or partners, just share a little bit about that side of things. Sure. So certainly from the business side of things, I really appreciate the obsession with our customers, we are really focused on having the right experience for our customer on our site. And our role, Patrick, my team is to bring on more supplier partners that add to that assortment.
So anytime a customer comes to our site, they can find whatever they’re looking when they realize they need it. And so we also in the b2b space have been focused on creating a consumer like experience. So if you think about all of us, as consumers, what it’s like to buy online, we know in business, they’re looking for the same things, they expect the same level of functionality and the tools and the convenience of all of that. And so, to come to an organization that is obsessed with that experience is great. It also is a culture that is really looking to learn and grow and try new things and fail fast and move forward.
You know, certainly the growth allows us to do that. But we definitely, we talk about, like trying, and learning and failing quickly, a lot in our organization and being curious. And so we are exploring what our customers are looking for. We’re exploring what we need to do internally with our processes and all with the goal of just driving that opportunity for our customers to get what they need when they need it. Yeah, and it just shows with your success again, you know, if correct me if I have this incorrect 2011 Zorro got the party started, and I think it was about 20 employees or so and just started small, lean, nimble, and now it is just exploded.
I know when I met Sherry a Riley several years ago, you know, she in the way she talks about the Zorro story. It’s like she’s the owner, you know, like she just has such pride and respect and admiration. And it’s just I’m gonna say it’s rare, but it’s just so refreshing to hear that from from the team. And I know Patrick’s the same way. You’re the same way. Talk a little bit about like, you know, that 10 year explosive growth and Sorrell? How’d you guys do it? Like how you know, it’s such an anomaly Really?
Sure. Well, so if folks aren’t familiar, we’re actually a subsidiary of Granger. So the whole idea kind of generated from the fact that we knew there was a market out there for particularly small and medium sized businesses. They’re very fragmented, they don’t have the scale, to be able to have an interaction with se or Granger, or some of the bigger distributors out there, they’re just not big enough to get that kind of service, call it. And so they wanted something very simple, they still valued a simple good price, you know, good fulfillment, all the same things that everybody wants, but they wanted in a much more simple transaction.
And a lot of the folks that we work with are, say, contractors, or they run their own business, and they’re the person buying the products, they’re the person using the products, they’re the person doing the work, paying the bills, doing all of the things. And so they needed something a little bit different than a more traditional distributor relationship would, would provide. And so for us, it’s really about providing that experience to them and giving them those opportunities to still get a good price and a good fulfillment experience, but in a much simpler way.
Curt Anderson 08:40
Well, that’s a perfect segue and I’m going to give a shout out to my buddy john in New Jersey from Tessa, john, you and Tracy need to connect john does he’s just a fierce network does amazing work. We collaborate constantly. JOHN, Happy Friday, my friend. So treats let’s let’s continue that conversation on I’m a small manufacturer, whether OPM, or contract manufacturer, and I like to kind of diagnose, diagnose both, okay, but I have widgets, what are in and zeros, either new to me, or like, what’s this relationship with Granger? What sort of data you know, dig deep into, like, what are the benefits of Zorro as a manufacturer? Sure.
Tracy Buelow 09:17
So the biggest thing that we can offer is reach customer reach and be able to increase your sales. So as I mentioned before, the small and medium size market for businesses is very fragmented, costs a lot of money takes a lot of energy and attention to reach all of those people. And sometimes, they’re not even coming to you in traditional ways.
They decided this morning, oh, no, I need this product. I’ve got to replace it. I’m going online, I’m searching for it and I want to buy it right now. And it’s allowing us to capture those customers where they’re searching and be able to bring it in and give them that opportunity to buy so if I’m a manufacturer, chances are they may not be coming to my website on Automatically, or they’re coming to my site, maybe together product information, but maybe not to buy, they still need that opportunity to buy.
But even if I have a website, I still have to drive traffic to my website, right? And Zorro does that for all of our partners, all of our large portion of our spend is attracting and acquiring customers, because we’re out in those markets in those spaces on the web, that customers are looking for products, giving them that opportunity to buy.
So if someone were to partner with us, we’re giving them access to all these orders, that would be extremely challenging and costly for them to get on their own. And you could certainly build a website. But again, you got to drive traffic to that website. And that cost money that is so costs, expertise and resources internally to be able to stay up with the dynamics in that marketplace and what it takes then to grab those customers.
Damon Pistulka 10:59
No, that’s perfect. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s it’s what you’re, you’re speaking to the choir here, because we help we’re helping small OEM manufacturers with these products, trying to get them out to the world. And we say, and we tell them all the time, it’s like, Listen, Amazon might not be right for you.
But you still want want to be there. Zorro, if you’re a b2b, I think is the place to be because you can’t spend the kind of money as an individual manufacturer on getting in front of that customer at the exact right time, like Zorro can, because of the the amount of of businesses you’re trying to do that for and how you aggregate customers and the traffic you have. There’s just no way you can duplicate that unless you do partner with someone like zero
Tracy Buelow 11:47
100%. And scale matters, you know, matters, especially in e commerce, because there are only going to be a few key players that people know to go to. And that spend is very, very competitive for pts to play in that space.
Curt Anderson 12:01
Yes. Yes, exactly. Right. And that this is a perfect another perfect segue, man. You’re like throwing layups, you’re making this easy for me, it’s so easy. So let’s, let’s dig into that seek out for a little bit on SEO and talk about search. Again, like, you know, we just did this workshop this week, we work with a lot with manufacturing extension partnerships. Purdue was Wisconsin, Illinois. And so what we’re, we’re actually showing examples, search examples of how we call it how do you dominate search?
So we go through this practice process of like, we call it how do you make that great first, and we call it web pression? How do you make that great first impression with your website? Well, by partnering with Zorro that has the multimillion dollar marketing budget, you are making that great first impression when we want to get there and attack search, like you know, you don’t need zero, you don’t need to be the widget expert, you allow the manufacturer to be the widget expert and make what they do best. You’re the guerrilla marketer.
Now, I believe you had a workshop earlier this year, I may I caught you somewhere. And you had a great quote on how the team at Zorro like you really you partner with Google and like you’re studying at top SEO tactics. Talk a little bit about how you attack those keywords from SEO standpoint and from Pay Per Click to help your your clients your products and manufacturers come up in search?
Tracy Buelow 13:17
Sure, yeah, absolutely. So there are a couple of key elements of search, right, you guys probably already talked about it, there’s plla, or product listing ads, right? There’s text ads, there’s organic search ads. Pra is is the top rung of, if I have an image of a product, if I’m out there searching for it, I’m going to see that image pop up, I’m going to be able to click on it and I’m going to go to a site and buy. And that if you can get into that space, that is where I would say the majority of traffic starts to go because it gives you that opportunity to buy no matter how generally research has been all along. And so we spend a lot of our time and energy understanding that space.
But with that we understand the profile of a customer. And we know what we look for where the return is dropped, guess who tends to buy what and so we’re spending in that plra space according to what we understand our profile of customers to be and where the value actually is. And we can avoid spending in areas where the return is not that strong.
And then what you start to have is this data loop, this data loop of we’ve got a lot of information, we’re feeding it back into the system, which is helping us bid more effectively, which is giving us sales and feeding data and it’s going to creating this circular motion that again, unfortunately it’s very hard for somebody else to come into the market and start to create that exact same loop.
And so we’re just getting really smart about where we spend because we know you can you can spend tons of money and be everywhere all the time but probably going to go broke doing it. This is the opportunity to say Where are the types of customers we find the most valuable? What’s their profile? And how do we NAB them? when they’re out there? And we can tell from their profile? They’re the right player.
Curt Anderson 15:11
Yeah. And that’s and what I love is like, you know, I don’t know if you agree with this, you know, Zorro is bait is almost like a little search engine, not little a large search engine itself, for industrial products. And again, I’m sorry to keep bringing this up with our workshops. I, you know, I have slides showing, hey, we have a search within Zorro.
You know, we have clients that are coming up top position within zero, we show like how, when you Google products on Google, you’re not only going to see zero in the text, you know, either SEO, or like you said in a Google Shopping ads, and, you know, and images. So I’m like Zorro is coming up multiple times for these products, you know, promoting these customers, you know, their their products. Talk a little bit about, you know, saying, again, we target manufacturers, you have some folks or distributors, is there a difference? Like, are you targeting more manufacturers, more distributors? You share a little bit about that aspect?
Tracy Buelow 16:00
Sure. So we actually work with both is the first answer. But here’s what I would tell you. Our model is third party fulfillment, right. So all of our partners fulfill orders on our behalf, which means anybody we work with has to have solid dropship capability. In some cases, manufacturers, that’s not their focus, they don’t want to be drop shipping small orders, they want to be able to ship pallets of product to a distributor partner. And so we’ve found success with distributors on more occasions because of that drop ship capability.
But that doesn’t mean that we don’t also partner with manufacturers who have that dropship capability. Where it’s also been really unique is we’ve done both on a single brand. So if you take a big supplier, I always use three Ms. An example, right? They’re a huge brand, everybody knows, well, 3am may want to drop ship several products on their own, where they can be efficient, but they have a huge portfolio that they don’t want to dropship. And so then they have all of these distributor partners that helps them get those products out into the marketplace.
Well, we may work with three, and one of their distributor partners so we can get the broadest portfolio on Zorro. And we’ve got the combined attention and support of both parties to provide content and good brand information and to help support the brand that’s out there. So that we have the best information online and we get it basically from both parties. So we’re open to either really just comes down to who who can fulfill the model we’ve created in the best possible way. And it is a core competency of theirs, versus someone trying to do that and trying to do all the things that they’d rather be spending their time on.
Damon Pistulka 17:50
And you make a great point, a lot of people, you know, you’re really good at making that product. But when you do that foray into, Okay, I’m gonna start trying to market drive traffic to our website and a lot of other stuff, there’s just and incorporate things like now I want to be drop shipping, I want to be doing, you know, there’s just a lot to learn when you’re when you’re moving into a platform for the first time.
And if you can focus on just doing that, and getting good with someone like Zorro and we’ve done this with clients or time both bigger clients, that zero is another channel, that’s great, because people there’s really not competition between the two, honestly, they’re a little teeny baby bit.
But then you can go the other way too, you can start out and get going get really good with everything inside and fulfilling and doing the things you can inside your company. And then maybe it’s time to start a little bit, you know, trying out some other things to to make a more broader portfolio of customers. But the the Zorro is such a key component for this b2b market and you guys focus in on that customer, when you look at any other platform, there’s really not a platform that focuses in like you guys do, which is so cool.
19:08
Thank you. It’s just the way it is, right? It’s the way it is. Because if I if
Damon Pistulka 19:15
I am in the industrial space, and I’m going to go look for something online, I don’t go to Amazon, Amazon’s got more consumer products, right? Yeah, there may be some stuff, but they’re this not work originated from where it came from. And then you talk about all that what Granger had to offer I already and then add the other partners you’re bringing in. He just really that is the place to go. Yeah,
Curt Anderson 19:40
for sure. And I think Tracy made some great points. So again, so say a couple of things for folks that are on Amazon and in a b2b space or industrial and they’re like, gee, should I consider azorult? The nice one of the common complaints that you hear with Amazon is the trend you know, you don’t have access to customer information with a dropship model. zorah allows you you know you do you know don’t own that customer relationship but you know who the customer is it’s transparent so on so forth.
The other nice thing is Zorro almost plays like a little fractional marketing firm. Not and again, I don’t use the word little, but you know, so common question I was just asked this week, you know, hey, you know, should I do an e commerce store?
I’m starting from scratch or do you recommend the marketplaces? Well, depending on budget, you know, and again, I’m, you know, everybody on here knows how pro e commerce I am. But if you’re just starting out, and you’re like, Man, I’m just not sure I’m going to kick the tires. I know Dan bigger his he’s a man he Dan bigger landed his new Great job. He’s like showing pictures from the beach all the time, Dan, we’re jealous. But you know, they just punch in e commerce.
You know, you could tip your toe very low risk. Handle product over to Zorro, now you have a presence online, and you’re just trying to get your feet wet in this e commerce world. Trace. And I know the great thing is you’re you you’ve said it multiple times, you’re obsessed with the customer obsessed with the customer. I know from my experience, personally, you make it so easy to help those vendors, those supplier partners get their product online, how to optimize talk a little bit about what are those beginning stages like the onboarding process for your vendor partners, sir.
Tracy Buelow 21:15
So obviously, we have ways that we operate, so we have to kind of work through those core elements, but we do partner or request that most of our partners are integrated via EDI II or some form of PDI transmission, right, you hope that you have so many orders that you don’t want this manual process to stay on top of those orders, you want them to electronically flow. But the biggest piece I would say honestly starts to come down to content. The more information you have about the products you’re listing online, the easier it is for the customer has to navigate to the exact right product they’re looking for.
Now we have folks that come to our site, and they know the exact brand and part number super easy for them to come online. But there’s a whole lot of them who are trying to explore they kind of know what they’re looking for, but not quite exactly. And they want to be able to navigate, the more attribute and product information, the better off you are. And so a lot of what we focus on with our supplier partners is that content element, we need some baseline information just to transact, you need all that core regulatory UPC quantity, you know, unit of measure all of those things.
But then as you start getting into more critical attribute information, it makes it easier to share those products and marketing materials, it makes it easier to navigate on the site. All of those things are great. On top of all of that fulfillment is key. Right. So ultimately, especially in today’s market, you guys probably seen it. Getting a product on time and fairly fast is really important, especially in b2b. And so we often talk to our partners about what that looks like, we’re finding in our data under three days is great.
So if you can get it out into them in about three days, that’s your sweet spot anything over that unless it’s product or category specific, where it’s common, that it’s a long lead time, you’re going to start to have trouble kind of converting that order. And so when we talk to our partners, we tend to talk about those elements, because we know those are the ones that make a difference. The wildcard and all of it, people like to bring up this price, right cost and price and price transparency online.
We’re not a low cost leader, we’re not out there to be you know, undercutting the market or trying to just be as competitive just being the competitive set. So when someone clicks on that item, it looks about right. And that it’s comparing apples to apples because now if you look on sites shipping included shipping not included, you’re starting to kind of compare apples to oranges, which makes it a little messy. So fundamentally, I would say those are those things and then just understanding structurally or strategically, how does this fit within the company’s objectives? How does it not how does it complement what you’re trying to do and not just cannibalize what you’re already doing?
Damon Pistulka 24:13
Yeah. errific and we have a
Curt Anderson 24:15
go ahead Damon,
Damon Pistulka 24:16
really quick. I mean delivery time is so critical on products now I mean, and you said under three but if you can guarantee, you know within real reasonable timeframe two days, that will raise your sales. I’ve seen it 25% kind of thing if you can just say we have two day delivery and it’s so it’s worth it for a an OEM to consider how can I do two day delivery and does it if it costs me a little bit more adjust your pricing or your shipping wherever you got to do to be able to do that because people will pay to get product within reason. I just that time is so curate key and it’s the whole maker ship that says out the door that that that kind of stuff doesn’t happen anymore on e commerce. Great.
Curt Anderson 25:03
We have a great question for you, Tracy, from our dear friend or your neighbor, Aaron in Wisconsin, do you track your clients to make sure vendors are fulfilling on time and providing quality content?
Tracy Buelow 25:15
Yes. So a couple of things we do, we have a lead time on our site, and we have the actual ship times and we do regular comparison of the two. And the goal typically is say you put five days out there, we’re good with people putting five days if you can deliver five days, because it’s more important that we’re accurate on our promise than anything.
But then we look for the opportunities to say you told us five, but you’re actually shipping in three, how about we change it to three and increase the likelihood of getting the sale. So we definitely do that, obviously, in the opposite direction. If we’re seeing us fall short on those lead times, we need to have conversations with our suppliers about that.
Similarly, if we’re not seeing sales, where we think we could see it, we will be working with those suppliers on content. If you don’t have images, you’re not MPLA. That’s like number one, right? So if we don’t have that, that’s our first thing to work with our suppliers on so that they get that kind of exposure. And then from there, like I said, those attributes that are unique to that category of that product are really important for navigation. They’re important for marketing, they’re important for keywords, right, all of those things matter. And so we just worked with our partners on continuing to build that out.
Curt Anderson 26:29
That’s fantastic. And I know, you know, one of zeros, benchmarks, trademarks, whatever you want to call it is, you know, vast inventory. You know, if you need it, you have it right. So let’s say like the manufacturer, maybe more more along the lines of the distributor, they have 1000s and 10s of 1000s of skews come to mind. My dear friend, Chris Harrington, also fellow was cast wisconsinite is am I saying that correctly?
Yes. Another, another neighbor of yours. So, you know, they’re with Gen alpha, and they comment, you know, they’ll have manufacturers or companies that have 1000s and 1000s of skews, let’s talk about that partner relationship on how you know, it’s not like, I want to have my ecommerce store, separate from marketplace, let’s talk about marrying those strategies together on how I want to have my e commerce footprint, do some my own SEO, I’m doing Pay Per Click social, whatever. But I want my own e commerce presence. And we’re not cannibalizing our selves by being in a marketplace, talk about the benefit and the value of combining those two strategies.
Tracy Buelow 27:30
Sure. So there’s two things that come to mind. For me, the one is our partners own the brands, and the products, right, they’re the ones who have worked really hard to develop high quality products, and they typically invest in supporting those brands. And so we ask them continue to do that. Because the more you bring visibility to those brands and products, the more people start searching for them, the more if we have them on our site, we grab them when they’re searching, right.
And so we look for our partners, certainly from kind of brand promotion to make sure that they continue to do that. The other side of it is typically our partners have a retention strategy with their customers and their investment in e commerce tends to be to support their biggest customers, they may provide inventory visibility, they may provide, you know additional content and marketing, they may be able to do some order tracking and various things. And that’s perfect for them to spend their attention on.
Because my guess is that’s 80% of your sales if you run the 8020 rule. And so the way to look at it is keep doing those things for those core customers and make sure you’re adding that value for those relationships. And then you can leverage a partner like Zorro to get that other marketplace to make up the other 20% of your sales. But you’re not having to do all the hard work and get those sales. And so they’re they can be very complimentary. And really support each other in terms of kind of driving attention online.
Curt Anderson 29:08
Yeah. And the nice thing is to partner with Zorro, what’s the cost? I think is zero. I mean, well, it’s
Tracy Buelow 29:15
minimal. Yeah, yeah. On the sales, right, we’re a distributor. That’s how we view our so it’s very similar to any distributor, you give us the cost, we’re gonna put a price out there and, you know, the margin is in between, it’s a markup of, you know, whatever we think but remember, what I said about being market competitive is what’s important, right? You know, we’re gonna work with our partners if we feel like that structure doesn’t allow for us to be competitive, because if we’re not, we’re not generating sales, which isn’t good for either of us. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 29:45
Yeah, like you like you’re saying that Zorro being the source for your 20% is a really nice way to explain it, because if you try to support that 20% through your traditional business channels, It takes so much resources for that 20%. Or, as you said, the complimentary part of it is really cool because the the masses of customers through Zorro makes it much easier than trying to do that internally.
Tracy Buelow 30:14
Right. And what that does then is build scale and buying power and all of those things within that supplier partner. Right. So now I have 20% more sales that allows me to go negotiate with my vendors as well, without having all that extra attention and cost.
Curt Anderson 30:30
Yeah. Yeah. And what we’d like to preach is, you know, what Zorro does is it brings a little street cred, you know, so again, you know, for a small custom manufacturer, you know, say 2030 employees, you know, again, they’re the best kept secret, we’re trying to help them stop being the best kept secret. Yeah, but, you know, if somebody does a search and say, there’s Zorro, and then ABC manufacturer, and they’re like, you know, what, it’s like, you know, it’s like, if you’re traveling, you know, Jesus, why go to recognize franchise?
Or do I try? Try the local, you know, restaurant? Not at times you find those hidden gems going to the local, but boy, we’ve been traveling, I’m tired, kids are yelling and screaming, let’s just go to whatever franchise we all know, right? So you know, it’s the same type of concept of that street cred, where when somebody does a search search for a particular power tool, or whatever that item is, and you’re like, well, I see ABC, you know, manufacturer, but I see zero, and I’m comfortable with zero, as you know, I shop as a consumer, I’m shopping as in my, my workplace as a b2b buyer.
So again, you’re helping from the search standpoint, you’re helping from a pricing standpoint, content standpoint, all the above you offer on what type of guidance like Chris, Chris has? Or was, Aaron asked, Aaron asked a great question about the content you provide any next steps are like for folks that are brand new to this content world or the SEO world, you guys kind of help hold her hand and like what this whole keyword thing is like, how does that work?
Tracy Buelow 31:52
So we don’t get into the specifics with our supplier partner around kind of the SEO space, what we do is work with them on here is our list of attributes and information that we would love to have from you. And the more of that information we have, the more we can do with it on the marketing side. And so, you know, you focus on the typical things that people would expect. The UPC and good titles and images and those things, attributes is where it gets really, really interesting.
The more information you have, the more that you can tie families of products together, the better. So that’s actually a really unique thing, when when you’re doing a website, it’s actually really hard to build product families. So think about if you are buying a shirt, you want to see a page for that shirt, and you just want to be able to choose your size. Well, that’s hard to build that really, right. Most sites, it’s like, well, I go to the page for the small and then I go to the page for the medium. And then I go to the page for the large, it’s hard to do that. And so what we’re trying to do is just gather as much of that information and then merchandize it in the way that makes sense.
What also makes us really unique is that when you have an endless cycle model, different categories should be merchandised in different ways. And a lot of sites that are out there, it’s kind of one way of doing it all. And we’ve been working and still have ways to go and continue to grow and improve in this area. But we’re looking at ways to merchandise certain products a certain way, because we know that’s how people buy. But it may not look the same as this item over here that needs to be merchandised differently as well. And so that complexity can can get really interesting to look at your product offering.
Damon Pistulka 33:40
It is a key difference though with your platform, it is a key difference. If people don’t understand this, as most platforms are one size fits all every listing is going to look the same. And you’re just going to you know, marry marry your product to that listing rather than your product to an appropriate listing for your category. Right.
Curt Anderson 34:00
Yeah, and I and I love what you’re saying, you know, Tracy and say and again, it’s almost like you’re fractional marketing department, you know, like you’re doing research, you’re digging deep into the SEO, you’re digging deep into you know, the whole product listings, what color button TO HAVE Checkout, you’re handling credit card processing. Again, there’s so much that you’re handling for you’re just making it so easy. They you know, in our workshops, we talk about kiss man, keep it super, super simple. And again, that’s, you know, and I’m speaking as a customer myself to Zorro, I feel Zorro does an incredible job of keeping it simple.
And again, let’s face it in a b2b space. You know, a lot of us are digital immigrants. We’re low on you know, more seasoned. I say, I won’t call us older, we’re in a more seasoned side. And you make it much easier for the folks in that space to create that online presence. Now I saw well, man, it’s already we’re coming. Race. It’s like a writing stuff. It’s this is juicy man, guys. I thought this is so good. So Tracy, I saw a quote from you and I know This is common to a lot of folks. But you again, I saw a quote from you earlier, you’re about like how ecommerce has really sped up about 10 years in 90 days through through COVID.
And I know we all agree with that. Now, hopefully, you know, we were talking before Tracy, man, our prayers go with you. She’s gonna become an empty nester here soon. So next week, or kids are heading off to college, we wish your kids great success. But as we’re hopefully coming safely out of COVID, I know we’re not sure but let’s say we’re coming safely out of COVID. What do you What? What do you see now? Any trends? or What are you telling clients, customers manufacturers? What do you see moving forward to end of last quarter of 2021? And into 2022?
Tracy Buelow 35:40
Yeah, so interesting question, that quote that you’ve heard is a is a McKinsey chart that’s been floating around for a long time about the adoption of e commerce and how it is really sped up in the b2b space. And so what I would probably say, just in general, is, people are much more comfortable buying products online, you were doing it as a consumer, you were doing it with probably products you would have never bought online prior to COVID. And now all of a sudden, you’re comfortable, and groceries and all those things.
The same thing has happened in b2b, what people have found is that really technical product that I thought there was no way I could just go buy online, I had to do it, and it was fine. And so now I’m comfortable going back and doing it again, right.
And so you just see this broader willingness to consider items that you wouldn’t have before, you’ve taken a look at your operations and how you run and figure this e commerce model into it, I still think every forum for buying will still exist. But they will have very specific purposes associated, the example I always give is like building products, you’re not going to lose the building product branches, maybe you won’t have as many around the US at some point.
But there are still going to be people who need the same day item, you’re going to go and get it. And that’s going to exist and there’s going to be product lines that are very variable like lumber that just ecommerce would be really hard to do. But then you’re going to start to think well, these things I can pre plan for and get it in a few days. I’ll just place that order when I remember on the spot. And I’ll get that chip to me. And so you’ll see this where people are buying in all different channels. Yeah. And you just want to capture as much of that as possible, right.
So I think you’re just going to continue to see that you’re going to see this willingness to buy certain products online that you never thought before. And to be honest, what we’re what we’re grateful at with Zorro is endless assortment matters, we know we can satisfy more of those customer needs in one place. And so we’re going to continue to build that out. And that’s what customers want, as well as an easy way to buy more of their items, than have to go to this site and this site and this site in this spot.
Damon Pistulka 38:06
Josh, especially in the b2b space, because if you make it easy for me to go in and buying all this stuff, this month, say or this week, I can come back and place another order for next next month. And then it’s super easy. The second time is even easier.
Tracy Buelow 38:21
Correct. So well, in some cases, it’s a purchasing manager doesn’t actually know the product. He just got a note from somebody that said, Go get this because I need it. And they have to go search it out. And we just made their job that much easier, what they care about as fast and good price. And so they look good internally. Yeah. And so it’s they’re all going to be looking for these ways to do this more often. Well, and then from the company standpoint, there too, they
Damon Pistulka 38:47
can consolidate purchases. There’s one place you’re buying from, and make it easier to keep that it just it just so much sensitive.
Curt Anderson 38:55
Yeah, sure. And that’s, you know, that’s what we preach, make it as easy as humanly possible to do business with you. And again, think about like those government employees JSA accounts. Yep. where maybe, you know, they’re set up with Zorro. And like for you have to go through hoops to, you know, to, you know, as a small little manufacturer, maybe there’s a lot of barriers where Zorro can just partner with you and make life so much easier for you can trace I don’t want to keep because I want to get everybody back to the tables. Our dear friend Aaron, she has a great question. I’m sorry, if I missed this, do you vet your partners?
Tracy Buelow 39:27
So yes, we do on a lot of those things that I was talking about those so can you fulfill on a consistent basis? You know, what are the products that you offer? Is it complimentary to what we already have? Or is it duplicative to what we already have? You know, does it fit the b2b Small Business customer, right? We definitely want to look at those things because we’re all going to put in the effort. We want to make sure the products are gonna sell but it really is more about that performance and can you consistently do what we need? eed to have a good fulfillment experience for the customer.
Curt Anderson 40:04
Absolutely, man, this is man this is good trace this was and this is awesome. So guys, let’s uh what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna we’re gonna wind down we’re gonna wrap up trace any Let me check your LinkedIn profile in there again guys, please please please connect with Tracy on LinkedIn check out Zorro, my dear friend Patrick vowels on a program. He’s on the team at Zorro. So, man, I have so many more things that we could go on and talk about, but I know we need to wrap up.
Tracy, I’m going to give a huge huge thank you to you. I know you’re super busy and we have a hard stop at the bottom of the hour warning tables. I’d love for you guys to stick around and chat with Tracy. Tracy, thank you. We wish you the best of luck to your boys great sex. I know you’re a wonderful mom. Best of luck to your two boys at college. And Damon, my brother have an awesome weekend. Let’s guys go out there and crush it this week. Man just go out next week. We have Gail coming on the program next week. Yeah, super exciting things going on here. Connect with Zorro check out the product on Zorro. daymond Take it away, dude. I’m out of breath. All right.
Damon Pistulka 41:08
Thanks, Kurt. Thanks crazy this awesome discussion. If you can’t tell this this gets Kurt and I fired up every week that we can talk about manufacturing e commerce in the same sentence. And it’s always good and learning learning how is our Zoho ro helps its partners accelerate through e commerce sales is it was a great topic today. So thank you. Thanks, everyone who listened on LinkedIn live we’re gonna shut down there and go back to the tables on Remo
Curt Anderson 41:35
Tracy. Thank you.
Damon Pistulka 41:36
Yeah. Thanks so much.
