Transcript - Yasmine Sayed
Joshua Williams: Retail Revolution is a special, limited podcast created specifically for "Retailing and Service Design," a unique course that is part of the Fashion Management graduate program at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Each episode features in depth conversations with guest experts in omnichannel retailing with myriad perspectives: technology, consumer engagement, data analytics, merchandising, and more. We pay special attention to the short- and long-term challenges and implications of COVID-19 and potential opportunities to rethink retail's future. Retail Revolution is produced by Joshua Williams and hosted by Christopher Lacy, both are Assistant Professors in the School of Fashion at Parsons.
Christopher Lacy: Welcome to Retail Revolution, where we discuss all topics relating to Retail and Service Design. Today we have with us, a Senior Consultant at Newmine Omni-channel Consulting, Yasmeen Sayed. Hello, Yasmeen. How are you?
Yasmine Sayed: Hi, Chris. I'm doing well. How are you?
Christopher Lacy: Very well, Thank you. Crazy times we're in right now is as we're aware connecting via multiple, from multiple places, in New York city. So, yay for technology.
Yasmine Sayed: Yes. That has been a lifesaver over these last two weeks.
Christopher Lacy: For sure. So, Yasmin, can you tell, I'd love for you to make an introduction of yourself, you know, what you do and, what your role is at Newmine Omnichannel and How, talk about yourself?
Yasmine Sayed: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I think this is such a cool idea and I'm really excited to be a part of it. So, I've been in the retail industry, over 10 years now. I started kind of at a small internet marketing company. We sold diet products, and this was back when there were no restrictions. So, we could say anything we wanted in advertising. It was really fun. But it was really like my intro into, kind of the digital world. I did not, you know, I went to school for marketing and advertising and, this was kind of my intro into the internet world, which was really cool because that kind of was a catalyst for me, with the rest of my career.
So, I ended up working for Coach for a number of years and then John Hardy, and then kind of transitioned into Consulting, which, I've been with Newmine for the last four years and have been working on a number of different projects. You know, I love consulting because I'm a Project Manager.
And for me, I get to just jump from basically one project to the next launch them, get them successful, transition over and then start something new. So, for me, it's been really exciting these past few years in consulting.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah. I mean, I think you, I love your trajectory of your career. It's when you and I met, I feel like we clicked right off the bat four years ago, you came into Barneys New York and we had our first meeting and I was like, I like her.
And you were really with it. And project managed on two of our projects, right? So, we had BOPIS, and there was another project he worked on with us.
Yasmine Sayed: Yeah. So, we did like a full Omni channel, which is kind of perfect for this conversation. We did a full omni-channel suite for you guys at Barneys, which was first kind of cleaning up your kind of co-sale process, which was essentially, you know, two store associates helping each other to broker a sale.
Christopher Lacy: Worst thing ever.
Yasmine Sayed: That was a tough one.
Christopher Lacy: How can I forget about co-sales?
Yasmine Sayed: I know you probably blocked it. So, yeah so we did that, then we did buy online pickup in store and then we also actually did, ship from store, which was, you know, not so much from the customer perspective, but really from a backend perspective that you could leverage every single one of your store locations, as many distribution centers.
Christopher Lacy: That's awesome. So actually, I want us to talk about that right now. Because I think that that's something that we don't really think about when we talk about retailing and service design, I think, you know, people are like, Oh, I order something and it just comes from that, that company's warehouse. But how much more sense does it make from a retail and service perspective to leverage your store network in that way. What, what are your thoughts on that?
Yasmine Sayed: Yeah, I think first of all, I think that's what truly omni-channel means is. Right. You know, it's been such a buzz word over the last five years and you know, kind of hard to interpret like, well, what, what is omni-channel but to me, omni-channel is ultimately making every single aspect of your business, kind of cohesive and streamlined. And when it comes to fulfillment, why not leverage all of your stores where you have inventory sitting, you want to move that inventory, you know and also to even be a little bit smarter about how you're shipping. So. You know, maybe I want to ship all my West coast orders from my stores on the West coast because I'm saving on my shipping costs.
You know, and then do the same for my East coast, but also, it's a way to really sell through all of that inventory. Ultimately as a retailer, you know, I want to not have excessive amounts of inventory because that can hurt me and is not sustainable in the longterm. And I also want to, you know, be able to basically sell through, even down to that last unit in a smart way and avoid kind of any, you know, customer relationship issues, essentially.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah. That's extremely important when you talk about the part of, you know, your West coast and East coast because quite often what happens and we talked about this in one of our classes at the beginning of the year called, Systems and Strategies. And it really was about how a lot of times a trend or a sell through doesn't happen the way it should because the West coast stores are waiting for product that's coming from the East coast. So, the East coast stores are getting things first and it changes how the customer can engage with a brand. If you're relying on this one distribution center to service, an entire country.
Yasmine Sayed: I think you're hitting the nail on the head and it's, you know, a lot of retailers are still physically moving inventory between not only just areas of their warehouse, but also within stores and that can get really, really tricky and confusing. And also, even just when you're trying to find the inventory, it's basically like businesses want to say we're one business, but let's treat every area of the business separately. So, I'm treating my stores differently. I'm treating my online differently. I'm treating my wholesale differently when really all of that should ultimately be treated in the same manner.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah, absolutely. And I think when we look at it, P and L statement. So, so Profit and Loss, and we go, how much money were we spending on shipping alone? I remember when we did that exercise that at Barneys, and we also had done that exercise when I was at Gucci and it was really scary when you realize how much of your bottom line was going into shipping either store to store or shipping, you know, just from the distribution center to move around products. And that's crazy.
Yasmine Sayed: Exactly when all of that could really be avoided.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, right now we are in, you know, I don't want to say crisis cause it's so dramatic. But we are in a pandemic situation to change. How we engage with our customers and how retailers should think. So, what do you think retailers should be thinking about when it comes to their Omni channel approach during this global pandemic? And what do you think will change after we come out of the other side of this?
Yasmine Sayed: Yeah, so I think, well I definitely think obviously this has affected everyone in the entire world, every business, even if it's not so related, because everything has a trickle effect. And I think that this is kind of probably been a wake up call for a lot of businesses, especially retail and, you know, not just traditional retail that, you know, we by mostly I've experienced it, but anything where you're selling, the first example to me comes to mind is restaurants. Right? A lot of them were not set up to do delivery orders. And when all of the restaurants had to shut down during this pandemic, they didn't have a way to do that. So it was either just shut your doors, and just not bring in any money.
I think a lot of them did a good job of quickly switching gears, taking advantage of, you know, basically third-party services that enable the delivery of those orders in order to actually make themselves somewhat profitable during this time. I think the same can be said for traditional retail where you know, I've been hearing stories from some colleagues within the industry saying, well, we didn't have buy online pickup in store, but you know, now because we don't have people coming into our stores but you know, there might still be people working in those stores, you know, we're not going to have people come in and shop, but Hey, can we, can we turn on BOPIS, can we leverage it as curbside pickup for now? Right. So that we can sell through still that inventory in the stores. So I think that, you know, this has probably been a wake up call for a lot of folks, and I think what they will do. I think the effect that it will have post this pandemic when hopefully things go back to normal pretty soon, is that a lot of them will realize, you know, the importance of having the ability to switch gears quickly because you may have to this, you know, we may go through something like this again. And also, you know, I think it might, they might realize like, oh wow, we never thought we needed that, but this is another way for us to increase our top line sales. So, we should start, you know, enabling these types of, options for our customers so that we can be flexible when something like this hits us again.
Christopher Lacy: Great point. I think when, especially when you talk about top line sales and then to follow up with that is everyone's going to take a hard look at how much inventory they keep on hand of products now, right? Because you know, something like this happens and the concern is we have a bunch of inventory sitting somewhere.
The season is continuing sale, normally would break and about, you know, two months, right. You have new deliveries that is supposed to start coming in. Maybe we knew we probably bought too much to begin with, but how do we start buying less so we can stay agile, should anything like this happen again? And for me, I think that's going to be a big wake up call for a lot of retailers where they go, we need to be in a get in and get out mentality where we don't have just this load of product weighing us down and keeping us from being agile. So having said that, I want to ask you, when you look at the retail companies that you engage with, or that you have engaged with and just in the industry in general, what do you think really holds them back when it comes to executing a truly amazing Omni channel strategy? Because to your point, you know, there were ones that already had something in mind and then there were others that didn't have anything in mind. So what do you kind of think is that you know, moment that they're reluctant.
Yasmine Sayed: I think really in my experience, what it comes down to is the technical enterprise systems that the business has in place. So, their e-commerce system, their order management system, any brokering tool that they have. So, you know, a lot of people don't really talk about this but if you're going to basically, you know, segment your orders or fill them in a smart way you need to have a tool that's going to basically broker those orders across, maybe all your stores.
Maybe you're even drop shipping straight from the vendor. Lot of opportunities there, but you need to have the systems in place. And I think a lot of retailers have. You know, old legacy systems that have been customized within an inch of their lives and they're really become kind of bandaid solutions.
Christopher Lacy: Right
Yasmine Sayed: Yeah. And it really makes it hard to string everything together and make logistics work. You know, when you've got, let's say 10,000 products, you can't manually track those. You need a way for this all to be done systematically.
Christopher Lacy: Ya, I want to ask you if you'll go a little bit deeper just for the those who are listening for you. And I will, when we talk about, you know, groping orders like that, where we know exactly what that means, can you dig a little deeper on what brokering an order looks like for a retailer?
Yasmine Sayed: Yes. So ultimately you have this, you basically have this, let's say another system or another tool that's either within your order management system or it's somewhat separate. And when an order flows from, you know, whether an order actually flows from your store, because potentially you may have made it easier for people to order something in a store that is not actually physically there and have that let's say shipped to their home or shipped to them, right. Or if you have somebody coming in from online and they're just placing an order, they don't care where it's coming from. They just know I want this product and it's coming and neither does the person in the store. So, this brokering tool is basically a layer within your order management system, that when an order comes in. You've you've already defined within this brokering tool, all your rules. So, you might have your most important role might be, you know what, to me it's most important to ship from the closest location to where that product ultimately has to get shipped to. So, that might be one of your rules.
And you say anything that's ordered from California is going to be shipped from a California store, or you might have a rule that says, you know what, I want my distribution center to be the number one location for fulfillment. And after that, then it can look at all the other stores. And this really is just based on your business and what you need to ultimately fulfill your business requirements. When this order then gets hits the brokering tool, based on the rules that you've set, it's picking the best location. So, you know, I like to think of it as like a smartphone for your orders because you know, we're just making it, the logic is smarter, we're making it smarter and it's doing it automatically.
Christopher Lacy: Okay, Right. And you said something about thresholds being set. I want you to be able to explain to everyone. So, let's say I'm a customer and I, and I want to order something. I click on it, but maybe in the company you know someone else's also ordering something and someone else's also ordering something, but there's only four left in the company, but we've got six people who want to order it. What does the retailer do at that point?
Yasmine Sayed: So, yeah. You know, so that's where things can get tricky, right? Because you want to sell through all your inventory, but you don't want to provide a bad customer experience for your customers. Right. And those two people who don't get that product, they're going to be disappointed.
So I think it's really a balance between, you know, deciding where, how fine the line is for you. Right? And most companies, I would say have a safety stock in place. Typically, I've seen that as two units. So for every product they always hold back two units. From hitting basically web, because that's where you could have a situation, Chris, like to your point where you've got six people online at the same time, you know, it's a matter of seconds between, let's say when they're clicking the ad, you know, there, the checkout complete checkout button. So typically there will be a safety stock and how I've seen most of those cases handled is depending on the size of the company. If there are, let's say two people who didn't get the product, but they wanted it and those orders were automatically canceled. Let's say, you know, the retailer may be able to find those items within a store or another location, and they'll actually call that customer and fulfill those orders for them.
But again, it really depends on, you know, the staff you have in place and the size of the company.
Christopher Lacy: Okay. And so, with the increase that we have of people who order online and, so they're engaging Omni channel strategy when it does what it's supposed to do. It's connecting all touch points. It's making it so that people have more access to inventory and products. The flip side of that is with the rise of online channels and mobile channels came the rise of returns. On retail businesses. and I want to ask you about what is the impact of returns on the retail business, in the US or, and globally right now? Are you seeing? Cause I know that's something that new mine focuses on.
Yasmine Sayed: Yes, we do. and I think we focused on it because we saw that there really wasn't anybody else paying attention to returns. And it's such a big part of the business. You know, everyone likes to focus on top line sales, right?
More sales, more sales, sell more, sell more, but nobody's thinking about, okay, if I sell a hundred million dollars worth of product, but then I get 75 million back in returns. I really didn't make that much. So, it's yeah. So, and you would think that's just common sense, but it's fun when nobody really thinks of it that way.
Christopher Lacy: And just willing to interrupt. I'm sorry to interrupt you but be crazy because everyone would go online. Sales are amazing on my sales are amazing. And I was like, but online sales aren't that amazing because those online sales are being returned in stores. So whenever there was always this talk of how online business was stronger than brick and mortar. I'm like, well, not necessarily, because if all those sales online went back, those returns went back to online. I don't know.
Yasmine Sayed: Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you're talking a 35% return, right. Which is pretty honestly typical across most apparel retailers, that's a really high, higher return rate.
And I think, you know, I like to think of it in two ways, right. Because not only first of all, Getting a little bit outside of the realm of retail, but sustainability, right. Sustainability can be twofold. It can be a business, you know, their model of and how that is sustainable over let's say the next 10 years. And then also even sustainability of the environment, which we know retail has a huge global impact in terms of production returns, even just getting fulfillment, right? So every, every return is also another tax back to the environment because it's another shipment that has to be done. And then, those are, that's also coming back to the retail. There's more people who have to process a check that return. So, neither model is really sustainable. And I think that the thing is that we've made it so easy for customers.
Like the reason that I think this is happening is cause it's like this Amazon effect. Well, one, every retailer is offering ease of use. We've made it so easy. We've, in fact, we've trained our customers to buy as much as you want, because you can just return what you don't. You know, the thing is we need to start training them to be a little bit differently because we talked about this earlier, but retail should only have as much inventory. They shouldn't really, nobody wants to hold on to inventory. Sell it, and then it shouldn't be coming back to you. Not only is that going to be a more sustainable business model for the global impact that retail has on the environment.
Christopher Lacy: You made a really good point where you said, we gave them this mindset of buy as much as you want, because you can return anything that didn't really work out or that you don't want. And I would say that with this current COVID-19 situation. Li Edelkoort, in an interview, she said the quarantine consumption mindset and how it's going to change, which I wholeheartedly agree with her. And well, when we come out of this, we will be much more concise about how and what we buy. Right. I think that now there won't be, when we come out of this thing of let me buy as much as I think I want and then return what I don't want because people are living right now going, Oh my gosh, I can do without this. And so now when all of this is when people start engaging with retailers again, mindfulness will be far more present.
Yasmine Sayed: I agree. I mean, also just even thinking about why do I have all these things? I'm not literally wearing the same outfit every day for two weeks. You know all this stuff.
Christopher Lacy: I am going to put on this outfit now, just so that I don't feel.
Yasmine Sayed: Now I need to start doing that. I agree with you. I think also just the look, this has had a huge, COVID-19 has had a huge economic impact, right. Everyone either has lost their job, gotten a pay cut or that's to come in the next week or two, honestly. So, I think we've never as a society experienced something to this level.
And I think when people start to realize how easily your way of life could just be taken away or changed so suddenly, that yes, it's you know, you need to plan, you need to prep. I think that's going to affect how people are shopping, because to your point, yeah. Hey, you know what, maybe this is going to happen again. I don't know what's going to happen. I need to be more prepared next time. Yeah.
Christopher Lacy: Do you think that what will happen is. Retailers are about to start seeing an influx of returns to their warehouses when people kind of being panicked about, I bought this when I bought this and now, I don't need it. And they're sending it back for it to be returned.
Yasmine Sayed: Yes, definitely. I mean, I think also people who like I was just saying, this is interesting timing because as we know, like COVID-19 actually started at the end of last year, like right after holiday, it wasn't in the U S yet. But I was thinking that like, if that had, if we had gone into what we're going through right now, let's say in January. It would have been pretty crazy because you already stepped the highest time for retailers who get returned to anyway at that time.
Christopher Lacy: Right
Yasmine Sayed: For holiday, it would have been even more influx because people had just spent a ton of money and then were losing their money. You know, it's interesting timing that it's happened now. I absolutely do think that yes, many people are like, oh my God, I just bought this expensive purchase. You know what? Now's not the time. Let me return it. I don't need it. Yeah, absolutely.
Christopher Lacy: So how is, how does Newmine help retailers navigate? Cause those are some rocky waters. So how are you guys really the compass and helping them ease that and, and strategize for that.
Yasmine Sayed: So, we have, you know, like I said, we noticed that there was really a need for someone to focus on returns and that nobody was really focused on it. It was always the top line, like I said. So about two years ago we started working on a product, which we have since developed. And we were actually, it's being used by several big retailers, which is really exciting. It's called Chief Returns Officer. And ultimately it's an AI, BI driven tool that can ultimately predict, well, first of all, not only can it show you all of your reporting in terms of sales and then returns, which having worked in retail it's very, most companies do not have that level of reporting set up if they want it, it takes them a week to pull it together for a certain timeframe. By that timeframe, it’s you know, by that point, it's over, it's too late. Right.
Christopher Lacy: Right
Yasmine Sayed: You, you can't go back. So, the nice thing about this product is it offers all of this amazing information that retailers really want, but the best part about it is that it can predict which items will have a higher return rate and alternatively, which will have a low. So, you know, our feeling is, push the products that you know are going to have low return rates, promote those more on the products that you're going to see a higher return rate. Don't promote those until you've gone back and looked at, you know, the product and done an investigation. There could be QC issues. There could be, you know, many, many other issues that you're not understanding. And the nice thing about Chief Returns Officer is it pulls in so many different data points, including customer. Basically, any information they provide mostly from reviews, but we can pull reviews from any site. And we're working on also even pulling in some like social media commentary based on those products, which ultimately then gives you a sentiment. So, you can ultimately see, for instance, you might not know a product keeps getting a return because the holes in the arms are too tight, but you never knew that because no one's done an investigation after that product's gone live.
Christopher Lacy: Wow. I mean, you guys have seriously changed the game on how merchant teams can even do sell through forecasting for the next season, thereby appointments when they, when they go, I mean, that information is honestly like diamonds. It makes a huge difference because a lot of times there was only the one source to tell you why things weren't working on. And that was that's your sales associates, you know, your score line. And sometimes it was difficult for, I think the executive teams to listen because the information would seem anecdotal. And now this is, you know, numbers driven, statistics driven, information driven, and then it gets reinforced by the storyline teams. Wow. Brilliant.
Yasmine Sayed: Thank you. Yeah, we think so. And you know, I think you, you know, cause you've been on the front lines, Chris. Like you know how hard it is to get that information and how hard it is to even to your point, even by, because you're basically, I mean, it's somewhat a shot in the dark, so this can really help you to be armed with valuable information.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I think I'm so intrigue by, I'm sure this is the brainchild of Navjit, who's the CEO of Newmine and, and I'm now going to need to pick his brain on how he thought of all of the ways the data points would come in to make this a successful product. Really, they should all be using this.
Yasmine Sayed: I think so too. Let's let's get them on board.
Christopher Lacy: On board. We'll get them on board. So, I want to ask you, because you you started at Coach and moved away into the world of consulting, which is amazing. In the sense that you get to see what's happening, not just from apparel, retail perspective, but all perspectives and what's happening, and you see what's happening on a global scale.
So I do want to ask you, you know, if someone were going into retail, what are the three things you feel they need to consider? To be successful Retailer.
Yasmine Sayed: I mean, there's, so there's so many, it's very hard to go down to three things, but I will say, I think some of the most important things are, and you know, it's a few things we've already talked about, which is number one, Product Assortment, I think is important because I truly do think that you know, if you have a good product, people are going to want to buy it. So thinking about your product and then, another big thing is low inventory depth. Don't, don't saddle yourself with a ton of excess inventory, start small sell through, you know, you'd rather have people wanting more, you know, and it's not, it's a good problem to have, if you didn't have it, rather than having excess and not being able to sell it anywhere.
Christopher Lacy: Very true. Yeah.
Yasmine Sayed: And then I would say the biggest thing too is really technical capability, you know? We, there are so many great platforms, eCommerce platforms, e-commerce systems out there from things that can be used from a very, you know, mom and pop type retailer to a huge corporation. But I think the tricky part of it is that people try to customize. I would say my biggest piece of advice is to also step start with standard out of the box functionality. It will get you the farthest, it's the most sustainable. It will set you up for longterm success.
Christopher Lacy: That's great advice. That's great advice. All right. Thank you. So how can I listen to stay informed about Newmine and about you, an insights on the retail industry.
Yasmine Sayed: So you know, there's so much great content out there for Newmine. I would say, you know, follow us on LinkedIn, where you can see, you know, kind of new partnerships that we're doing. We put out a lot of information about you know, just the retail industry, but really also specifically to returns, which we're really focused on. You can also go to newmine.com and you can link over to the Chief Returns Officer website, where you can even do a kind of a calculator for your business to see how much you could potentially save and if you're interested in a demo, you know, chief returns officer you know, reach out to new mine has a contact us, or you can reach out to me directly. You can find me on LinkedIn, or, I'll give you my email, which is ysayed@newmine.com. And yeah, I look forward to connecting, please. I hope, I hope we get some people reaching out.
Christopher Lacy: That would be awesome. I'm sure they will want to everything you talked about today with us in omnichannel strategy. Extremely valuable information. I'm glad you had the time to speak with us today. Hopefully we will get to all meet in person at some point in the near future. So good luck with everything that's going on with this current, pandemics situation, and looking forward to seeing you on the other side.
Yasmine Sayed: Thank you so much, Chris. It was great chatting with you.
Christopher Lacy: Your welcome
Joshua Williams: Thank you for listening to this episode of Retail Revolution. A very special thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible, our guests, our students and fellow faculty at Parsons School of Design, especially in such an extraordinary and unprecedented time. Our theme music was composed by Spencer Powell.
Be well and stay tuned for our next episode.
