E194: Mark Adams & Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos

Richard Hill [00:00:04]:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One, and welcome to episode 194. Now in this episode, I speak with Mark Adams, general manager at BigCommerce and Roosevelt Santos, senior product manager at Recharge. We chat all things composable and the detailed process of replatforming, internationalization, and launching into a 180 countries, and how BigCommerce works with retailers to ensure a smooth transition, and the big one, reducing cost of ownership. And, of course, so much more in this one. So if you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast, so you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode. Hi, guys.

Richard Hill [00:00:51]:
How are we doing?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:00:53]:
Doing good. Good.

Richard Hill [00:00:55]:
Fantastic. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I think before we kick off and get into the nitty gritty, I think it'd be great for you guys to introduce yourselves and how you got into the world of ecommerce. So if you wanna go first, Mark, that'd be great.

Mark Adams [00:01:06]:
Yeah. So Mark Adams. I'm the general manager for BigCommerce here in Europe. Look after all of our go to market teams, sales, partnerships, customer success, professional services. I've been in e commerce for most of my career actually, originally working in my own agency from kind of the the early 2000, just really the dawn of ecommerce, and technology was, of course, very different back then. Lots of very common projects and, systems that we have. Great. And then spent some time kind of doing consulting for brands on technology strategy and PE companies around acquiring technology businesses.

Mark Adams [00:01:47]:
And then more lately, you know, BigCommerce in 2018, I set up the the team here in in Europe. I was the 1st person Harley Brown as CEO. And then, yeah, went away to be CEO of another tech, ecom company and came back, about just over a year ago. No.

Richard Hill [00:02:04]:
You couldn't keep away.

Mark Adams [00:02:07]:
I couldn't.

Richard Hill [00:02:09]:
Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. You've you've sort of seen it all then, I guess. Obviously, working in your own business, working in your own agency, then working for different tech companies, still working with different sort of, brands, and then obviously leading, in Europe on the on on Bigcom. So, yeah, lots to dive into. Thank you for that, Mark. Roosevelt, if you wanna introduce yourself to our listeners.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:02:30]:
Yeah. Of course. And thank you for having me. So I'm Roosevelt. I'm a Brazilian living in Amsterdam for a year and a half. I've been working in tech for about 15 years since the the dawn of iPhone actually. That's, really important moment, the change. Yeah.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:02:48]:
How we we work in tech actually, and change a lot of the retail experience for all the world. Right? And Recharge is a company that has transformed the way, traditionally, offline market works with payment cards and gift cards, currently present in a hundred 80 countries. Mhmm. And I've been basically leading our efforts in platform and customer experience, and it's been really a great experience being here. And about 8 months ago, we start working with BigCommerce, with Mark and his team to add BigCommerce to our platform stack, looking always to improve for the future and the increasing demands of the market.

Richard Hill [00:03:33]:
Oh, fantastic. Well, thanks for that, guys. So I think the best way to to dive in, obviously, you you sort of said there, you know, you started working with, BigCommerce and Mark and the team sort of 8 months ago. But I guess it'd be good to sort of, step us back sort of prior to that. What made you sort of make the decision to or what what was sort of the key factors that led to working with BigCommerce? Why did you choose BigCommerce as your sort of as part of your stack?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:04:03]:
As a recharge, we are always looking at how to improve our platform for the future. Mhmm. As I mentioned, the the market is always evolving. The demands from the user are always evolving. Users want things even faster than before. They want speed and everything. They want a great experience. The demands from experience 10 years ago were very different than demands that we have today.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:04:27]:
And looking for that, we're always looking for solutions that allow us to do this faster. And having a solution like BigCommerce with really great API documentation and solid solutions for part of what we want to improve allow us to do innovation even faster.

Richard Hill [00:04:45]:
Mhmm. Mhmm. So in to so I think there's a lot of talk in the industry and a lot of talk around sort of composable and and sort of that sort of modular future proofing. Was that a big part of why you chose BigCommerce as well?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:05:01]:
Definitely. Definitely. Mhmm. As I mentioned, BigCommerce, we started this conversation actually about a year ago. When I start leading the efforts for the whole platform, I was looking for where we can make our platform even better. And then you always find different opportunities. But then you want to find that in a way that you can, in the future, continue to replace the small pieces, the composed architecture so you can always continue to innovate. But you also want to leverage what is already done in the market so you can spend more time in what is a really true differentiator for your business, in our case for our customizing prepaid solutions.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:05:44]:
So looking at that, we start a procurement process to understand the tools in the market to solve what we wanted with a really big list of criteria. And after 4 months, the result is that we BigCommerce was the best fit for what we needed, and we could easily integrate our solutions into our stack to solve the problems. Not the problems, but to improve the things that we wanted to improve in our stack in a faster way. So it was really, and has been a really great experience. Having Mark and the team aboard is really almost an extension of our team. We are very close working together in implementing, testing the solutions, and make sure we have a fast, go to market.

Richard Hill [00:06:29]:
So I think what springs to mind straight away will be there'll be a lot of people listening, a lot of people that are a lot of merchants, you know, merchant, you know, owners, marketers, you know, people that have gotta make these decisions to to replatform or, you know, to add, you know, elements and, you know, and grow the business. You talked about that procurement process. Can you maybe step through a couple of key areas of that procurement process that sort of led to it being successful? Because I think, you know, a lot of people are not quite sure where to start. You know, they may be you know, a lot of clients we speak to are sort of but they may be at the 20, 30,000,000 mark turnover. That's a lot a lot of people we speak to, and they're like, right. We wanna you know, they've got this vision to do, you know, whether it's 50, a 100 mil. But they maybe don't know what they don't know is the reality. They don't quite know what is out there, what you know, they they within their bubble of, you know, connections and this the the the market they're in and the experience that that team's got.

Richard Hill [00:07:27]:
So, you know, they might be asking the wrong questions, for example, and not really thinking, you know, future proofing. So maybe step us through that procurement process, and what were some of the key things in that process that you think led to a successful sort of, partnership with BigCommerce?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:07:45]:
Yeah. That's a good question, actually. And I think the most important thing, if I can highlight 1, would be to tap in the shared knowledge that you have inside the company. At WeChat, we have a really great team in different departments, people from different backgrounds for more than 40 countries with different perspectives in life as well and how to use the solution. They really have a lot of experience inside the company. We have people with 5, 10 years in the company. We also have people with 5 months, 15 months, a year. So they can bring so much to the table to understand different perspectives on the users' problems on how to see the market.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:08:27]:
So I think the big first step that you can do is to really go around the business talking to people about Yeah. How we see the opportunities. Of course, we have to prioritize what are the main opportunities we have. But around that, I like to first, in a really, product way, explore things. So, make a broader understanding of what is happening and what are the options, what are the solutions, and understand what can have more impact for the business as well. And once you do that, during the procurement process is about having those criteria, then it's time to go into detail how those items, those things that you found can be measure against solutions in the market. And even before that is actually nice as well to have a first conversation with the biggest players in the market. That's what I did.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:09:20]:
So I basically looked at the market reports Yep. On the biggest players, of course, you know, the big commerce was there. And just start a conversation first to understand what the platforms they are their offer because that can also be a source of insights. And once you gather this, again, I use the team to understand, oh, that's actually something interesting. And then I came up with a list of criteria of things we know we need based on, the data that we have on the users, the market, how they use our systems and how will we want to improve, but also things that can be a good opportunity. And then I basically give different weights for those criterias and then start talking with the the vendors, and assess these points. And it's a really long process, and we have basically a committee inside the company to go through every question. So we did, reference checks.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:10:17]:
We did technical assessments. We trialed the APIs and the solution before. Yeah. So every aspect that was important for us, what is the SLA for customer service? How would work the partnership once we we signed the contract? Worked the real limits. Everything was a very long, important process that we went in the details of everything to make sure, it was a great fit for what we need because it is a partnership that we want to be a partnership for a long time. We're always looking to improve, and we needed a solution that can grow together with us. We don't want to make partnerships with things that we're gonna last just for 6 months. We want a lot of So how

Richard Hill [00:11:03]:
so so from the moment you decided that, obviously, you were looking for a new partner to making the decision to work, how long was that processed before you'd sort of, right, this is the one. How long was that?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:11:13]:
It it was about we started in August, the conversations internally. I believe in September, we start reaching out to companies, and I believe we signed the contract actually on the 21 December last year.

Richard Hill [00:11:28]:
Oh, okay. Yeah. Just before Christmas. Not that we have an appraisal for Mark.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:11:32]:
Exactly. Exactly.

Richard Hill [00:11:35]:
Oh, fat that was a very very thorough response there. Thank you very much for that. I thought that was you know, I I would say to the you know, I think a a lot of people that listen to you know, it's sort of they're milling this over, this process and the thought some of the just the thought of, you know, the implications of some of the decisions you've got to make are obviously huge. You know? So I think you brought you broke that down really, really, really detailed, but I like the idea of, you know, really bringing in different people from the teams. It sounds obvious, but, obviously, people that have been there, maybe not that long, that have got fresh ideas, have come from other you know, depending on what business you're in or the the parts of the industry or the parts of, know, obviously, if you're if you're listening as a as a merchant, which most people are, there's a lot of different experience in the team. You know, the people that have been there a long while, you know, although they've got a lot of experience, they might also have a very very,

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:12:25]:
how can we put it, a

Richard Hill [00:12:26]:
very fixed, focus, a very fixed opinion on things, whereas fresh ideas, bringing that through, and then consolidating that down to a hit list. And as you mentioned right at the beginning, I mean, I think you're in a 180 countries, aren't you? That must have been a big part of the decision, because, obviously, I'm very aware of how very good BigCommerce is in in multicurrency, multilanguage. That was that a big part

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:12:51]:
of the decision? Definitely. That's a critical part of the decision in the business. I think it's a big differentiation that we have from other players in the market that we made the little choice to be multi language, multi currency. We want to offer the best solution in a global scale with a local experience.

Richard Hill [00:13:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's where the the huge leverage, isn't it? Where it's one of the biggest levers we see with merchants that we we work with. Typically, they come to us with maybe 2 or 3 countries enabled or 3 or 4, different, feeds in different countries on different platforms. But, obviously, till you can multiply that very quickly when you sort out your multicurrency, multicountry, multifeed. So, Mark, obviously, you're you've been working with Roosevelt on this project and the team have. You know, is this a sort of typical project for you guys? I mean, I think, you know, when we talk about composable, how sort of how much of a focus is that for you and your team at the moment?

Mark Adams [00:13:56]:
A huge a huge approach. But before we get into that, I I wanna pick up on something Roosevelt was talking about, the ways of working, and how how they work with us, because I think that is genuinely really interesting. You know, at Recharge, they've got their own internal IT organization. They're not using an agency to go and deliver that. Round about a 5th of our projects are of that nature where the customer is doing the development internally. Themselves. And for us, often, that's one of the most challenging use cases, because, you know, lots of companies don't do these types of projects every single day. They don't have the the ways of working, the approaches, the project governance to be able to pull this off successfully.

Mark Adams [00:14:42]:
And and it when when projects go really well, it is because of the culture of the organizations involved, the dedication of the various people, and the alignment of various people from all parties. And that's clearly something that recharge just having their DNA. They know how to deploy technology. A lot of retailers, for example, are not often typically great at that, and so projects can be, can be challenging. You know, we we were launching the first site, I think Roosevelt, correct me if I'm wrong, within kind of two and a half months, in in Ireland. And so it's it's been very rapid. Lots of collaboration. We work closely together.

Mark Adams [00:15:19]:
We have our services, people within the project as well. And and that is particularly with a composable project, which is highly technically complex, that kind of culture is is very helpful. It makes it the chances of success

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:15:36]:
are higher.

Mark Adams [00:15:36]:
I mean, on composable, it's interesting, as I mentioned, you know, when I first got into ecom, that's how everything was developed. I mean, there was no big format did everything back in early 2000. You bought content management, you bought search, you bought an ecommerce platform, and you had to plug it all together yourselves. And it was it was complex, difficult, challenging.

Richard Hill [00:15:59]:
I remember

Mark Adams [00:16:00]:
well. And very, very, very costly. And I think that is you know, with where composable is today, particularly with BigCommerce, our strategy is is not only to, you know, create the agility through Composable, allowing our customers to pick the best in class technologies and approach that they want to take to customer experience, but also the way that they deploy that technology. That's often the key. It's it's not just picking the technologies. Are they preintegrated? Yeah. Yeah. Is available? Do they match? And is it gonna be easy to actually pull that off? And and is the architecture gonna be correct for what the customer's trying to achieve? So there's there's lots of moving parts in composable, and at BigCommerce, what we're trying to do is simplify those moving parts.

Mark Adams [00:16:46]:
We wanna make composable easy, simple, as we possibly can. So we're doing a lot of the heavy lifting, ourselves around this. And then, of course, you know, the customer has to have the right strategy. They have to understand how those tools and technologies are gonna be used, by their business users in particular and how it's gonna be deployed by by the by the technical teams. And, again, what we're trying to do is move away from technical intervention to manage composable to business user management. And that's our journey, and we'll talk about that in terms of, you know, our roadmap a bit later. But I think that's making composable successful. You look at the biggest failed projects in our industry in the last you know, 3 or 4 years, it's because they were the customer was trying to do composable, but they weren't really given a road map to help them do that.

Mark Adams [00:17:39]:
And they were they were having to learn Yeah. On the job and make really difficult decisions.

Richard Hill [00:17:44]:
And Yeah. This wasn't connected. They got their sort of business to platform, but there's not that middle man, if you like, and that middle connector, which is obviously something you guys are are super strong at. Yeah. Yeah. So, obviously, Mark, you know, Roosevelt, you know, Mark from, obviously working with a lot of a lot of different merchants, a lot of different use cases. And, obviously, Roosevelt, you know, a very strong business growing year on year. You know, what are some of the trends you're seeing right now in, obviously, in reasonable in your industry, but, Mark, in the in the industry as a whole that sort of successful merchants are, sort of embracing and doing well with? What, you know, what are some of the things you're seeing at the moment? Now you might be looking for an SEO boost, a down to earth digital PR campaign to share your story, or maybe just some straightforward technical help to amp up your performance.

Richard Hill [00:18:36]:
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Mark Adams [00:19:06]:
Well, we've talked about composable. Around about, you know, close to 30% of all of our builds now are are composable. And and in larger enterprises, virtually all of them are composable. So that is definitely a trend, that we're seeing. Yeah. I think, you know, more broadly right now, there are there are 2 key how do I grow sales faster? How do I ensure that I grow them profitably? And therefore, how do I manage, you know, that that ecommerce infrastructure to be able to to go and do that? So cost of ownership is being looked at very carefully by boards at the moment. Yeah. Investment decisions are being scrutinized like never before.

Mark Adams [00:19:48]:
I mean, even going back to kind of, I remember, 2,000, 2008, 2009, that's the the last time where I felt we were in a kind of a macro economy where it was there were that many headwinds, and it was that challenging, and and the decisions were scrutinized in in kind of the same way. And and so, you know, for a for a for a brand, for a retailer, for an organization on this journey, they've got to marry vision and strategy. They've gotta manage that from a cost perspective, and at the same time, they've got to they've gotta grow sales profitably. That's that's really the conundrum to solve 3 those three things all at the same time. So I I think for leaders like Roosevelt, it's it's a it it is it is particularly challenging. So what I would say, you know, you need good partners. You need partners that have got the expertise, the experience that have been on that journey many times to help you and and to lean in. You need good leadership in the company.

Mark Adams [00:20:45]:
And I come back to kind of project delivery. The trends I often see related to that is, because of the nature of SaaS over maybe the last 10 years and plug and play, often customers, have lost the ability to manage IT projects successfully back 10, 12 years ago when I was doing this in my agency. You know, a lot of customers have project management teams. They were doing this all the time because that's the way technology worked. They had to. Well, SAS has introduced the easier way to deploy technology and manage it. And then then some of the some of the kind of, the governance and perhaps the the ways of working we spoke about earlier, that that gets lost as things get easier. When you get into, you know, different situations and complex projects, you need the customer needs those skill sets.

Mark Adams [00:21:33]:
And and oftentimes, we we don't always see that. And the most successful deployments of technology happen when the the customer understands really what they're getting themselves into and what they need to do, and they know how to manage Yep. Their their technology agencies, their partners, etcetera. So a trend to kind of at the customer to to reinvesting those types of things, is is something else we're also seeing. Of course, AI AI everywhere at the moment, being talked about an awful lot. Yeah. And to some extent, a lack of genuine use cases that are highly successful. But, yeah, that's it's

Richard Hill [00:22:12]:
There was a couple of there was a couple of things your you guys are doing with AI. I mean, I was at your partner summit, a few months ago, and, obviously, there's a few things there. But what is what's BigCommerce doing with AI now that our listeners should be aware of?

Mark Adams [00:22:29]:
A few things. So, we're launching Big Copywriter, which is basically the the tool that will help, you know, product merchandisers and content writers produce product descriptions Yeah. Forms of content out of the box. So that's kind of speed, time,

Richard Hill [00:22:46]:
and That's most merchants' pain in the bottom, isn't it? Right. You got another 10,000 SKUs to write about. Oh, you're joking. Yeah.

Mark Adams [00:22:56]:
And and then using AI to optimize that that product description for the channel in which the the data is being consumed, the marketplace. So Yeah. Channel. A lot of work is going on, in our product around that at the moment. What else? Search and merchandising. So we're leveraging Google's AI technologies in this area to improve search Yeah. Semantic search capabilities and merchandising capabilities and recommendations, to to name a few. There's there's there's a few other areas, but those are the main ones right now that we're focused on, are the ones that are gonna allow our our business users to, you know, do more with less.

Richard Hill [00:23:35]:
Yeah. No. Thank you, Mark. Roosevelt, what what are you seeing at the moment?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:23:40]:
Yeah. What we have seen, in our space, and it's true for a lot of spaces actually, current, customers have always entered products quickly. I think that becomes even more relevant in the times that we are now. The speeds of the the Internet improved so much in the last 15 years. Mobile in everybody's pockets, AI as well. And so for us, the recharge looking at the speed of delivering the digital products that we sell has been always relevant to provide the best experience for the user. And that comes again, relevant, aspect to having a partner that can really truly deliver a fast solution and also a fast partnership as well. As, Mark was saying, we had cases that we made, really quick decisions together like a extended team with BigCommerce.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:24:34]:
And that is really helpful to, like I said before, speed, the time that we can deliver, innovation. And as, it's really important for the business to be to be quick to respond to this market and the customer demands. So I think that's a really, really relevant, aspect to add to what, Mark brought.

Richard Hill [00:24:56]:
Yeah. No. I I totally agree. I think that innovation piece, speed, you know, so everything seems to be speed, doesn't it? I mean, you talked about, you know, I've just gone on I've just sort of been, I would say backpacking. That would be that would be quite true. But, going going from, middle of nowhere in in Southeast Asia, you know, with different Internet connections and, you know, just keeping it was a bit of a test for me for my, you know, for for me. You know, I run a behind the podcast as I think most of us just know there's a there's a, you know, an ecommerce marketing agency, and I try to we've been building that in a way that it's you know, obviously, we do have an office, and we do have a physical location whereas as our HQ, but we have people scattered, you know, all over the world that work for the company. And, you know, and I like my passion is is travel.

Richard Hill [00:25:41]:
So I'll try to spend sort of 3 or 4 or 5 months traveling around and, you know, we went to a lot of places in the middle of nowhere, basically, in this in Southeast Asia and just sort of keeping in contact with everybody. And it's just incredible, I think, now. I mean, it has been for many years, really. But, you know, I think my Internet here in the office in the UK is probably the worst Internet that I've encountered, after after the after living in on a almost in the I was literally in a, you know, in a, paddy field for 2 weeks a couple of weeks ago in in the literally, the middle of nowhere. And it was just lightning fast everywhere. It's it's crazy sort of what what is out there and what can be done and, you know, the amount of people that obviously, you know, work like that as well. You know, especially in our industry, the tech side of things, a lot of, you know, developers, tech people work remotely in the middle of nowhere and so forth, but very interesting. Very interesting.

Richard Hill [00:26:32]:
So I think, let's move it up a bit to you know, we talked about a few things there. I think a lot of key areas. I think the the thing that resonates for me is what Mark and and what Roosevelt the way you have successful, you know, your project's been, but that's obviously partly because you've got that experience who's about in your team, that tech team, you know, however, whatever we wanna call it. But I think, you know, obviously, a lot of companies don't have that person, those people. They've got used to our plug and play piece, a plug and pay play tech, you know, and a few I'm simplifying this a lot, but, you know, 3 or 4 bolt ons and various partners, and it it it sort of works. But then when we start, you know, we start talking about APIs, and we start talking about making it work with a 100 80 countries. And, you know, I guess this is more of a question for Mark. I mean, you've sort of touched on it.

Richard Hill [00:27:23]:
What would you say to companies that are listening where I think, oh, that's quite a daunting task? You know, we don't have that guy. Obviously, you know, what we're saying, you know, the different partners and different tech, platforms like BigCommerce obviously have those teams, but they probably feel quite intimidated by even some of those conversations. You know, what would you say to those guys that are listening, Mark, about you know, they really wanna sort of really explore it, but it is quite a daunting task because they just don't have that that sort of those people, that team in their team?

Mark Adams [00:27:54]:
Yeah. Pick partners that have been there and that have done it and that understand it suit you. You know, for ex I've been most of my career, most of the people that I've hired at BigCommerce in the last kind of 15 months are industry veterans of service delivery and ecommerce, because that is the differentiator. You'd probably be surprised that I'm gonna say this, but, you know, technology is an enabler. It's not the solution. Solve the problem. And many technologies are very similar. And, yes, of course, there are differences in some.

Mark Adams [00:28:32]:
But it's more about how the technology vendor and the other partners you might have, and the skill sets they have, the experience they have to be able to help you cut the customer on that journey. That's the most important things. If those skills and experiences and expertise are not within any one of your partners, then, you know, be very careful about going on that journey. The second thing I would say Yeah. It can be broken down. You don't need to go I'm a I'm a I've never been a fan of big banging projects and doing everything at once one single delivery. It's it's high risk. And so mitigating the risks of of of project delivery, which actually Roosevelt has done at recharge.

Mark Adams [00:29:16]:
So they they're deploying incrementally across countries, testing, learning Yeah. The next one. Yeah. Smart approach, it derisks it, and you learn along the way, and you gather those experiences, to make better decisions in the future. So those are probably the 2 things I would say that you genuinely make the difference more than anything else.

Richard Hill [00:29:36]:
Yeah. No. Brilliant. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. So I think, we're sort of coming into not be well, this episode will air and will be, you know, literally a week or so from q 4. You know, the in theory, it's, the majority of merchants rely on q 4 as most business well, a lot of businesses do, but merchants specifically, you know, Obviously, preparing for that, you know, we're we're a few weeks out from from that. But I think, you know, I think a lot of people make the mistake where, you know, q 4 comes and goes, whether it comes to January, February, and they have a look at the the accounts.

Richard Hill [00:30:15]:
It's like, it's maybe not quite gone. You know, we we sold a lot of stuff, but the bottom line is is is pretty thin. You know? And, ultimately, you know, it's it's a little bit challenging out there. In terms of costs and savings and and sort of, obviously, across the merchants, you're working with Mark and and yourself, Roosevelt, as a, you know, as a as a merchant. What would you say about sort of things that companies should do right now to look at sort of cost saving exercises? What are you seeing that, you know, the simple things that we talk about, you know, you know, here at our agency with our clients, the different routines that they should be doing, different things, you know, that they should be checking. You know, you've talked a bit there around, you know, doing things in stages. Obviously, you're not got this massive cost. You're breaking it down.

Richard Hill [00:31:03]:
But what are you seeing, guys? And what do you what would you recommend to our listeners to sort of look at saving costs and sort of minimize costs over this coming sort of next 3, 4 months?

Mark Adams [00:31:14]:
Shall I take that first, Richard? Yeah?

Richard Hill [00:31:17]:
Yes. If you wanna go first, Mark, please.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:31:18]:
This is a tough question because if probably if

Mark Adams [00:31:22]:
you haven't already made these decisions and you're in we're in now coming towards the end of August, it's gonna be difficult to have a big impact in in a short amount of time, but let's try and answer it. The first thing is to ensure that, your systems stay up through peak. You know, the biggest impact is it on profitability is when you've got the cost, but you've not got the sales. And if something's down and not working and the customer can't check out, you're not generating revenue. So job number 1, ensure that it is robust as it possibly can. And and there are things you can do with your vendors, for example. So when you're going into peak when you're going into sale, if you plan certain types of sales, many of our customers are doing flash sales, for example, and short term high velocity, sales that that last for maybe 24 hours or something like that. Have the conversation with your customer success manager, your vendor, to inform them so that they're they are ready and are ready to expect that.

Mark Adams [00:32:22]:
Even in the SaaS world

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:32:23]:
Yeah.

Mark Adams [00:32:24]:
You know, in theory, you have, the ability to scale magically sometimes, I think customers expect. Well, it isn't all magic. It's still IT. It's still infrastructure. It still needs to be planned and provisioned. And the more, you you know, the technology vendor has a a view of what to expect, the better that they can plan for. So, you know, engage and and and and talk to them. Clearly, it comes up every year, you know, the level of promotional activity and when you do your promotional activity as you go through peak can have a big impact on on costs and profitability.

Mark Adams [00:33:01]:
And so, you know, learning from, you know, previous years and and doing that in the best possible way, This, of course, will be tough in in in the current economic climate, but looking to optimize that. If you're selling on many different channels over peak, One of the one of the big things that that we're focused on is being able to optimize, as I said earlier, the product information for, for the channel. And you can and and what that can lead to, if it's properly optimized, is a much lower cost per click, on paid advertising. Yeah. Typically, 10 to 30, even 40%, if it's properly optimized. That can have a big impact on on cost saving, and that can be done very quickly. We have tools and technologies such as Feedonomics, which helps with this. There are other tools as well.

Mark Adams [00:33:54]:
But if you're spending a lot of money on paid digital and it's not properly optimized, I'd I'd go after that pre peak for sure.

Richard Hill [00:34:02]:
Yep. Yeah. I think it's it's a it's a very quick will, isn't it? The feed piece that I think well, we know gets missed so many times where it's actually fairly easy with the tech that's out there. Obviously, you mentioned Feedonomics. You know, we we do a lot of work with those with you guys on that. But just making sure those titles, descriptions, you know, the extra data that you can have in a feed that usually, as a default, just isn't there. Yeah. You know, the different custom labels based on the different platforms that usually are just not there if it's just sort of out of the box, whereas it's actually quite straightforward.

Richard Hill [00:34:35]:
And then I know with Freedom Nom, which you can obviously split test the the titles as well. So you're you're split testing in, say, shopping ads, for example, which again, probably most people listening, I would say 95%. But probably 99% are not doing that, so quite a quick win, but, obviously, you've got to explore that. But, yeah, shopping feeds is a great one. Yeah. Roosevelt, what are you what are you seeing?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:34:57]:
Yeah. I I truly can reinforce what Mark brought. I think guaranteeing the operations are working, inside the business, but also if the different partners that we have to compose our solution are really key to make sure we don't lose anything during that moment of high season. And in general, it's important that we can leverage data, understand the customer behavior to really target our efforts to be the most efficient possible. That's also a thing that is really important in our efforts to reduce costs, optimization on how we we do conversion, if it's working or not, and doing this in a daily basis, in a weekly basis, always reviewing how it is the results for each specific thing. And in our case, in each specific market or each segment of the customer is really important to understand those markets, those customers, and be on top of the data to be able to really optimize our marketing efforts.

Richard Hill [00:36:02]:
So you do a lot of a lot of, conversion rate optimization. So in terms of, obviously, Roosevelt, I assume your your business is very much reliant on retention and people obviously continuing to use the service. We have a lot a lot of listeners with subscription products and, you know, and a lot of we have you know, I know we've got a lot of a lot of clients as most, people have in this industry that are sort of a lot of repeat purchase, you know, of certain clients brings to mind. We've got a few clients that have got children at different stores and, you know, doing a 100,000,000 online and selling, say, pet products, for example, which, you know, is very much you know, you buy, your flea treatment in March because it's getting hot March, April, and then in you know, and every year, it rolls around and, you know, you you it's very fairly fairly quick win to obviously keep those clients engaged, to keep those clients, you know, the communication flow with various flows and campaigns depending on your on your system. What anything you would sort of, obviously, your retention for your business was supposed to be a huge huge lever. Anything any sort of little secret, source you can add in to the mix in the episode around retaining some of your clients, some of the things you've been doing. Obviously, you mentioned sort of, conversion value optimization there and and and, that. But any particular specific things that you would recommend sort of for improving average order values, improving stick rate retention?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:37:31]:
Wow. Yeah. There are a few things we can do. Of course, I don't want to give too much away for our competitors.

Mark Adams [00:37:37]:
That's cool.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:37:40]:
But I think the secret, again, goes back a little bit to what I said before, and especially in a big business like ours. We always say we have a deliberate global solution, but we want to provide the local experience. That truly makes a difference. It's about the product description, the product title. Yeah. How people how people what is the term that the person uses to top up their phone is not top up everywhere. It's different. Yeah.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:38:08]:
And we have to be aware of those difference to make sure we provide an experience that the user feels safe that he can use because we understand his need, how he talks, how he expects to be served, what are the payment methods he expects to have on his country. So those small things combined make a lot of difference.

Richard Hill [00:38:29]:
So that local knowledge, bringing that in, because I think, yeah, got got all the days where you can hit Google translate and sort of cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:38:38]:
No. That doesn't work.

Richard Hill [00:38:39]:
No. I mean, it yeah. But just to buy I was saying I was away a few weeks ago and the the the differences in in just some of the things and some of the, you know, there's

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:38:48]:
a you know, like, in

Richard Hill [00:38:49]:
the UK and, you know, a lot of places we use Uber, but out there, there's a, you know, it's a it's a lot bigger in Asia is Grab. You know? And when and some of the different sort of wording on the app is quite different to Uber. Now, if you went over to the US and tried to launch Uber, which I'm sure they have, you wouldn't just sort of copy, you know, you know, it's very very different. So as you know, the base idea is the same, but ultimately, you know, some of the language terminology, you know, is very different. And I think that's, yeah, we see that a lot in in in the sort of the SEO side of our business. Obviously, it's about 50% of our business is SEO. And, you know, that translation piece that, you know, having somebody on the ground that, you know, is is native, essentially, obviously, depends on the on the specific use case. But, yeah, that's a that's a great one.

Richard Hill [00:39:33]:
Great one. So I think, let's let's move on to the last couple of questions, guys. It's been fantastic having you on. So I think one for you, Mark. I think, obviously, we've talked a lot around sort of, I think, more b to b, you know, and, and, you know, what is sort of big commerce plan? You got this b to b, b to c. You know, I think, you know, when I go to this when I go to your site and look at sort of signing up as a, you know, as a potential smaller merchant, shall we say, you know, you know, you've got to fill the form in, and I think, oh, that's that's maybe a little bit more challenging for some of the smaller merchants to get over the line. Are you really sort of targeting more b to b, b to b now, or what what's what's the strategy there?

Mark Adams [00:40:18]:
Yeah. I mean, yes. We are we we we we're having a lot of success in b to b, but that is predominantly having a great product for those types of customers and investing in that product. I'll come back to that in a second. Actually, from a marketing perspective, I would say 2 thirds to 3 quarters of all of our marketing is still focused in b two c. We've been ramping b two c direct marketing for a couple of quarters now here in Europe. And so we're doing more of it, and we plan we plan to equalize that more from a marketing perspective. But, you know, we're doing both.

Mark Adams [00:40:54]:
Still, B2C is 2 thirds of all of our customer base in Europe at least, and that B2B, which is a third, has really been acquired in the last 18 months, 2 years. So we're growing much faster in B2C sorry, in B2B than we are B2C. Yeah. Pension rates seem higher in B2B. Our conversion is higher. Our average revenue per customer is higher in B2B because we're targeting much bigger businesses. So the metrics look good in B2B, but our largest customers are, in fact, B2C. Recharge is B2C.

Mark Adams [00:41:30]:
The biggest customer we signed in Q2, another £1,000,000,000 in GMV is b2c. Still, the very largest of our customers, and I think this is the same in America as well, are, you know, big multichannel b2c retailers and brands. Yeah. But b2b is growing very quickly at BC. Yeah. You know, 35% up year on year so far. And for us, there's there's less competition from a platform perspective because, you know, you look at all the SaaS vendors, nobody's really focused on it that has any scale, and we are. We're focused on it.

Mark Adams [00:42:09]:
We're investing heavily in the road map on it, and we continue to innovate on it. So it's

Richard Hill [00:42:13]:
I love it. I love the fact that you're doing you know, obviously, you're doing both, but I think, you know, my background is very much, you know, I had a I had a distribution business, and I think, you know, there's a lot of opportunity there for, you know, platforms like yourself that there's a lot of, you know, b to b business out there that they need specific functionality that you guys have have nailed, you know, when we do we were talking about the different pricing that's I mean, the semi different things, obviously, but Yeah. You know, when we just talk about the different, you know, the different sort of front ends for different users, I think that you just that one use case alone. You know, if you do you can open up so many markets very, very quickly. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks thanks for clearing that up. Now from a personal point of view, Mark, when we started working with you guys maybe about 4 years ago, I have a little sort of, how can I put it? I have a little, hobby, which is investing.

Richard Hill [00:43:04]:
And I I always pretty much invest a few quid in all of our partners that we work with. So I put several £1,000 into, big cover shares, about 4 years ago. And it's not been a brilliant return, shall I say, to date. You know, what is your prediction for the Bigcom shares over the next couple of years? Any insights or anything anything you would say on that?

Mark Adams [00:43:26]:
Yeah. Obviously, we've just released,

Richard Hill [00:43:28]:
I apologize for this one. You weren't expecting this question, but

Mark Adams [00:43:33]:
Well, no. I I get it. I get it. We get asked this. So we've just released our q two results. I'd encourage people to go and have a look at those. The company really is in the midst of a of a transformation at the moment. So if you think about where we came from originally SMB, moving into mid market, and then moving towards enterprise, and we've done a successful job of that, but not as quick as many people, many investors perhaps would have liked, I guess.

Mark Adams [00:44:03]:
And the transformation we're now going on is really to accelerate the business' move to larger enterprise. So if you look at the way we're marketing, you look at the way we're structuring our teams now, the kind of people we're hiring, it is like I said, it's in ecommerce industry veterans. It's people that come from the enterprise ecommerce space, and we wanna go and win that market. I believe it's there for the taking. We have a couple of competitors Yeah. That are more API based than kind of full featured platform. Yeah. And, you know, the legacy vendors in that space are dying or slowing down and, you know, they're not innovating in their roadmaps.

Mark Adams [00:44:43]:
And and so I think that is the biggest opportunity for BC. If we do that successfully, you know, rest assured, all the other metrics will go along with it, higher profitability, larger revenues per customer, better retention rates in larger enterprise, which all drive revenue growth. That's our strategy. That's what we're, that's what we're gonna go and execute on more aggressively than we have been. I think in in the past, we've tried to be all things to all people, And, we're kind of letting go of that strategy a little bit and saying, no. We're gonna be the the very best platform for, composable architectures in the enterprise, but with a level of, simplicity that helps the customers execute that strategy more efficiently.

Richard Hill [00:45:27]:
Mhmm. Well, thank you, Mark. That was, very convincing answer. I might I might even top up. I might have a little top up next month and get a get a few more. We'll see. We'll see. Roosevelt, so, what would, in terms of what's on the road map for recharge, what what could you share with the the team that sort of, you're working over the next sort of 12, 18 months that you you're allowed to share?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:45:56]:
Yeah. That's, a good question. We get that a lot. I'll try to share well, I can give away not too much as I said before, without giving our secret sauce. But I think the fundamentals are the same. We have to understand truly, what is happening in the market. What is the customer demanding? So speed of delivering the the product. In our case, it's a digital product.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:46:21]:
Right? The user gets the code, the credit in his account or the PIN code and ensuring the connections with the partners are there in our past, and we can predict and deal with different situations. Even when the the partner is not available, we have to have plans for that. So being able to predict those risks, mitigate those risks in advance to always provide a great customer experience with speed as being our biggest focus is what are we're most focusing on right now.

Richard Hill [00:46:58]:
Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I'll be watching from the sidelines and keeping an eye on things. Well, thanks, guys. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. I'd like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Mark, do you have a firstly, Mark, do you have a book recommendation you'd like to recommend to our listeners?

Mark Adams [00:47:14]:
Yeah. I am rereading at the moment Good to Great by Jim Collins, which is one of my favorite book business books. I think you have to read that book. Like, most of them, actually, you have to read them every every few years. It's been 5 years since I read that. So I'm on chapter 3 rereading that book. Nice. Classic.

Richard Hill [00:47:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you, Mark. Roosevelt, what do what do you, what would you recommend to our listeners?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:47:40]:
Oh, there's so many good books out there. Right? I can mention a few. I already like to go back to 2, and I'll give a 3rd. I'll give you time. The hard things about the hard things is a really good book. I really love that book. I also like no rules, rules from the Netflix story. But I like yeah.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:48:02]:
But I one that I really like and I don't hear much about it is The Madness Effect from, Johansson, I believe. It's a really nice story how the family Mads family was to intersect ideas for different fields to innovate. And I I read that a long time ago without

Richard Hill [00:48:24]:
being too

Mark Adams [00:48:25]:
much my age. Yeah. Yeah.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:48:27]:
I always bring that to me to try to intersect ideas and innovate, sometimes bring in ideas for a different field to implement in a simple way for the solution.

Richard Hill [00:48:37]:
Fantastic. We'll we'll hook up all those 4 recommendations, in the show notes. So for the guys that are listed in, what that wanna find out more about BigCommerce, more about Recharge, I'll start with Mark. What's the what's the best way to reach out to you, Mark?

Mark Adams [00:48:51]:
You can go to our website, and and, request the connection on there. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, or via email, mark.adams@bigcommerce.com.

Richard Hill [00:49:03]:
Thank you, Mark. And, Roosevelt?

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:49:06]:
Yes. Please, access recharge, richard.com. Easy as it is. And, I'm on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect. I'm happy to connect with people.

Richard Hill [00:49:16]:
Thank you very much, Chaps. Well, it's been a absolute pleasure having you on, and I look forward to catching up with you both probably in a in a year or so, and we'll get you back on and see how, see how a few of these predictions are faring and see where we are with, Recharge and and the business. But thanks for coming on the show.

Mark Adams [00:49:33]:
Thank you, Richard.

Roosevelt Fernandes dos Santos [00:49:34]:
Appreciate it so much. Bye bye. If If

Richard Hill [00:49:40]:
you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast. You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and I'll see you on the next one.