Where Culture Happens, Commerce Follows

Phillip: Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

Brian: I'm Brian.

Phillip: And I am cold. It is cold here in South Florida. I'm getting a taste of what you get.

Brian: Cold? {laughter}

Phillip: I know. I know. I have nothing to complain about. But things are heating up here. We are in the midst of end of year planning. And I think people are looking forward to next year. I think people are looking at, you know, we're heading into trade show season. People are looking at innovation, I think. And as I'm talking to retailers, merchants, you know, folks in marketplace, they're starting to think about what is next. And I want to welcome two guests along with us and our newest partners, some folks from Aptos, to get into that consideration phase about what might be next for you as we talk about the next phase of innovation for what's happening in retail. And so, without any further ado, I would like to welcome to the show Jason James. Jason James is the CIO over there at Aptos, bringing two decades of leadership experience in cloud operations, cybersecurity and IT infrastructure and digital transformation. JJ, welcome to the show.

JJ: Yeah, Phillip, Brian, thanks for having us today.

Phillip: Yeah, I'm so glad to have you. And along with JJ is Nikki Baird. Nikki Baird is the Vice President of Strategy and Product at Aptos. Nikki is charged with looking after the future of Aptos clients and product solutions and services that focus on accelerating retailers' ability to innovate. And I think that's what we're gonna talk about here today. So Nikki, it's a pleasure to have you with us, too.

Nikki: Yes, thanks. I'm excited for the conversation.

Phillip: And I just wanna say, you know, this show and all of what we do at Future Commerce wouldn't be possible without our partners. And I think what is really key to underscore is that innovation doesn't happen in isolation. I think retailers depend on partners for innovation. And so today, I really want to get into this idea that as we go into the next six months, Brian, it's going to be a heavy trade show season. It's also a heavy planning season, where folks are going to be looking around for in the retail sector of what to implement next. So, we're talking about breaking through traditional barriers, we're talking about how to create more seamless, secure, imaginative customer experiences wherever commerce happens. Aptos has been partnered with us for the last few months on the podcast, the newsletter... and Aptos powers brands like New Balance, Crocs, Coach, North Face, Under Armour, Tumi. And I just think that it's an incredible solution that you all should consider. But don't take it from me. Nikki, JJ, give us a little bit about the solution that Aptos is partnered with in retail right now and what you guys are working on.

Nikki: Yeah. I would characterize it as, we do all the parts of retail that are hard––which some people might argue all the parts of retail are hard––but there are some that are harder than others. So True. That is true. Sale point of sale is probably one of the most difficult things to pull off in retail just because you have that distributed store environment. You have mobile devices. You have high turnover workforce. You have a young workforce, in many cases where this may even be their first job. And yet, you also have the compliance, and that you're collecting tax on behalf of the taxing authority that you're in. And you also want to control how much discount is given out and things like that. So I think there's a lot of kind of infrastructure that's involved in delivering point of sale. But then also it's supposed to be the heart and soul of how you deliver an experience to your customers, how you convey your brand value to your customers. So it is, probably, the hardest part of retail, and it's the main focus for us. We also have to focus on the inventory side and how to get that into stores. But actually engaging with customers, that's where the rubber really meets the road.

JJ: Yeah. So, sort of, to drill down on that. I mean, Nikki hit all the high points –– how do you look for the next generation technology in retail that combines top level security with a frictionless experience as much as possible in a evolving landscape of retail?

Brian: So true. Yeah.

Phillip: And doing it quickly. Right? And doing it outside of not just the––I think we'll talk about today––probably, not even in just the store setting. Right? I think retail is expected to be flexible, innovative, and maybe in nontraditional settings today, too. So we'll talk about some of that, too. Brian, you were saying?

Brian: No. I just feel like this is such an important time to be focused on this very difficult problem because engagement with customer is...it seems like it's becoming harder and harder as we see the customer rapidly evolving and the places they show up. It's a multimodal engagement at this point as we've kind of uncovered in some of our research. And so in many ways, there's a lot of rewriting of the rules that has to happen. And that means rewriting of software––the way that you think about software––because oftentimes, your software dictates how you engage. And so, I think that you all are at the forefront of that engagement inflection point, and that means that you're you're you're helping rewrite those rules in real time. So, you know, I think that we say context is king. It's not content anymore. It's context. I think consumers are struggling, you know, in a world of, like, increasing inauthenticity to find authentic ways to engage with brands, and the context is shifting all the time for them. And so, Nikki, how is this sort of shaping where and how brands show up right now?

Nikki: Yeah. I think there are two parts to it, really. Like, it's discovery, right? Making sure that you show up in the same places that that resonate with your brand value proposition. So if you're a lifestyle brand, you wanna go to the events and the festivals and the concerts and any of those kinds of things that actually speak to the same kinds of brand values that you have. It's a great way for people to discover a brand. Or, it's also leverage, where it's an opportunity for you to use that to validate, look: I know what's important to my customers. I know, you know, from a lifestyle perspective, the different types of experiences that my consumers are trying to have. And I know it well enough that I'm here. If you're at this event and it's relevant to what my brand supports, then I'm showing you that I know and providing that context of, "yeah, I'm in. I'm the cool kid. You should come shop with me."

Phillip: And those, you know, cool kids––I think we've seen it happening so much now. The cool kids are fandoms. Right? They're run clubs. They're...It's wherever community is happening. Right? It's happening in so many different areas now. And that's happening, I think, outside of the traditional, like, retail doors. So we've seen many examples. Some brands are partnering with conventions and marathons, and what I might be reticent to classify as a cultural activation, but for lack of a better word, what do those experiences sort of lend themselves? You know...why do those experiences lend themselves so well to commerce, Nikki?

Nikki: Yeah. I think it's definitely that sort of lifestyle touchstone. Right? It's that appeal. If you're New Balance, for example, and you built your brand on running, then a central touchstone would be a marathon. And you probably can't get any more iconic than the New York City marathon. Right? So that's demonstrating your support for a community at a very, like, intense level to be able to say, "yes, I am here. I'm supporting running events. I'm enabling you. I'm an important part of this community. Uh, and so, you know, showing up to those events shows, hey. I know. I know how important this is to you. I know everything that goes into having a successful marathon experience. I even know what it feels like for your family and friends that you're bringing along to root for you and support you along the route." Like, that's all part of the value proposition. And, of course, people get swept up in the moment and want something to remember it by, and they're there to help enable that too.

Phillip: And and a historic size of a turnout; I think it was 59,000 plus people that finished that marathon this year. It's only growing in popularity. Yeah, you look at the level of engagement too. The expo of the marathon is its own draw. Right? It's the, just, going to see the partners of the New York City marathon is its own cultural affair in its own right, never mind just running it. I think that that's something that we we can't overlook. It's the commerce and the culture come together. Right, Brian?

Brian: Exactly. Yeah. I can't help but think that next year, there might even be 67,000.

Phillip: Oh, 6-7. You had to say it. Come on, man... {laughter}

Nikki: We gotta do that. {laughter}

Phillip: Boo. Boo. Boo.

Brian: Oh, man. I got booed down. I got booed down. It must have been at least 41 vendors at that time.

Phillip: We got it... You got your short clip out of it.

Brian: I got my short clip, yeah. So what's crazy about this is it feels like we used to think of physical as such a static thing. It was in a specific place. You were there. People knew where you were. Now it feels like we're in a more disembodied world, place seems to be rapidly evolving. The idea of place, what place means. The New York City Marathon is much of a place and an institution as a store on 5th Avenue. I think that being––and this requires an immense amount of flexibility, as you put it. I think adaptability and responsiveness in an age that lives at the speed of light––I almost said speed of culture––is huge. Tell us a little bit about some of the ways that you were able to help New Balance be successful in something so complicated and so and and yet and and ephemeral and but also, like, not.

Nikki: Right. Well, so New Balance would say that they basically set up the equivalent of a 100-store chain for a weekend, basically, and then have to take it down. So, it's 90-odd registers, but that's up significantly from when they first started. And part of the reason why is because when they first started, they had to lug, you know, big PC, you know, cash drawer, the whole nine yards to the show, and they had a depot set up to hold all those registers. They had to start unboxing them almost six months before the marathon just to make sure they could go through them all, make sure they were updated with all the right software. You know, the OS, any security patches, always an issue. Make sure all the, you know, inventory and pricing that they were gonna offer at that event was loaded onto those. They had to box them all back up. They had to stick them in a big truck and drive them all to Javits. And now, literally, if something went wrong while they were there, if they really had to, push came to shove, they could walk into an Apple store. They could buy an iPhone. They could provision it within ten minutes. So the difference in terms of the amount of prep work that they had to do and just their ability to expand the number of registers that they could really use and have functional in the space. It's really changed the game. And I think it's opened up, right? Like, there's only so many iconic marathons. There's the New York. There's London. Right? You've got your maybe top 10. But it does open them up to scaling out to other opportunities that maybe they wouldn't have considered at an event level because it wasn't at that level. But now they can get into more intimate events that are at a more local level than they could before.

Brian: Love that. That is exactly it. It's setting up infrastructure to be on the move, to be able to repeat, to be able to scale back down. I mean...What they did with New York was sort of, like, the max. And so now it's easier and more efficient for them to take these systems out and run them in more different locations all throughout the world. That's unbelievable. JJ, I would assume this is just absolutely astonishing on-demand retail theater talking about here. How do you build infrastructure to support this to make sure that you can actually pull off something that's not gonna just, like, break down on you in the moment.

JJ: Yeah. I think what you have to come in with a mindset is these these ephemeral retail experiences are really that, an experience. You know? You still have to bring your branding. You still have to bring your store experience to a non-proverbial four-wall center. Right? And these, with these events, you have to think about the fragility of them. And what I mean by the fragility of them, you don't typically have the same kind of dedicated network infrastructure. It might not be your core networking wireless access points, things like that. So you have to come with a point that you have to be flexible and be ready that an outage, a service interruption, something that could impact that experience can occur and therefore you have to build for it. Right? For us, you know, and we'll talk about this later, really, you know, offline capability, but also an environment that's not dependent upon a perfect or pristine network. You know, because when you think about it, you go into a convention center, you go into a rodeo, you go into a parking lot, these aren't ideal situations. They might be ideal for the experience you're having, but you think about the technology stack on the back end and those technologists and you know, I can imagine going back ten years ago and saying, hey, we wanna set up in a parking lot or we wanna set up and we need high speed internet and we need the same security as we have in stores and the CEO of yours head would have exploded, right? And so, but now that's the experience that we have to plan for. We have to plan for the unpredictability while still maintaining the experience, the brand, the essence of a retailer. And so it's not only interesting and innovative, it's exciting.

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Phillip: I think it also, you know, like you said before, is, uh, it allows you to be a little more, um, uh, nimble. Right? So you were saying, Nikki, you know, the timeline in order to to be ready for something like the marathon was this really, you know, laborious, uh, elongated, uh, timeline. Now it's something that we can be extraordinarily, uh, nimble in because the not only is the hardware readily available, but the technology and the software can be easily provisioned. I look at now that also is something that used to only be accessible to a select few large enterprises that could execute at that level. Now I look at, you know, many brands, you know, started on the smaller D2C scale at doing say, like pop ups. And they created a landscape where the small retail experience became sort of the de facto standard that now large brands have followed suit. They execute the small brand experience because that's a place of connection where you can feel like it's a more authentic, you know, way to experience in person, a more curated and maybe a more personal experience. So this pop up commerce experience, it used to mean making do. And we used to maybe experience that and maybe relegate it to smaller brands. But now it seems just like a strategic advantage. Is there a technology angle to that? And has technology evolved to support that shift as now that it seems that more brands are aiming at doing more pop ups? JJ, I'll I'll aim that at you first.

JJ: Yeah, I think number one, they're doing that because that's where the customers want it to occur, right? Instead of waiting for the customers to come to you, you're coming to your client base, you're coming to your customer base and in doing so, you're still bringing about that experience, you're allowing them to interact but you're creating in a sense a new experience. How exciting is it for somebody to go to a New York Marathon and pick up shoes at the marathon? You know, they may not be that they were running, they were supporting their spouse that was there, they were supporting their son or daughter that was there, but it's also an experience that will have future successes. Right? If you can walk into a retailer that's in a nontraditional retail space and transact, Nikki may know the odds and statistics more than I do, but I can tell you as a consumer, I'm taking off my CIO hat, I'm putting on my consumer hat. If they're able to pull this off in the middle of a parking lot, I'm probably a hell of a lot more likely to go in the store next time and say, you know, that was a really great experience. I bet it's even better in the store. I think that's what's driving a lot of it. It's driving in a sense that as there's so much competition out there for retailers, you have to have this, I think, as a differentiator to ensure that you're meeting your customers where they live, where they play, where they work.

Nikki: I'll jump on top of that. I think there's also the angle of the right experience for the right context. So like at the marathon, honestly, it's all about speed. Like, there's a huge long, you know, Disney like line that consumers have to get through. And these are people who are not there truly to shop New Balance. They're there to go experience the marathon. So in that context, they are all about speed. They want those transactions to be as rapid and painless as possible. They want everybody they don't want that line to ever stop moving. Everybody's just gonna be marching straight through the line and getting back to the experience that they wanna have. And then I do think there's also that context of, okay, yes, I wanna do a pop up. I want to set up in a location where I wouldn't normally reach or where, you know, my store is too far away or I wanna test a location and see if this is a great place to put a location. And in that context, you actually wanna bring the whole brand. Right? You wanna bring everything that you can do. You wanna be able to sign people up for your loyalty program. You want people who stop in and are like, oh, you're here. This is amazing. You want them not to feel like, I don't know who you are because this is the pop up and this is not the brand. Right? Like, can't deliver those kinds of experiences. You have to bring the whole brand value to that equation. So I think having the ability to pivot or balance or actively choose, right, what experiences am I gonna deliver in this location where I know it's temporary? Is this a full brand experience? Is this I know I'm pulling my customers away from something else, and I wanna deliver a very streamlined experience.

Nikki: Like, having that flexibility to do that and have it all be managed in the same place and with the same set of technology. I think that's the part that makes that a bit more game changer. Right? You could always, you know, go get a square and take transactions, But then it's very disconnected from your enterprise experience. And it's a lot of work to bring all that back into the enterprise. So Mhmm. You you have to have that what's available to me. You want everything to be available to you, and then you wanna be able to pare that down for the experience you're trying to deliver. To tie it back to kind of the events context, sometimes you have to just staff up. Right? And sometimes you can pull from your local pool of resources. When you have to staff up, then I mean, that's talk about a high pressure situation. I've never done this before, but I am literally gonna be ringing people up for the next eight hours. Right? Like, solid, uh, especially when you're talking about something like the marathon where it's just a constant stream of people. So you need to be able to enable them quickly. So in that in that context of speed, you need to really be able to hand them a device, and that device just sort of walks them through everything that they need to do, and they don't even need to think about it. It's like clear what the next step is. So that's an important aspect.

Nikki: And then same thing, if you're bringing the full experience out to an event or or some kind of engagement with customers and you have to bring the full, I can sign you up for a loyalty program. I can redeem your loyalty points. Even as an experienced store associate needs to know, okay, if I'm going to do a mixed cart, you're going to buy something that I don't have in the back of my truck. I'm going to enable you to buy that through something I could ship to your house. I still have to make sure that I walk through all the parts of that transaction. I need to get your phone number in this case. You might not have a phone number on file, but I need to prompt to get your phone number because that needs to go on the shipping part of it in case there's anything that's wrong with the order. Like all of those kinds of things. Those are things that a very experienced practice store associate might know intuitively. But when you're, you know, literally in the parking lot and you got to figure that out, then that's a different case. So like for us, that enablement piece, like no training manual, no training mode. You shouldn't even need it. It should just be so intuitive that it walks you through what's the next step that you need to have because then you may, you know, disappear back into the woodwork of the temporary work scene. Or you may take that back into the store and say, oh, now I know how to do this. So you gotta be able to kind of accommodate both both situation.

Phillip: There there was another use case, I think.

Nikki: So, yeah, I can't mention the retailer, but

Phillip: I

Nikki: But there is a retailer who is loading their full experience into literally, like, a camper van looking, you know, kind of I forget what they're called, but in a van. And and it's a full try on experience. So this brand is famous for, like, looking at your gait and giving you analysis for that. And out of the back of this van, they can custom fit you insoles for your shoes. So, like, that really is a case of packing a whole store into a van and driving it even to, like, corporate headquarters, for example. So they they bring that if a company is focused on, you know, health and wellness for their, uh, for their employees, then they this retailer rolls in. They're able to provide that full experience and sign people up for the, you know, runner program and all that kind of stuff. So they deliver that full experience, but it's literally packed into a van that they drive around.

Phillip: Got it. Uh, that's that's incredible. The kind of case study that we often don't hear about is how experience in the retail context is starting to come out of stores and become we hear a lot about, like, immersive experience. We hear a lot of immersive store design. We've written a lot about it at future commerce. Um, I don't think we've heard a lot about how, uh, mobile experiences are, you know, are being powered by technology, specifically things like point of sale, uh, because often experience isn't, uh, we don't turn the key on experience to transaction. And I think that that's something, uh, that you're really touching on there that we we need to, uh, really link it back to is that experience does actually convert, uh, to a customer, uh, and we we should not think think of them as, you know, two separate. One is not necessarily brand, and one is not necessarily performance. They can be one in the same. Right?

Nikki: Yep. Very much so. I mean, like several of our retailers will say that a customer that's acquired through an in person, in real life, whether that's in the store or at an event, a customer acquired in that way is stickier, is longer lifetime value, is ultimately more loyal than a customer that's acquired online. So I think that's also part of the as this realization sinks in, we see more and more retailers who are saying, I I gotta I gotta get out of the four walls of my store. And and I think from from JJ's perspective that out of the cocoon of safety, that is the store environment. And and we gotta rip that out and send it out abroad and access customer data via a mobile phone that's sitting in a parking lot and and making sure that that's not just a good experience, but also a safe experience for the customer and the retailer.

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Brian: Yeah. I'm just thinking about sort of the the culture shift here because in so many ways, digital has been all about removing friction. And it's been about convenience. And people are used to that now. In fact, it's, I think, moving things out of a store that people go to to more of a push world where it's like you show up in the places where they're going to be or you come to them where they are. And that sort of like digital expectations being imposed on physical world. But what that really does is shifts some of the friction to the brand. That's the brand's responsibility to to sort of account for what what would have been friction. And that takes, you know, a lot of work. And so as you go to build these experiences that more accurately reflect the digital native person, the terminally online, the people that are becoming something other than what we used to be, this new culture. You mentioned, JJ, some of those friction points that connectivity, security, as Nikki just mentioned, inventory syncs. You said something briefly, but I kind of want to dig in a little bit further. What happens when network drops or a transaction hangs in mid purchase? We're talking about moving to kind of an offline function, which is pretty heavy lift. It's it's kind of a scary world. Tell us more about how you accomplish that.

JJ: Yeah. It is I I would say, number one, it is a heavy lift, but that lift requires innovation on the vendor side. Luckily, we've done that at Aptose. Right? We understand that friction and, um, fragility can occur in a traditional store. So we designed and built it from the ground up to say, hey, look, you know, sometimes you may lose connectivity to the internet, you may lose connectivity to your network. How do we ensure that the transaction can still occur? You know, there's I would say there's less patience than ever before from customers wanting to go elsewhere. Meaning, if they come in and they can't transact, they don't have patience to wait there five or ten minutes for you to figure it out and go mess with a dongle on the back or reconnect or a router or reset a switch, they don't have time for that, right? They want to get in, get out, get on with their lives. Luckily, we're not luckily, it's been engineered from the ground up. We're built in a way that we understand the fragility of retail. And as a result, we have offline capability that can fail over automatically, go into an offline mode where they can still transact.

JJ: So, God forbid a retailer get hit back at headquarters where the ransomware and it takes down their core network. Should that occur, we can still transact. And so the idea is we're not stopping that transaction. Now when the network comes available we can re sync and recalibrate and re sync inventory but what it means is we're not losing the customer. Again, you're standing in line, it's the holiday season, we've been there. We've been to other retailers and all of a sudden you're like, what the hell is taking so long? I just want to get this in, I got to get this home, I got to get this wrapped, we got a holiday party to go to and this poor person's had to run-in the back room and reset a router, we've been there. That's painful. Number one, it's painful as a consumer but it's also painful and it's also embarrassing to the retailer. So what we've done is rebuilt point of sale from the ground up knowing that there's fragility in the environments.

Brian: That's impressive.

JJ: And we've seen it work in action. We've had we've had network outages. We've had other clients have security issues. And so being able to make sure that transaction still occurs and that customers still retain is so important.

Brian: Yeah. People like you said, they're let let alone waiting for five minutes, they don't even wanna wait five seconds for a page to load. Like Right. I think you're dead on. I've been in this situation even recently where I've been in a store and their network went down, and it caused me to have to be there for, like, thirty minutes because I had to get something completed. And that that was a bad experience. Took me off. Made me wanna switch to a different brand, actually.

JJ: And, Brian, to your point, that experience isn't a one and done event. What happens next time is it sort of lays subconsciously in your mind, and you're thinking about going back to that retail center, that mall, and you're like, I don't know if I'm gonna shop with that. Yeah. And so it has not a one time impact, but a potential impact on the future transactions with that retailer.

Phillip: This I'll save for the after dark, Brian, but I swear that that latent frustration is the reason why I don't go to a regional mall here is because I don't get any five g in that mall. Like, I can't get on my I can't use my phone in the mall. Like, I just can't do it. And it I couldn't put my finger on that until JJ mentioned it, but I'm like, that is one of the reasons why I don't go there.

Brian: Neither can their store associates in that mall.

Phillip: Neither can their store associate the store associates can't use it either. Possibly. There's like a Faraday cage around that mall. I think that that's, know, when you talk about experience, you know, experiences, you know, breaks down fast if the tech fails. I'm just curious, you know, when you're talking about this failover, how do you design these systems that fade into the background? I'm just curious, like how it works. You were talking about that it does work. I'm curious, you know, we have some sophisticated people that are sophisticated buyers, they are evaluating, you know, their purchasing. They want to know how these things work. I'm curious if you could just give us a little bit of the, you know, how it works from your perspective here.

JJ: Philip, without giving away the secret sauce, you know, of our 49 spices, I would say what it boils down to is the database is created on next generation technology.

Phillip: So

JJ: From the ability to cache on the device itself, we can't use traditional database providers. We have to go to a next generation provider that allows us to do that. When we think about all data is stored somewhere on a database typically. Even if you take a traditional server and a file structure, a file structure in a very basic sense is still a database. But when we designed the point of sale understanding that the core data itself had to live on the device itself so if that device became disconnected from the network, it became disconnected from the internet, it could still transact. In a way, it's combining all of the traditional point of sale equipment, if you will, into a single device. And what it also means, Sid, that single device, which is also encrypted, fail, it makes it very easy to provision another device. You know, Nikki talked about how quickly we can provision. That becomes important too because hardware has failure. What happens if all of a sudden you have someone in there, the store and they go irate and just grab a tablet and run out the door, right? You know they're headed towards food court. Luckily we can provision very quickly that data is secure so there's nothing that can be done with it but at the same time within minutes they can prepare and be ready for the next transaction. And so it comes from a way of saying here is what works in a traditional point of sale. Now let's start over and figure out if if we had to start over, what would we what would we do? And so much of it is built on next generation database technology. I

Phillip: I think that's such an important thing to underscore too is how much of our technology that we buy is built on, you know, legacy systems that were acquired, um, or rolled up into, you know, software suites. So it's probably something I think a lot of folks out there are really evaluating at this point in time too.

JJ: And for us it's not only future proofing the point of sale transaction and Nikki can get into this later, don't want to derail the conversation. But as we integrate artificial intelligence and build that next generation solution, it has to be built on next generation technology. And what we've done is chosen a database partner that allows us to evolve as data evolves and how you use data evolves and the integration with generative AI and agentic AI. And but without that, you know, you know, next generation foundation for the house, it would not have been possible.

Brian: Ben, you're starting to get into the the future leaning stuff here, but I think that foundation's essential. Before we move on to that next next those next steps, one thing that I just wanna come back to, it it had to do with the sort of place versus store conversation. Because we talked about the next generation of experiences being mobile and being something that's flexible and you can take it where it needs to go. It's beyond place. It's a moment. But where does that leave stores? Where does the what what happens to the physical store, and where is it headed? What's the what's the point of the store in this next generation of of shopping?

Nikki: Yeah. I think that is it's important to note that it still has an incredibly important role. Right? Like, you go to an event, it's ephemeral, and then you leave and you have a consumer who has some of your products. Where do they go next? And being able to make those connections back to the store experience, I think, is really important. We've had retailers, uh, who literally, like, loaded merchandise onto a school bus, drove it around to colleges during move in week and sold out of the back of the school bus. And they were updating the receipt to have the local store address on the receipt so that there was a reference point for that consumer to say, oh, like, I'm new in town, obviously, move in for college. But now I even know where my store is, where I can go get more of this stuff or where I can see what else they had since they only had what was on the bus. So I think thinking through, you can do things to help draw the connection more firmly. But I think that idea of, you know, you used to used to do discovery in stores, and that doesn't happen that way anymore now. So now you have to build trust outside of the store to get people to say, oh, I like this brand. I want to go to this store. And I think we're seeing, you know, them adapt to that shift.

Nikki: And then once they're in the store, you gotta deliver more. I mean, it's not just you put products on racks or on shelves, and you wait for people to walk in the door to buy them. So events are coming into stores too. Right? Retailers are doing much more to drive traffic to the store in an experiential way, and that stretches what a point of sale needs to be able to do. So that's an important factor too. Like, you're coming having people come in. I I gave the example of the or we have retailers who say that a customer acquired in a store is more valuable lifetime wise than one that's acquired online. You know, they're learning that through doing things like The North Face having backpack packing classes. So come we'll show you how to pack your North Face backpack. And, you know, obviously, you're gonna buy some of that stuff because it was awesome. But those, you know, being able to stretch what you can do so that you deliver the experience, but you also have that buy button right there for when they are ready to buy that blocks them in. That's what makes that experience, that stickiness that says, yeah, I wanna come back and do this. Not, oh, I had a great time packing my backpack, and then I had to go get in this really long line to buy anything.

Phillip: Just thinking about, you know, if you're running events out of your store unit, you start blurring the lines of like, well, what do we need our POS to be able to do? It's like, it's like, it's you're you're like, I need a booking system now. I need like events and like, need my calendar integration. Like, you start layering on all of these requirements. And I remember the bad old days, because they weren't good old days. I remember the bad old days and working with like legacy, you know, drug chain that will go unnamed in my agency days. They had a 100 person team that worked on their POS. And it was custom software and had SAP behind it. But yeah, I remember those days and they it was a very similar story. Like you had 100 integrations because it had to be everything to everybody in every store in every region. And, you know, all of these store use cases, I think you're start we're starting to see a lot of that sort of like stretching the limits of what a point of sale is anymore. And I think that's where also partner integrations are starting to come into is that the more you have partners and the more you have technology partners and integrations is like, maybe there are points of like extending our capabilities so that we don't have to rely so much on the core. But I think that that's such an interesting perspective on, you know, what we demand of our stores and stores experiences in 2025 and 2026. And I guess that brings us to the next question. Nikki, since you had the ball, what is the next frontier? You know? And and if retailers are selling anywhere at any time, you know, and assuming they have the full security and scale, then what challenges and constraints still need to be solved?

Nikki: I think there's tons. I mean, I think there's we're really at the beginning of making these things fast and easy and repeatable. And I think, you know, retailers are gonna get more and more clever. They're gonna have their own, you know, event specific inventory. They're gonna have event specific promotions, and they're still gonna want, you know, oh, I had event specific inventory and promotions, but it for some reason, you need to return or exchange. Want I you to be able to come back to a store to be able to do that. You know, that idea of I'm gonna reset the store address on the receipt for every new location that I'm in. Like, that should be automated. It should auto set your tax rate so that you're charging the right tax, depending on if you're 10 feet this way in the parking lot or 10 feet that way in the parking lot, you might be in a different taxing jurisdiction. All of that fun stuff. But I do think that unlocking the more frequency, higher frequency of events, I think taking them to more and more targeted and precise kinds of ways of reaching consumers. You know, right now, we talked about 59,000 people ran the race. It was like a million plus spectators. That's fabulous. Like, you don't have all those opportunities everywhere. But how do you make that an engaging opportunity for 10,000 people? And I think that's where that's where it really can take off and where you can point to, hey, I pulled these are your community. These are the people who work in your store who came to this event. And now you can go back and have that continued relationship with the people that are even in your own community. I think those are places where there's more opportunity for authenticity, more opportunity for context.

Brian: So agree with that. I I love that viewpoint. I think store associates should be at the forefront of brand experiences. And I I think drawing on your local storefronts to help with any ephemeral activities that are, you know, come together moments is genius because I think that human connection is what we're trying to enable here. So being able to have that callback to, oh, we are here. We are local. We're a part of your community. We're not just some some some randos that have come in to help out. Like, we're we're a part of this. JJ, how about you? What do you see coming?

JJ: Yeah. I unfortunately see a little bit more threats on the horizon. You know, putting my CISO hat on as well. I mean, you have to go back and study where the industry is right now. Retail is the third most attacked sector in The United States. It's increasing. It could have the potential within the next year or two to become the number two most attacked sector in The United States, which means it would displace healthcare. I think what you're gonna see is as retail evolves, the threats will evolve with it. I think what happens is we're we're getting away from retailers thinking they just have to protect what's in store to understand they have to protect the environments when stores don't have proverbial four walls. I think they still have to understand that there's an evolving AI or genetic threat that's coming to retailers and all industries. But I think I think what has to happen is they have to have a much deeper partnership with their partners to understand not only what security they're doing, what are their partners doing. Right? Who is storing your data? Who is touching your data? Who's interacting with your data? What are they doing to protect that data? What are they ensuring to ensure your transactions occur? Because, you know, when those events from a cybersecurity perspective happen, the consumer is not going to think, oh, well, was your network provider. They're gonna think, no. It was you. I was transacting with you. You were the one that was down. That's where the pain point is. Retail has to evolve its mindset into making sure they do a better job of vetting their partners. They have to do a better job of training their staff. They can't depend on annual training. It's not good enough anymore. And they have to understand this AI or genetic threats that are coming to them as well.

Phillip: Uh, I think that's the yeah, that's the reality of of where, uh, I think a lot of folks are gonna spend the next, you know, six months trying to align their solutions is, Nikki, you know, what are the possibilities of the future? How are we going to deliver on customer experience and expectation? JJ, and how do we do it in the most holistic, secure and, you know, I'd say the most, you know, proactive way that we possibly can. And I think between, you know, those two, you know, modes of of thought and and purchasing, I think is maybe this idea of, you know, what I think you guys are on about is unbound commerce, right, is what is what is the unbound commerce future look like? And to when when it's not innovative, it's just expected now, because I think customer expectations are always rising, they're always evolving. So, you know, if you had to gauge a guess, we do this to every guest. What do you think it looks like, you know, five years out? I think that's probably a really long horizon, given all the changes in technology that we're experiencing at the moment. But, you know, if you had to take a guess, what does unbound commerce look like in five years? JJ, we'll turn it to you, we'll give Nikki the last word.

JJ: Yeah. I think innovation will always be there. I I don't think it's you know, I think we're just seeing the beginning of a rapid form of innovation. You know, when we talk about how AI will play into retail and, you know, many of us may have our own literally agentic personal shoppers that go across multiple retailers and buy on our behalf. I think what we're going see in the next five years is going in the stores and it won't be widespread, but I think there's going to be certain retailers that when I interact with someone at the store, it's gonna be non human. Meaning I could be dealing with a humanoid looking robot, uh, handing me my package. It may not be there helping me fit me for my shoes but maybe it could. I think you're gonna see that because it's gonna be an early look about what experiences look like. If you look at what's happening in the landscape out there, the cost for humanoid type robots is plummeting fast, But it's still not quite there yet. I think you're gonna see it early on almost as a we'll call it retail sideshow to get people in the door because it'll look interesting. Will it provide ultimate value? Not at first, no. But I think we're gonna see it. I do think in a much faster light, we're gonna see agentic use cases where, you know, it pops up in my shopping cart and said, hey JJ, you got a trip coming up, you're going to speak, here's the weather, notice your shoes, you haven't replaced those in about fourteen months, time to go buy new shoes and by the way, the last time you bought those, you bought also some orthopedic inserts because you're a man of a certain age, right? And so I think you're going to see that. I think it's just going to aid us, but it also could be shopping for us while we sleep. You know? I think that's probably an early indicator, but robotics is coming too.

Nikki: Yeah. I I mean, I would say that I think we think a lot about agentic in terms of how it impacts consumers, but we also need to think about how it impacts store associates. And I think how you deliver to a store associate is an extra challenge. Like, it's one thing to go around them and just go straight to the consumer, but how do you inform that store associate to be a part of I mean, they're a part of the store. That's why you go to a store. There are store associates there. Uh, sometimes you don't need their help, but when you want their help, you want them to be right there. So how do you enable them in a way that doesn't feel creepy or invasive and feel supportive and that for the store associate feels like something that they can get on top of? So I do think I think in five years, AgenTig will will be like that will I won't say it will be solved, but I will say we'll have the shape of how that absolutely needs to go into the engagement between retailer and consumer across all of the touch points, including the store. But I think as well, like we've been talking about omnichannel forever, and really, we're still only scratching the surface of some of these use cases. And I think bringing point of sale into that fold of you can take it anywhere, the employee enabler you can take anywhere, that will be something that really breaks down a lot more of those barriers than we've even seen to date.

Phillip: Oh, that's the optimistic future I wanna hear about. That's great. I I think that's that's great. And, also, I love the the focus on the associate too. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. I'm so proud to be partnered with Aptos. Nikki Baird, JJ, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Future Commerce.

Nikki: Pleasure, any time.

JJ: Thank you.

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