Southern Fried eCommerce Episode 22

Southern Fried eCommerce Episode 22 Recap

Hey, y’all, I don’t know about you but I’m feeling twenty-two. Welcome back to episode 22 of The Southern Fried eCommerce podcast from EYStudios. Our cohosts Jay Brimberry and Emily Faulkner start off today’s discussion by regretting the fact that we didn’t hold this podcast on 2/22/22 for ultimate two-ness. Emily points out though that here at Southern Fried eCommerce we don’t like following the crowd or being the same as anyone else, so why start now. To be fair, this is our second attempt at this podcast which has to count for something in the land of two-ness. We had to start over because Jay’s door violently blew open while he was talking the first time. Emily attributes to the only obvious solution: ghosts. 

Today’s episode is officially our first international episode with our guest joining us all the way from Italy. Gaia Vernaglione and Leonardo D’Aprile of Zakeke, the 3D configurator & AR tool, join us this week to discuss eCommerce news from an international perspective. Leo is also here to be jealous of Jay’s ghosts. Gaia and Leo are especially qualified to be on our Southern Friend eCommerce podcast as residents of southern Italy (Apulia, to be exact) though we hear it’s a smidge different than the southern U.S. 

Jay starts off by asking our guests about their weekend plans. Gaia is visiting friends and plans on enjoying some reading with her time off. She says, “We still do not have enough time to read and enjoy the small pleasures of life.” Jay vehemently agrees and waxes poetically about the European view of life as meant to be enjoyed. Gaia agrees, “The Italian Dolce Vita”, the sweet life. Leo echoes this sentiment by saying his weekend plans are “getting drunk as always.” He says he jokes and that he’ll actually just be having a chill weekend seeing his family and friends. 

After discussing what Italian weekend plans look like, Jay hands over the spotlight to Gaia and Leo to talk more about Zakeke. 

Zakeke Explained (and Pronounced)

Gaia begins by politely correcting Jay’s pronunciation of Zakeke — the correct pronunciation is Zah-kay-kay. She then tells us all that she is the Country Manager for USA & Canada for Zekeke which means she focuses on the markets in those countries. Leo is the chief content officer at Zekeke and explains his job as, “anything to do with content: I’m your guy.”

GAIA: Zekeke is a one-stop solution for all things visual commerce, a cloud space application that empowers brands and retailers to allow products 2D customization, 3D configurations, and 3D and AR visualizations. We stand out for three main things (of the many that I could talk about): first of all for subtlety and adaptability. Going back to dark humor, our internal dark humor joke is we can go from cakes to graves in no time. Meaning that you can personalize cakes, high-fashion accessories, jewelry, furniture, all the way to funeral items. Our portfolio showcases high-end and well-known brands like Armani and Ubisoft, Clipper, Nalgene… but also small to medium-sized businesses. We can work with B2B and B2C merchants online and offline since we also take in-store operations projects. We take pride in the depth of our product and the way it can easily adapt to the needs of different industries…

We also take care of manufacturers who more and more need the implementation of 360 configuration technology like ours that allows the end-user to configure a product and all of its components directly on a 3D model with different shapes, textures, colors, but also grants the possibility to combine different products with simple hide and show back-office functions.

We think about the retailer needs too, who may not necessarily need customization and configuration tools but still would want to cut sales cost and returns and make the user experience as seamless and real as possible by just offering a 3D or AR view of their products. And on that note, we have artists and galleries using our tools to allow customers to see paintings and sculptures on their walls and in their houses which is pretty cool.

And also, our customer care and technical support. I don’t want to sound too obvious but one thing we stand out for is our remarkable technical support and customer care. Which is not to be taken for granted with small, self-service businesses. Our help desk system and team have a five-star approach with all clients and we make no distinction between big, medium, and small businesses. Discontinuity, inconsistency, and disservice are three words that should not be said in the business world. And pardon my French, but, we work our butts off to eliminate those three words from any of our client’s dictionaries.

And finally, we provide continued software updates and large new features throughout the year, every single year. Every year we have a pretty busy in-house development schedule. Just to give you an example, a couple of weeks ago we launched our multi-channel feature that allows our clients to utilize Zakeke on the same platform at the same time. We are launching in the next couple of weeks a virtual try-on solution for face products so we’ll start with glasses, in conjunction with one of our clients eCommerce Lounge, and then we’ll move on to different products that you can wear on your face…The other important thing we’re releasing in the next few months is the possibility for businesses to upload third-party catalogs through Zakeke. And finally, I will say by the end of the year, beginning of the next, we will be releasing our embroidery printing function.

One last thing I want to say. We are a young company that started in 2017 and as of now, we are growing in the market at a 160% to 200% annual growth rate. So let’s say we’re the cool kid on the block, that’s just moved in and needs to make more friends.

Jay then asks what platforms Zakeke is available on.

GAIA: We’re integrated with all the leading platforms so BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Shopify, Shopware, Etsy, etc. All the leading platforms and then we have APIs that can be integrated into any other eCommerce platform. 

Jay asks if they started primarily in the European market and then spread out.

GAIA: We were actually 98% international from the beginning. About 40- 50% of our sales come from the US market… So we’re basically everywhere. 

Jay then asks Leo for his input and asks if Gaia missed anything. 

LEO: Gaia explained it really well what we do, what we offer but I did want to say this: of course, we are a start-up business because this is our fifth year but one of the important things she mentioned was the support thing, that it’s not really an obvious thing for a SAS. What I wanted to add and mention is the opportunity that we have to actually grow with businesses. So you mentioned being partnered with us, really our job is not just being a solution or a platform but being a reliable partner for thousands of thousands of businesses. We do have more than 7,000 customers in 120 countries and you don’t grow at the rate that Gaia mentioned if you’re not a reliable partner for small businesses, medium businesses, or even multinationals.

You need to have your feet on the ground, that’s why the support team is really important, and you need to understand where the market is going, where clients need to go, and how to actually implement solutions. Gaia also mentioned multiple updates; we have at least one big update every month and most of those updates really come from interactions between us and our customers. So they are inside our team without even knowing it. Because they develop a solution with us that they need, or others may need in another part of the world without knowing it, and they become more successful and we become more successful. And we are happy to be more and more successful because it means, really, that our customers are growing and that’s the important thing at the end of the day when you do this kind of work.

Jay then asks Leo where the name Zakeke comes from. 

LEO: There is no actual real story or meaning. It was just a matter of brainstorming and coming up with this strange name for a solution like ours. It was our team thinking about visuals and sounds and letters and they came up with this really strange name that doesn’t make any sense. 

Guest Question Lightning Round

With that laugh we move on to a lightning round of three questions from Jay:

  • What’s your least favorite business jargon?
    LEO: When people say “we need to brief on this” or “brief this guy” or “brief that”, it’s never brief.
    The thing is, being Italian we need to speak different languages but that’s a really interesting topic in Italy: the use of English business words inside an Italian dialogue. So you’ll hear a manager while speaking to you in Italian say words like “brief” or “schedule” and you say, why aren’t you using the Italian word for that?GAIA: I find myself agreeing with Leo with brief. But also, when people want to schedule a call or meeting and you’re in the same office. And in that moment you’re literally doing nothing but talking to the other person and you could just talk about it right then in that moment but people will postpone or schedule things for later. I think optimizing time is the best way to conduct a business and that’s not always what happens.
  • Are you a gamer? If so, what are you playing?
    LEO: I’m a terrible gamer. I was good in my childhood. Now I play in more of a nostalgic way like Super Mario. As an Italian of course, if you don’t play Mario you cannot go to high school. But I don’t have all these new consoles like PlayStation and stuff like that.GAIA: Not much myself but in my family my brother, my cousins they’re all big gamers. So I know a little bit, not too much but a little bit. And I’m definitely interested. I don’t think I’ve had the time ever to focus on getting good at gaming but I think it would be a really interesting passion to have.

Jay then tells them that clearly Italy is a utopia where everyone just drinks wine, rides bicycles, enjoys the outdoors while he and Emily spend their time in a dark basement with just the glow of the TV for company. Leo agrees and says that actually they drink wine and ride bicycles at the same time. He jokingly says it’s a country requirement similar to Super Mario skills.

  • I did research on this question to make sure it was applicable to Italian guests and yes, this movie was released in Italy under the same name so, have you ever seen the hit 80s movie Willow?
    GAIA: I have not. I will note it down and watch it but I have not.
    LEO: I have not either.

Gaia mentions that when she was living in the states she was subjected to going to movie trivia nights frequently. Except all the movies have different names in Italy so she got all the questions wrong every week and would just drink wine instead. One example of this type of translation is Home Alone is called “Mama I Lost My Plane” in Italy. Another is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is called “If You Leave Me, I’ll Erase You.” 

New From EYStudios

With that lovely bit of trivia, we move onto the eCommerce news of the week starting with the blogs fresh from the EYStudios kitchen: 

And don’t forget to check out our recap of last week’s podcast episode: Southern Fried eCommerce Episode 21 Recap

TikTok Lengthens Video Time

The first eCommerce news article we’re discussing this week is TikTok Bumps Up Max Video Length to 10 Minutes from Variety. This article discusses TikTok’s recent tripling of their maximum video length and how the platform is encroaching on Youtube’s territory with longer content. Jay asks Gaia if she’s a TikTok user and she says she’s more of an Instagram person but during the pandemic, she did sign up for an account. She says she watches content occasionally but doesn’t post much. 

GAIA: It’s definitely a plus that you’re able to do business with longer videos. Even though I’m kind of struggling to think if I really would watch a 10-minute long video on TikTok. Because I already struggle to pay attention to videos that are longer than 1 minute. So I’m not really sure what you can do with 10 minutes. Maybe it has more to do with content strategies I’m not aware of that’s more Leo’s area. 

Jay asks Leo for his opinion and also asks if Zakeke has used TikTok in their marketing strategy. 

LEO: Not yet but we will. Because as you said it’s a really interesting platform and talking about visual commerce well there’s nothing else that can speak more than a video… I can put together a 2 minute video showing 2D configurations and it speaks for itself. But like any platform it needs to be studied, it needs to be understood and you need to find the right target. As it is right now, of course, it’s a huge opportunity for a lot direct to consumer business because of course you have the Gen Z really living on that platform the way maybe our generation, millennials, are living on Instagram. And the older generation on Facebook. 

Leo also agrees that it seems like TikTok is just trying to copy Youtube and YouTube was copying TikTok with their new Shorts. He argues however that Snapchat is also being copied with their 24-hour Stories being one of the first uses of short video content. He doesn’t think TikTok made this move for marketers as he doesn’t see much use for them but rather to appeal to creators as a way of saying “you can make whatever you want to make” here. He also argues that the only way for TikTok to grow is to try and compete with these other content platforms that do have longer content because right now TikTok is dominating the short content market and there’s nowhere to go from #1. 

Jay then asks Emily what she thinks about this news. “Is ten minutes too long?”, he asks.

EMILY: Absolutely. I am so tired of this. I’ve been waiting to talk about this all week because it’s really been bugging me. I think it’s just a numbers game for them at this point for TikTok. I listened to a talk that BigCommerce and TikTok did where TikTok was basically saying that users spend an average of 2 to 2.5 hours on the platform at any given time. Which is essentially like saying someone sat down and watched a full-length movie on this app. Which, yes, that is absolutely true: I will spend a very significant amount of time on there just scrolling but the thing is, it’s because it’s bite-sized content.

That was the reason that Vine was successful in the first place. You can consume so much media and you get sucked in and you’re having a really good time. I mean when they moved to 3-minute content it jostled a lot of people because 3 minutes is a long time. You have to really know what you’re doing to stay engaged with these people and if you’re really just talking to talk you’re not doing anything of value so people will swipe, people will move on, people will close the app.

And I think moving to ten minutes, unless you’re extremely strategic with it, is something that is just not going to go well. I think that’s a large reason why — and don’t get me wrong Youtube is still very successful and still very valuable — that younger generation gravitates toward TikTok because of the way that you can create content and share content. And it’s a very unique platform and when you try and mimic what YouTube is doing you’re really just watering it down and making it exactly the same. People are just going to move on to the next thing.

I have been a very advocate of TikTok since the pandemic because I didn’t realize how special the content was and how creative people can be with a minute of content. So the more that you elongate it the more you’re just letting people just do the same thing. Especially now with the inclusion of all of these new ads that they do like every third swipe is now an ad. It’s just absolutely watered down content and it’s just going to make people eventually just leave. I’m so frustrated by it.

Jay suggests we all get together and create a new social media platform that only allows videos up to a minute long as that is the cycle of things. Gaia suggests a speed button like in WhatsApp that allows you to skip to the good parts of a video and get to the point. Jay agrees and thinks this is a billion-dollar idea. He jokes but when the next one comes out it’s not called JayBird he’s going to regret it. 

Jay moves back to more serious topics and says that he agrees with Leo that TikTok is really not the place right now for B2B content but that could change with this 10-minute video length maximum. Leo agrees and thinks that this could change a lot of things including the demographic of TikTok and how people need to conduct themselves on the platform for visibility and engagement. He also, as a content guy, says that this is probably also the time that more businesses with being investing in TikTok content creation. He thinks strategy will need to come more into play with a longer video length maximum because just because you have 10 minutes doesn’t mean you need 10 minutes to get your message across effectively. He also suggests that influencer marketing might be the go-to strategy for a lot of businesses. 

American Eagle Goes Virtual 

The last article we discussed is American Eagle debuts on Roblox with inclusive club showcasing spring apparel from Retail Dive. Roblox is a cross between a video game and a social media platform that is very popular with Gen Z and Generation Alpha (those born after 2010). This move by American Eagle is one of several moves by the company to reach these audiences via emerging platforms. 

To start off we got a general idea of how familiar everyone was with Roblox as unfortunately no one on the podcast qualifies as either Gen Z or Gen Alpha. It seems as though everyone is familiar with the game but no one has played it. 

Leo thinks this concept is very interesting especially when it comes to their client Ubisoft, one of the largest companies in the video game industry. They initially came to Zekeke, Leo says, because they wanted to allow their customers to customize their shirts on their eCommerce platform. He gives the example of customers playing Assassin’s Creed and screenshotting a particularly awesome moment. The player is then able to upload that screenshot to the eCommerce platform and buy a mug or a T-shirt with that screenshot on it. Leo believes that moves like the one that American Eagle is making are going to become more and more popular in the future.

Jay agrees and thinks that a buy now option may be the way forward. For instance, you’re playing Roblox and like an American Eagle outfit well now you can buy it and go pick it up at the store in real life. He also brings up the fact that Zekeke is really good at creating entry points for all-sized businesses when it comes to new technology like this. He says it’s one thing for American Eagle to be able to digitize a collection and input it into an online game but it’s another for a small mom and pop business to do it. He thinks that Zekeke is the solution and is excited to see what the future brings. He then asks Gaia if she’s interested in the metaverse as someone who is not a gamer. 

GAIA: I think it must be an interest right now in this moment of history because it’s approaching — doesn’t matter if you believe in it or not. It’s something that is getting closer and closer above all for younger generations. In general, I think we’re all dipping our toes in it little by little.

She then mentions that NFTs might be the next step forward or it might be something completely different because right now the landscape is changing so often. Jay agrees and thinks that companies like Zakeke are in a great position to be successful because they have the right type of technology and their foot in the door in terms of this type of business. Gaia agrees and says, “It’s all about entering the market on the right foot.” 

Jay then asks Emily as a gamer who is currently playing Horizon Foribben West if he’ll see her showing up to work in something she saw in the game or in something Alloy (the main character) might wear. Emily agrees and jokingly remarks that she just got to the part in the game where she got to try on her new Nikes and can’t wait to buy them in real life. She does say though that she thinks that this will work as a marketing tool going forward and that it’s already been effective in some ways in phone apps. 

Jay then brings up a current debate in the United States about whether or not these corporations should have unfettered access to children and young teens playing these games. He asks, “should there be any sort of caution when it comes to this type of marketing?” 

EMILY: I think there always should be especially now in this age where it’s so easy to make a one-click purchase; where kids can take your phone and buy in-app purchases very rapidly. I think that’s something we should be a little more mindful of. Will businesses be mindful? Probably not but just something to think about.

GAIA: It should but I think right now the metaverse, the gaming experience are not the only places where this type of marketing can actually reach younger generations. I think right now we’re in the moment where there are so many channels where younger generations are involved…So I think it’s more of the natural caution you should have with younger generations and media but I don’t think it’s just the metaverse or these types of games themselves.

LEO: I’ll give you the example of my niece, she’s 4 years old, and she’ll say things like ‘can we buy this on Amazon’ or ask to play a video on YouTube and clicks on ads, etc. But if you don’t actually give access to a smartphone or these devices well then she can just look at TVs or advertising in a different way. I know it sounds old-fashioned but I don’t think you can actually draw a line or a limit where you can allow this to only those 18+. Because anybody can open a Facebook account and you have the same type of advertising.

Leo brings up that there is a large cultural shift between generations. His niece, he says, knows how to operate a smartphone better than he does. Meanwhile, his first phone at 14 was a Nokia 3310 that was so brick-like “burglars could use to break into houses.” It had no gaming except Snake and there definitely wasn’t any advertising. Now kids are getting their first smartphones at 10 and he believes it’s going to be difficult to try and draw boundaries once that happens. 

Jay agrees and with that, he wraps up the podcast by going over some articles we didn’t have time to talk about today: 

Jay also mentions some content marketing ideas for April 2022 from Practical eCommerce including that the day we recorded the podcast was Employee Appreciation Day (Friday, March 4th) and he extended his appreciation to Emily. Appreciation was spread everywhere including to our wonderful guests Gaia and Leo who we so appreciate for joining us. Gaia says she is happy to come back and talk eCommerce, dark humor, ghosts, or really whatever Jay wants. Leo suggests bringing the ghost as an additional guest for the next episode they join for. Jay thinks this is a great idea and thinks his great-grandmother would be a great guest. Leo agrees and says he’ll bring his great-grandmother and we’ll have a lovely ghostly episode where they discuss eCommerce and the metaverse from beyond the grave. 

On that somber note, we say goodbye for now. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Southern Fried eCommerce with a dash of Italian thrown in for good measure. Please, like and subscribe, and make sure to come back next time! Bye now!

About Zakeke

Zakeke empowers brands and retailers to provide consumers with seamless customization options and product personalization through 2D, 3D, augmented reality, and Virtual Try-on solutions. Its suite of tools can be integrated into any eCommerce platform or a brand’s back-end to enhance the consumer shopping experience while increasing sales for customers across industries ranging from fashion and jewelry to gaming, gadgets, and sports equipment. Founded in 2017, Zakeke has over 7,000 customers globally in 120 countries looking to engage consumers with an interactive, visually appealing shopping journey. Zakeke is cloud-based, cross-platform, and multi-lingual, making it easy for customers of all sizes to easily adapt, grow sales and scale up!

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