Welcome back to The Retail Razor Show – It’s Season 2, Episode 1! Back for season two of the show, we saved a BIG topic to open up with – The Metaverse! Yes, our Retail Avengers team has been jumping out of their seats to bring you this discussion, recently held in our Clubhouse room, to answer the biggest, burning questions retailers and brands have about the Metaverse. What exactly IS the Metaverse? What is it not? Why should you be interested and what can you do with the metaverse? How can you use the Metaverse? Is it about building brand loyalty? Commerce? And what about NFTs and web3? All of the above? The Retail Avengers team digs into these questions, and more, to cut through the clutter! Hosts, Ricardo and Casey then come back to recap the discussion and talk about a few key examples of brands that seem to know what they're doing in the Metaverse right now. Plus, they’ll bring you an easy 5-step roadmap to getting started in the Metaverse. All that in the season 2 opener! Have you heard the news? We’re up to #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your loyal help, we’ll move our way up the Top 20 in no time! Leave us a review and we’ll mention you in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/ Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech: I’m Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. I've spent my career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business. Now I slay franken-stacks! Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, including E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno. The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTube Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShow Retail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPod Host → Ricardo Belmar, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmar Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmar Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmar Co-host → Casey Golden, Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCasey Connect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICasey Read my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCasey TRANSCRIPTS2E1 The Retail Avengers vs The Metaverse [00:00:00] Pre-Intro[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar: Hey, Casey, it's season two. Now maybe we should do something different for the show intro. [00:00:04] Casey Golden: Yeah, I've seen some podcasts play different clips from the main interview in the beginning of the show, kind of like a preview. [00:00:11] Ricardo Belmar: I don't know. That kind of seems like it's been done to death doesn't it? [00:00:14] Casey Golden: True. We can always just pick up. In the middle of a conversation and give the audience some FOMO. They wouldn't know whether or not they've missed something or arrived right on time. [00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm, not a bad idea though. I don't know. I wonder if we might get some bad reviews for trying to trick our listeners that way. What if we just added some cool sound effects? [00:00:31] Casey Golden: That would be too simple. What would happen afterwards? [00:00:34] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. I guess you got me there. All right. All right. So, we could just start talking about our main topic and give listeners a preview that way of what's to come without really giving away our speaker. [00:00:44] Casey Golden: Sounds like plan. I think that's what we should do, but how much time do we have to do that? A minute. 30 seconds, two minutes, 15. [00:00:54] Ricardo Belmar: well, uh, let's see, how long have we already been talking about it? I don't know. We might not have much time to talk about the m... [00:01:00] Show Intro[00:01:00] [00:01:20] Introduction[00:01:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to the first episode of season two of the retail razor show. I'm your host Ricardo Belmar. [00:01:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your cohost Casey Golden. Welcome retail razor show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. [00:01:40] Ricardo Belmar: It's great to be back in front of the camera and on the mic. [00:01:43] Casey Golden: Yeah. And for those of you watching us on YouTube, how about that? , you're actually watching us on YouTube now, not just listening. This is a big step for us this season. And personally for me, I'm blow drying my hair again! [00:01:58] Ricardo Belmar: totally, totally. And, for listeners or, or maybe I should say viewers, can expect to see us on video pretty much every episode now, apart from when we're bringing you our clubhouse sessions, because you know, obviously those are audio only. [00:02:11] Casey Golden: Well, Ricardo, this is our first season of the new season. So of course, we've got an amazing topic this week. One that have been asked about and asked for many times, [00:02:24] Ricardo Belmar: And one that our Retail Avengers crew had really been dying to cover for months and months. [00:02:30] Casey Golden: That's right. So with all of this anticipation, I am so bummed that I missed the clubhouse session. [00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Especially since the topic is, wait for it, retail and the metaverse. I mean, this one was just about tailor made for you, Casey. [00:02:44] Casey Golden: Yeah. So I know I'll save my commentary for our recap discussion after the clubhouse session. [00:02:51] Ricardo Belmar: It'll be worth the wait. So with that lead in, since this is a topic that doesn't really need an introduction, let's just dive right in and listen, sorry, youTube viewers, view , well I guess still listen because it's clubhouse, to the Retail Avengers versus the Metaverse. [00:03:11] Clubhouse Session[00:03:11] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Welcome everyone to the retail razor room. We have a really amazing topic for discussion today. I know the entire group here has been just itching to, come back and talk about the metaverse. And so we've got five folks up here on stage. I am sure there'll be some folks from the audience that are gonna join us later. [00:03:30] And I know we have one more of our retail Avengers team. It's gonna join us a little bit later in the hour. So without further ado, we'll do some introductions. Jeff, why don't you go first? [00:03:39] Jeff Roster: Hi, Jeff Roster former Gartner retail analyst now cohost of This Week In Innovation podcast. [00:03:44] Ricardo Belmar: Thanks Jeff, Shish. [00:03:46] Shish Shridhar: Good afternoon. I'm Shish. I'm the global lead for retail with Microsoft for Startups. I've been in retail for over 20 years primarily focused on AI for retail and solutions around it. And currently just building out a portfolio of innovative startups. Thank you. [00:04:02] Ricardo Belmar: Thank you. Brandon [00:04:03] Brandon Rael: Brandon Rael, I've also been in and around the retail consumer industries over 20 years. And since our last discussion, I've joined Capgemini Invent team, they focus on innovation transformations and all the digital stuff we love to talk about here. So looking forward to this great conversation about the metaverse and all the potential. [00:04:19] Ricardo Belmar: And Trevor, [00:04:20] Trevor Sumner: Hey everybody. I'm Trevor Sumner. I'm the CEO at of perch. We do interactive digital displays at retail that use computer vision to detect which products you touch. So. We're basically instrumenting the clicks at retail, opening up new intelligence, data streams, and really cool shopping experiences for customers like Johnson and Johnson, joe Malone, Purina, Unilever, many others. [00:04:44] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. And I'm Ricardo Belmar. I started the retail razor club room here in, in clubhouse last year. Also running the retail razor show podcast with my co-host Casey golden. So everybody in the audience who hasn't subscribed yet, do yourself a favor, hit your podcast player and hit the subscribe button there. [00:05:01] You'll find some of our past clubhouse sessions showing up in each new episode of the podcast. I'm currently the lead partner marketing advisor at Microsoft for retail and consumer goods. And we are just gonna jump right into the metaverse here. So probably makes sense to start with a few good definitions. [00:05:18] I think everybody has a definition that it's kinda like that joke about economist s where if you ask 50 different people, what the metaverse is, you get 60 different answers, something like that. But I'll throw this one out, I think this is a Wikipedia definition that defines metaverse as a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet. And it's also defined as a network of 3d virtual worlds focused on social connection. [00:05:51] So just to kick things off, what does everyone think of that rather complex definition. [00:05:56] Brandon Rael: It's a bit overwhelming. Isn't it? , [00:05:58] Ricardo Belmar: it's a mouthful for sure. [00:05:59] Shish Shridhar: it is! [00:06:03] Jeff Roster: I'm gonna have to go back to my Catholic school days and and diagram that sentence. Cause I think that's about run on over, run o
