S1E3 – The Retail Avengers & The Celebration of RetailROI Welcome to Season 1, Episode 3, the third ever episode of The Retail Razor Show! I’m your host, Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top 100 Retail Influencer, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and lead partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft. And I’m your co-host, Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock and slayer of retail frankenstacks! Together, we’re your guides on the retail transformation journey. Whether you're thinking digital and online, mobile, or brick & mortar stores, there'll be something for you! For episode 3 we have a truly special treat in what may be the most important episode we do this season, and it’s only episode 3! We’re celebrating the history and accomplishments of industry charity organization, RetailROI, with two special guests: · Greg Buzek, President & Secretary of RetailROI, Inc., and Founder & President of IHL Group. · Vicki Cantrell, Vice President of RetailROI, Inc., and co-founder of Vendors in Partnership Awards. These two retail legends and many more you’ll hear about in the Clubhouse recording lead one of the most important organizations in the retail ecosystem today. RetailROI’s purpose is to raise awareness and provide real solutions for the more than 400 million vulnerable children worldwide by working with other charities serving those children, such as orphans, foster kids, building schools, bringing clean water to communities, and more. Give a listen to this episode to learn what RetailROI has accomplished in its history over the past decade, what the future holds, and most importantly, what you can do to support them. You’ll hear about RetailROI’s most important fundraiser – Super Saturday, happening at NRF 2022 on January 15th. For more information about RetailROI, the important work this group does for vulnerable children everywhere through all the charities they work with, to register for Super Saturday if you’re a retailer, or to learn how you can sponsor Super Saturday if you’re a solution provider, visit https://www.retailroi.org The Retail Razor Show Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazor Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazor Join our club on Clubhouse: http://bit.ly/RRazorClub Listen to us on Callin: https://bit.ly/RRCallin 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 TRANSCRIPT S1E3 Retail Avengers & The Celebration of RetailROI[00:00:22] Ricardo Belmar: Hello. Good morning, good afternoon. Or good evening, whatever time of day you're listening. Welcome. Welcome. This is season one, episode three, the third ever episode of the retail razor show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar, RETHINK Retail top 100 influencer and one of RIS News, top 10 movers and shakers in retail for 2021. And lead partner marketing advisor for retail and consumer goods at Microsoft [00:00:46] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host Casey Golden CEO of Luxlock, where I'm obsessed with the relationship between a brand and a consumer determined to slay retail, Frank enstacks [00:00:57] Ricardo Belmar: All right, Casey. So how many Franken stacks have you slain since last episode? Inquiring listeners want to know? [00:01:03] Casey Golden: Well, now that I'm counting, we've got three in the works. [00:01:06] Ricardo Belmar: That's incredible. Can't wait to hear how many more it is next time. Let's see if our listeners start tweeting out their guesses for next time on how many that might be. [00:01:13] Casey Golden: I love a good tweet storm. [00:01:15] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely me too. Me too. So Casey, this episode is a really special one for me and a topic that I think carries [00:01:22] so much meaning for so many people in retail, I'm talking of course, about the retail ROI charity organization. That's run by Greg Buzek and supported by some incredibly thoughtful and giving people, including our second special guest this week, Vicki Cantrell. Someone with an incredibly rich history in retail. [00:01:39] And for those that don't know, retail ROI, it's an organization that helps vulnerable children around the world, whether it might be orphans, foster kids adoptions, or just helping schools that lack running water or electricity or need just a better chance at education and bringing food to their table. [00:01:56] Retail ROI works with a number of other charities to bring these missions to life. And they've helped hundreds of thousands of kids around the world over the last decade. I first became involved with them about five or six years ago in a project they supported in Liberia during the Ebola crisis and even a webinar to school kids in Honduras about career paths. [00:02:15] But I'll save that story for after we listen to the session [00:02:18] Casey Golden: And this was an emotional clubhouse sesh, listening to [00:02:22] Greg and Vicki's stories. You just, you can't help but celebrate their massive accomplishments. [00:02:27] Ricardo Belmar: That is so true. Absolutely true. And actually, one of our retail avengers team, Jeff Roster, he's also had an incredibly huge role in their activities over the years. [00:02:37] In fact, he's the one that introduced me to retail ROI all those years ago. [00:02:40] Casey Golden: This is such an important topic. One with such rich accomplishments. And Greg is just one of the nicest people in retail and in Vicki, she's just literally amazing. It's such a treat to have conversations like this and share the impact retail ROI is making with vulnerable communities and supporting our youth. Let's get started! [00:03:01] Ricardo Belmar: I'm totally with you. This might just be one of the most powerful, both heartwarming and heart wrenching podcast episodes we're going to do this season . We'll let Greg and Vicky and Jeff tell us the real story behind retail ROI, all of their past accomplishments and where they're going in the future. [00:03:17] So let's give a listen to the Retail Avengers and the Celebration of RetailROI.[00:03:22] Clubhouse Session[00:03:30] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome everybody to another session in the Retail Razor Club room. We've got a special one today where we're doing a celebration of one of what I feel is one of the most important organizations in retail today and that's Retail ROI. And some of you in the audience are very familiar with retail ROI and what it's accomplished and what it's done in the past. [00:03:56] And maybe others in the audience might not be quite as familiar. You'll get to learn quite a bit about it through the course of today's session. We've got a couple of special guests with us today, Greg Buzek and Vicki Cantrell, who I probably can't think of anyone else who can do a better job of telling us everything there is to know about RetailROI [00:04:15] and and as I say that, I'm sure Jeff is ready to, to jump in and, and raise his hand as well. Being the person that introduced me to retail ROI many years ago. So with that, why don't I ask Greg and Vicki, to give a brief introduction to yourselves. Vickie, why don't you go first? [00:04:29] Vicki Cantrell: Hi, [00:04:30] everybody. Great to be here on a Friday afternoon at five o'clock. I will give Ricardo any grief cause everybody does, but this is a topic that's worth a Friday at five o'clock. And I've been involved with retail ROI since the beginning and, and pleased to be working alongside Greg and Randy to figure out how we increase our shop and how we make a great experience and, and divide the money and make the biggest impact. [00:05:00] So I started 10, 11, 12. Are we 12, 11 years and have many great experiences not only traveling myself to various countries, but also taking both my children there, and the impact has been on our life and our hearts pretty impactful and happy to tell you more about it. I've been in retail for ever and ever and all sides of retail. [00:05:28] So [00:05:30] I guess that's how I got involved because it's my fellow cohorts in retail that brought this to bear [00:05:36] Greg? [00:05:37] How RetailROI Began[00:05:37] Greg Buzek: And I'm Greg Buzek I guess my day job or my first day job is being president of IHL group we're a retail analyst firm Gosh, this started because I had started a orphan care ministry at our church and we were at Oracle open world. [00:05:53] And it was the day that Lehman brothers went under September 15th, 2008. And Paul Singer of SuperValu and previously with target was there. And I knew he was an adoption advocate. So we had a meeting and said, you know, Hey, maybe we can do something in the industry. And we could call it, you know, at that time there was a lot of mergers and acquisitions and everything was focused on efficiency. [00:06:17] And then we just call it, we'll call it ROI, a play on words which ends up being the world's geekiest name for a charity retail ROI. And we just said, we call it the retail orphan initiative and that's how we get our acronym there. [00:06:30] And that day with the help of Rose Spicer from Oracle Paul Singer basically did his OpenWorld presentation about 10 minutes on target and the rest on adoption , and we were all astounded and we came out of that meeting and said, Let's let's do something together. [00:06:49] And I know Jeff was there Rose
