← B2B Breakthrough Podcast
B2B Breakthrough Podcast
Special Episode - Rah Mahtani on Wizards of Ecom: Navigating CoCreate 2024
00:31:54
Inside this episode of the B2B Breakthrough podcast, we are sharing our Head of Marketing, Rah Mahtani's, interview on Carlos Alvarez's Wizards of ECOM podcast about the upcoming Alibaba Co-Create conference. They explore the conference’s unique value, catering to both established eCommerce sellers and newcomers, with a focus on actionable growth strategies. Rah highlights the VIP ticket's exclusive perks, such as hotel stays and networking opportunities. They also discuss panels dedicated to female entrepreneurs and a special pitch event offering grants. Rah and Carlos express their enthusiasm for the conference, encouraging listeners to take advantage of early bird pricing and special discounts. Don’t miss this inspirational conversation.
Loading summary
Transcript54 lines
- [00:02]
A
You may remember that a few weeks ago Carlos Alvarez of Wizards of Ecom joined us to talk about his journey in Building Multiple 9 Figure E Commerce brands. So naturally we wanted to return the favor. You're about to listen to a recent episode of Carlo's Wizards of E Comm podcast where he welcomed our very own head of North American marketing, Ra Matani. Carlos and Ra discuss the exciting opportunities Alibaba.com will offer at Co Create, our must attend event for innovative e commerce professionals happening this September. For Tickets, visit alibabaco create.com and use code ALIPODCAST. That's a L I podcast all one word at the checkout for a discount. Enjoy the show.
- [00:46]
B
Welcome back to the Wizards of Ecom podcast. This is episode number 377. My name is Carlos Alvarez and I'll be the host for the show. On today's episode. I have the privilege of having RA Matani Ra the head of marketing for Alibaba North America and the driving force behind the conference I am most excited to attend this year, which is Alibaba Co Create. Welcome to the show, ra.
- [01:05]
C
Thank you, Carlos and man377. My lucky numbers are three and seven. So this is, this is a good start.
- [01:12]
B
Excellent. Excellent. The I in pronouncing the name and going to chat GPT I have a. I have a tendency to like Latinize or like Cubanize names. So I don't know if I was like hitting the, the everything right with Ra Matani I but I got it right.
- [01:28]
C
I like the flavor, you know, my of my life. People called me Raul anyway, so. Okay, I'll take it. I've been Latinized.
- [01:38]
B
All right, let's do it. Obviously we're going to talk about Alibaba Co Create and there's a million reasons why I am excited about attending. I'm going to say the main reason which when I, when I first heard about it that has me excited this time is I'm just really numb from everybody and their mother throwing up these different conferences and there's really no. It stopped being about this is going to level up my business. And it was like a very clear why as to how this is going to level up my business. That's what I'm doing. I'm taking time away from my family and friends to go travel, which there's worse places, right? Vegas and to level up my business. And I don't want to come back and only say oh yeah, networking was good, which, which is important. But I want to be able to say I learned this Or I made this strategic partnership or there was, you know, I mean, like, I've been able to source this new thing or this new method. Like I want to be able to come back and do that. And from what I know I've heard from last year and see on the side, this is exactly what I feel like we all need. So in your own words though, can you share a little bit about yourself? And we don't need to go all the way back to kindergarten and your first dog and all that stuff there, but like a little bit about yourself in the sense of like, how you connected with Alibaba. How did you come up to be, you know, one of the driving forces behind something as massive as co create?
- [03:07]
C
Absolutely. Yeah. So my name is Rahmutani. I'm the head of Marketing for Alibaba.com North America. I've been in the company for a year and a half and you know, I was really brought in to build a North American marketing team, build trust with all of our buyers. And you know, I think quite frankly, there's been such a massive influx, Carlos, of new businesses formed in the U.S. like, take the last three years alone, we've seen 16 million businesses formed in the U.S. alone. That's the most in our country's history. So the opportunity is really there as a lot of people start to look for, you know, should I start a side hustle? Do I want to just test the waters with drop shipping or do I want to become a serious E commerce or offline retailer? You know, I see Alibaba.com really, really well positioned to help all of those folks. And it ties like right back to why did Jack Ma found this company in the first place? To level the playing field for small business owners.
- [04:13]
B
And you know, that seeing if I'm online and I see Jack Ma or like he's like him or Elon Musk, I stop, I listen to what they have to say. So yeah, that's absolutely amazing. And how did you within Alibaba so you growing North America, why do you feel like co create is so important to help you hit those goals?
- [04:39]
C
Yeah, I think like you referenced in the beginning in your setup, Carlos, we all tend to attend and take time away from our family at all these different conferences. And there are things that we learn and glean as we go through. We network, we make amazing connections. Last year's co create brought me a connection that introduced us. So there's incredible value. But what I see a lot is many times there are similar speakers or the same Topics that get covered and you know, sometimes it's really hard to choose which conference am I going to go to and why. But with Alibaba.com, what, what we want to do is lean into what we can really bring value with. And that is we are the place to connect with global suppliers. So when you come to a conference with us, you can expect to see different products and suppliers from around the world. But we also have a really cool, diverse array of people that use our platform. So 48 million global buyers and of them, you know, you've got e commerce sellers, people that are selling into marketplaces and doing incredibly well for themselves, people that are just testing the waters to see what they can sell and what works and even people that are ordering samples or things for their, their home and things like that. So it's a great place to just bring all these different people together, learn from each other, but just take actionable insights home.
- [06:10]
B
You mentioned you touched on this a little bit a second ago is I want to, in your own words, like the target audience of people that are going. It sounded like you were saying established businesses. It's not, it's not that somebody who's just starting off would not benefit from this because they obviously would. But what do you, what do you see as the, the majority of the people that attend this. What does that target audience look like?
- [06:43]
C
Is a good question. So majority of attendees, I'll go. Based off of last year's Co Create, the majority of attendees were E commerce sellers. So folks that are selling on Shopify, folks that are selling into marketplaces like Walmart or through Amazon or Amazon fba. So we definitely see a lot of E commerce sellers. And 30% of last year's attendees were at seven figures of revenue or higher. So definitely a lot of established business owners. But this year with a lot of the feedback we've gotten from folks like yourself and other partners that we have, we want to actually increase the number of established business owners that, that come in to co create. Now that's to your point, Carlos. Not to say we won't bring value for new business owners or people that want to test the waters and get started, but we really want to dive deep on effective strategies to grow and scale. So that means more established businesses this.
- [07:42]
B
Year and, and with Co create how? Like for example, it's rare that I'm struggling for words here, but for example, some of these conferences I find or trade shows I find amazing. I find more value walking the exhibitor hall or the exhibitor floor. Than maybe some of the tracks that are going on at that time. But what's the layout of this conference going to be? Because I didn't have the privilege to attend last year. Is it multi track? Is there a lot of exhibitors? If so, like what types of exhibitors are there? You hinted at a, a podcast section which is like so exciting to see at these types of events. What does that lay? Like what does somebody should they expect day one they get there, I'm imagining they get their exhibitor badge. What's day one look like?
- [08:35]
C
Yeah, let's, let's break it into a few different parts. So we have our main keynote stage and that's where over two days we'll, we'll start day one September 5th and make big platform announcements. So think, you know when our, when our big friends in tech like Apple or Google put on a conference, they're making announcements about what's happening next. We will bring our, our president Quo and he will come on stage and announce the Next step in AI for Alibaba.com the next push in logistics as well as a few key partnerships and what we're doing to support businesses beyond that. We actually will have a variety of sessions where we'll have speakers like yourself talking about scaling within marketplaces. And we're not just thinking only in Amazon. There's a lot of different places as E commerce has evolved. There's social selling, there's other marketplaces that you can sell into. So we want to look at that and then talk a lot about scaling. Like how do you scale your business meaningfully? Do we want to just talk about being in the six figure range? Do we want to talk seven, eight, nine figures? There will be experts on hand to, to talk about that as well. But then we also, we've got some breakout rooms too. So only for our VIP and premium ticket holders, we'll have rooms where you can have deep dives with industry experts. So Carlos, you'll be speaking in there about selling into different marketplaces. We'll also be talking about AI and how to develop or improve your products using AI. And then we have a room dedicated to specific vertical categories. So we'll have the leaders of our category teams who are out negotiating with specific suppliers in different verticals. And we'll do deep dives on things like beauty or consumer electronics and things like that. And then you hinted, Carlos, at a podcast recording lab. So we do have for some of our key partners we'll have podcasts going in real time. So about eight throughout eight different podcasts throughout day one. We'll have a private room to record in with, you know, any of the buyers or our executives or media that will be on the ground.
- [10:58]
B
That's. That's amazing. And at the risk of sounding like I'm selling something which is not like the, the case, the, the VIP ticket seems like it's being given away when you break it down. And I don't know if that's an early bird and that's going to change. I definitely don't think people should wait until the last second. I think it's a horrible strategy. Even though somebody broke down their logic on it recently, I'm still struggling with that. But you get, and correct me if I'm wrong here, because I do not have this in front of me, but you get on the VIP package, you get two nights in the hotel, which, like, I'll just throw Prosper show out there, which, which I also like attending that the cost of that ticket is two nights in the hotel like that, that, you know. So this includes at no additional cost the two nights in the hotel. So you're not spending money on Ubers back and forth coming to the hotel. You're not having to get up extra early and grab some garbage food on the way over. It looks like there's snacks and sometimes lunch and there's a gala. There's a lot of food included. So, like, you're again being taken care of there. You obviously get some of your supplies at some level or products. From Alibaba. I read something there's like a $200 credit that you get.
- [12:11]
C
That's right. You get a sourcing coupon that you can use towards, you know, sourcing products or logistics. And, you know, it's a pretty good way. Obviously it's, it's not, it's not going to meaningfully change a giant shipping container order, but it's a great way to order some samples or something like that for, for almost no cost.
- [12:32]
B
It's an amazing way to sell it to your partners and your business and your spouse that this ticket's being paid for, like, that's $200 off. And when you start backing out, what is already included in this ticket comes out to, like, it almost feels like one of these, you know, one of these extreme couponers that went into the store and they, they left with goods and got paid. So they're leaving with all this value, all this opportunity to network and leverage their business, and their whole ticket is pretty much being offset. So it's almost like you're saying, hey, we want to help you out with your business, want to help you grow and we've put together this beyond competitive ticket. So again, at the risk of sounding like I'm selling it, it's, I mean I hope I didn't just double the price basically. But, but it's pretty amazing. It's, it's a no brainer. Yeah. To go.
- [13:13]
C
No, thank you. Thank you for selling it for me. I don't have to, I don't have to play this.
- [13:16]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. And is this a, is this an Early Bird price? Like is this price going to be going up as we get closer?
- [13:22]
C
Okay, so it's 9.99 at early bird. So in actually 40 days from now, we'll go up to 13.99 for that VIP ticket.
- [13:33]
B
Still a steal, but much rather get it at the 9.99. So we'll have a link somewhere in this app. I'm sure somewhere we're going to mention a link for people to go to. There will be definitely be a link in the show.
- [13:44]
C
You've got a discount code for your audience. So actually if you type in woe in the promo code box, you take an extra 20% off that VIP ticket.
- [13:53]
B
Absolutely. Highly recommend that. So it's even, even more of a steal one. So this doesn't sound like a total sales thing for co create, but we'll definitely have that in the show. Notes more on the layout of the show. Is there multi track, like when somebody gets there, they're going to know at such and such time these people are speaking or are we in one main hall and after the keynote the next person just comes on and it's speaker after speaker.
- [14:17]
C
No, there's three total rooms. There's the keynote stage, the Masterclass sessions and then the vertical category sessions. But also if you want to take some time and browse different products and suppliers, I mentioned that's one of the key things we can do differently from many of these other shows is we bring our suppliers actually there. So you'll see a room, it's called the Alibaba Guaranteed Pavilion there and it's right next to the stages and you'll be able to browse different products. We'll even have a wall of the 500 trending products on the platform at the moment. So it'll be quite cool.
- [14:54]
B
Absolutely. That is wild. The sessions that are VIP only included, what's the difference between those? And somebody who just say gets. I guess it's the basic ticket.
- [15:06]
C
Yeah, the VIP only sessions. So we have the Masterclass session and the vertical category session that are just for premium and VIP ticket holders. The reason for that is those sessions are really deep dives into how to grow and scale your business or how to use AI. So I'll use the AI example. Our friend Brandon Young is going to be hosting a session on optimizing or developing products using AI. So that will be a one hour sit down in a room where everybody is able to watch Brandon take you through the process but also possibly whiteboard different ideas and real time scenarios. So we do that because you should be a qualified business owner that really wants to implement the strategies right away.
- [15:54]
A
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Then let me tell you about Co Create. Co create is Alibaba.com's largest annual in person event and it's returning to Las Vegas on September 5th and 6th at the Paris Hotel. You'll hear from over 100 incredible speakers. We're talking C level leaders, industry experts and eight figure business owners sharing their secrets to success. Head over to Alibaba Co Create.com to learn more and use code ALIPODCAST. That's one word. A L I podcast for 10% off general admission and 20, 20% off premium and VIP tickets. See you there.
- [16:34]
B
What is great about that? Like I could, I can tell you firsthand and I was just recently talking to one of my best friends Ramon, who's no doubt going that Ramon's part of Brandon's inner circle. And Brandon was talking about, you know, using AI for products like many people are, but actually implemented it and was talking about it and showing the implementation almost a year and a half ago, like a year plus ago. And now those products that, you know, using Alibaba, they're actually on the market now, they are selling and they're actually doing really well. So like I think he's going to give a even more behind the scenes stuff in that session. So I'm excited to attend that one as well.
- [17:17]
C
Yeah, likewise.
- [17:21]
B
I'm speaking super excited about that. Brandon, you mentioned what are some other areas, if not speaker names, but what are some other areas at least that you feel like people are asking a lot about? And you can say I might not be able to tell you the speaker right now, but we're going to cover this at a high level.
- [17:44]
C
Yeah, I'll break down a few for you Carlos, and we'll drop a few cool speaker names as well as we move along. Right. I mentioned we'll kick off day one, September 5th with our President Kuo giving a recap of what we are announcing that day. And we'll have some media on hand, like journalists and PR on hand to, to cover those stories. But beyond that, you know, we'll bring some of our, our really successful buyers onto stage. We're going to talk about how you can maximize your margins by taking advantage of like the big key sales events or by negotiating with our suppliers. We're going to share some inside baseball as well. So we're going to bring in our category leaders to talk about the biggest trends that we see in the US market. And that's not just macro level trends. We want to, we want to break down what's happening in specific key industry verticals and how you guys as business owners can then unlock what we see happening. But we also got feedback last year that we needed to bring more female business owners on stage. And this year we're really making an effort to focus on important things that impact female business owners. So one is we'll have a main stage keynote panel about funding women entrepreneurs and we have some great leaders like Entrepreneista and Bold sky that will be talking about the importance there. But then the evening of the first night we actually have a screening of a film called show her the Money and the director dives deep into the importance of funding women entrepreneurs and what female entrepreneurs bring to the US economy. So that's like day one, main stage. The key topics you'll hear if we dive into like what's happening in some of the smaller breakout rooms, we'll dive deep on logistics because we've really optimized our logistics offerings and I think you probably know better than anyone. Overseas logistics are really hard and we want to talk about, you know, what are the strategies if you're a drop shipper or can we help you consolidate shipments from different factories, you know, consolidate it in the country of origin and then bring it to your fulfillment warehouse. So we'll talk through deep strategies there with the leaders behind developing and leading the logistics programs for Alibaba.
- [20:18]
B
Yeah, I think logistics and you know, maybe AI in search either being neglected or not deployed correctly in their business is probably going to be the two areas that put more people out of business. Just, just my experience based on 15 years of doing this, like more people out of business this year than like it almost be, might be like an extinction event for a lot of sellers. Like if you don't, if you're not current in those areas, like it's going to be bad for business. It's, it's definitely going to compress your profit margin. So like, yeah, it's, that's awesome to see that there, especially from, you know, the experts at this, you know, which is Alibaba. So it's almost the horse's mouth when it comes to that. Like Alibaba is the, the source, if you will.
- [21:04]
C
Yeah, I have a cool one, Carlos, that I'll, I would love to throw in. So this is a baby of mine that I've been fostering and trying to figure out how to bring to life. So I hope it's enjoyable and valuable. But we will do a session. It's a Shark Tank esque, but we're calling it the Pitch the Pros. And we've got these amazing guys from the modern inventor that will put it on and we'll have a panel of five judges that will sit and on the main stage we will have 15 business owners come up and they've got three to five minutes to pitch their product. And you know, about half of them will be active growth mode. So they're already businesses that are established doing well. And then the other half will be businesses that are just trying to bring an invention to life. We're going to pick five winners and we'll award them grants in real time on stage and a, a pretty cool prize package over there. So that's a fun one.
- [22:02]
B
Sweet. I wish I was heading out next week. The what you mentioned earlier about, you know, bringing more female business owners to the stage, that's. That, that's always amazing. I find that. And I don't know the why, I won't even assume to know the why, but I find that the majority of got male business owners. I don't know, guys, us guys maybe have more of a tendency to like, I don't know if it's beat our chest or talk louder about the wins and stuff that we do, but whenever I get into these like private masterminds or I do have the opportunity to come across one of these amazing businesses that as that is female run, I'm always like so impressed. I'm like, how are you not on stage? Like as like the biggest draw of this show? I've learned so much from you in this tiny conversation. Why don't you have a podcast? Why don't you know what I mean? And it just feels like there's almost a less of a need to do that, if I may. So the fact that you're prioritizing that and we're gonna see more of that, I think that's. I Think that's awesome. It's also going to be great ammunition for me to invite a friend of mine. I mean, she's a friend of mine as well, but she's also a closer friend of mine's wife named Natalie from Creations by Natalie. Maybe that will be what we can get her to entice her to come out with the crew because we're bringing a lot of people to Co Create to actually hear these talks. So that's awesome.
- [23:21]
C
I love that. You know what? I have a real privilege in the role that I sit in where I talk to business owners almost every day. And I've met some really, really cool business owners and we're thinking about female entrepreneurs specifically. I had the privilege of talking to this woman, Jen Kennedy, who owns this company called Honeybug. And Honey Bug is like curated boxes for kids and it's like the perfect gifts to give kids. She's leveraging Alibaba to source her products and I just recently found out about it. But then you've got these amazing problem solvers and creative minds like Dr. Ronak Mehta. She's going to be speaking at Co Create. She is a physician as a day job, but she decided to invent these little plushies that. They're called nerd bugs and they represent the different organs in your body. And, you know, I feel like I, I randomly see them at shops all over the place. But, like, this is a woman that has a side hustle. An amazingly successful business. Developed it on Alibaba.com and has now scaled it like crazy. So we're privileged to have.
- [24:32]
B
You got to send me those links. You got to send me links to those people. Like, that kind of stuff lights me up. Like seeing that, that's like my, my decompression time to be able to read those kind of amazing, uplifting stories. So I please share those so I can put them in the show notes 100% you.
- [24:45]
C
You got it?
- [24:45]
B
Yeah, that's it. What about the networking? Is there anything like. How do you imagine. Networking is a very powerful part of getting a bunch of people together? Is there anything you're doing intentionally or that people can expect that this networking is going to be great? Like maybe super successful business owner, but maybe they're, you know, they're tilting a little bit to the introvert side and they don't really know how to maximize this whole networking thing. So what's. What, what should people expect there?
- [25:15]
C
Yeah, we should break it down into a couple key areas. So there are definitely times and I like I really like that you referenced this, Carlos. There are times where people that are extroverts will have no problem walking up to someone at a networking coffee or a lunch to, to grab time with them. And we will have those, right? We got three or four coffee breaks throughout the two days. We've got lunches that we're putting aside an hour for so people can network. But then, you know, we have the VIP gala dinner where you'll be, you know, in a group of. For VIP ticket holders only. A group of about 250 folks that are all really successful business owners. You know, we're not bringing in any third parties that will try and pitch you on on things. It's really just business owners sharing and trading ideas. But we pick these more intimate settings for opportunities for people that might be more introverted to have a chance to brush elbows with everyone.
- [26:18]
B
That's amazing. I'm looking for it. I fall somewhere in that weird middle ground. Like I would definitely say I'm more of an introvert, but then having wizards of Ecom community doing a podcast, getting approached more, it doesn't mean that I'm going to go into like an epileptic fit if I have to talk to people. But it's definitely one of those things that I need to recharge at the end. So I think if you catch me towards the beginning of the day, you'll be like, oh my God, Carlos, he's an extrovert. He just like loves talking and networking, whatever. But at the end of the day I'm just like, where can we get some ramen as a group and just sit there and have a really low key, you know, talk and like talk shop and prepare for the day tomorrow. So I feel that there's there. There's what? What do you feel like you wish that I haven't asked and we haven't touched on that. You feel that anyone that's considering going to cocreate, they have to know this. Did I miss anything?
- [27:10]
C
No. I think, you know, the big things are you really have a chance to spend time with suppliers. So we'll bring real suppliers there. You know, I mentioned we'll have around 30 different suppliers there that are showing off products and we'll have over 500 different products there. So it will be a really wide variety. Not only that, we've got all these different levels of business owners that will be there and you have the full Alibaba.com executive team. I think one thing, Carlos, that I've heard from our partners over the last couple years is that Alibaba.com in the US didn't feel as accessible as some of the other marketplace brands. And we are really making efforts to change that. So our president, his full leadership team will be there. Members from our team in China will be, will be present. We've got, you know, a bunch of our offices in the US that will have people there and we're really open. Like we want feedback. We want to know what we're doing well, we want to know how we can help you. So I think that's, that's the key thing to know.
- [28:14]
B
Yeah, I, I've been a power user on Alibaba and I've used Alibaba. I don't even remember the year, but it was unre. If you looked at it and how it looked when I first started using it to now, it was unrecognizable. And you can tell that a lot of the major changes were based off of feedback. And I'm sure, you know, not coming into North America because you're already here, but like I'm sure that's just that trend is going to continue. So I love hearing that. I'm, I know you're going to be there at there. So we're going to be able to get a, we'll get a selfie, some coffee, have some fun on the ground. I'm looking forward to presenting. I'm going to be talking about co create until people ears are numb from here until then because I think it's that important to go and I look forward to seeing everybody there. What is the best way for someone. Oh, we mentioned woe go to. I'm gonna, I'm gonna drop a link.com.
- [29:08]
C
And then you'll see the area to buy tickets. We have three ticket options. Right Carlos, we should, we should definitely.
- [29:14]
B
Mention that I think there should only be vip. I mean it's a steal.
- [29:18]
C
Yeah.
- [29:19]
B
Getting less. Okay. But go ahead, you do your thing on this. We got one Choice and it's VIP.
- [29:26]
C
The, the general admission tickets are $199 at Early Bird. I mentioned for the next 40 days. And it's June 27th now, so 40 days from here will go up in price. Then we have the premium tickets which are 599 at the early Bird pricing. Those, those actually come with two nights in the hotel as well and a $100 sourcing coupon. Then the VIP tickets to Carlos's point that at 9.99 is a, is a really, really good deal. You get the two nights in the Hotel, the VIP gala dinner access. You get obviously the lunches, the coffees and, and all of that. But a 200 source in credit that comes with it.
- [30:06]
B
Free. So free. We just can't say that, but free.
- [30:09]
C
Pretty much free until my lawyer shows up behind me.
- [30:12]
B
Hopefully nobody gets fired behind that. When they, when the counting gets a hold of those numbers and runs that. We didn't make anything off these tickets but. All right. I'm very curious as to this answer of what I'm going to ask you next. So what is your favorite book and why?
- [30:28]
C
So I got a two year old at home right now and he's, he's at the point where he's sitting more still as we read through books. So I'm bringing out my, my childhood favorites and I've got a couple Shell Silverstein, where the Sidewalk Ends. I love like all the, the perfect rhymes that he has in there with the goofiness but then also Winnie the Pooh House at Pooh Corner. I think a lot of magic happens in these kid books that we tend to lose as adults. So I could go back and read those anytime.
- [31:03]
B
Yeah, I'm looking for the course that you put out on how to get the two year old to sit still. Like anything after that was kind of a blur to me but I'm trying to get my 6 year old to sit still. So like I'm still, I still haven't figured it out so.
- [31:15]
C
Yeah, no, that's amazing. My course for that either.
- [31:18]
B
Yeah, I, I, I started reading to them too and it's, I'll tell you, I don't know who is enjoying it more, them or I. So I hope you're in the same boat. Rod, thank you so much. You're extremely busy, probably a much, much more busier than I am. So I appreciate you taking the time to come on this show. I'm looking forward to seeing you at co create and staying connected and working a lot behind the scenes.
- [31:41]
C
Yeah, likewise. Carlos, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.