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- [00:00]
A
We've got craft brewing, CRO banking, toys, and I'm a wallet salesman, basically. We've got two special guests. Mina Zandabar, VP of Global e Commerce and Digital growth at Mattel and Avi Moskowitz, co founder and CEO of Pretty Damnquik pdq. We're covering the full spectrum today. We're going to talk about growth from a couple angles. Mina, you as VP of global e commerce can't get much further upstream at a really big 80 year multi billion dollar holding company. And Avi Moskowitz, pretty downstream with PDQ helping brands convert more people in checkout.
- [00:30]
B
So we are effectively a data company connecting all the different parts of the customer journey from the moment they come into the store to the moment they're delivered.
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C
The power, the super power of e commerce is first party data.
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B
We're able to inject the communication and the personalization in that journey that ultimately gets the customer over the finish line.
- [00:52]
C
Mattel is a big machine, but all of us start always with the customer and voice of the customer. So what is number one and is important for us is listening to our consumers through the trends, through direct communications, through our community, through the shows, through the events.
- [01:08]
B
The reason why we emphasize checkout, even though we're a full journey platform, is in checkout. That's the moment. That's the only time that you really know this customer. There's a lot of money sitting on the table that is there for you to take that doesn't require any investment.
- [01:27]
A
All right, we are back with another episode of Marketing Opportunities Operators. We've got an atypical episode today. We've got no Conor Row Lane. We do have Cody Ploer and we've got two special guests. We've got Mina Zandabar, VP of Global e Commerce and digital growth at Mattel and Avi Moskowitz, co founder and CEO of Pretty Damn Quick pdq. Mina and Avi, thank you guys for joining.
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B
Thanks for having us.
- [01:45]
A
All right, so this is obviously brought to you in part by PDQ and the usual suspects, motion rich panel pression after sell in the house.
- [02:27]
D
One thing that's become really obvious this year is creative strategy is changing. It is no longer just just about make better ads or even more ads. You have to have AI in your workflow. You have to understand all the right best practices today. And the leverage point is how you think about the creative.
- [02:41]
A
And that's where a lot of teams are struggling. People are still learning creative strategy the same way they did years ago through trial and error. Intuition and there hasn't been a structured way to learn that role properly.
- [02:50]
D
It's also super hard to find great creative strategists these days. It's still a new role and it's one that's extremely important but there's a lot of self learning. It's. And so that's why the training in the space is so important. And Motion is a huge leader of that. And they're launching a new free course and community launching in March. This is going to be a new way that people can really master creative strategy.
- [03:08]
E
And what I really like that this is, this is all taught live. Things are changing so, so fast, so rapidly right now that courses that were recorded six or eight months ago like those are all outdated by now. The course won't just be listening to people talk about ads, you will actually be hands on. In this course you're building concepts, you're actually making creative, you're testing it and you're ultimately learning how to make decisions when things don't work out the first time.
- [03:31]
A
And the instructor line is legit. There are creative experts from brands like Caraway Comm, Harry's Space Goods, Happy Mammoth and agency leaders and founders from Scaled Brands. They're teaching what they're doing right now, not what worked three years ago.
- [03:43]
D
There'll also be some potential, I'm supposed to say internships at least for Jones Road. I'm going to say job opportunities. You'll have the ability to sign up and learn more. But we will be interviewing a few candidates as part of this partnership with Motion, which I am so excited about. The course is live, it's free to register, seats are limited. If creative performance is part of your job in 2026, then this is worth paying attention to. We'll drop the link in the show notes.
- [04:09]
A
I'm super excited to dive in because we've really, we're covering the full spectrum today. We're going to talk about growth from a couple angles. Mina, you as VP of global E Commerce can't get much further upstream at a really big 80 year multi billion dollar, you know, holding company. And Avi Muskowitz pretty downstream with PDQ helping brands convert more people in checkout. So we're really going to be tackling E commerce growth from like some, some very, some from the far sides of the spectrums is what I would say. Before we begin, let me check in on Cody a little bit. Cody, how are you doing?
- [04:38]
D
I'm doing well. Busy as always. Good, good as always. I got some like construction going on in the background. So I'm going to be muted and mostly here to listen, but obviously excited to chime in. Avi, thanks for. Thanks for having us. It's been a, been, been a while, but it will be good to catch up and awesome to see all the cool things that you guys are doing that your team has been showing us.
- [04:55]
B
Same here.
- [04:57]
A
I'd love to get into some pretty brief intros. So, Mina, maybe you could just walk us through briefly what your title and role and responsibilities look like at Mattel.
- [05:05]
C
Of course. Thanks. Thanks, Connor. Thanks for the introduction. By the way, my name is Mina Zanbar. I'm the VP of Global E Commerce here at Mattel. I lead our D2C strategy across some of our most iconic brands. As you know, Barbie, Hutfield, Monster High, and many others. I actually started in banking, then moved into Beauty and Lawless and eventually found my way to get to toys, which was not planned but ended up to be incredibly fun and joyful. What connects all of them together. For me, it brings joy to everybody's home. So it's fun.
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A
Absolutely. Love to hear it.
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B
Awesome.
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A
And then, Avi, why don't you give a brief background of unpdq?
- [05:49]
B
Sure. Brooklyn born. Been building companies my whole life, mostly solving operational problems at scale through technology and customer focus. My most recent company before PDQ is how I got into pdq. I launched a craft beer brewery. We built a Shopify store just before COVID hit. And what do you know, Covid and alcohol make an explosive combination. We suddenly were processing hundreds of orders a day, some days over thousands of orders. And we were confused by having all these customers coming into our site. And yet the bottom line, the actual impact, the key metrics to our business were things that were not translating the way that we would have expected them to. And as we took a closer look, we realized that checkout is where almost 50% of our revenues were being lost. We had effectively a leak in our checkout. And as we began solving the problem for ourselves, we took a look at the overall e commerce market and realized it's a much bigger problem. It's a $270 billion a year problem for E commerce. Amazon understood from the first day they launched their business that it's all going to be about logistics combined with trust and confidence, which is why from the moment you come into their store, they're screaming, this is when you'll get it, how you'll get it. All those key signals that ultimately translate into you completing your checkout come from that. And we realize that the bigger problem is trust and confidence. And how do you get that trust and confidence into the E commerce experience? That's not Amazon. And the challenge is not that regular brands don't understand that they're losing all this money in checkout, but the data is so fragmented, unlike Amazon that owns the entire chain. So we are effectively a data company connecting all the different parts of the customer journey from the moment they come into the store to the moment they're delivered. And by having that, we're able to inject the communication and the personalization in that journey that ultimately gets the customer over the finish line. But fundamentally that's what retail is. It's trust, confidence, the emotional aspects of buying. And unfortunately there isn't an app for that. You can't just download something that injects it. It requires so many different aspects of the journey to be touched. 1600 actual criteria, 1600 different data points that we're touching in the checkout alone to help influence that purchase.
- [08:33]
A
Love to hear it and I'm super excited. Cody's user at Jones Road. So we're going to get deep into sort of the strategy of how PDQ is helping brands reduce abandoned checkouts and things like that. I will just call out because I want to start upstream and then we'll move downstream. So we'll hit some of the PDQ stuff in a few more minutes here. But we've got craft brewing, CRO banking, toys and I'm a wallet salesman basically. So we really, we've got like a pretty eclectic group of experience here. Okay, first Amina, I've got a question for you here. So before your role at Mattel you were at Blueprint where you oversaw the entire kind of growth infrastructure. Now I'm super curious, that is obviously more of a traditional startup environment I would assume. Whereas Mattel, as I mentioned earlier, $5 billion company, 80 years old, very established systems. So maybe you could talk a little bit about like the, the spectrum of execution that you've worked in. Like how do you maintain the agility and startup velocity while being in a much larger, know, enterprise level, complex business?
- [09:32]
C
That's a loaded question I have to take. Yeah, totally, but, but I actually started my journey in a big corporation and then from there I went to the startup and I came back into a very large scale corporation. I have to admit I learned something new in every single one of them. Corporate is where you learn about priorities, process sequencing and you have access to unlimited resources. When you go to a startup, that's where you learn about Agility, real time decision making and making mistakes. Stand up and run again and pivot360. Then coming back to the corporate, what I learned, I can actually merge these two walls together. Not only have the process and processes and and real time decision making and agility also sequence all of this together. Because it's a very different environment inside a corporate. I don't try, I don't try to make everything fast and quick as as much as I would do it in the startup environment. But still we are a very small startup inside a big corporate. D2C Digital cannot be merged into the corporate and get into the process and process, process and processes existed. You have to be agile. You have to be really taking ownership for your journey and making decisions. Test and learn and move fast. Otherwise the environment outside your corporate is going to move fast and you're going to feel behind. So you have to move fast with that. So I learned something new in each one of them.
- [11:13]
A
Yeah, I believe it. And one thing that I was curious about is the Mattel creations and the drops that you guys do have become like I think it's a very like modern form of E commerce. Even like the idea of drops feels like it's only a handful of years old. Like really popularized with, with sneaker culture a couple years ago. So are there maybe aspects of Mattel that you're working on that are more agile and more naturally have the attributes of a faster moving organization?
- [11:39]
C
So at the high level, Mattel creation is the fastest growing unit of our business. It's where we actually talk directly with our avid collectors. Matteo Creation is all about collectors. It's about community and it's about content. So at the high level I would say natal creation drops are really about the storytelling and community and you're selective about the projects we are taking. Yes, you're right. We want to stay agile. We are agile. It feels so special because it's not about volume, it's about the narrative and the community and the content we are creating around our products. So it's a very unique D2C. It's not a normal CPG D2C. It's where we are having our community to talk to us directly and building that relationship through the community to sell our products. But it's all about collectors and avid collectors.
- [12:31]
A
It feels so much different than some of your previous experience like banking since joining Mattel and specifically with Mattel Creations. Are there any like strategies or lessons that like really stand out for you?
- [12:41]
C
Start with your customers. It doesn't matter where you Go. Health and wellness, Beauty. It's all about the eq. That emotional intelligence of your customers. If you know your customers, then doesn't matter what you sell, it doesn't matter what community you manage. You can build that emotional connection with your consumers and customers. So you always have to start from your customers. I remember in the old days when I was looking at Amazon and what Amazon had built over time, Jeff Bezos used to say in every meeting there is an empty chair, that that chair is your customer. Start from outside. Don't get into the hassle and bustle of inside company. And what you know is different than what your consumer knows. If you really want to win, you have to get out and you have to know your customers and you have to talk to them directly. Doesn't matter where you are in the organization.
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A
Okay. Yeah, I love this. And you know, for those listening we have a preparation doc. I'm gonna ask a question off doc, because now I'm like just extremely curious but like what does that look like from a process perspective? I think all brands say that all the time. Especially like the brands that I'm constantly interfacing with are significantly smaller. Right. Tens of millions of dollars a year. Everybody wants to be customer first. We always say with like product expansion or category expansion, like what do you have permission from your customers to build? And like I think it because like it's a little hand wavy at times and people aren't like on the ground talking to customers in the way that you're describing. So at Mattel, when you guys are thinking about future creations or figuring out how to go to market with the next drop, like how are you engaging with customers and like who are the teams that are interfacing? How do you collect the data? I would love just like a high level overview there.
- [14:23]
C
Mattel is a big machine. We have Innovation group, we have Data group, we have marketing, we have supply chain. Right. But all of us have start always with the customer and voice of the customer. So what is number one and is important for us is listening to our consumers through the trends, through direct communications, through our community, through the shows, through the events and making sure you listen to your consumers firsthand. Everybody is our consumer. You grow up one or another with our products, right? You started with Fisher Price perhaps and then you went to Barbie and Hatfield and at some point now you're a collector. So we have you in the life cycle, in our journey. You start with us and when you are grandpa and grandma, you're still staying with us. So it's so important for us to understand your journey and bring you in the journey with us from the moment you were born to the moment you're collectors and then to the moment you're buying to your grandchildren.
- [15:22]
A
Totally. Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. Cody, were you a Hot Wheel kid growing up?
- [15:29]
D
I'm sure I had a little bit of everything. Yeah, I had all of them. I know it's fun because my daughter's three and I have this like train set that's sitting around that's like probably 20 years old that, that when she goes to my, my parents house she still plays with. So we still got some of them kicking around. I will definitely be Hot Wheels for my son.
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A
But you're not.
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D
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
And you're not yet a Mattel creation drop buyer.
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E
No.
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D
But you know the when, when kids want something like my daughter just bought or I just bought it for her, like she's a big Trevi fan. Shout out to, to, to Trevi simple modern team. But she's a big mini fan. And so they, they had a drop. It was Trevi mini cotton candy flavor and it was just like so personalized to her. And like when a kid wants something like you kind of have no choice
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B
but to get it.
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D
So I totally get the, the value of the drop strategy.
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C
You know, we have American Jail for your daughter. We have Barbie for your daughter. Right. Like we, we have everything for, for your son and your daughter. So I, I grew up myself with Barbie. I have so much nostalgia with Barbie. Right. And then the new generation of growing up with, with American Girl. And that's what I say. We have you in your life journey. Somewhere in your journey you're going to be with our products and you're playing with our products at some level. And everybody is a casual collector. By the way, the die hard collectors, yes, they come to Metallic Creation, they buy the drops because that's the where they find the joy. But everybody's a casual collector. So Cody, if you never bought Hot Wheel from Metallic Creation, I want you to try it and let us know how you feel.
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D
I will. I definitely will.
- [17:01]
A
Lately every market I talk to says the same thing. Budgets are tight, goals are higher than ever, and I have to prove what's working, not just report it. And that is the new reality of marketing. If you can't afford to rely on guesses or platform reported results, you need clear causal proof of what's actually driving growth. And that's exactly where House comes in. Incrementality testing is the New scientific way to measure true impact, to see what's moving the needle and what's just noise. So you can reallocate spend based on fact and not faith. Cody, Connor and I all use House for incrementality testing and it's become a core part of the modern measurement stack. They're now working with more than 40 of the top 100 DTC brands, which shows just how quickly this approach is becoming the new standard for serious growth teams. House helps you run real experiments across your channel so you can answer questions that actually matter, like which channels are truly driving incremental revenue? How much should I really be spending on Meta, Google or YouTube? And what's the halo effect of my ads on Amazon or retail sales? What sets House apart is the combination of rigorous science and marketer friendly design. The math under the hood is complex, built on causal inference and experimentation. But the platform itself is simple. You can choose your questions, launch a test in minutes and get clear, actionable results you can actually use. Plus, every customer gets a dedicated measurement strategist, someone who's lived in the world of growth and knows how to translate data into strategy. They'll help you design smart tests, interpret the results, and build a repeatable culture of experimentation across your team. With House, you aren't just buying a tool, you're buying the growth marketing team that can help you make the most of it. In a world where every marketing dollar is under a microscope, you need to know what matters with House by going to house.IO/operators. That's H A U S.IO/operators and start allocating your budget with confidence. So we're talking a lot about being customer centric. I want to tie this into PDQ here. Customer centric. Mina brought up Amazon, Avi, you brought them up earlier. I'm curious when it comes when it came to transitioning from the craft brewery to E comm software vendor. Like what were some of the first initial features, Avi, that you said this is what E comm brands are lacking right now in order to be customer centric. And this is what I want to be providing as a service to those people.
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B
Yeah, that's a great question, Connor. I would say starting the craft beer business in bars and physical locations, it was very clear to me that there was a great appeal. Brand is so important, obviously, as Mattel knows and any established brand, the brand becomes so important and you can get so many things right. The brand, the product, the experience. In a retail setting, you control a lot more. I think the first learning for me on The E commerce side was that I wasn't able to provide that personalized experience, look at the customer coming into the store, understand them, have the conversation and have the ability to personalize what it is I was going to provide. Because even today, if we're talking about Shopify, but every E commerce store, it's a one size fits all, first time customer, returning customer, high value customer, customer that's close to your inventory, customer who just had a bad delivery experience or bad support experience. All of them are lumped together and treated the same way. There's a lot of segmentation on the marketing and advertising side, but there's nothing really in the journey that's speaking to this particular customer as a first time customer. So segmentation was the first opportunity that was screaming out at us and saying, you really do need to identify customers differently based on at least as cohorts. Now with AI, you really should be able to identify a customer as a personality and really understanding who they are, understanding their situation. Am I ordering from a hotel? I may be checking out tomorrow. You know, what are the unique aspects that are actually driving my purchase and what's going to help me succeed as a customer and buying from you and me as a brand, be able to profit and benefit and continue to grow my business by making good business decisions along the way. So I would, I would say segmentation was definitely number one. Probably number two was thinking of the business as with unit economics, thinking of my checkout as a P and L. How do I take all the things that are factored into this particular purchase into consideration? What did it cost me to get this customer here? Like, what were my CAC costs? What are my cost of goods? What is my fulfillment cost? What is my delivery cost? If I can collect all that information and I can actually influence the customer journey, then I should be able to know how much of a discount I can provide. Can I offer expedited shipping? What items to upsell that'll fit into the box so I don't pay for shipping twice? There's so much nuance there that ultimately affects whether or not this business is going to be profitable and if this customer is going to come away happy.
- [22:10]
A
Can you give a couple examples? What are common ways that brands are personalizing the checkout experience for, let's say a new customer like you mentioned?
- [22:18]
B
Sure. So going back to trust and confidence, the earlier you can communicate to the customer everything there is to know about the product. So on the product display page, having the delivery promise, but knowing that you're communicating with confidence that you're not putting a date there that you're going to regret. So using data to have a high confidence date on the delivery page, showing them you know, that you know a bit about them. So you can start injecting confidence and say, hey Connor, I know that you're located in Denver and we happen to have a location near you, so I can get this to you tomorrow. Right? Start that communication as early on as possible. Not upselling. Right? So again, going back to Amazon versus non Amazon. Amazon's focused on communicating everything they can about the delivery of the product because they realize how important it is for you to get confidence in this first product before they offer you others. So start on the product page and the entire journey really should be influenced by getting the customer over the finish line based on injecting trust and confidence. So show them reviews of either the product they have in their cart specifically, show them any kind of trust badges, anything that will help them understand recent purchases by other customers. At the same time you want to inject some urgency and say if you order by X time, we will get you the product by X time. But also be able to do that intelligently and say that if I know it's a Friday afternoon, fulfillment's shut down, I'm not going to be picking and packing it until Monday morning. Then communicate it in a way that's going to be pleasing to the customer. Don't say we will start shipping on Monday, but say you'll receive the product in, you know, next Wednesday and specify the day. Being able to personalize the journey for the customer from the moment they enter the store all the way through checkout with all those different points. And even in terms of the options that you offer the customer as a first time customer, you're going to want to offer them, get the product to them as quickly as you possibly can. So minimize the number of options you're presenting. Maybe offer them the discount on expedited shipping so they get it faster. Knowing what your margins are allow you to know which options you're going to use. But not having the same shipping options for every customer. The vast majority of Shopify brands are presenting options that aren't exactly accurate. If you really want to understand when you're going to get it, you need to read the terms and conditions. More than 50% of support tickets that come in to an E Commerce store come in the same day the order was placed. That's a crazy number. And the vast majority of those are Wismo tickets. A WSMO ticket is where is my order? And the reason they're asking you on the same day they place their order is they genuinely don't know when they're going to get it. Even though they read, you know, it said you'll get it in three to five days. Well, does that, do I count the weekend? Saturday, Sunday? Is that when you're going to ship it? Is that when I'm going to receive it? All that confusion for customers who've placed the order leave them with this, you know, uncomfortable feeling as to when and whether they're going to get it. But think about all the customers that left because they didn't have that clarity.
- [25:51]
A
It makes total sense just to build
- [25:54]
C
on what Avi was saying. Like, I loved the way he put it into the picture. For the customer journey, you have to be data oriented. You have to start with data, understand how many customers are coming to your websites where they live and they don't transact why they leave and they don't transact and understand their journey. And to Avi's point, get them to the finish line and help them to convert. Customer not only wants trust, they also want to understand what other customers are feeling and really connect with other customers in that journey is going to help them to actually fast track their decision. Nobody comes to the site just to window shop, right? They come to the site because they have a reason to come to the site. And it's so important for you to connect emotionally with them where they need it and help them and really handhold them to get to the end. Like,
- [26:49]
E
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- [28:13]
B
Cody, you were going to jump in. I was going to, I was going to ask you some questions just to prod you because you really came at this with the marketer's eye. Our first conversations was through the lens of the marketer and I would say today you're as much involved in understanding the logistics and all the other aspects of the business because they all are connected to each other. There are so many different pieces that I've learned and watched as we've grown together over the years. There's so many elements of this that it's hard to simplify how you provide that experience because it's made up of so many, so many different pieces.
- [28:53]
D
Yeah, I was, the main thing I was going to say is like, I think you're selling it short a little bit because sometimes when, when somebody asks like, oh, what exactly does PQ do? Like when we started it was probably two to three years ago and like the main product was the, you know, segmenting checkout and being able to show, you know, Amazon style delivery promises. But it's, it's so much more than that and it's, it definitely touches ops, finance, E comm, like everything but like there's so many things and I think it's kind of like an end to end thing that you know, like we use you guys for tracking pages as well and so we're able to carry that customer experience. So there's that consistency of showing accurate things like that segmentation is a really big one as well where you know, we're able to show different offers or different messaging or timelines to different customers. One that I love is like predicted LTV is like if you think somebody's going to be a high value customer, you can actually discount shipping for their first one because it's likely worth it to get them to convert or something like that. Yeah, we show reviews to people segmented based on what's in their cart. We're trying to take that a step further and Layer on some other data into that. But there's definitely, I think really thoughtful ways to personalize it. And then yeah, there's so many backend things like my ops team talks to PDQ more than anybody else at my team because there's, there's so much with like our order routing and flow that is integrated and set up and has been a really big help to also save us money. Like we don't have to do split shipping and things like that and we're able to, you know, based on where somebody is. It's not a three to five day standard shipping for everybody. Some people it's a one to two. It depends because we have multi warehouses so it's, it gets really complex. But being able to actually give people the accurate data lifts, conversion rate and then yeah, like again we care a ton about profitability. So it's also you know, the dynamic rate, ship shopping and being able to give them the right one where you're able to maximize the value you're able to give to a customer and say hey, we can get it to you quickly. But then you're also making sure you, you're actually getting it there in time but also doing it for the most, the most cost effective way. So there's just so much that kind of goes into it that touches all of those things. But it's, we're, we're obviously very big fans.
- [30:54]
B
Thanks Cody. Yeah, and then I jet I. It's so difficult to communicate all the different aspects. I have to say Cody, who is one of our first customers, we've learned as much from Cody as we've provided over the years. And a big part of what we're doing that I think is really unique is data is so critical to businesses today. And that's so obvious that data, every business today is a data driven business. The challenge is that you can provide visibility into data, but if you can't provide a fast way to react to what you're seeing, then it's just frustrating. You know, I remember early days when I was using like Google Analytics. It would show me things and it was just like poking myself with pins every day because there was nothing I can do about it just looking at it. We built this platform so that it provides the visibility, but also it acts on everything it's seeing and it's acting on it in real time. And it really is transformative. And for us, Cody's a great example of how we've grown together to a place where I don't think there's an aspect of Cody's business that we don't touch because the customer journey and I think one of the challenges today in general in e commerce is we're dealing with siloed data. I mean, it's not that we don't want to provide a unified personal journey to every customer, but because there are 13,000 apps on the Shopify store, most stores today are using upwards of a dozen of these. Each of those apps are living in their own Chinese walled garden. It's like literally walled off one from the other. So how can you benefit from all that information? So fundamentally we've had to bring all that data together, all that functionality together so that the decisions you're making starting on the first page of the customer meets all the way through the tracking and delivery process. All of that has to be unified if you're going to provide the cohesive experience that's going to bring you a long time customer and provide the profitability to the business. Connor, are you feeling any of this pain? Are you seeing this? Are we? We just poked around your store a little bit before we came in and not going to get specific, but you
- [33:17]
A
can see getting audited on the podcast. Obviously ready to come with the feedback.
- [33:22]
B
You can go check. We have this new tool we released called Checkout Index. It's free. It'll just give you like a quick perspective, you know, of the business. But there are just some obvious things I ordered, I was at, I was at a hotel last Tuesday, wanted to get something desperately before I left. It was a charge stand that I had before. I just wanted to replace it and they weren't able to communicate when I'll get it and there was no way for me to find out. And so I went to Amazon and I ended up ordering something I didn't really want to get. But I needed a charger before I left on the trip. That's just one example, but there are so many.
- [34:03]
A
All right, so I've got some interesting numbers to share from Ridge from our beloved sponsor, Rich Panel. We switched our support stack at Ridge to rich panel about 15 months ago and our cost per ticket has dropped over 70%. That means same team, same volume and over $500,000 in annual savings. CSATs have not changed. We've been sitting at 96% week after week. So the automations did not come at the cost of customer experience. Our last platform talked a lot about AI, but nothing was really changing under the hood. Rich Panel is genuinely AI. First they came in, they rebuilt our workflows and we were Live in under two weeks with basically no lift on our side. And they're about to roll out a returns portal, which for us is huge. Because if they can do the same thing for returns as they did for customer service, that would be sick. If you want to cut down your support costs now and save on returns platform with an AI first platform, talk to Rich Panel. Go to richpanel.com demo tell them Connor from marketing Operator sent you and they'll take good care of you. Thank you. Yeah. So the way that we've thought about it, Ridge, and then I've got a question for, for Cody after this one consistent point that I'm hearing that like we believe it Ridge, or at least have for a long time, one of our goals is generating more ltv. We've been very candid in public about how a lack of natural LTV in our business is a big bottleneck on it. That we get about $100 from a wallet customer and then we get $10 in the next year. It's like it's a very small incremental lift versus some sort of consumable or apparel where there's a more natural repeat purchase rate. So how do we.
- [35:24]
D
Have you thought about gummies?
- [35:25]
A
Have we thought about gummies? Yeah, something that you could just eat every day, leather gum. But like one of, one of the. We've obviously invested a lot in product expansion and category expansion and that has led to its benefits. But one of them is just like how do we just naturally provide a better experience of being a buyer of ridge.com a buyer from ridge.com and that's kind of what led us down the path of like a better account experience. Getting people signed in with someone like a Revo so that we could do some light on site personalization, just make someone feel better about being a customer. And we see like a very subtle lift in ltv, but that doesn't surprise me at all. And a lot of what PDQ seems to be doing and a lot of the points that you hit because I could imagine the features that we're describing or for any brand trying to optimize like visibility and clarity on the pdps or in the checkouts or in the tracking or whatever else. I could see benefits across the board. I could hear conversion rate. I could hear average order value. Someone wants to spend more because they know when it's going to come. I could hear nps. I could hear ltv. So I'm curious, Cody, like which ones did you care about initially? Did you. Where did you Test it. What did you measure? And like what were some of those, those key learnings for us is profit per session.
- [36:32]
D
Because we, you know, we're, we're, we're a bootstrap brand. We care about profitability a lot and so we haven't, I don't know, I've always been skeptical of like LTV of like, like there have been suggestions before like hey, you know, we think you should lower your free shit, you know, your, your shipping cost or whatever it is for this person that's potential high LTV for their first purchase because it's worth getting them in. Like I just am always skeptical of that. And so because we're, you know, we try to be profitable on first purchase, it's always that it's really your, you know, normal CRO, it's your combination of conversion rate and AOV gives you your revenue procession. But now when you're adding in different cost side to it where you're having, you know, different shipping costs, different shipping options as well, like that's a huge factor. And so it's really like profit per session and it's anything from you know, shipping thresholds that we're literally testing right now, shipping prices and especially as they relate to them, different shipping options, all of those that go into it. It's really like looking at what's giving us really like the best landed economics
- [37:30]
B
that we can get.
- [37:31]
A
Yeah, totally. And that's interesting because like I, I could even see a scenario where like all the on site metrics stay exactly the same. It's just being more optimized in the back end. Like what, how are you actually fulfilling that order? Maybe saving a couple dollars there. So on a, on a per order basis you are more profitable.
- [37:45]
D
Yeah, yeah. And where we've been in the past is like I think I've actually tried to squeeze too much profits. Like we've gone really high aov, we've gone really like high shipping prices because like those always showed the most profit. And there was definitely a lot of success with that. But now it's like how can we provide the best customer experience? Because we get to Mina's point about customer feedback, right? Like what we've realized and internally we analyze this, but Laurent is the head of the, I think chief Product officer also shared some data when we did our Black Friday sale. Like we have really good offers for people that are spending a lot. Like we've raised our AOV significantly year over year. But like during Black Friday and like even throughout the year, like our conversion rate of the people that are way below that is actually lower because they're so far from the threshold.
- [38:28]
A
Totally.
- [38:28]
D
And, and they're. The shipping price is probably as a percent of the AOV is too low. So we're, we're now trying to think about that and less of an averages and I think Taylor Holloway talks about this less of an average but actually like what's your modal order distribution? What we're trying to do from a customer first approach, maintain current profitability. How do we get the best customer experience possible? So to get our free shipping threshold as low as possible and to be able to get our shipping cost as low as possible without hurting it. So whatever we can do in the back end to optimize our, our shipping cost, our shipping timing, whatever it is, we just want to kind of pass that through to the customer.
- [39:03]
A
I totally agree. I don't want to go super in the weeds here, but I love the point you just hit and we see a bunch of weird behavior because we have so many different categories at this point. Right. Like even within rings we have 350 $400 tantalum wedding bands and we have $29 silicone rings. So like we've gotten to the point where like we offer for us we're doing a lot of personalization around the progress bar. But like if the progress bar breakpoints are too high, all of a sudden we are deterring silicon ring buyers or some of the lower end ring buyers because they are $150 away from getting free shipping or whatever and it just ends up turning people off. So it's really funny. Yeah. Thinking about it as a distribution and these like different tranches of order values that you have to serve, I think is extremely valuable. There's, we found a ton of like random little optimizations there and I can only imagine we're missing all that opportunity on like the, the shipping cost side.
- [39:50]
D
Yeah, I haven't even thought about that yet because we're at least all, all similar products. But it's like free shipping threshold or cost and like profitability analysis on a, on a ring is so different than, than luggage.
- [40:01]
A
Totally. Okay, I want to kind of go back up the stack here, talk about Mattel a little bit more. One thing that Cody said about Jones Road is that PDQ touches everything from like E Com to marketing to Ops to CX etc. Mina. The question I have at Mattel is like you guys have dozens of IPs. We've talked about Hot Wheels and Barbies and Uno is there. I Just looked up a list. I was a big Thomas the Train fan back in the day. Do you guys have that ip? I'm curious from like an org perspective, like what functions benefit the most from being centralized and like shared across all those different forms of IP versus what teams live specifically within these different forms of ip.
- [40:41]
C
So just to answer your question, but before I answer your question, we have a Thomas floor here. You're very welcome to come and visit so you can see your favorite.
- [40:49]
B
Love it.
- [40:50]
C
Yeah, going back to your question, I would say start with the content. Content is something you can actually centralize and have one set of content for your consumers. So when they come to your environment, they, they belong to that environment and they don't leave the environment. And any direction they take to come to that environment, they feel they're coming into the same place. So content is something, I would say you always kind of start from personalizing it, but centralizing it as well. Finance, supply chain, all those cross functional teams could be centralized as well. What you don't want to centralize, it's the CRM is the merch. Because as much as we think globally and we live like a startup here and we actually execute locally, every local market, every consumer cohort and segment needs a completely different treatment. So when you want to talk to your consumers, back to what Cody was saying, like consumers with higher AOV completely need a different treatment with the versus the consumers with lower AOB versus the consumers which actually they're coming or the customers, they're coming to your websites and they are just promotional shoppers that don't come to your website to buy something which is not promotional. All these different segments of the customers, they need completely different content, different merchandising, different CRM campaigns. Personalize your CRM campaigns to the needs of your consumers versus generically sending one set of communications to everyone. One shirt doesn't fit all. Every consumer needs a completely different experience.
- [42:28]
A
That makes a lot of sense. So. So things like technology or CRM are shared across brands. I'm curious in hearing more about some of the segmentation that you guys have behind brands. Like we talk about the collector market. You've got like, you've got Agent millennial spending like $400 on Lego sets right now and like really cool new Hot Wheels drops and things like that. What is the process behind like identifying who those people are? Where does that information live? Is it at the CRM level? And then like what sorts of different strategies are you taking across these different types of customers?
- [42:59]
C
We started with the Data nowadays the the power of E commerce and there's millions of us out there, the power of E commerce is you can see exactly where your consumer starts, what they looking for. You can see their behavior. So there is no question mark anymore. And that's what I say. It's not one shirt fit all because we can see exactly somebody's coming to our website. Where is the first place they they went in, what they clicked on, what product they had some interest. And then it comes with everything we do in our cart, the cart amendment emails, the personalized email, the personalized emails going back to the consumer and actually show them other recommendations based on their behavior and what they bought and what else we can offer them. And as slowly you build that relationship with your consumer you have more and more data to understand who these customers are, how you want to segment them, what are those cohorts? And talk to them very differently through your content, to your CRM, through your merch.
- [44:00]
A
I think one of the like natural like follow ups to that question around data and just like the explosion of it and like this enormous complexity is how different people are leveraging AI today. So I'm just curious maybe more from like a personal perspective. Mina but like how are you using AI on a day to day basis or like how do you see it trending across the industry?
- [44:20]
C
So what I do, I actually use AI in my personal, not on behalf of Natal but on my personal life a lot. So the busy work AI can help you to leave the busy work to AI but meaningful work stays with you. Where the creativity comes to the picture. When the judgment comes to the picture you always have to use your own because you have experience, you've been in the business, you know your customers and in real life you know what you want to do, right? And every single person has a completely different brain and the brains are completely different wired. But what AI can do can simplify your life. It can take the busy world out of your hand. For example I use, I use AI when I have to shop for something nowadays versus going to individual websites and read the rating and reviews. I go to AI and in my personal life I want to buy something. I just add for, ask for ideas. I asked for the healthiest supplement which it has the least amount of, I would say metal in it and I get the list of the 10 products and then I can do some more studies and ask more questions. Takes that busy work and that mental like constant working for something which is just busy out of your hand and then you can focus on what really matters and where you want to put your energy, which is your creativity, which is your judgment, which AI cannot do that for you and use that power to drive what you want to drive versus getting into the day to day work that I would say is the best place you can start. And by the way, Connor, another thing, I would say we are all getting to what avi was saying. 300, 400, 500, who knows millions of these AI tools. That doesn't mean you have to use them all. Pick and choose what really works for you and continue working with that. And if something you try and it doesn't work, don't force it to work just because you want to. Make sure you're using some AI tools or some AI like content or some AI data. I would say just use what it helps you and takes the pressure out of your day to day. That's the best place to start with.
- [46:35]
A
Yeah, I think that's a fantastic answer. One of our goals at Ridge this year, we've got 12 things that I've talked about in the podcast a couple times and one is just AI everywhere. So like we've just, it's a mandate. Everybody at the company should be like kind of plugging around, using ChatGPT, using the new tools. Avi, you're in a, you're in a different perspective having a software platform. I think it's just such a unique time to be implementing AI. What does that look like at PDQ right now?
- [46:56]
B
Yeah, it's so interesting because data, data fundamentally is what drives AI. And fortunately we've been collecting data since our founding. And up until recently, until we were able to create our own AI tools internally, we were relying heavily on a very large team of people. We call our business SWAS, not SaaS, software with a service. Because there are people that are monitoring and managing your business. You actually have an expert that gets to know your business as well as you do so that we can leverage the data, make sure that we're monitoring, identifying opportunities on a constant basis, always testing, always optimizing. So we started off with a very heavy human component and began just using generalized AI tools to try and accelerate that process. Say, because we have the data, we have the intelligence, we have the tests, we have the results. And we realize that AI hallucinates. You can't just ask it a question like what should my next a B test be on? Free shipping thresholds. It'll make stuff up, it won't understand it. So what we've built over the past two years is an AI tool called Max M A X X and initially used it internally with our customer success team. So instead of them running tests manually one after the other and identifying opportunities, Max would identify the next test, the next recommendations, be able to predict things for you, tell you how best to prepare for a Black Friday Cyber Monday. You can ask Max literally anything and it becomes your copilot. But it's a copilot that's built specifically for your E commerce business. Yours. So in your case, Connor would understand Ridge, know every test we've ever run, know other industry insights that I might be able to share and be able to provide you really that kind of partnership and the kind of acceleration that we all experience in general use of AI every day. But that's only the beginning. Because ultimately E Commerce's opportunity, I mentioned before, its limitation. Its limitation is that you need to build trust and confidence with every customer.
- [49:17]
A
Customer.
- [49:18]
B
But its superpower is unlike retail, that requires a one to one relationship when you're selling a customer product. I don't think we've yet figured out how to have more than one customer being served at a time, meaning have one one person from your business serving multiple customers. In E Commerce, you can be serving hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of customers at a time. And more than that, you actually have a lot more data available to you for each of those customers. But your limitation is being able to react to each of those customers in real time. So our North Star, when we think about AI and making it practical, is something we call autonomous checkout. That means that all the things that we've been talking about, what Cody's doing, what Mina's been doing in all the businesses that we apply AI to. On the E Commerce level, it requires us to set up rules to identify segments to be able to create a pretty robust framework that allows you to manage many cohorts in a very intelligent and personalized way. What autonomous checkout does is it takes this loop of segmentation, personalization, testing and optimization and will do that on a customer by customer basis. So that example that Cody gave of looking at a customer with a lower average order value on Black Friday, that may not be getting the right free shipping threshold, we're able to tackle that in real time because we have the ability to train our models to make those decisions. So you no longer need to say here's the information, respond to it. But we can look at things in real time based on day time, inventory, location, actual real time inventory information, even seasonality. We know that something may be delayed being able to manage every single checkout for profitability. That's our North Star. We're well underway with doing it. There are segments we already are able to run autonomously. For example, if we know that the business has a in their inventory located in New York, customers ordering from New York the day of the week were able to have the rule work autonomously. You can compare it to autonomous driving where initially you're not going to jump into a car, sit in the passenger seat and say hey, hey Sally, take me for a ride. You're going to start gradually and say can you park? You know, and let's gradually gain the confidence and trust necessary to be able to let that car drive you autonomously. But we all know it's getting there and there are plenty of locations around America today where you can get into an autonomous vehicle in a very similar way. We're not in the not too distant future, your checkout can be optimized so that every single session is run for profitability. So instead of you saying if a first time customer from New York comes to my store block on a Monday, blah blah blah, you know, puts these items in the car, instead of saying that, you're able to just say the strategy and say I want to make X amount of margin on first time customers and it'll take care of the rest for you. It'll understand and be able to interpret exactly what's happening at this moment in your checkout to make the best possible decision. That becomes a superpower. Because whatever impact we're making today, and it's very substantial, it's still human driven impact. We're making rules and learning things individually. Our team is learning, our brands are learning and we're learning together. But you're able to accelerate that. It's like on steroids. When you think about being able to take this particular customer at this particular time with this particular cart with these particular capabilities and make the best possible decision to help them complete their order and also help the business achieve the business goals.
- [53:26]
E
Operators, quick gut check here. Q1 is when everyone realizes the same thing at once. Traffic gets more expensive, growth slows down. So the question isn't how do I drive more demand, it's how do I make more money from the demand I already have. That is exactly why we use Apple after sell by rocked. Most brands think upsells are about being aggressive, but they really aren't. They are about timing. And the best time to upsell someone is when they're already in buying mode, which is when it's Right after someone buys. So after sell it lets you put the right offer at the right moment with one click. There's no re entering payment info. There's no extra checkout steps. Brands using after sales see around a 30% lift in AOV. And when you're running real volume, that adds up fast. But here's the part most people miss.
- [54:08]
C
This.
- [54:08]
E
It's not just upsells that after sell ads once you're live, you unlock the entire rocked monetization suite. Rock thanks monetizes your thank you page with premium non competing offers. Think Disney Plus HelloFresh and brands are seeing 30 cents to 50 cents in pure profit per order. Rock Pay plus as a clean wallet placement at checkout and kicks back another 10 cents to 15 cents in profit per order without hurting conversion. And in some cases it actually improves conversion. No inventory, no new ads, no operational lift, just margin. This isn't growth hacking, it's just found money. If Q1 is about tightening margins and getting paid more for the traffic you already earned, go to aftercell.com operators activate rock thanks or rock pay plus and you'll get the full after sales suite free for a year or an extended 60 day trial for post purchase upsells.
- [54:58]
A
So one of my questions there because I find the security super fascinating, is PDQ leveraging any like first party data to personalize the site? Like are you guys able to identify someone on ridge.com and say hey, we know this person is less affected by shipping costs. They're more likely to pay for shipping than the average person. Therefore we will push them into a segment where they are opted into $7 shipping or whatever. Do you do that or are you exclusively using on site Ridge data to decide whether or not, you know, they should be opted into one segment or another?
- [55:25]
B
So we're able to use a combination with the two. The reason why we emphasize checkout, even though we're a full journey platform, is in checkout. That's the moment, that's the only time that you really know this customer. And at that moment we really know the customer. So everything that's happening has to be done within those three seconds, you know, or at most 10 seconds that's happening in checkout. We have to be able to make those decisions because that's the true moment at which we know everything about that customer. Everything up until that point is guessed, you know, you're inferring and we, we have a, you know, some sense of what it is that the customer is reacting to or sensitive to. But the moment they come into checkout is the moment that we're able to personalize. And that's why I mentioned those 1600 data points because then we really know that Connor McDonald is Connor McDonald at that moment.
- [56:22]
A
One of the things you laid out that I, that I conceptually really love is just one thing that E Com brands do right now that I, I mean we all probably realize, but maybe I haven't given enough credit to is like if we're running an A B test, Cody brought it up earlier. Free shipping threshold, like before pdq. You're really just finding like a global optimal solution. All my cost, I'm making more money off of this arbitrary line that I've set for Cody, I think it was. And Cody, you can feel free to respond here. I'm speaking, speaking on your behalf a little bit. They're driving up average order value but you had all these lower value customers who were all of a sudden converting at a lower rate. So like, like getting away from the global maxima and more towards this like more personalized and in the future like autonomously optimized checkout I think is super exciting. And you can see trends like that across the board. Postscripts shopper AI is like that too. SMS marketing right now is like just one big blast that's maybe at best globally optimized when in reality lots of different people need to be hearing lots of different things from brand. So I'm excited from a brand perspective for this, this more AI driven future.
- [57:23]
B
Let's get you on it. Make it happen.
- [57:25]
A
Cody, did you have anything there?
- [57:27]
D
No, I was just gonna say I agree with that. Yeah. Like I think I've always shied away from personalization because I think like it wasn't there yet and it became too much to handle and manage. But now we're seeing it, you know, applying some stuff like you said, SMS sales and some other stuff. So I think it's cool. I think this is just, yeah, less of the first party gate and more of the, you know, like for us it's, it's being personalized by logistics, which is really cool. And obviously there's a big, you know, customer experience of finance tie into that.
- [57:51]
C
The super power of E commerce is first party data. Right. You do it just because you get first party data and you learn who these customers are, what they do, what is their journey, what they're looking for and actually they help you to innovate for the next trend based on the data they're providing back to you. So the power, the super power of E Commerce is first party data. I always say that is the heart of the business.
- [58:16]
A
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Are there any ways while you've been at Mattel or previous roles of first party data that you guys have collected guiding some sort of like larger business decision?
- [58:28]
C
Everything we do, we do it with first party data. First party data, as I mentioned, is the heart of our business. That's very, that's where you understand who are your demographics, who are the people, who is the avid collector, who is the casual collector or in actually previous work environments like in beauty, who is using what color, what they're using for what is the problem they're facing which you want to provide them with the solution for it. At the end of the day, the consumer comes to your website because they have a problem they need a solution for. Even if they want to buy a gift. The problem is I want to find a gift. The solution is provide me with the options you think are the best for me and make it easy for me to pick it up, buy it and pack it. It's always looking at the consumer from that angle and leveraging AI to understand what are the solutions you can provide and how can they. You can help them to go through this journey with you in a much easier way. We already know every Click consumer makes 20% of them may get lost. So the less click to the checkout, the smoother checkout process you build for them is easier and it's helping your business to be much more profitable. It's helping the customer to have a much better experience and stay loyal with you and come back to you and shop from you and and build that loyalty and community with them.
- [59:50]
A
Love to hear it. I totally agree. So we're closing in on an hour here. Mina, you have any closing comments for listeners, any place they can find you if they want to follow more of your work? Maybe you're posting on LinkedIn.
- [60:02]
C
I'm not sure I am on a LinkedIn absolutely. If I can help anyone, I'm always available to help others and I'm always trying to get mentorship too because nobody's perfect. I truly believe that. Actually I had a town hall with my team last week and one of the topics we were talking about is not. Not being perfect and just making a progress every day and it's going to get you to the, to the, to the better place in 360, 365 days. I would say the closed session is when you build the team. Always look at your team as the superpower of your company. If you're in a startup, if you're a big corporate, as your team, as the superpower of your unit and look at them with diversity. Having a diverse team is helping you to do things differently. And doing them outside of the box and giving them the ownership and accountability for what they're doing is going to build your business the superpower of every company. When you look at the successful companies in the world are their people and people are the assets. And AI is not going to replace people. It's just going to put them in a different place and with different skills. So that's a closing session for me. You know how to find me. Any question I'm here to answer. If I can help, I would love to help.
- [61:22]
A
Wonderful. Awesome. Thank you so much. Mina. Avi, where can people find out more about PDQ or follow you? What do you want to leave the people with?
- [61:29]
B
Sure. I'd say, of course, same in terms of outreach. Love learning and I love sharing what our learnings are. You'll see a lot about what we're discovering and what we're finding when we uncover different, different tests that we've run. But LinkedIn is great, of course. Pretty damnquake.com Also, I encourage people to take a closer look at checkout. There's a lot of opportunity there, a lot of margin that's left there. We just released a tool which is free at checkoutindex.com easy to use. It'll give you so many insights, things that you'll be surprised to learn about your business. And if you reach out to me and you want a deep dive audit, our data team will take a closer look at your checkout and give you the roadmap. It's how Cody started with us initially we did an audit. We're able to uncover some meaningful opportunities and that's how the journey began. So I encourage people to take a closer look. There's a lot of money sitting on the table that is there for you to take that doesn't require any investment.
- [62:35]
A
Perfect. Well, thank you guys again for coming on. This was a super fun episode.
- [62:39]
B
It was awesome. Nina, thanks for making time. Thanks.
- [62:44]
C
Thanks, Cody. Bob.
- [62:47]
A
All right, thank you again to our guests, Mina Zandabar, VP of global e Commerce and digital growth at Mattel and Avi Moskowitz, co founder and CEO. Pretty damn quick. Super fun to have on. We hope you all enjoyed it. This is partially brought to you by PDQ Pretty damn quick as well as Motion Rich Panel, Pression After Sell and House as always. Please share with your friends, family, fellow marketers, we look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you.