Has Shop.org jumped the shark?
After six years of paying Shop.org membership dues, this is a question I find myself asking today. Has Shop.org jumped the shark? I wonder if other members have the same question. I always enjoy the camaraderie of the retail community. But content at Shop.org events is all too often impractical and painfully redundant.
Last year, my former colleague Sucharita Mulpuru gave a keynote at the annual summit urging members to step back from all the fluff and to get back to basics. It was a brilliant message in an otherwise dull show. But Shop.org didn’t get the message.
There is no shortage of companies who want to demo cool new stuff they’re doing. But after days of hearing about the next new thing, the flight home for many retailers is sobering. I’ve been there, telling myself, “My boss just doesn’t get it. We’re so busy fixing today’s problems. When will we ever get around to all this new stuff?”
Many attendees return to work feeling a bit defeated. They wish they could forget about today’s real problems (e.g., internationalization, compliance, operations, technology selection, or just working with IT). Instead, they drop a few more names into LinkedIn and keep looking for their next career move. Little do they realize that the presenters with all those new widgets have the same fundamental business problems they do. The grass is always greener.
Fixing real problems is what separates men from boys; and it rarely involves buzz words. Thinking back on the last few years, the Shop.org agenda has been saturated with every new fad that’s fit for print: Customer Experience; Multichannel Analytics; Rich Internet Applications; User Generated Content; Web 2.0 Social Media. I don’t knock innovation. But c’mon now.
What will be this year’s buzz word at the annual summit? Who knows. But whatever it is, you can be sure it will be novel… and beaten to death.
Non-retail members of Shop.org are very often FORMER retailers who help retail clients tackle real problems every day – not with buzz words, but with proven tools and methods. What a retail member fixes once, a consultant and vendor may have helped fix over and over again. But I rarely find these meat-and-potato problems addressed in a didactic manner at Shop.org.
For example, AMR Research reported at eTail this year that 69% of retailers are currently seeking a new ecommerce platform. That’s relevant. After a lot of arm twisting, I was granted access to facilitate a session on this topic at Shop.org’s Strategy & Innovation Forum. I had advocated the topic as a presentation. Unfortunately, I was allowed to treat the subject only through a panel discussion.
My distinguished panel of retailers in January was incredibly intelligent and insightful. But the content had to be delivered through four story tellers and two questions each. That does not allow for much of a cohesive lesson on “how to” address a real problem. One Shop.org board member submitted feedback that the material was “over-simplified” – even though the session format afforded no room for detail or nuance. While the subject matter had potential, it fell short of being prescriptive.
Most retail members I know are neck deep in problems and need varying combinations of outside technology or experts to help. This stuff isn’t easy or sexy – but it is real. I spend a lot of time on the phone with retailers sharing what I’ve learned. But expecting retailers to volunteer to disclose internal problems to a public audience is near impossible. The boss might get mad. Competitors might exploit the blemish or find a better solution. While retailers may be willing to share their problems one-to-one, it is rare they will present them openly …on stage …at an industry event.
So if retail members won’t open up, who will? Non-retailer members will. Internet Retailer and eTail get this, and put consultants and vendors to good use. But, in my opinion, Shop.org has only a small handful of non-retailers deemed worthy to present such material.
Of the non-retailers who ARE allowed to present material, the faces are familiar. You will find them on stage for their fourth or fifth year in a row. But look around. Do you find them in the audience afterward? Not often. When luminaries of the industry don’t feel it is worthwhile to stick around for the content that follows them, I say the show has jumped the shark.
Shop.org tells me it is in the process of revamping its content architecture to address the gaps. However, it was explained to me this “could take a few years.” In the meantime, I will focus on Internet Retailer and eTail, who — without a membership fee — depend on relevant content to sustain and grow their audience.
I wonder what you think. Let me know with your comments.
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One Response to “Has Shop.org jumped the shark?”
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Interesting and heartfelt comments, Bill. I agree with the sentiment (focus on real commercial issues, prioritise expertise) but I thought I’d share some of our feedback from the UK, where we run the Internet Retailing conference (http://www.retailevents.co.uk/IR2008/).
Our feedback from a senior, focused delegate group, was that they were tired of “vendor presentations” and wanted to hear from retailers about their experiences. The desire isn’t so much to get ‘inside information’ or confidential details (although I’m sure these would be welcome
) but to get an unalloyed, practical view on the benefits of initiatives and why x was chosen over y and what were the decision criteria.
You’re totally right about the difficulty of getting retailers to open up. Often, big companies are happy to present “PR Huffery”, or have glorified adverts masquerading as case studies.
It’s my view that where you have a senior, experienced and demanding group of delegates then senior, experienced, capable companies are willing to present - a sort of “peer effect” kicks in. In these sorts of environments you get more sharing since people know that ideas are free (but doing them is not).
Of course, this is a slightly idealised view and it puts a massive pressure on the conference director. S/he needs to vet and coach every presentation, be ready to reject a sponsor’s proposal, turn down a leading company’s suggestions or reject their terms, winkle out great speakers in niche roles within amorphous organisations and finely balance the numbers of suppliers with delegates. We initially wanted a no-vendor approach but, like you, we found that some consultants and researchers held such great insights that we gave them a platform (and received very good ratings as a result).
It’s always going to be difficult to programme major companies against small ones, glamorous buzz topics against the bread and butter we’d all like to ignore and throughout all of this manage to tread a credible path that satisfied some, challenges many, and rewards all. However, like you I believe that unless one tries to do so any conference is just a waste of time and money.
I’m now going to go and review our agenda and speakers