Innovative Solutions That Drive E - commerce Success with Abis Hussain

Andy Splichal:

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast, where we dive into the strategies that help e commerce businesses thrive. Joining us today, we have Abis Hussain, the chief product officer at Wholescale. Wholescale is a forefront of revolutionizing how brands collect, display and leverage customer data and reviews. With Abis' extensive experience in digital marketing and e commerce, we're set to uncover some of the most effective strategies and innovations driving today the e commerce landscape. Abis, can you start? Let's talk about your journey in digital marketing and what led you to your current role at wholescale.

Abis Hussain:

Sure. Well, thank you Andy, for having me. It's been long, I was trying to speak to you and looking forward to be on this podcast. Thank you again.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, we're excited to have you.

Abis Hussain:

Yeah, thanks. So the digital space, I came in very early about 2005 and six through an affiliate marketing route. At that time it was a lot per paper install model through different plugins and toolbars and whatnot. And so started very early at the time of, and I was in John Wilson School of Business here in Concordia and then, you know, moved towards video ads and then to Facebook Advertisement so the journey in the digital space was always through the media buying side. But the really, the big thing was for the eleven years when I was at rhythm one, a lot was done at the programmatic demand and supply native ads and really played with big brands there with larger marketing budgets. So that stayed. So in the digital space, the medium marketing and the media buying background was always the core focus. But then I, you know, after 20, 12, 13 when more in the branding and you know, when Shopify came, I got hooked up into that and tried new things, launched few brands there.

Abis Hussain:

So it has been, it has been a good journey, pretty extensive when it comes to digital play. But yeah, now we're here.

Andy Splichal:

So why wholescale? I mean, what, what's whole scale about and how is it solving problems?

Abis Hussain:

Great. So whole scale was, was an idea. My co founder David his idea in mind, you know, we were collaboration, collaborating for some time. So I was a vice president in one of, one of his luggage companies. And then when the COVID hits, we were sitting together. We're like, listen, well, nobody's buying luggage, so we ought to try something else. But I did before, before even meeting David, I saw a shift in paradigm when it comes to Amazon ratings reviews that a lot of these companies were relying on fake reviews and sampling reviews and seeding reviews. And Amazon really went after those ones and said, well, you know what, these reviews are not allowed.

Abis Hussain:

So the relevancy on the reviews and recency on the reviews tied exactly to the sales of that product on Amazon. So I saw that a lot of people starting doing new things to get reviews on Amazon. But again, Amazon is a closed loop system, does not allow outside integration. So even if you capture something outside, you won't be able to take it on Amazon.com dot. But we, we had Walmart and we had other places where we could take those reviews, collect the data outside of them and then take it back to them. So the whole idea was around, hey listen, this space is a lot of gray area here. No new developments happening. All the digital guys is just relying on post purchase emails that convert at a lower than 2%.

Abis Hussain:

So what can we do here? So we tactically and with some strategy, I founded a company with David where it became a SaaS solution and we wanted to really help people with, who are selling on big, big box retailers. So not, not really the people who have a Shopify site, but people who actually selling container ins and container out business on Walmart.com, Target, Lowe's, Home Depot's and big guys and how we can really help them get those reviews because they really need them in order to sell them for sure. So this is, this was the whole idea. And then we transform into a SaaS solution, which is now it's been two and a half, three years and it's been going well. There's no longer startup anymore.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah. You know, I think, what's the statistics I read? I think it's a 90% of consumers read the reviews before purchasing. So I mean, it really is, the importance is immense for growing. Now you had mentioned that you don't do for Shopify. So these are people and not for Amazon.

Abis Hussain:

So we do, we do for Shopify, but Amazon does not allow Amazon have their own sampling program and their own, their own post purchase email. Because in order to leave a review on Walmart, you have to be logged in into their system using their profile and the previous purchase. You get a notification from Amazon whether you want to review or not. Hardly anyone goes back and review unless they have a problem. This is where the gap is, Andy. People don't tend to leave reviews on platforms if they are happy with the product. They usually leave review actively when there's.

Andy Splichal:

A problem with the product for sure.

Abis Hussain:

So the active reviews, recent reviews are always the one that people are not happy with. The one star, two stars. It's hardly people go and say, hey, you know, I really love this product. Good job, guys. You know, unless they're invited to do that. This was the gap that we identified. We founded wholesale. So Shopify, we worked actively.

Abis Hussain:

Your Shopify partner, you can, you can use our app there. But what I was going to say that that was just part of it. The core focus was more on the brick and mortar business, helping people, you know, buying something off the shelf and through a QR code and through our, some sort of a hook in the product, inviting them to leave a review and their feedback about their product that they have bought from the store and the shelf. And then that review goes through a digital route, get posted on walmart.com and other places. So this was kind of, kind of the mechanism. But Shopify is one of our critical partners and we work actively with them.

Andy Splichal:

So you had mentioned, you know, the way that most people do it if they're doing it at all, which is to send a post purchase email and that has less than 2% conversion rate on people filling out it. How, so, how are you guys? I mean, how's your system working? What's the success rate, percentage of people.

Abis Hussain:

Leaving reviews on average? And in a general, I'm really talking about taking, consolidating all the data we are converting at 50% to 60%.

Andy Splichal:

Wow.

Abis Hussain:

So the, the post purchase emails, Andy, are more for the digital purchases. So when you bought something from any.com and you get an email or post purchase SMS, then comes the sampling program where brands actually give people free products in exchange for the review. We don't really think that they're authentic because people hardly give negative and critical comments. But then there's third way is actively leveraging any hook that was there on the product. Either you have to register a product in order to use it, get a warranty for that product, you have to fill a form. So we power that journey. And while you, where you're getting your, while you're activating your warranty or you're registering your product, you get asked questions about, hey, what do you think about the product? What star rating would you give them? And then, so we asked review during that process and then take that review to the digital platform. So we are powering all those existing QR codes, dormant links that were always there, and asking people to leave a review through a hook that already existed.

Abis Hussain:

We saw that people were already scanning those QR codes and they were already visiting those pages, but they were never leaving a review. They were just activating their warranties, they were getting registrations done and finding some content on how to use the product. We power that journey and during that process, through a soft opt out, we, and often we ask for a review and that gets taken on Walmart.com dot.

Andy Splichal:

And so, I'm sorry, the last piece, did you say the review, it's on your own website and then you're importing it to Walmart or it's done on Walmart?

Abis Hussain:

No, it's to a feed. So that comes to a SaaS platform and then that platform takes that based on the UPC to Walmart and other places. Depends on the contract, depends where the, where the brand is selling, what type of a storefront they have on different retailers. So it really depends a lot of things. But essentially, yes, that's what's happening. That we issue a dashboard to a brand and their reviews comes there. Our moderation team and our AI reads those review, validates the digital fingerprint and then take them to Walmart or other places.

Andy Splichal:

So Walmart now is doing a bit of research and it looks like they're up to almost like 7% of all us e commerce sites.

Abis Hussain:

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Splichal:

So how do you know, how does wholescales Walmart syndication program help brands maximize their sales on Walmart?

Abis Hussain:

So, you're right. Well, Walmart is, I like to say after Amazon is going to be the biggest marketplace, the fact that they're on actively onboarding brands and products on their platform, coming up with new initiatives, how to sell their app is getting better. So they're taking a lot of initiative. They really want to beat Amazon in that space and that's where it's coming down from. So we are integration partner with Walmart, where a Walmart brand that is selling on Walmart.com can use you whole scale to generate reviews and ratings and then gets posted on their, on their program. It's new to us. We were using third parties to before take reviews to Walmart. And now we're a direct partner and we love their relationship.

Abis Hussain:

The idea here is that we don't only want to focus people who only sell Walmart.com, you want to focus on the people who are actually selling on brick and mortar business. So the big guys, you buy a piece of furniture, you buy a piece of luggage from the store, the 4000 stores in the US, and then you. So if you're focusing on the people who are selling on Walmart stores, so you buy a piece of furniture, buy a piece of luggage in Walmart, and when you're unboxing it, you find a card, you find a QR code or there can be tons of ideas and you end up scanning or going to the URL. That URL is mostly powered by us wholesale. And during that process they get to leave a review. So you purchase something offline, you captured the data of that person, make, made them or, you know, made him or her online and then also got the review. And now that review got posted on their Walmart listing on.com. So mostly people who are selling on the shelf, they're also selling Walmart.com.

Abis Hussain:

Just kind of the mandate they give to all their, all their sellers. So we are helping them, converting the offline customers into an online space through which they're getting their email addresses, they're inviting them to join their brand communities and also getting latest reviews. So this is the Walmart piece, but this is kind of the piece with every other retailer.com dot Walmart. We have a kind of a direct partnership and some of the retailers use as third party services. So we take a review through their APIs.

Andy Splichal:

Now, how does it work for a brand who might just be launching on Walmart? And they have, you know, a good number of reviews on products. Can they upload those past reviews or do these have to be reviews since they've launched on Walmart?

Abis Hussain:

No. So that's a great question. So not just Walmart, but all the big box retailers in the US and in Europe, they require you to have reviews even before you launch a product, through sampling programs, seating programs. So this is, this is a, it's a funny ask because when you have not launched a product, how can you have those reviews online? But then they ask you to actually give free samples to people to get in exchange for review. But we helped, we help them. If you are selling the same product that you have sold on target and we have that data, we can, you know, take the same data for the same product after validation on walmart.com dot. So if you're, if your Walmart is a new store, a new shop from day one, you could have those reviews that were collected using Lowe's and, and Target and Sam's club program because it was the same product. And that's allowed by Walmart.

Abis Hussain:

But usually if somebody's selling they, there are mostly, our clients are selling multiple places at the same time. So that never have actually happened. But there is a possibility that if you're selling an a place and you want to launch in a b place, we can take those reviews there as long as the same product category.

Andy Splichal:

Now, I saw that it whole scales. You also have a landing page builder where you can. So where does your clients use that? What does it consist of?

Abis Hussain:

Right. So that was, that was my idea a couple years ago where I spoke to David. I said, well, listen, that our clientele are really less digital. They are not that tech savvy. These guys are just bringing stuff from different countries and selling on walmart.com dot. They do have a site and they have agencies doing a bunch of things for them, but they're not really, you know, the digital is missing in their DNA. Let's just say that, right. So we try to came up with a lot of tools that are part of your contract day one, such as landing page builder, through which you can create content.

Abis Hussain:

So you don't really need to hire a designer. You can on upwork and fiber or find somebody to make a lender for you through css, but you can through a very drag and drop method. It's a plug and play. You can create landing pages in whole skills. So, and get a QR code issued. So you don't really need a digital service, a digital site or anything. All you need is wholesale contract. You upload your product, you create the landing page, you issue a QR code and then print that QR code on your product in China or where, India, wherever you get the product from.

Abis Hussain:

So you really need, you don't really need a Shopify site in other places. So we created that just to close that loop and start getting reviews for those guys. That was the idea.

Andy Splichal:

Now, how many people like what percentage your customers use that opposed to they already have a Shopify site? Because this sounds like it's really just for sellers who are only selling like on a Walmart.

Abis Hussain:

Yeah, Walmart or other places. Well, it will be hard to look at the percentage, but this kind of the option you get from day one when you close the contract and you get our platform, I would say more than half, Andy, if there are 200 customers or 300 customers, the half of them are using this because you can very quickly get the content out instead of, you know, even a very basic designer and you're in house or somebody who knows how to drag drop stuff. You can embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo and other places. You can create CTA's and kind of roll it out. It almost like a creating a fast lender in canva or in Klaviyo to drive traffic to.

Andy Splichal:

Now you had mentioned you're using AI to validate the reviews. And I mean AI, it's, you know, it's the big thing everybody's talking about and how it's going to change this and that. How do you see AI changing the e commerce landscape?

Abis Hussain:

We have a dedicated prompt engineering department here, the pure purpose and they're directly reporting to me that the pure purpose there is R and D and that is that you want to come up with the advanced tools and fast so we can leverage all kinds of chat GPTs and all kinds of Azure models and Amazon comprehend models where we could a get cleaner data with validated fingerprints so it's authentic. And bring the quality score up because see if you're, if you're buying something and reading a review and the review is not sufficient, telling you the problems, the ins and outs, the attributes of that, of that product before your purchase, you're not really, not really getting any out of it. So it doesn't matter. You can have thousand reviews, but if the content is weak, it's not. So we are building different tools in, in kind of enticing user to give us a lot more information and then taking that to the retailers. That's the one solve. Second solve is making sure that nobody's abusing the system where you, you're not just leaving fake reviews on your competition and there's a whole moderation piece where profanity, discriminatory comments, legal issues, especially some issues that are product safety concerns. So escalating it to the right party, all that is done through AI.

Abis Hussain:

And then obviously there's a layer of human moderation. But yeah, we were trying to bring automation there as much as we can because the volume of reviews are pretty high. So this is kind of the space that we're playing it. It's authenticity, quality of review and making sure they're genuine.

Andy Splichal:

So when did whole scale launch?

Abis Hussain:

Well, the soft launch, 2020 December 29, 1st line.

Andy Splichal:

And what's some of the feedback you've gotten?

Abis Hussain:

I feel the first year, year and a half were all really non digital client and they would just be like, hey, here's my Excel sheet with a list of products and they've been sold on these PDP and product pages on Walmart and Sam's club and Lowe's and target. Get the reviews there. That's it. And they were not, they were not really tech savvy. They had no idea, they had no automation in house. So we had to do a lot of legwork. And at that time there's a pretty legacy model now with the whole scale I've developed and playing on a different level. But at that time it was not analog, but not really a Web 2.0 type of stuff style.

Abis Hussain:

So when we started, because it was in the trial space, Navia built a lot of efficient tool, bringing a lot of automation. So the first year and a half was a problem where the feedback was around, hey, where when my review is going to be on walmart.com dot, how can I get more content out of people? You know, how come I'm not getting four more four and five stars, right? So. But now the last year it has changed because we a lot big digital guys, some of the renowned brands in the United States especially, and they have robust digital strategy where we leverage our Klavi integration, mailchimp integration, HubSpot integrations and desktop better support system. And then, you know, it's like this and you go and buy something on Alpha on Amazon. It happened to me a lot of times, and I'm sure with you too, where you bought a piece of equipment by reading the reviews. But then the problem came after three months and six months of the purchase. Most of the reviews were actually given by the customer after 14 days and 18 days. And those are very impulsive reviews.

Abis Hussain:

They haven't really used the motor or that mattress or that pillow or that diffuser. If the problem actually comes after 90 days, it's a product defect. But it didn't got pointed out in reviews because most of the reviews were the first ten days of purchase feedback time. So we made an automation trigger where we go back to the customer and ask, hey, are you still that satisfied or have you changed your mind? Would you like to leave a new review? Because you know, a month ago you thought bad about it, but is it better now? Is it is because you have, you have used in a different scenario. So that way, as I said in the opening statement, like we want to keep the recency up and relevancy score up, that is new content, but also relevant content, because we want to make sure that it's helping the brand taking critical decisions in their R and D, new product launches, whatever, but also helping the purchaser making the right decision. So to your question, we got a lot of feedback in the last three years around the quality, how we can have more characters in the comments. And we have taken those into consideration. A lot of R and D and work has been done there around that.

Andy Splichal:

So what's next for whole scale? Are there any new developments on the horizon?

Abis Hussain:

Big time. And the pipeline is humongous. I'm sleeping less than ever, but I think that we want to make sure that we are coming up with creative ideas on how to capture better content. And when I say content is not just written content, but video content, the picture content. Because the debate on the UGC by the user is pretty high if you can actually get to see a video of the product before you're buying it in the functionality. I bought a. I bought a swimming pool cleaner, a robot a few days ago. The whole thing I learned about it was through a UGC on YouTube and Amazon thinking about how it's actually used.

Abis Hussain:

But the brand wasn't really doing anything for it. It was all user generated content. So we are focused more around that because really want to help both the brand and the customer, the purchaser. So our next is all the initiatives around the content, making it better, making it easy to capture, but also the hook. Not every product can be registered and not every brand would like to issue a warranty. So we come up with new creative ideas. That's kind of. And again, the whole AI piece is still, it's still just going, I would.

Andy Splichal:

Think, you know, being. The biggest problem is how to incentivize people to leave, especially not even just written content on a review, but video. And so what are some of the ways that that brands do incentivize?

Abis Hussain:

Andy? Mostly sampling, which is the wrong way of doing it. Imagine if you have an dollar 800 item and you have to give 25 of them free in exchange for review and then ask if influencer to making it. We don't believe in that piece at all, even though we do some sampling when it's really needed. What we believe is believe in is the velocity of and the volume of review. If you get a lot of volume and through, through some of those profiles, identifying through an AI technology that hey, Andy, have 500,000 users on his instagram, how about we actually reach out to Andy and say, hey, you know what, we value your feedback, but would you be able to also make a video of that product or a barbecue grill that you just bought? And what we will do in exchange is we're actually going to make you famous. We'll post it on our brands page. So a lot of people like to become an influencer and looking for that, you know, that, that first gig, we want to help them. So, and, but our job is to identify who the better one is.

Abis Hussain:

So the community angle of building a community of influencers who know who, we know which category fits which person through profiling, it's one of our initiative. But right now, really the way brands are doing it, through sampling program, which is not neat. Absolutely not. If it's a $20 item, fine. But if it's like their shipping cost to it, there's the product cost to it and then you're making the content. Plus you always have to keep new content coming in. Otherwise six months or a year old review doesn't mean anything to the person today.

Andy Splichal:

So how does the pricing work with whole scale? And how can an interested listener learn more?

Abis Hussain:

Sure. So it's a SaaS solution, early contract. It's really a la carte when it comes to what kind of service that you're looking for. We have robust sales team and business development team which basically understand what really your need is. I mean, again, we love contracts and we love money, but the system that me and David have designed, because we came from a consumer product side is we want to understand that what is the perfect fit for you. Really look at what type of cost is that to us and then design programs, have you really kept it agile, very fluid? Our pricing model, depending on the client, but you know, it can start from anywhere from like $6,000 and go up to $100,000. So it's really depending on what program.

Andy Splichal:

That you're going after and who is the perfect client for your guys's service.

Abis Hussain:

Perfect client is the one who wants to grow online, who has not been there yet. A perfect client is the one who have established brand brick and mortar, but have not, you know, launched or have really scaled online and looking for reviews. And the perfect client is, and I'm going to say, I want to say the, the best for the last is the one who's struggling with good reviews. A lot of people have the good product, but because of the dormant and mundane strategy around capturing reviews, they have one and two stars. That is all complaints, pure complaints. You sell hundred and three people are not satisfied. All those three reviews are actually first on your listing now and your business is done. So we want to help that guy get more reviews, you want to help that brand get a lot more reviews and get those three reviews under, under the fourth and fifth page in the pagination and get all the good ones first through an active strategy.

Abis Hussain:

So these are kind of the three pillars that I see when I'm not on the sales side. I'm more on the tech side. But yeah, that's kind of the ideal folks for us.

Andy Splichal:

Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap it up today?

Abis Hussain:

No, all good man. Listen, I'm happy to be here. Well, we can chat more down the line when we launch something new. Love to be on your podcast again. And as I said, listen, we are all innovators in the tech space. I like partnerships. If anyone is listening to it, would like to partner up with us through integration process or any other process. We love that.

Abis Hussain:

I think the world is too big, market is too big. We all can play and eat together. So that would be my message. And yeah, we'd love to be here again.

Andy Splichal:

Well, it's been great. Well, thank you for joining us today and for your valuable insights. Yeah, so whole skill is pioneering changes in the e commerce landscape by enabling brands to better collect and utilize customer data and reviews for our listeners. This episode underscores the importance of leveraging user generated content and integrated technology solutions to not only meet customer expectations, but also significantly enhance operational efficiencies and profitability. Thank you for tuning in and make sure to subscribe for more expert insights on mastering the ecommerce world. And if you join this episode, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us an honest review and we look to more information on wholescale. You can visit www.wholescale.com. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I'll talk to you in the next episode.