Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Optimize Your Ecommerce Strategy: Branding, Neurology, and Marketing

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

In this episode on The Radcast, host Ryan Alford talks with guests Samrat Saran, Head of Client Solutions at Neuro-Insight, and the CEO and Co-Founder of 4th Avenue Market, Salim Holder. They discuss the growth, community, and neurological factors involved in creating the 4th Avenue Market e-commerce brand.These are the topics:Building and maintaining community through e-commerce.Establishing your brand's narrative through brand-driven content.Creating a seamless experience for your customer on your e-commerce site.To learn more about 4th Avenue Market, visit their website here.Keep up with neurology in marketing by following Neuro-Insights here.If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and share the word if you love our podcast, so we can keep giving you the strategies to achieve radical marketing results! You can follow us on Instagram @the.rad.cast | @radical_results | @ryanalford | If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alford, your host, and welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I am the founder and CEO of Radical Company here in Greenville, South Carolina, if you didn't know, and the host of the Radcast. And it's great to be joined.

I'm just going to say, I might start calling some Rada a co-host here. He's become one of my favorite. people in marketing and one of the smartest guys I know in the business. So I'm just going to keep having him on until he says, Uncle, Samrat Saran, head of client solutions at Neuro Insight. What's up, Samrat. Good. How are you, Ryan? It's been a while. Hey, I know. It has. We're also joined by Salim Older, who is the CEO and co-founder of Fourth Avenue Market. And good to have you as well, Salim. It's good to be here. Appreciate it. Looking forward to the convos. For sure, for sure. We wanted to get these two guys together. You know, we're going to let you in on a little secret.

They're old college buddies. And we might get into a couple college stories, maybe one or two. We want to keep it interesting. And we want to keep it PG-13 slash R-rated here on the rat gas. But they went to school at the University of Rochester, the assignment school of business, their MBA. They got together. And so old college buddies, but both doing. timely marketing and business here in 2021 with Saleem running an e-com business geared towards very community-driven marketing to the black market. And we're going to talk more about that. And then, of course, some ride, of course, always in my head talking about the brain.

But yeah, we're looking forward to the discussion, guys. And before we get started, do we have, you know, like one or two good stories from back at the old University of Rochester. You have to go there, Ryan. So Salim, myself and a couple of other folks, this is two days before our quarterfinals, first quarter finals. And tell them Salim and I,

we'd sort of known each other. But one day we're in the library, and I'm like, hey, Salim, how are you doing on finance? And he's like, I just started studying. I'm like, I don't know. No, nothing about this. I'm like, do you know what the difference we're going to bond in the stock is? And he's like, well, I'm still trying to figure it out.

I'm like, all right. So then the plan was made for all our exam. So we had finance, accounting, economics, and statistics that we were going to study together through and through until the finals are over. And then for the next four days, I kid you not, on 16 Red Bulls, a night, we basically went through. those four days. And that's what we call our boot camp. And that's how our friendship started. And it has always been together. Samarra saved my MBA. I was sitting there like, I don't think I'm about to pass this class. I think I'm about to get kicked out in school. So I was studying for my life. And I was happy to have Samurai helping me out with that. And Salim's been with me

ever since all our marketing program. We've been together. Everything we've been together. And yeah, he's one of the best guys I know. Hey, I love it, man. And I love that y'all, you know, a lot of times you go to school with people, you lose that connection. But it's awesome that you guys have kind of grown through the marketing space together, obviously doing your different things. But kind of leveraging, you know, the knowledge of each other and helping each other along the way. And I can personally relate as I just finished my energy drink before walking in here to the, both the college and the now of the jitters of too many Red Bulls. and, you know, it gives you wings for sure.

Exactly. The only thing is bad about that is when, and I know this never happened, right, where, you know, you get through what you have to get through, and then you do it, and then you need to go to sleep, and you're like, God, damn it, I can't get to sleep. So after all finals were over, basically the entire class was meeting up at a bar. and there were four people that were not at that bar. I was not to say, I didn't even know they did that.

We were fast up in the study room. It's done. Oh, man. Well, I do want to start. Let's, Samarai and I have gotten into it. Everybody's starting to know what Samrat does. And we're going to leverage, you know, I know, Samarot and I want to just comment as a whole on e-commerce where Neuro plays in,

some of the trends and things that are going on. But let's give everybody some background, Salim, on, you know, your background, Fourth Avenue market, bringing us up, you know, starting from, you know, the beginning to now. And let's start there, just giving some background. And let's have at it. Yeah. So fourth have market, it kind of started. My experience is in brand management markets. After I got my MBA, I worked for a little over a decade.

And companies like Kimberly Clark managed brands like Cotex, James and Irish Whiskey. grooming brands, denture brands. And honestly, I was really, I was enjoying my experience. And I was growing these businesses by millions of dollars. And I kind of got to a point where I was like, if I can do it for them, I could probably do it for myself. And I think the other part that really tugged at me was just the fact that every, you know,

as I'm working, as much as I, you know, I like what I was doing. I couldn't see how what I was doing had a positive impact on the communities that I was a part of. And so I stepped out on faith. January of 2018, I just said, you know, I'm going to step out on faith. I'm going to figure out what the next step is going to be in my life, but I knew it wasn't where I was at.

And so as I did so, I stumbled into this opportunity where there was a sales broker who had known for years. And she had started a company. She told me a year before I left, she started this website. It was with ethnic hair care and multicultural beauty and personal care products. And so when I talked to her a year later, and I'm stepping out of the corporate world and I speak to her. And she's telling me, he's like, yo, honestly, Salim, I had approached you with this other product opportunity. She's like, yo, I don't think you should worry about that. I think this is really where you should be and she focused on this.

She just wanted to retire. She's very successful. I had many businesses. So she was like, I don't really need this, but it's kind of like my baby. And I want to give it to somebody who actually is going to take this and go. Not really give it, but I bought it from her. So me and my partner, though, so my co-founder, he has his experience in technology, software engineer 15 years, Silicon Valley, GitHub, et cetera.

And so we got together. I said, well, my marketing experience, your tech experience, we can actually put our heads together, and we can take this platform, and we can grow it. And the idea what actually happened when we bought it, what we didn't realize is as soon as we bought it, we became overnight the largest black-owned online hair and beauty retail platform in the U.S. With over 7,000 products on a platform. And to be honest, we kind of started out as a focus on why we can actually create greater awareness and distribution of products that are targeting this community who is so often left out.

out of the conversation or as you walk into traditional retail stores and you see that little four foot section of the shelf called the ethnic set. But the reality is this category is a two billion dollar category. And that's just the sex, the part that the black consumers are spending is two billion dollars in growing. The fastest growing part of the entire hair care category is this textured hair care category. And so I couldn't understand how you have these consumers that are going in a store struggling to find stuff for them. They can't find what they wanted. But as I talked to my partner about it, we actually realized that the opportunity and the challenge was even bigger than just thinking about the black community and black consumers. What we actually realized is that there was consumers that were out there, 74% of consumers, in fact, that are saying, I want my dollars to be spent with companies that are aligned with my values.

So naturally, for black consumers, they're saying, well, I want to spend with companies who are investing in the black community, who are buying from businesses across the supply chain that are also from the black community. or black brands, but then you also have women who want to support women-owned businesses, or you have others that want to represent environmentally friendly businesses. And so I understood this idea about transparency at the point of purchase and how we can do a better job of driving that transparency, starting out with this consumer, which was one, it was personal to me, two, it was top of mind for the entire country right now after everything that was happening last year. And then just how fast this category was growing, it made it a ripe opportunity for us

to step in and focus on this community. And then the bigger part was seeing that dollar go back around and through the community. Because that was truly the impact of seeing, you know, not, 85% of sales of ethnic hair care products are done by black consumers. Yet we own 7% of the stores. And the implication is as money is spent, that money is taken out of the community, not reinvested into the community. And so we said, well, we can create an approach that actually,

and we can start with this community, but moved to other communities where that dollar would actually, where people are spending money, they can actually extract value from the money that they're spending. And that's really what we're creating with fourth-av-market is, it's really this community-centric marketplace that puts transparency at the forefront and allows consumers to know where their dollars are being spent with companies. And that's really where the essence of fourth-av-market is and how we've kind of grown to where we are today. Love it.

A lot of brilliance there. a lot of, you know, we have people on and they talk about certain things and they get down paths. And I'm like, so you just, you just fell into this. You got really lucky, huh? And then there's people that come on and that really know what they're doing. And I love all my guests equally. But, you know, but as a marketer, you know, the brilliance of everything you just digested right there for us, you know, makes my heart pound hard. And so anyway, let's break down a few things there. I do want to talk about, you know, you said you stepped into this in 2018. I mean, what's, I know the lot, what have been some of the mechanics of that? I mean, has it been, has it been as smooth the road as you just described or, I mean, because, man, it was so eloquently delivered. I'm like, was there any trials and tribulation here? Like, it's maybe one or two, right? So, you know, the interesting part is when we, we bought the site and we, you know, we're like, all right, let's put it.

live, right? So, you know, see, the site hadn't been live for a little while. We put it live, and of course, it didn't work. Orders weren't going through. This wasn't happening. I remember when we first put it, for whatever reason, I can't remember what happened, but all the product names and descriptions disappeared on us. And so we had to figure out. So it took us another seven months after we bought the site to really revamp it. We got it up and running. And it was actually February of 2019 that we actually launched the site. And it didn't work. And as it didn't work, you know, we, we, we, we scrapped it and then we relaunched it again in November of 2019. So it was like by February to June, it just wasn't working. Like people were coming to the site, but they couldn't buy what they wanted to. So there was so much work we had to do with 7,000 products. And we did it. We scrapped the site, started over and started in June. And then we relaunched what you see now in November 2019.

We relaunched that site. But it, I mean, that's just part of the struggles. You know, we can probably spend another two hours on the other. Yeah. That sounds like, now that sounds more like the, the e-com journey that I know. Yeah, especially with 7,000 products, you know, it's like, you know, we've got brands that we work with that are, you know, have five products and they think they're struggling. And then we have brands with thousands. And I'm like, you, man, you don't even know what a struggle is. So you have to write descriptions and images and, you know, all that. So what platform are you guys

on? Just had a curiosity like e-com was. We started out, So this was the site started out was like WordPress WooCommerce, which was not the best setup. And then we moved over to Shopify, which obviously made it much easier for at least several of the things we want to do in the short term. I want to stop right there. If you're listening and you're moving into e-commerce, I don't care if you're big, small, and different. If you don't start with Shopify, you're making your life harder than it needs to be. It is so much easier. Yes, you pay some fees.

Yes, you do some stuff. But they have the integrations. They figured this out, people. And it used to be you have thousands of skews. Can't be on shopping wrong. Not anymore. And you got to come to me with a really, we developed mainly in Magento and Shopify, depending on the brand.

But unless you have, unless it's just a real, uh, specific use case, we, we push everybody to Shopify. So that sounds like a common journey. We try to take it from where it started, but good, you know, we had to move on, you know. Yeah. Well, one more question. before I want to bring some rod in to have a little discussion, you know, about ecom and neuro in general, but universally. But talk about the way with which maybe some of the specifics that you've developed your community over the last couple of years.

Obviously, I see heavy blog writing and different things on the site that I could see, but would love to understand how you guys have engaged the community more directly in building this brand. Yeah, you know what we recognized, we recognize this insight that when it comes to communities, communities have a really interesting way of working, right? And every community has a different kind of ecosystem for how they get information. And this is like whatever community you're talking about, whether you're talking about like athletes or you're talking about the black community or you're talking about whatever. And what we recognize specifically in the black community is what we have is like we'll call the points of trust. And these are like historical reasons why this has kind of evolved to be this way,

but you have like the barbershop and the salon. You have the church or the mosque. You also have like HBCUs or black student unions. And you have these community organizations like Kappa Alpha, or Alpha Kappa Alpha, Jack and Jill, these organizations. And the reality is in the black community, there's so much overlap with all these different organizations that reality is that you can connect with about 90% of the black community

by authentically inserting yourselves and integrating yourselves within this community ecosystem. This is how products and services are found. Because if you think about it, there's not a lot of media that is absolutely talking specifically to the black community. In fact, I think it's less than 1% of all media dollars are actually spent in media that's specifically targeting the black community. And so as a result, over time, the communities had to find other ways to figure out information and products or services.

And so what we found is that we can integrate ourselves in this community. So forget about Instagram and everything else for a minute, but just simply having conversations with the leaders of these organizations, by having conversations with churches, by having conversations with barbershops and salons, that, number one, they're passionate about this mission of being able to put money back into their pocket that's being spent. But I think what's bigger than that is we're passionate about actually putting,

of actually seeing, of providing a financial incentive for them to do what they're already doing. So we've actually created a program, which we call the assembly, which provides a financial incentive for barbers, stylists, for colleges, for HBCUs, for churches to be able to push forward our products and to be able to recommend people come to our site and use our users services, etc. And so we found that that has been crazy compelling way, especially given the climate of today that consumers are really trying to figure out, like how do we support our communities? And again, I should actually say this. This is not just a

black community that I speak about, although I, you know, I've talked about that. But there's a lot of people who also want to support the black community. They want to buy black. And they realize that just because it's black owned doesn't mean that's black only, right? And so what we've done is connected with this community and find it and provide an incentive, but then to operate the way that they're already operating. And that has worked really, really well for us so far. Yeah, a couple things there. I really love that at the end, not black only, because I think there's been, you know, no matter how much media in general off like divides us sometimes, you know, the news more than anything, I think people want to be closer and more inclusive. And I think there's been a struggle, I think,

for people to know how to support, you know, different communities. There hasn't been a clear and transparent way to know how to do that. Like, hey, I don't want to be part of the problem. I want to be part of the solution. But I have no fucking. idea how to be part of the solution. You know, like, it's like, I mean, but that's exactly what we recognize is like most people out there are really good, heart of people that would really want to support others in a community. They don't walk around saying, I don't want to support this community, et cetera, but they may not, to your point, know exactly how, right?

It's like, all right, so is this brand a black home brand? And if I spend money, how's it going? So that's what we said is that we are not an exclusive platform where we only have products or we only talk to the black community. What we're saying actually is the alternative is that we're an exclusive, inclusive platform that we actually have brands and products that anybody. We got head and shoulders. We got everything on there, like general products that are on there.

But what we're doing is prioritizing the needs of this consumer that's been deprioritized elsewhere. And then by driving that transparency allows other people who are like, I like this product. And now is black owned? Sure, absolutely, I want to buy this product. You know, they should be able to have that transparency to know how to do it. So it's not about black owned or black. specifically. It's about us kind of rising all tides together, realizing there's one that's been left behind, but all of us can actually come together and grow together. So that's really

been the focus for us. Yeah. And one more thing. The thing that, you know, having worked with large brands as well, like in my career, it was always a little bit of pandering that went on. Like it was always like the attempt, you know, and some brands were trying. And again, it was back to like they didn't know how to. Maybe they didn't engage the right way. But it was always like insert black guy here, insert Asian there. Like, you know, and that, it was so token, you know, like, and some brands, it was like they were being token. They knew they were being token. They were just trying to, to check the box. Some brands that I work with were literally didn't even know the best way to engage with the African American community. And so, you know,

I saw both sides of it. And, you know, it's not, yeah. There's the challenge with that is, and this is part of the challenge that I had when I was in the corporate world, is that there's so often that I was one of the only black people that were at the table. And it wasn't that nobody, it wasn't like, you know, any racist reasons why they weren't hiring that, you know, might have been the case or whatever. But as a result, if you can imagine, you know, take race out of it.

And we just talk about gender for a second. If it was just a room and it was a meeting and all guys. written there talking about things that were related to women. Of course, there are certain things that you're just not going to know. There's certain things you're going to assume wrong and that you're not going to understand. Having some people in the room can help give you a better understanding or more holistic perspective. And I think a lot of these companies miss that by not having that talent that's there at the table, whether it's in their agencies or whether it's even going out and doing the research to understand a little bit more clearly.

So as a result, they make assumptions and it's good intentions, but a lot of times those assumptions are wrong. and they don't land as as authentically as they could. Yeah. And I can tell you as owning an agency, it's difficult in Greenville, South Carolina to find African American candidates. Like, you know, like I literally reached out to go friends like a year ago when some this was happening. It was forefront and I continued to try.

And it's like we don't, I think we've had one cap, you know, applicant ever. You know, like, and like we have these listings and it's like, it's not from a lack of trying, but it's kind of like it is but it's like it's kind of like these things you know increase each other they compound each other because it's like historically there hasn't been a huge African American presence in the advertising world and thus it compounds so it's like they aren't around people so they don't grow up learning it so they aren't and you so it's like you know like I don't know how you we start that engine but it needs to happen yeah but uh sumrott let's get in here and talk a little bit about, you know, the impact of, you know, community-driven brands like what

Salim's doing and, you know, how the brain responds to this in making decisions at the shopping cart and otherwise. So I'd like to start with a question. When you see an ad, you see an image of a brand in the store, anything that has a visual attached to it. If you were to just see that with the image of the brand itself versus the image with the person. Which one is more appealing to you? Question for you guys. Always person. Why a person?

Relatable, I guess, or, you know. Relatable is actually a part of your subconscious that gets triggered when it sees something that's relevant. And people are relevant. We as a species like to see other people. We want to see other people because it gives us. gives us a sense that this may be something that's useful to me if these other people like it. And it gets conditioned as well.

So which is why I think marketing is such a huge impact in society. What you show to people over time as what is relevant actually changes your own perception of what's relevant. And what we have seen is over the years, there just hasn't been, to Salim's point, enough representation from other communities. But now that it is happening, it's starting to change. In the beginning, how this all started off with was,

to your point, token representation. Let's just have one person from that community there. And you know what? People call bullshit very quickly. Yeah. It disengages. And to some people and me be like, all right, fine, there's inclusivity involved here.

But for most people, it just doesn't work. but ads that actually go beyond race and show people for who they truly are and that this is just our natural human values that are on display. Create the most amount of engagement and it doesn't matter what race you're from that's on the screen. In fact, we saw ads that we had tested, which were predominantly black actors, stories about families, stories about, you know, refreshment, multiple different kinds of stories. that did equally well with audiences that were not African American. And that has big implication. Because what that means is stop stereotyping race, stop stereotyping gender,

and just tell stories that are human. Because that's all we want is to be engaged with other people and see their life and feel like, you know, that could be my life too. It's when we start to go to extremes and we say, okay, this group can only look like this. They can only do things like this. They can only have professions like this. That's when everything goes down for society and for creativity.

And I think what I would assume is the proliferation of video content is allowing us to potentially open these doors more. Because the struggle 10 years ago when I'm doing newspaper ads or magazine ads, it was kind of, I mean, You could have it in the words, but it was just kind of like it was the image. You know, here's the Asian guy. Here's the black guy. Here's the white girl. You know, and it was so static. But now with video being able to tell stories, it both is opportunity, but it also calls

bullshit real quickly on those that are pandering versus those that are telling real stories or that have obviously dug into the cultural insight and letting the story kind of tell that, I would think. And I think there's also been a moment of awakening within people that tried to be responsible citizens in corporate America, but just didn't have access to it. Through social media and by being able to see so many different people's stories, they've sort of come to the conclusion or come to the realization of, one, what does that culture really mean? And beyond the stereotypes that have been created, because you look at any segmentation that comes to in Salim, you probably saw this a lot. in your world. Yeah.

It was always the same image. And it was always an index to population that said 13% of population, 140 index for our product. This is why we should target them. Yeah. You then go to, okay, what are their general preferences? They like music, hip-hop. And this sort of nonsense that was built.

And you can still, like I see those old slides and I cringe, those are going away now. And it's starting to become more holistic, which is great. But which has now impacted, you know, all facets of life, including e-commerce, which is, which started off as this world where you sort of went and bought products that you knew exactly what you wanted. So you're going to a store, you'd browse. You'd be like, all right, I like this product. Now let me see if I can get it cheaper on e-com. 100% right.

And because that's what Amazon started out is purely, you know, the store was the, where you, you know, discovered. And then Amazon was just the storefront for where you bought, you know. And it was purely based on the buying experience and not necessarily the shopping experience. And when you do that, what are you looking at? Does my page refresh as fast as it needs to? Instant refreshes. If I want to go search, can it handle a thousand search items on one page? Can it do multiple sorting?

Is my buy option always on screen? And these are great things to have. But they're meant for only one specific action to take place. Now, rewind back to the beginning of civilization when the first shopping mall was created, back in Greece. And people used to take stone tablets and write down what they needed a buy. From that moment, to the hawkers who would go down the streets and learn the skills of salesmanship, to when department stores started and immersive buying started becoming a bigger part of the experience, to when grocery stores came in, and every aspect of the shopping experience was studied,

what does it feel like when you walk through those doors? Do my carts make noises that irritate people? How smooth should the wheels be when I'm pushing them across? How do I dull the noise inside the store so people can still think? How do I avoid the sound of the chillers from going across two aisles? How do I make it so it's not so cold, but it should be cold enough to keep people interested in the shopping experience versus being too warm and getting people out of there? What should the sounds in the store be like? I hope that has been studied over decades.

and now you have e-com that is come and solve for only one part of it. Right, right. So today, my challenge to you, both of you, do your grocery shopping online. Pick up any retailer and try to do it for about, you know, 30, 40 items. And tell me how many Advils you needed after that. Well, I'm going to tell a little singer, we talked about this pre-episode. I don't even have to do it. My wife did it on Sunday and spent two hours on Walmart.com or whatever the app.

was and between that and a bungled delivery, it's time we'll never get back. And this is the thing. Every part of that journey has been optimized for the buy. And when you have ventures like what Salim's got with Fort Ave. And when you're a small business or a medium-sized business trying to create the e-com landscape for yourself and you need an econ landscape, you have to think beyond the buying and really think about the full shopper journey. And it has to start with, how can I get a person to enjoy this experience rather than feel like they are here to only buy shampoo.

And that's where you start to make it a story. Yeah. Everything now is so search driven, you know, like everything's driven by the search bar and not just natural discovery. And I think whether it's Shopify or whether it's a retail or whoever, whoever, figures that out, the discovery, the end cap of online. I mean, think about when you go to the grocery store, it's the incap and perfectly curated for what you might need at that time. I've got the popcorn, the peanuts, and the, I don't know, M&Ms, you know, all perfect on the N cap, you know, And Amazon's doing that a little bit, you know, with, hey, you want this, you're going to have these things.

But unless you searched your way into that one thing, the discovery process is not where it needs to be. And even take it one step further. Why do you assume that I am coming here for a mission-based shop? Like, why is the search part the first thing I see? What if you changed it completely? What if you started off with? I'm just looking. Yeah.

And you go from there. You know what's interesting about that thought is, you know, we actually have been thinking about that a lot with Fourth Ave and the fact that we have over 7,000 items. And the shopper that's coming is more often than not somebody who's trying to figure out what's the right product that I use for my hair or skin anyway. So before I'm not coming in and saying I want this particular product. Sure, maybe about 40% do. but still about 60% are trying to discover.

And so we're trying to do a better job of how do you lead that discovery? How do you make that experience something that's exciting? Some they want to come back to, something that's enjoyable, because that's what you get when you go into the store. Actually, that's the alternative. What a lot of these consumers think they don't get in the store is a good quality shopping experience. So they go online, but they're just shopping online, but they don't know what's out there. So how do we help them to discover it in that way?

That's a really good point. One of the companies that I think, you know, I'm blanking on the brand. But the category you guys will know, I think they're getting at this a bit. Not that this is super exciting. But when you hit their site, you immediately get a four-question quiz. And it's engaging and it's fun. And it's a mattress company. Now, it's simple because it's mattresses, but they do sell like 40 different types of mattresses.

And you answer like these four questions. and then you get the discovery of the five or six things that match what that is. And I'm not saying that's exciting, but at least it's directive into, you know, self-selection after I've answered some questions and things like that. So I think that helps. We actually did that same thing in a form of a hair quiz. So you come on the site, you go through, you answer four or five questions,

kind of interactive. And at the end, it tells you specifically, here are the types of products that will work best from you. out of all that we have on the site, we've mapped it based on science and ingredients that work with certain hair types. So to that same point, it's like, how do we start going down that path? It makes it enjoyable. So that was the first step for us.

And here's the, what you just said, there's two points here. One is take the pressure off the shopper of having to do the journey themselves. So what you both suggested with the quizzes or with, you know, just trying to limit the selection so people can process. That's one really strong way of doing it. The other way is if you go into the store, just as you're, just do it yourself. I want to find something that I've never shopped in the category for.

How do I do it? And when you start looking at that journey and you say, all right, my first cue was, I was looking for the category as a whole. I was looking for hair care. The second thing was, hey, I really like products that are, have a certain look. They should look different.

That's what I start getting attracted to. Once I get to that, then I start to look at colors and they start to identify brands. Interesting. Once I get there, then I start to make a decision on ingredients. Then I start to make a decision on package. But what do we do? You type in any product. You say, okay, eggs brand shampoo, I'll get 17 different options for the 12th pack, the three

pack, the two packs. Right, right, right. The last thing I do. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So these are things that you can change. Here's another one.

If you're buying shirts and right now apparel is coming back in a big way. Why, if I've already bought one shirt, why are you suggesting seven more shirts to me? What's the first thing I do once you buy a shirt is, all right, what sort of trousers does this match with? You have the right socks. Do I have the right accessories? Why aren't you saying, hey, why don't you? pair with this shirt, this is the way that you want to pair this. And now you've just sold and a full outfit. And you've made the experience complete. These are small traits and what we are getting to

is reducing cognitive load. So when you're on a website and you're trying to make decisions all the time, your brain is basically doing that same exam that Salim and I were doing when we had no idea what finally not on 12 Red Bulls. But if they are, you know, you might. You might. sell a lot of stuff. And after, you know, a few minutes, you're like, I'm done, man. I just got to do it anymore. And that is what Ecom needs to solve for. That's what all the, and if the small and medium businesses do this, you're going to

give the large ones to run for their money. Salim, how have you guys focused as far as your brand goes? Like, you know, I know you come with a deep branding background and things like that. You know, how have you guys try, you know, obviously. very community driven, which we've talked about. But are there any like specific kind of, you know, brand narratives or things like that. I mean, is it all, I know. And I, maybe we start with that background of, you know, where Fourth Avenue come through, you know, from in Birmingham and all those kind of things. I'd love to just give a little perspective on that. Yeah, you know, the, the idea of,

you know, when we were talking about how do we see this dollar go back around the community, we thought about it. And we said, you know, this isn't a new idea. It's not a new concept. Right. And, and what we, as we did research, and I say we being me and my co-founder, we did a little research and we were just kind of looking through, like, where throughout time do you see examples of the dollar going around a community and helping to improve an overall community? And we thought specific about the black community. We thought about Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma that some people have heard of.

But, you know, those who have heard of it know that that was like an economic powerhouse. It was like, you know, in that area, that community, the black people own, the churches, to the schools, to the barbershops, to the malls, etc. But that wasn't the only place in the U.S. where there was such a strong powerhouse of, you know, economic foundation that was black run or black owned. There was Birmingham, Alabama's 4th Avenue District. It was a little Haiti in Durham, North Carolina. And so as we thought about Birmingham, we actually thought about that as, wow, Fourth Avenue district there. It was one, transparency. You knew who you were buying from where that dollar was going. You knew that it was going towards it helping and improving the overall community. The second part that I thought was interesting about that is that that was actually the,

the center or was really like ground zero of the civil rights movement. If you've seen the iconic footage where the kids are getting laid out with the fire hoses or attack with the dogs, that was in a center of fourth ab district or where those little girls were killed, they were bombed in the church, that church bombing 16th Street Baptist Church. That was also in a center of fourth ab district. So there was so much heritage and history to the story. And there's so many lines to that story from the transparency to the community aspects and elements

of it to just the power of, the power of. the black community of being able to see that dollar go around and to be able to support and develop their own, that we brought that in and said, you know what, we can take those same values and principles and make that apply to the 21st century today as the 21st century, the 21st century, 4th Avenue District. So that's really where the name came from, because what I understood is that people will remember stories a lot more than they remember facts. and what this story is really about, as much as it, again, is centered on, you know,

this story around the black community, it's really much bigger story that is really about transparency and it's about us as Americans, as American community helping each other and seeing the dollar go around and supporting each other's communities and be more conscious when you're consuming things about how that dollar you spend has a broader impact throughout other communities.

So that's really the mission. And as we work with people, you know, we, I'm a big proponent of just the idea that the idea that you don't have to, you know, purpose and profits can actually coexist. They don't have, they're not mutually exclusive ideas. So we brought this together and that's the brand that we're building one that's really about we're going to make a lot of money. But at the same time, we're also have a very valid purpose about building up communities in general. That's really a vision. I love it. And I mean, you guys are curating products.

So I'd be interesting. I'll lay this out for both you and Sumrott. You know, the challenge in curated sites, you know, whether it's Fourth Avenue Market or Amazon at the highest level or even in between is how specific brands that you carry stand out within those curated experiences. I would open that up for both of you for like, you know, what that balance is and how, how. how, you know, you guys go about it. Yeah, I mean, I can say a lot of what Samrott's been talking about or stuff that I think is, it's amazing stuff, because we were actually having these conversations,

you know, a couple months ago, we were just talking about it. And I really think what his thoughts are, are like absolutely cutting edge and we'll push brands and businesses forward. It's thinking about that experience and a discovery process and putting consumer at the center to discover what's best for them. My platform, what I'm doing today,

is kind of in one way trying to do a better job make sure consumers can navigate the site and find what they want and what meets their needs. But another sense is being able to help people discover new brands and other brands and having spotlights on certain brands

and giving opportunities for brands to even pay to get a higher placement on the site to, you know, like more, you know, like you do on Amazon. So there's that part as like the traditional retail play of working with brands and allowing them to find, you know, pay to get extra space. But then I think the,

a longer and more sustainable play is what Samrod's talking about of like creating this experience that's really compelling that enables discovery, you know, and then having the right brands will be there. And that keeps them accountable for saying, well, if you're not being discovered, maybe you need to change some things about your brand versus maybe you need to change where your brand is. And what Salium's saying is actually spot on because what happens right now is the pay to play model. I'll pay you. Give me the, you know, give me top shelf. And that's how I'll get the most sales. But with search and with AI getting stronger and stronger, brands need to pay an equal amount of attention to their PDPs or their product display pages. The problem is

that most of them just basically write whatever they feel like on terms of basic description, basic facts, and that's it. It's not enough. If you want to make this journey immersive, every part of the e-com experience has to be, right, not just the first page of what Salim's making. it's important for brands themselves to start thinking about this. The other issue is people don't understand the difference between marketing and sales. Marketing is what you do on TV. It's what you do on radio. It's what you do on when you're trying to get people to get aware.

At the point of purchase, the state of mind of a shopper is very different. That same person now is like, I'm here to make decisions. Don't waste my time with, you know, fuzzy-duddy stuff. And that part of the message also has to be optimized. So think about the things that are important to the people, like the quiz that you've created Saline. You know, what kind of hair do you have? And what are you trying to look for?

And then making sure that the PDPs were built to be able to solve for that. Right. You know, everything happening at the back end from an engine perspective. Yeah. So these are small tactics that can pay big dividends. Yeah. the kind of imagery that you use on your website from a product perspective. Like, you have to think about if I were to be picking up a product in store and looking at it.

Those are pretty much the same exact angles I would need when I'm on a website. It's not just front and back, but think about all the things that happen in that one moment when you hold a product. You're understanding not just the basic dimensions, but wait. How big is it? How will it fit? Does this actually fit in my, if it's shampoo? Will it fit in my bathroom? Is it going to be too big?

All these things are questions that are getting answered very implicitly in the shopping journey. Now you have to think about how you're going to do that online. It's so fascinating because, you know, the sales versus marketing aspect is so spot on. And what's happened is it was easy to separate sales and marketing. when marketing teed it up and then the store was the sale, you know, because we had that clear divide. And now with everything, you certainly have ads and things that run that are the marketing, but marketing is now expected with e-com to be judge-jury executioner, you know, to use the analogy,

like you've got to tee them up, you've got to serve them well on the site, and then you've got to close them. And I think there almost needs to be, you either have to be really well-dam rounded as a marketer, you know, and we've, we've had this performance marketing on, you know, like this is essentially saying, oh, it's sales and marketing. I almost think you need like this delineation of marketing still and sales optimization within the e-commerce. And certainly the bigger brands are doing that with the dollars they have. But there's a big difference between attention and driving. people to the store and then optimization to get them to buy and everything that we've been talking

about. I mean, that was the biggest thing that we saw when we first launched. And I kind of was like, well, we're going to test for this and see. But we put that, put an ad out there. We got traffic. We got a lot of traffic. Yeah. But nobody was buying.

So we were like, all right, that was great to get people there. But then we had to go back and look through the journey. Like, what's stopping them from buying? This page is loading too slow or they can't find this. there's no search here. They can't, and that was to your point about closing the sale

to optimizing for navigation. The marketing side got them there. They're like, oh, fourth tab is amazing. Love your mission. And they get to the site and they'll buy. So that's where we had to optimize that second part,

which is so critical and lowering your cost of acquisition, making it so I can keep marketing and anyway, you know, so it's a great point. And it's a science. So, everything from do you create engagement as soon as people get on the website or do you create

mode does this feel like a place I want to be in or does this feel like an exam that I'm going to have to take right right right and then from there how do you keep those moments of connection going it's um and it's not to your point it's not sales or marketing there's this world of shopper marketing that you have to really study and I think for ecom that is the science that needs to be studied. Yeah. Which is, how do I talk to shoppers in the moment to be able to explain all their questions out to them and get ahead of those and be able to deliver on what the product expectations

are? Marketing is meant to give you an idea of a brand that this will solve your problem. Sale is the experience of how you close. But that middle ground of shopper marketing, I think that's where Ryan and Zellem, you guys have got it down. you need to focus in on those messages and really test and learn on what's working best. Yeah. I love it.

Well, you know, I know we could talk all day about these topics and I'm going to reserve the right if you guys are open to it for further discussion. But because it's, you know, it's right in the wheelhouse for me. And I love just learning about the entrepreneurial journey. And Saleem really appreciate you coming on. Salim, why don't you tell our audience where they can keep up with you and all things, Fourth Avenue Market? Yes, so you can find us on Fourth Ave market at Fourth Ave, the number four, T-H-A-V-E Market. You can find us on Instagram and find us on Facebook there.

Find me on LinkedIn. We actually just kicked off a crowdfunding campaign through WeFunder to give the community an opportunity to have ownership. So you can check us out on WeFunder, Fourth Ave Market. Um, yeah, appreciate the opportunity to be on. Yeah, this is a dope podcast you got here, man. Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate it.

And Samrat, we're going to, we're going to let you plug. Hey, man, you keep coming on. I'm going to let you plug anything you want. So, uh, what, uh, where can I keep up with all things, Neuro Insight and everything, Samrott? To neurodashinsight.com. Come onto our website or if you want to follow me on LinkedIn. It's Amratt Serran.

S-A-M-R-E-S-A-R-N. Um, what I will leave you guys with is, is remember this. Creativity is what will get you success. But creativity is not about breaking boundaries for boundaries sake. Creativity is the art of human understanding married with the science of execution. You need to. I love it. I love it.

If I had an amen. Hallelujah, I pushed the butt. So anyway, really appreciate Salim Holder on today. You know where to find him. He just told you Samrat will be a regular as long as he can. keeps coming on here from Neuroinsight. And you know where to find us at the.rad. Dot, dot cast on Instagram.

I'm at Ryan Alford on Instagram and everywhere across the web. And please find us the new and improved the radcast.com where you can search for any of the topics we cover and find all of the content, all the highlights, all of the badassery that is Salim and Samra today. You'll know where to find us and we'll see you next time on the radcast. Yo, guys, what's up Ryan Alford here? Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it. And go leave us a review at Apple or Spotify. Do us a solid. Tell more people. Leave us some reviews. And hey, here's the best news of all. If you want to work with me directly, you want to get your business kicking ass. And you want Radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 864. 729-3680. Don't wait another minute.

Let's get your business going. 864-729-3680. We'll see you next time.