Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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. 

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 Samrat 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. But 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 convo. 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 of 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 Radcast. But they went to school at the University of Rochester, the Simon School of Business, their MBA.

They got together. And so old college buddies, but both doing timely marketing and business here in 2021 with Salim 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, Samrod, 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? Sorry, man. You have to go there, Ryan. stories from back at the old university of rochester so salim myself and a couple of other folks this is two days before um our quarterfinals

first quarterfinals and um until then salim and i we'd sort of known each other uh but one day we're in the library and i'm like, Hey Salim, how are you doing on finance? And he's like, um, I just started studying. I'm like, I don't know nothing about this. I'm like, do you know what the difference between a bond and a stock is? And he's like, well, I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm like, all right. Uh, So then the plan was made for all our exams. 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. Samurai saved my, 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 of school.

So I was studying for my life and I was happy to have Samurai helping me out with that. And Salim has 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 that's 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 about to say i didn't even know we were fast up in the study room it's done oh man well i do want to start. Samrat and I have gotten into it. Everybody's starting to know what Samrat does, and we're going to leverage. I know Samrat 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 your background, Fourth Avenue Market, bringing us up, starting from the beginning to now. And let's start there, just giving some background and let's have at it. Yeah. So Fourth Avenue 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 in companies like Kimberly Clark, managed brands like Kotex, Jamison 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, you know, 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 I'd 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 tells me, she'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, 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 my co-founder he has his experience in technology software engineer 15 years silicon valley github etc and so we got together i said with 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 US with over 7,000 products on a platform. And to be honest, we kind of started out as a focus on, wow, we can actually create greater awareness and distribution of products that are targeting this community who is so often left 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 and 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 too. 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 percent 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 move 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 4th Ave Market is, it's really this like community-centric marketplace that puts transparency at the forefront and allows consumers to know where their dollars are being spent with companies. And so it's not,

and that's really where the essence of 4th Ave 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 they really know what they're doing. And I love all my guests equally.

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, uh, you know, makes my heart pound, uh, uh, hard. And, uh, so anyway, let's break down a few things there. I do want to talk about, um, you know, you said you stepped into this in 2018. I mean, what's, I know the, what have been some of the mechanics of that? I mean, has it been, has it been as smooth a road as you just described or, uh, I mean, because man, it was so eloquently delivered. I'm like, was there any tribute trials and tribulation here? Like maybe one or two. Right. So, you know, the, the, 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. Um, and it didn't work. And, and as it didn't work, you know, 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 is in November, 2019,

we relaunched that site, but it, it, it, I mean, that's just part of the struggles, you know, we, we can probably spend another two hours on the other struggles. Yeah. That sounds like now that sounds more like the, the e-comm 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, man, you don't even know what a struggle is. So you have to write descriptions and, and images and, you know, all that. So what platform are you guys on? Just out of curiosity, like e-com wise. We started out, um, so this was the site started

out. It was like WordPress WooCommerce, which was not the best setup. And then we moved over to Shopify, um, which, you know, obviously made it much easier for at least some 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 or indifferent. 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 SKUs, can't be on Shopify.

Wrong. Not anymore. And you got to come to me with a really – we develop mainly in Magento and Shopify, depending on the brand. But unless it's just a real specific use case, we push everybody to Shopify. So that sounds like a common journey. We try to take it from where it started, but, you know, we had to move on, you know. Yeah. Well, one more question before I want to bring some right in to have a little discussion, you know, about e-com 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 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 Psi or Alpha Kappa Alpha or 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 percent 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 one percent 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, and, and, and use our, and our user services,

et cetera. 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 the black community that I speak about, although I've talked about that. But there's a lot of people who also want to support the black community, 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 and provide an incentive for them to operate the way that they're already operating. And that has worked really, really well for us so far.

Yeah, a couple of 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 divides us sometimes uh you know the news uh 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, I mean, but that's exactly what we recognize is like, most people out there are really good hearted 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 owned 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 that 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 there's 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 that 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's 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, it was like they were being token.

They knew they were being token. They were just trying 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 and so, you know, I saw both sides of it. And, you know, it's 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 were in 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 and more holistic perspective.

a 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, as authentically as they could. Yeah. And I can tell you as owning an agency, it's difficult, uh, in Greenville, South Carolina to find African-American candidates. Like, you know, like I literally reached out to a couple of friends like a year ago when some of this was happening. It was forefront and I continue to try. And it's like we don't I think we've had one cap 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 so it's like, 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 that word 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 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, maybe 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 refreshments, 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 then 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, you know, the struggle 10 years ago when I'm doing newspaper ads or or or magazine ads, it was kind of I mean, you can have it in the words, but it was just kind of like it was the image. You know, it was, you know, here's the Asian guy. Here's the black guy. Here's the white girl. You know, it was the image you know it was 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 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 you and selling 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 uh 13 of population 140 index for our product this is why we should target them yeah um 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 um those are going away now and it's starting to become more holistic which is great um but which has now impacted um you know all facets of life including e-commerce which is um 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 browse, you'd be like, all right, I like this product. Now let me see if I can get it cheaper on e-commerce. 100% right. And because that's what Amazon was, it 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 to 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? 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 that has been studied over decades. And now you have e-comm that has come and solved 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 secret. 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, uh, between that

and a bungled delivery, uh, it's time we'll never get back. So, and this is the thing, every part of that journey has been optimized for the buy. And when you have, uh, ventures like, like what Salim's got with 4th Ave, uh, 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 e-com 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 the the discovery, the end cap of of online. I mean, think about when you go to the grocery store, it's the end cap 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 end 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 taking one step further. Why do you assume that I am coming here for a mission based shop? Why is the search for 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 4th Ave and the fact that we have over 7000 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, 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, something 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? So 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 ask 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 the form of a hair quiz so you come on 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 for 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 uh 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 uh or with um 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 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, um, 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, uh, have a certain look. They should look different. That's what I start getting attracted to. Once I get get to that then i start to look at colors then i start to identify brands and once i get there then i start to make a decision on ingredients then i start to make a decision on packaging but what do we do you type in any

product you say okay x 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 true so these are things that you can change here's another one um 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? Do I 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 tricks 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 finance was. Hopefully not on 12 Red Bulls, but if they are, you might sell a lot of stuff.

And after a few minutes, you're like, I'm done, man. I just can't do this anymore. And that is what e-comm needs to solve for. That's what all the, if the small and medium businesses do this, you're going to give the large ones a run for their money. How, um, Salim, how have you guys, um, 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 uh 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 even start with that background of you know where fourth avenue you come through you know from 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 what we as we did research, I say we being me and my co-founder, we did

a little research and we're just kind of looking through like, where throughout time do you see examples of the dollar going around a community and helping to, you know, improve an overall community? And we thought specifically about the black community. We thought about Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that some people have heard of, but you know, those who've 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 and the schools to the barbershops, to the malls, et cetera. 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 Fourth Avenue District. It was a little Haiti and

Durham, North Carolina. And so as we thought about Birmingham, Alabama's fourth Avenue district. It was a little Haiti and 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 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 4th Ave 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 4th Ave 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 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 a fourth, the 21st century

fourth Avenue district. Um, 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, 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 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 the vision i love it and i mean you guys are curating products i'd be interesting i'll i'll lay this out for both you and samrat 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, you know, you guys go about it. Yeah. I mean, I can say a lot of what, um, Sam Roth's been talking about or stuff that I think is, it's amazing stuff because we were actually having these conversations, you know, I don't 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 one way to try 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 given opportunities for brands to even pay to get a higher placement on the site to, you know, like more, you know, like, like you do on Amazon. So there's that part is 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 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 Sully I'm 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. So 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 dutty 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 selling you know what kind of hair do you have and what are you trying to look for? And then giving them, then making sure that the PDPs were built to be able to solve for that. Right. You know, everything happening at the backend from an engine perspective. Yeah.

So these are small tactics that can pay big dividends with the kind of imagery that you use on your website from a product perspective. with 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 you, 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 right how big is it where will 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,

like 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-rounded as a marketer, and we've had this performance marketing on, this is essentially saying, oh, it's sales and marketing. I almost think you need 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, you know, 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, optimizing for navigation. The marketing side got them there. They're like, oh, 4th Ave is amazing.

Love your mission. And they get to the site and they don't 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 it is 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 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 e-com, that is the science that needs to be studied yeah uh 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 Zalim,

you guys have got it down, is 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 Salim, really appreciate you coming on. Salim,

why don't you tell our audience where they can keep up with you and all things 4th Avenue Market? Yeah, so you can find us on 4th Avenue Market, at 4th Avenue, the number 4-T-H-A-V-E Market. You can find us on Instagram, you can 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, 4th Ave Market. Yeah. Appreciate the opportunity to be on the 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're going to let you plug. Hey man, you keep coming on. I'm going to let you plug anything you want. So what, where can I keep up with all things Neuro Insight and everything Samrat? So neuro-insight.com, come onto our website, or if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, it's Samrat Saran, S-A-M-R-A-T-S-A-R-A-N.

What I will leave you guys with 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 them. I love it. I love it. If I had an amen, hallelujah, I pushed the button. 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 keeps coming on here from Neuro Insight. And you know

where to find us at the.rad.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 Samrat 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, next time on the Radcast. And hey, here's the best news of all. If you want to work with me directly, if 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.