During PrimeTime in Nashville, NMG’s consumer electronics retailers had the opportunity to hear from Gap Intelligence, a data analytics firm that tracks pricing and promotional trends across myriad product categories – mainly focused on CE right now. Scott Peterson, a senior analyst at Gap, spent time after the session diving deeper into their work and how they get it done.

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Rob Stott: All right, we are back on the Independent Thinking Podcast. Changing up the View. We were just in a previous episode. Or it might be a future episode, I don’t know how I’m going to publish these things. But we were looking over the show floor from the staff lounge. And now, it’s hot, a little hot. We’re not inside the convention center, we’re right outside on a terrace looking over the beautiful city in Nashville behind us. Mr. Scott Peterson.

Scott Peterson: Yes, we are. It’s my first time here actually.

Rob Stott: First time in Nashville.

Scott Peterson: Tennessee in general.

Rob Stott: Tennessee in general. Wow.

Scott Peterson: It’s all new.

Rob Stott: Well, welcome.

Scott Peterson: Thank you.

Rob Stott: I think this is like six or seven if I count right. One of my favorite cities to travel to. Business, pleasure, whatever it might be, there’s just a lot that goes on here. And you’re getting to experience it.

Scott Peterson: Yep. We did Broadway last night. We got some good food, we got some good beers. That’s one thing that I do know a lot about also, because coming from San Diego, that’s basically our culture, craft beer.

Rob Stott: There you go. It is. There you go. Well, I appreciate you joining us. Scott Peterson, senior analyst, TV and smartphones

Scott Peterson: Correct.

Rob Stott: for Gap Intelligence. We have a history. This is kind of fun to get to do this, man. It’s been a while. I heard your name was on the docket for our CE Merchandising Session this week. I was like, ‘I got to reach out. I got to get back in touch with Scott.’

Scott Peterson: I love that you did.

Rob Stott: Yeah. Right. So I’m happy to be able to do this. For those that don’t know, those watching right now listening, whatever they might be doing, give kind of that elevator pitch. What is Gap Intelligence?

Scott Peterson: Yeah, it’s a great question. Thanks, Rob. So Gap Intelligence is a counter intel provider essentially. And the way we track the market, the metrics that we track are really aligned with the four Ps of marketing. It’s the price, the promo, the placement, and the product that’s out there. So we’re out there in the stores, brick and mortar, on a week to week basis. We have collectors across the country in about two handfuls worth of regions that go out there. And then using an app, they will collect skew specific pricing and promotions. Meanwhile, we’re back on the web scraping the websites for these major retailers that we track so we can have the in-store price, the online price. And imagine doing this now week over week, month in and month out. We have yearly trends. Now I can see the trends shaping of the marketplace. We can see the tendencies of certain merchants. If they’re sorting one brand or one segment or one product category more or less, that all basically jumps in the Gap data.

Rob Stott: Right. So what I love about it, and I always had an appreciation for it at the previous job, but being here now at Nationwide, we’ve got our prime metrics data, which is kind of that point of sale. So it’s the sell through. You guys have a different approach, and it’s sort of like what’s in stock now and kind of the pricing on it. So you can tell not only what’s being sold but at what prices and is it sale promotional data, that sort of thing. So it’s a different approach to what we’re doing, but still really important work.

Scott Peterson: Absolutely. You bring up a really good point. It is absolutely complimentary to sales results.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: I compare the sell through, the sales data as having the score of the game. You can watch ESPN just on the bottom. I didn’t watch the game, but I know who won the match, who won the game? The 9ers beat the Packers 25-17, whatever.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: What did they do?

Rob Stott: I noticed you didn’t say Chargers there because…

Scott Peterson: The Chargers who?

Rob Stott: You’re, who, who… Did they…

Scott Peterson: Yeah. They’re not in San Diego at all.

Rob Stott: A little bitterness there.

Scott Peterson: I’m not even sure if they exist. It’s okay, I wasn’t a huge super fan. But again, honestly, back in San Diego, there’s hardly any people with Charger gear. I was surprised-

Rob Stott: They probably burned it.

Scott Peterson: They did. That was a very conceited effort for that too.

Rob Stott: It’s a little bit of bad. But anyway…

Scott Peterson: But Gap Intelligence data is fundamentally complimentary to sales and sell through. If you need to know the score of the game and that’s it, that’s great. I just watch the bottom of ESSPN. I can sound smart at the water cooler. I can talk to my sports buddies a little bit, but I don’t really have that fundamental understanding of why it happened. I believe the technical term is causal data is what we have. If your bosses says, ‘well sales are up and sales down, why,’ and you’re scratching your head, that’s when you reach for Gap Intelligence.

Rob Stott: So you’re kind of getting more into that, you’re kind of diving deeper into the box score. So you see the yards, yards per carrier or whatever, how many RBIs were hit that day by who, and that sort of stuff. So you’re getting-

Scott Peterson: Yeah, we got all of that. Is this price the Black Friday price?

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: How often has this price been duplicated? What other brand is doing this same price moving as well in the same segment? It’s ironic a little bit because we actually don’t have sales data. I literally have no idea what’s out there selling, which sounds a little silly but I’m able to be a very effective analyst because we have the landscape of data. What’s out there in the landscape is what’s selling. So if something is not out there, it’s not getting those chances to sell and that’s why your sales are like that. Or one of the things that we’ve actually I guess we bust people on is what’s supposed to happen?

Rob Stott: Right.

Scott Peterson: Well, we’re looking at the Gap data, we don’t see this product. Well, we were supposed to have that last month so your data is wrong. We can actually show you pictures of the field of that Walmart end cap or that Walmart area where your product is not there. And so what’s supposed to happen and then you were supposed to see sales results, you didn’t see it. It’s the reality of what’s out there in the channel.

Rob Stott: Interesting.

Scott Peterson: If you saw it on the first slide and on our website, it says eyes and ears in the marketplace. That’s basically it. We strive to be sort of that channel observer that you can depend on. It’s every week, it’s very regular. We’re very objective. And we don’t have the sales, so we’re not on anyone’s side.

Rob Stott: No, I love that. The description is perfect, right. The eyes and ears in the marketplace and kind of seeing what’s going on. And to a specific category, we mentioned your categories, TVs, smartphone. What categories, you’re consumer electronics based right now. Is that right for Gap Intelligence?

Scott Peterson: No. We actually have a huge home appliance hub as well.

Rob Stott: All right. See, this is the reconnection.

Scott Peterson: Yeah.

Rob Stott: Some things have changed.

Scott Peterson: Countertop cooking is blowing up.

Rob Stott: That’s awesome. Okay.

Scott Peterson: All the air fryers that people are shopping for on Black Friday. We have categories and this is how Gap grows. We scale up based on our client need then into adjacent categories. So Gap started as a printer company. So we tracked printers and the consumables that went into them and then one of those printer vendors, Epson, made a digital camera. I don’t know if you remember this, but back then Epson had digital cameras. Gwen Stefani was the celebrity spokeperson for them too.

Rob Stott: I remember that.

Scott Peterson: Yeah, it was a long time ago. And so they approached Gary Allen Peterson who is Gap intelligence. So that’s a fun fact for the podcast, that’s literally what Gap means. It’s Gary. And so they approached Gary and said, “Hey, we love what you do for printers. Can you do this for digital cameras?” And he said, ‘absolutely not. Oh my god, I’m going crazy with growing this company and stuff.’ So I was actually hired on in 2010 to take over Gary’s role from CEO, printer analysts, and digital camera analysts. He said, “Hey what you know about cameras, I can’t teach. I’ll teach you how to push buttons on Excel and make analysis happen.”

Rob Stott: Wow.

Scott Peterson: So it’s been a dream ever since, man.

Rob Stott: And to watch it grow. When we talked last, I think you guys were getting into the wearables at that point because they started to explode, right?

Scott Peterson: Probably.

Rob Stott: So like late 2017, 2018.

Scott Peterson: It checks out.

Rob Stott: And you start to see these very… It’s kind of a really similar story now that I think about it to what Nationwide’s doing. We talk to our members all the time about how we’ve got our core categories, it’s CE, it’s appliances, it’s furniture and bedding. Outdoor has grown. Well, actually, outdoor would be kind of the first expansion into our members have needs. They’re starting to see trends in their marketplaces. We’ve added outdoor. We’ve added the flooring category with partnerships. We’ve gotten deeper into custom integration. We’re looking at hardware and the tools and things like that. Countertops, cabinets. You start adding those things as they become necessary in the business. So kind of very different business models in kind of what we’re doing, but it’s neat to see that you scale up when the need arises, right?

Scott Peterson: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s the Gap Intelligence way right there. And interestingly, if you could travel back in time like 10 years ago and be like, ‘we’re going to be tracking outdoor and furniture,’ and be like, ‘what? We’re the CE guys, what are you talking about?’

This was the joke. When I started at Gap in 2010, 2011, we would have company meetings and Gary’s like, ‘we can scale up and do this.’ And he’s like, ‘heck, we can even be tracking refrigerators.’ And boy that got a laugh, everybody laughed. ‘Refrigerators, why would we do that? That’s home appliances.’ And now if you look at the category list that Gap has, that magnet, having refrigerators has expanded our home appliance hub tremendously. And then what also happens, and I’m sure this is how the same thing with Nationwide is someone from some company moves laterally or into an adjacent side, ‘Hey I loved you guys when I was at my old role, but can you do something from a new role now?’

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: And we do the due diligence, and we make it happen.

Rob Stott: Yeah, you kind of explained this at the top, but for a retailer out there, what would they come to you for or how would they utilize the data from Gap Intelligence in their business, in their day-to-day?

Scott Peterson: This is actually a really good question because we don’t currently work with a lot of retailers.

Rob Stott: There you go.

Scott Peterson: Not to reveal our whole business book here, but we are very heavily weighted on the actual vendors themselves.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: So think the LGs, the Samsungs. And they make refrigerators, so they’re like, ‘hey can you do this too?’ So it’s like the brands that are in the marketplace themselves. We work with the licensees and stuff too, but because we’re tracking skew specific information, it’s really important for the product managers at these companies to really have that eyes and ears information on the market. The thing that we run into, which maybe this is, I’ll maybe turn this around to a question is, one of the things I’ve bumped into with merchants, with retailers is, they don’t like to pay for stuff. And they’re kind of used to getting free data from the vendors they work for. So that’s been one of our hurdles, like penetrating into a merchant as a Gap client. Is that similar to your business?

Rob Stott: Oh, for sure. Prime metrics, perfect example is a platform. It’s our sell-through data. So your POS, point of sale data that we aggregate. Our members have to opt into sharing that POS data, which to them that’s like the holy grail for them, that information, wanting to make sure. So a lot of guardrails are put in place. There’s anonymization of that data and things like that. So you could see what you’re doing, how you’re performing. Free, but it’s one of those things you got to consent to do it and things like that.

Scott Peterson: Free, that’s what I’m saying.

Rob Stott: That’s the turf. So they’re used to…

Scott Peterson: And here I am trying to sell you data at Gap Intelligence, like we get this for free.

Rob Stott: But It’s different data, it’s different data, which I love. It’s kind of cliche. The more data that you have, the kind of… It might feel messier as an analyst. I’m sure you’re looking at numbers all the time, your head must spin. But the more data you can get access to, it sort of paints a clear picture for you.

Scott Peterson: Yes. And this might be a challenge that you guys see also is, once you produce this data, you have this data,

Rob Stott: What do you do with it?

Scott Peterson: Yeah. And you got a lot of horses. And you’re feeding them water, but these ones aren’t drinking. And you’re like, ‘this water’s good for you. And you’re like, I know what’s good for me but I’ve just…’ I compare it also to a gym membership sometimes, which is maybe a negative connotation. It’s like I feel healthier having it.

Rob Stott: I love that though.

Scott Peterson: But did I go to the gym today? Absolutely not. Am I going to go tomorrow? I’m going to tell myself I will. I’m going to use the Nationwide tomorrow, or I’ll use the Prime Metric, I’ll use the Gap data tomorrow. It’s how do we get our clients to engage with it?

Rob Stott: Right. Right.

Scott Peterson: So I find that we do best when we have a power user or somebody, like I said, that’s been implanted from another role at a different company where they were tasked with that coming in to use the data. Because it is good for you. We know You’re going to make smarter better decisions, but getting it and how do I use it? It’s easy to understand the sell through and the sales data. And this is why I think ours data is extremely complimentary to your data because we don’t anonymize it. So I can tell you if there’s something that’s an exclusive skew. A club store exclusives is one thing that’s popping to mind. We have that product, we have that part number, we have everything. Whereas in other sales data providers, that would be masked to protect your relationships with the people that are giving you this data. Yeah.

Rob Stott: Absolutely.

Scott Peterson: We go and get the data ourself. We’re not on anyone’s side so we can bust kind of the reality of what’s happening.

Rob Stott: I want to dive into, we talked a lot about the how and the why. I want to dive into the what, but what you just mentioned is something I think would be cool to hear since you have the perspective of the early days. Now when you’re talking about collecting that data, was it like going into the stores and using, writing down what the actual physical prices were?

Scott Peterson: It was.

Rob Stott: And what’s it like today?

Scott Peterson: It’s similar.

Rob Stott: So it hasn’t changed.

Scott Peterson: No, it has. It has. So actually, this is… So going back, I told you my origin story.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: I was working at a Ritz Camera, I was a camera shop guy.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Scott Peterson: And this guy, Gary, would come into my store every week and he would never buy anything. I make commission people, like I am not making money unless I’m out here selling. And this guy comes in.

Rob Stott: He just would never buy it. You were like, ‘why does he keep coming back?’

Scott Peterson: Oh, we talked about a memory card last week, I think he’s back. Here’s the memory card. He’s like, ‘no, I don’t want to buy it.’ And I developed a rapport with him. He has the same last name as me, Peterson. So I was like, “Hey Mr. Peterson, you’re coming in my store, right.” And he would always with a pen and paper be writing down the pricing. And I know that he shoots with a Canon DSLR, but he’s writing down these Nikon pricings and I’m like, ‘What are you doing, man? Like that’s not for you.’ No, no. He’s like, I work really closely with the brands and help them understand the shelf is what he told me.

Rob Stott: Interesting.

Scott Peterson: So I was like, all right, he’s not going to buy anything from me. I’m not going to waste my time with him, but I’ll talk shop with him because he’s a camera guy when he comes in. So now I’m reading the old Gap Intelligence reports and it says things like, ‘sources at Ritz Camera indicated that a Canon shipment is inbound.’

Rob Stott: That was you.

Scott Peterson: And he was like, ‘you were sources, man.’ I was like, ‘really?’ And so that was when he’s like, ‘well, he knows about camera’s I can’t teach, but we’ll get them in here. But like that, the process of our data collection is extremely manual, and I don’t know of a way we can scale it up to where it’s not. We have scaled it up. We have multiple regions now across the country, coast to coast. They’re basically independent contractors. Instead of a pad and paper, we’ve traded that for an app now.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: So we have developers in house that developed an app.

Rob Stott: Plug it in.

Scott Peterson: And our collectors go out there with last week’s set of data, they can confirm, confirm, take a photo, change the price, add a promo.

Rob Stott: That’s so awesome.

Scott Peterson: And all of it gets synced to the cloud.

Rob Stott: It’s crazy but impressive too. Like that’s how it’s done, and it’s still being done that way just using the tools of today.

Scott Peterson: Yeah, it was… You’re bringing me back, Rob, because that was, I would… My Tuesdays, I would go out to retail.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: And then my whole Wednesdays, I’d sit with my little reporter’s notebook, one hand in the notebook and one hand on my 10 key and just transposing data into Excel row by row by row for every single camera.

Rob Stott: That’s so crazy.

Scott Peterson: The world was smaller back then.

Rob Stott: Yeah, but that’s awesome.

Scott Peterson: The first Gap Intelligence pen that we had, that our Gap’s like or Gary’s like, ‘ooh, we’re going to make pens because we’re a big company now.’ We’re going to get our own, those little orange cap pen, like a BIC, right. And on the side of it, it said, ‘Gap Intelligence, yes, we’re writing down your pricing’ was like the tagline we had on these pens.

Rob Stott: That’s so awesome.

Scott Peterson: So interestingly, Gary would come into my camera shop week over. Week when I got hired on at Gap, I became that visit. So I would see all my old friends at the store and they’d be like, “You’re the Gary guy now.” And to be honest with you, I thought Gary was like a student or something doing a project. Like I’m like, ‘oh.’ We have San Diego State, the University of San Diego very close by where the shop was. So in my mind, this is what you said about assuming something, if you don’t have all the information, you’re going to assume something wrong. And I just assumed Gary was some sort of college student doing a thesis or something.

Rob Stott: That’s incredible.

Scott Peterson: I just didn’t ask questions until he asked me if I wanted to join Gap. And then my question was, “How much are you going to pay me? Is it based on commission? Because if not, sign me up.”

Rob Stott: Because I’m not making it from you, so… No, that’s awesome, man.

Scott Peterson: Yeah. And so this was, oh man, 13 years ago.

Rob Stott: That’s awesome. And to where you are today. And when we talk about today, you were in our CE merchandising session, it had an awesome presentation. A lot of insights that we could dive into. But a couple of things stood out to me, one being sort of the month that you created or the season that you created in OctoNovemDecember.

Scott Peterson: Yep. Buckle up.

Rob Stott: Did I say that right?

Scott Peterson: You’re close.

Rob Stott: Anything from that presentation, like if you had to summarize it, I know there’s a lot of data points, right. The most important data point that you shared today, what do you think that was?

Scott Peterson: Well, I think to the audience here today, because it’s all the nationwide clientele and stuff, really the message was sort of we’re down now hanging a little while longer. Hope exists in a couple key kind of technologies where we’re seeing momentum in consumer interest and that the holiday season is really going to be an opportunity to reverse some of the sluggish nature that we’ve seen.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: I really believe strongly that the consumers are getting really worn out of just constant promotions. And we’ve spoiled them, we’ve spoiled ourselves with like Black Friday starts today kind of thing. So my error of being mindful or my advice of being mindful of consumer fatigue transformed into opportunity of member-based sort of programs. I want to be part of the club. I want to shop where I’m part of this club.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: So if you can be a merchant or a brand that makes me feel like that as a customer, that’s going to be a winning success for the holiday season. Yeah.

Rob Stott: And another thing you mentioned too is, consumers aren’t shopping for the product because of the product now. That’s something that stood out to me and it’s more about that. It’s similar to how they’re shopping at a store because of that experience and the service that they’re provided. It’s about also creating that experience in their home, which I think that’s a message We’ve shared a lot as Nationwide. And you can also see it too. Anyone walking around the show floor this week, you’ll see almost literal homes built on the show floor of vendors that are creating. It’s their ecosystem, so they’re showing it off. But they’re creating an environment and experience for that customer, and that comes through in the product that they purchase. But you have that opportunity as the independent retailer to influence sort of that customer’s entertainment experience in their homes based on what you’re pushing them towards.

Scott Peterson: Absolutely. And speaking of homes, a smart home is a thing.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: We’ve had this for years, but It’s been very fragmented and very confusing. And I’ve got six different apps, one for my light, one for my other light, one for my soundbar. It’s just too much.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: So my message of this consolidation or this ecosystem, I was not shopping for any other smart plugs other than the Amazon Smart Plug because I knew I don’t want an app, I want it to plug in with what I got going already. I know it works with Alexa, I know it works with my everything. I didn’t even consider TP Link or any of the other brands that are big marketplace players. They’re probably better plugs. But I wanted the holistic contribution where I could just bark at an Alexa and something will happen and there isn’t this disconnect. When a smart home seems fun and awesome, but the only people I know that are doing it are the major tech enthusiasts or the brainiacs out there. And I’d like to tell you I’m one of those people, but I’m really not. And Apple’s a great example of keeping it simple, and sophistication is the ultimate simplicity or I think I got that backwards. But you see what I mean?

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: It’s like that vibe I get where the features are second, the brand identity and…

Rob Stott: The experience is first.

Scott Peterson: Yes. Yes.

Rob Stott: And it’s got to be seamless and simple. To borrow from Apple there, but… And then I tried to say the seasonal month that you created, but I’ll let you kind of explain what you actually meant by that. Because It’s a great point kind of what you brought up, and it goes to another point that you made about July and how that Christmas in July was always a thing but Amazon really legitimized it and gave us a reason to, a purpose for customers to shop during that period. But also now seeing it extend, we’ve got October coming up, and I’ll let you dive into that.

Scott Peterson: Thanks. Yeah. So I actually, I don’t want to take credit for this if anyone’s listening, RetailMeNot.

Rob Stott: Okay.

Scott Peterson: That, that…

Rob Stott: That was their term.

Scott Peterson: In 2012, they taglined that. So this isn’t even a new phenomenon, this holiday creep has been going on for I guess a decade now.

Rob Stott: Ever, it feels like forever.

Scott Peterson: And they had the funniest YouTube video. You guys could probably look it up, OctoNovemCember. Just Google it, you’ll find the promotional videos. And what really stuck with me was they created a mascot that was a combination of October, November, and December.

Rob Stott: Like a pumpkin with a turkey body wearing a Santa hat.

Scott Peterson: You’ve seen this. It’s coming back to you.

Rob Stott: Is that it? Is that it?

Scott Peterson: Yeah, it is. It’s turkey legs, Santa body, and a pumpkin head.

Rob Stott: That’s incredible.

Scott Peterson: And he comes busting in the scene like the Kool-Aid Man, like OctoNovemCember. And I just was like, that is it.

Rob Stott: That’s awesome.

Scott Peterson: That’s happening. And so I’ve literally been saying that for like the last 10 years now.

Rob Stott: That’s incredible.

Scott Peterson: I’m not sure if RetailMeNot really uses this much. By now, it’s very familiar.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: It’s just table stakes. It’s like, I’m going to go into the store and see all the Christmas stuff already.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: Everybody jokes about that.

Rob Stott: Right.

Scott Peterson: As a Halloween fan, there’s always the memes when you going into October and there’s Christmas music plan already, right. It’s like, give me Halloween time, right. But if you ask anybody,

Rob Stott: Jack Skellington had it. He was legit in his concerns about losing the Halloween holiday.

Scott Peterson: Yeah, it’s happening. And everybody listening here has had that experience walking into a big box merchant and you’re like, “Christmas already.” And It’s wearing.

Rob Stott: The Thanksgiving enthusiasts that get… ‘But there’s Thanksgiving still to’… I get it, I get it.

Scott Peterson: Yeah. I’m glad we’re not doing the work on Thanksgiving, that was… Retail really went there because it had to get more sales. ‘We’ll get one more day to sell, everybody come back in on Thanksgiving.’ Yeah, I’m glad that we pushed back against that. It just wasn’t sustainable I don’t think. And It’s Black Friday now the day after Thanksgiving. But I’m like the urgency to shop isn’t there.

Rob Stott: Right. That and that’s…

Scott Peterson: Hasn’t it been Black Friday? My wife said this actually. She’s like, “Hasn’t it been Black Friday all month, Scott?”

Rob Stott: Right.

Scott Peterson: I was like, well, yeah. Now it’s actual Black Friday and she’s like, “So what?” And she’s like, “Aren’t the deals going to be active next week too?” I’m like. “Well yeah, but”…

Rob Stott: That’s where we’re at. This Black Friday was a day, like it was the day for years. And that was the day everyone shopped. That was when the deals were live. I remember it slowly creeping into the weekend, right. Because you had your Black Friday day, and then sales on Saturday, a small business Saturday.

Scott Peterson: There you are. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Rob Stott: So then it would extend. And then Sunday was just a day, and then Monday you got Cyber Monday and give back to. So it felt like it started to sort of expand into that four-day weekend of those sales. But now It’s like four months long, it’s incredible.

Scott Peterson: Yeah. So again, my point of making it, where’s the urgency, give me my urgency back. Give me part of a club. Oh, I got an exclusive offer only for me. Like that’s going to get my dollars out of my wallet versus extended sale saved today. Which I understand why we’ve done this. Did it really even make sense to put all my eggs into one single day basket?

Rob Stott: Right.

Scott Peterson: If I don’t make that day, my seasons messed up. So now we’ve got a little more comfort, but I think it is really wearing on consumers to have such elongated deals. The point I was making about… You and I are old enough to remember when Cyber Monday was invented.

Rob Stott: It became a thing.

Scott Peterson: Yeah. And do you remember why it was a thing?

Rob Stott: No.

Scott Peterson: So what we found was, everybody went to Thanksgiving, had Black Friday, didn’t wake up, they missed the deals, they went to the wrong merchant, they didn’t take action hard enough on Black Friday. They waited over the weekend and then they went into the offices on Monday. The office has internet.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Scott Peterson: High speed internet, mind you. Okay. This is something that we don’t have here back in 2010. So people were at their office using their offices high-speed internet to click on the deals, and the retailers and brands were like, what the heck’s going on on Monday? And Cyber Monday became a thing.

Rob Stott: That’s incredible.

Scott Peterson: It was for everybody that missed out, that needed a stable internet connection to be able to shop on company time, basically. Yeah.

Rob Stott: Oh, that’s great. The slacking off of workers is what invented Cyber Monday.

Scott Peterson: Some of the early years had studies actually too. It was like, ‘1 billion dollars lost in worker productivity due to Cyber sales.’

Rob Stott: I remember that. Yeah, I remember those sales.

Scott Peterson: Yeah, not it’s…

Rob Stott: That’s incredible.

Scott Peterson: Just embrace it. Yeah.

Rob Stott: Oh, that’s awesome.

Scott Peterson: Cyber Week, we’ve got it. Now Cyber Week is a thing. It’s not even a day anymore. Yeah.

Rob Stott: Oh, man. Well so much data that was shared and so many great insights. We appreciate it. Again, happy to have reconnected, man. This was a lot of fun.

Scott Peterson: Likewise Rob.

Rob Stott: Appreciate that you’ll get the chance to walk around our show floor a little bit and be here and see where this relationship with Gap goes. So nice to have it back.

Scott Peterson: Well now that I know that you guys got your own sales data, I feel like we’re going to be mashing up a lot more.

Rob Stott: We might be talking. We might be talking.

Scott Peterson: Yeah. This is like we’re going to make… Gary always has a thing where it’s like peanut butter and chocolate mushed together makes delicious Reese’s. I’m not a huge peanut butter fan.

Rob Stott: Are you saying Gap and Nationwide smushed together? I’m like, ‘all right.’

Scott Peterson: That’s a delicious peanut butter cup.

Rob Stott: Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. This was a lot of fun, man. And I look forward to having more of these conversations in the future.

Scott Peterson: I hope so. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Rob Stott: You bet.