23 May How ECRM Took Their Business Model Virtual In A Matter Of Weeks
For over 25 years, ECRM has been driving efficiencies into the buying and selling process between retailers and brands by hosting over 100 category-specific, face-to-face Programs per year. When the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down travel, the company quickly pivoted, launching not just one, but three new takes on their business model in just under two months. I sat down with Joseph Tarnowski, VP of Content for ECRM, to talk more about how the company’s culture and long-standing embrace of a Continuous Beta mindset helped them move quickly when time was of the essence.
Dave Knox: Let’s start with the background of ECRM and the integral role that you play with the retail and CPG industry?
Joseph Tarnowski: We serve the industry in two ways. One is through our Programs, which are category specific and revolve around private, prescheduled, face-to-face meetings. I use the word programs, not events, because we are not an event company, especially in a traditional sense of a conference or expo. The format and the process of what we do is different. We have around 100 programs across four divisions including food and beverage, general merchandise, health and beauty care, and pharmacy. The main goal is giving these retail buyers discover emerging brands and help them with their category planning. With suppliers, we’re giving them access to these buyers at scale. Anybody can have a meeting, any supplier can go and find a buyer and set up a meeting, but we’re giving them the ability to do this at scale in a condensed amount of time. This includes access to our high-touch Client Success team that works closely with our buyers and suppliers to curate a schedule of relevant appointments by matching buyer needs and objectives with suppliers’ products and capabilities Within two or three days, you’re having anywhere from 50 to 150 meetings depending on the category. The second aspect of the business is the RangeMe product discovery platform, which ECRM acquired 3 years ago. This is a marketplace format with several thousand retail buyers and more than 200,000 suppliers. RangeMe also serves as the inbound product submission platform for many of the largest retailers in the country. A brand uploads their product information, builds a profile on RangeMe and then it gets routed to the appropriate buyer at the retailer. These two parts of our business work in tandem to bring buyers and suppliers together in an efficient and effective way.
Knox: RangeMe is proving to be a very prescient acquisition in today’s environment. What drove ECRM to acquire the business at that time?
Tarnowski: We were looking towards the future and originally we were going to build our own digital offering to bring brands and retailers together because knew it would compliment our business. Obviously, everything is going digital and while we didn’t believe that face-to-face was going away, we did recognize that digital was going to be an important part of our business. Ultimately we decided it was easier and faster to acquire the best in class platform that was out there rather than build our own from scratch. RangeMe already had the reputation and they were very well known with our audience. They had a great platform so why duplicate the process?
Knox: COVID- 19 has greatly impacted the industry that you serve with retailers and brands unable to meet in person. How has ECRM and RangeMe responded?
Tarnowski: Once we started seeing the warning signs with major industry events being postponed and buyers having travel restrictions, we knew the industry was going to have major pain points. As a company, we stepped back, looked at our community, and we realized that because we already have our format and our process of working with these audiences, we could step in and help right away.
The first line of action was RangeMe, where they worked with retailers that have the RangeMe link on their site, and RangeMe handles their inbound product submissions. What they did in mid-March, just as quarantine was starting, was to work with eight major retailers to do what they referred to as sourcing campaigns. So for example, Fresh Thyme Farmers Market was one of them. They announced that all suppliers who couldn’t meet with buyers because of the trade shows closing, they could submit products to Fresh Thyme Farmers Market through RangeMe. Then at the end of the month, all their buyers are going to spend a good portion of a day dedicated to just reviewing those product submissions.
The second was on the ECRM side where we came up with what we called our Efficient Supplier Introductions (ESIs). They are a one-to-many virtual presentation where we have up to 20 category specific buyers and 10 suppliers. Over a two hour period, each supplier gave a 10- minute presentation to that panel of buyers. And we hit a nerve with that because within two weeks of launching it, we had more than 1,000 buyers sign up. For example, you had one buyer jump on the first ESI, then two days later, we had 30 buyers from that same retailer sign up across the categories. The word got around of this really efficient way to find products that they needed.
So the Efficient Supplier Introductions worked very well but we also had feedback that buyers wanted something a little more akin to our in-person experience with the one-on-one interaction directly with each supplier, rather than as a group. The suppliers were looking for that too. That is what led us to launch our Virtual Programs, which is basically the same format and process that we use in person, but with a customized, digital meeting platform layered on top of it. Both the retailers and suppliers have still have a highly customized experience where they are assigned a client success manager who will have a consultation with them and learn their needs and objectives. That Client Success Manager curates an appointment schedule that is completely relevant and as perfectly matched as possible so no time is wasted. Now that has been ported to the digital format, but everything else is the same as far as the underlying process, the format, and the very high touch customer service.
We were kind of unintentionally set up for this happening. With our process and format, all we had to do was just layer the technology on top of it. And the technology is a version of an app that the buyers and sellers use at the in-person meetings already. Now it’s just facilitating the virtual meeting component.
Knox: What is remarkable is that while others in the industry cancelled or postponed events, ECRM quickly pivoted with not just one, but really three different innovations in just two months. What is the culture of ECRM that allowed this mindset of Continuous Beta?
Tarnowski: You nailed it by saying culture. The underlying ECRM culture is really what separates us apart from any other organization I’ve worked with in my life. The culture is a true team, where if something happens, everybody drops everything and pitches in, straight up to the CEO. I’ve seen Greg Farrar, our CEO, helping carry boxes and moving stuff in our sessions countless times. It starts from the top and resonates throughout the whole company.
There are so many instances where the company is able to adapt and turn quick. We foster that kind of action within the company. If you think it works, give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, or if something doesn’t work, we iterate. Get the feedback from the market, apply it. And even in our process at our sessions, during every single session we have what is called an exit interview. Our staff will meet with every buyer and every supplier participating, and have a 20-minute discussion with them to just to get feedback. All of that feedback is entered and then at the end of each session, we have a meeting called correction of errors, where we take all that feedback and we put action items against it to apply to future sessions. As a result, the whole company has that culture of constantly taking feedback, applying it to the business, and then growing at each step along the way. That culture is what enabled us to really move quickly.
Knox: Everyone is hypothesizing on what’s going to be the new normal. In your industry, what do you think the role of virtual programs is going to be going forward?
Tarnowski: That’s actually been a big discussion point with the team and we believe that virtual is here to stay. It is not going anywhere and will be part of the new normal. There are a few different ways to look at it.
Several of our in-person programs have become known as the place where everybody in a category gathers and it’s a highlight of the year for the industry. Those will always be in-person. But there are other sessions that might be smaller, which will more than likely stay virtual. Retailers have told us that they are going to be traveling a lot less going forward and will need to pick their spots. That will also help us determine which ones will be virtual vs in-person. So we are planning for a mix that includes in-person, virtual sessions, and ESI’s that we schedule around the times when the buyers are doing their category planning or midyear review. For instance, the ESI’s might become a tool for the midyear review when they are looking at a refresh of just adding a few new products.
We are really going to let the market determine which way different programs go. If they really are fine doing it virtual, we’ll do it virtual. It’s easier for everybody. There are so many less moving parts in terms of getting there and coming home and digging out from that. It will vary from category to category because each category has a different personality. Some are more about the face to face and the social part that goes with it. Some of them are a little more about just the meetings. Once we do get past this and it is okay to travel, some are going to stay virtual and some are going to be in person. By extending our services to include virtual meetings along with the in-person meetings and RangeMe, we’re now able to serve our customers whenever, wherever and however will best fulfill their needs.
Knox: With that in mind, ECRM isn’t an event company but you do have a great expertise for in-person. What happens on the other side of this for the entire event industry ranging from mega events like CES to more niche gatherings?
Tarnowski: I think at least minimum until we get a vaccine, any place where you have those massive get togethers of 50,000+ people, it’s not going to be the same. There are still way too many unanswered questions. The event still might happen but there is going to be social distancing, whether it’s by regulation or just by people wanting to maintain social distance. There is an intimacy at that is just not going to be there and it is going to change the way people interact at events. A lot of major industry trade shows follow the same format with an expo format that has a thousand booths and massive audiences sitting close together. Those are going to have to completely rethink their formats.
We were able to make this pivot because by nature, our programs, our sessions are smaller. We’re only bringing the relevant buyers and suppliers for the category. As a result, the total audience is maybe 600 people at a session. That is why we’ll have 100 of these during the year, but our total audience at each one is small. So even in person, we would be able to manage that with those social distancing requirements. But how do you do that with an 80,000 person event? That’s going to be very tough. And then it is the sponsors of those events and the participants who are paying to go there. What are they going to think? Will the value be there for that cost? They may just opt for something virtual instead because they’re not going to get what they got from in-person for a while.
*This article first appeared in Forbes on May 20, 2020
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