CommerceNext 2022: Seizing the Next Wave of Growth takes place on June 21-22 at the New York Hilton Midtown. We’re taking you behind the scenes of planning the 2022 ecommerce conference, the inspiration behind the theme and the vision for this year’s conference.
Retail and ecommerce have been undergoing an accelerated transformation over the last two years, and that pattern doesn’t show signs of stopping anytime soon. The lasting effects of the pandemic on the industry demonstrate the need to continue building closer relationships to customers, exploring new technologies and navigating changing workforce dynamics. Our Co-Founder Scott Silverman explains that: “Growth in ecommerce is not happening in the same way it did three or four years ago… there are many changes and challenges in the industry such as inflation, the impact of privacy changes on advertising, difficulty hiring new talent and retailers must take new approaches to address these changes.”
While developing the theme and vision for our 2022 ecommerce conference, Co-Founders Veronika Sonsev, Scott Silverman and Allan Dick turned to the heart of CommerceNext: our community. “Crowdsourcing content from our community via our Advisory Board and our community surveys played a critical role in developing the content for this year’s conference,” said Veronika Sonsev.
The CommerceNext team leveraged insights using a variety of methods to develop this year’s conference: the CommerceNext Advisory Board, annual ecommerce trends and investment surveys and on-going conversations with ecommerce retailers.
Scott notes that the advisory board, with an array of business models and verticals in the industry, is “critical in keeping CommerceNext’s ear to the ground.” To get their opinions, the Co-Founders met with the advisory board members in LA and New York to discuss key trends in the industry. “Our advisory board is living in the day-to-day of retail and ecommerce, so these meetings are helpful to discover critical topics to ecommerce marketers while creating the agenda, ” explains Veronika.
Discussions with the advisory board brought to light important topics for this year’s ecommerce conference, including:
- Winning the War for Talent: Building a Culture Where Innovation Thrives
- Setting up Shop in the Metaverse: How Brands Can Get Started
- TikTok Advertising and TikTok Influencers
The War For Talent
“One thing we’ve noticed while running our webinar programming is the way retailers are hiring nowadays is different, and more difficult. We’re giving retailers the opportunity to share their open positions on webinars, but it’s become clear that we need to discuss the war for talent and the changing workforce at this year’s conference” says Allan.
Both the webinars and our advisory board meetings highlighted the ever present challenge of hiring talent and adapting to the new workforce. The “new workforce” is not specific to retail—people across all industries are discussing how to find the right balance between in person, remote and hybrid teams/work schedules. Our recent 2022 Digital Trends & Investment Priorities research shows that 44% of retailers see talent recruitment as a top risk to achieving their 2022 sales objectives (report available soon).
Within retail, there is a larger conversation of how to retain the best talent through a strong culture, looking for certain skills in the interview process and prioritizing leadership/innovation. We’ll cover all these topics about the war for talent and the “new workforce” at CommerceNext 2022.
The Metaverse—Shiny Object or Sticky Trend for Retailers?
New technologies and trends are always making their way to the forefront of the retail industry, but they often take a few years to be integrated into retail and ecommerce marketing strategies. This year, there is a lot of buzz around NFTs and the metaverse. Brands like Nike and Forever21 have taken to the Metaverse (on Roblox, specifically) to provide virtual environments and digital products to their consumers. With this topic on everyone’s minds, we plan to give you the 411 on the Metaverse and provide potential use-cases for you to decide if there is opportunity for you to participate this latest trend.
TikTok Advertising and TikTok Influencers
TikTok was one of those shiny objects in 2020 and 2021 that is here to stay (we covered TikTok at our Marketing Summit Series back in Jan 2021—check out those sessions here and here). With TikTok’s ad exposure increasing from 19% in 2020 to 37% in 2021, there is even more opportunity to utilize TikTok advertising. Even though retailers have been using this platform for some time, the main challenge of converting customers still remains. Because there are so many components that go into TikTok, such as utilizing influencers/content partners, developing impactful creative and honing in on the right measurement objectives, we will have multiple sessions dedicated to TikTok this year.
In addition to these new topics, we will also cover the important tactical improvements that you can make to improve advertising efficiency and scale ecommerce growth.
Seizing the Next Wave of Growth
As retailers prepare to seize the next wave of ecommerce growth, hear from our Co-Founders and conference attendees on what they’re looking forward to at this year’s ecommerce conference:
“Every year is so valuable and we always hear from some of the best and brightest minds in the industry. I’m particularly excited to dive into some of the newer trends of the year and provide the space for our community to evaluate new trends and determine how they may fit into their strategic plans.” Veronika Sonsev, Co-Founder, CommerceNext
“What I love the most about the CommerceNext conference is the openness to having conversations and exchanging ideas amongst colleagues.” – Noam Paranksy, Chief Digital Officer, Tapestry
“I’m looking forward to helping the community—we want them to learn as much as they can and get ideas so they leave armed with the ability to apply lessons towards current industry challenges.” – Scott Silverman, Co-Founder, CommerceNext
“What’s great about the CommerceNext conference is that there are so many tracks and a diverse array of content and it brings in great vendors and great brands all in one place.” – Vivian Chang, Head of DTC Practice, Clorox
Learn more about the conference here and register to attend. We can’t wait to see you there!
