Shah tells us how he got started

Delivery. Q: When you were first leading the Shah tells us ecommerce strategy did you ever consider your own mobile apps or other DTC strategies? A: We were initially exploring how we could play in that space. We did sell direct-to-consumer in a very small way. What we were doing initially was trying to sell folks on the data play using DTC to collect first-party data for our database. We were keeping an eye on third-party deprecation very early on because there were a lot of regulations coming up like GDPR. We were looking at direct-to-

Consumer to test

Products and to collect first-party data. But during the pandemic we actually stopped because it wasn’t the path forward and we wanted to make sure our retailer’s business database shelves were stocked with our products. So we thought let’s stop experimenting [with DTC]. Let’s work on getting the products on the retailers’ shelves. Q: Once you saw the success of waiving shipping fees how did your retail media partnerships evolve from

We were approaching

The retailers and saying we wanted to work with them on ecommerce. A lot of times pre-Covid it was just this little thing not a big deal. We were saying “Let us talk to your retail media arm let us B2C Lead talk to your ecommerce teams so we can bring them together.” The way to win in this space over time is to make sure we have a strong ecommerce and product assortment — and we had the data to support why retailers should have this assortment. Q: What insights did you gain from retail media networks? A: With Covid we saw a huge spike in