ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Conference – Day 2 ColderICE Recap

Today the rubber meets the road as sessions kick off at 8:45 am. I actually stayed out too late the night before, thanks to being sponsored by the CEO of TheFind.com, he keep buying the brewskies….Thanks Mr. Kumar

Got up a little late, and had to rush to get showered and dressed, but made it for today’s keynote from Crocks, yep the shoe company. Jay Custard, Global Online Marketing Director for Crocs, who refered to his shoes as “ugly clown shoes” began to detail the rollercoaster ride that has been this company.

After riding a wave up, once the darling shoe fad of a nation. Crocs is now having to fight the battle of being a “fad” and pull themselves out of a bad economy and a slump in sales. He charted the many challenges the company faced and ended with candor, of a company looking for new digital sales opportunities and how they are partnering with e-tail distributers and dabbling in social strategies.

One great takeaway for me was when he said “Crocs has no online ad “budget” Why stop spending if there is ROI? If I give you $1 and you give me $5, why stop?” That my friends, is always a good way to look at marketing opportunities. I hear so many sellers complain about how much it cost to market on sales channels, yet no acknoledment that for every dollar they spend, they STILL get huge retuns. Some days, I just wish they would STFU and move on, hey we all go issues with marketing spend but it is part of the game we signed up for.

The other big sessions were from the two search giants Google and Bing. I dunno, but just about everything they said, I could have found out by reading the help pages for Bing or Google, WTF?!? Although Google did give away 10 Nexus One phones to lucky people sitting in seats with a note taped to the bottom. But other than that, it was pretty uneventful for me, IMHO.

Of course I am a tough crowd, you need to deliver more than fluff to a guys like us who are nuts for conferences. Bing showed me how to use their search engine to plan my travel trips…BUT I am at an eCommerce conference?!? And Google talked about how cool their search looks for cameras…Zzzzzzz.

No mention about how they were going to make it easier for retailers, no talk about Google CheckouteBay Getting More Serious About Advertising | WebProNews and not a peep about retail analytics. But hey, in case you lived on Mars and have no kids, you may not be aware that many people use their cellphones to do searches, that was the “hot news” LMAO!

So remember this one guys, if you got nothing big to speak to ecommerce sellers, you can speak about how I can get more data to help us sell. That is a great topic for search guys to cover. But you also can giveaway free stuff and the crowd will love it.

After today’s activities, I need a drink! But that was not a problem, because they had the HOTTEST party on the patio last night sponsored by eBay (can you name the eBay exec pictured below?)

ChannelAdvisor threw a “Quatro” de Mayo (4th of May) because we would not be there on the 5th . They had killer margaritas an open bar and a mariachi band. Food was authentic mexican style and the fun was on. They even had a photo booth to take crazy shots of you. This was a primo time!