Bonus Episode: Networking with Your Tribe with Kristin Schoenstein & Elizabeth Robillard

Elizabeth is a seasoned expert in the field of conferences, with nearly a decade of experience in market research and event organization in the retail and finance sectors. Since 2021, she has played an integral role in the powerhouse eTail Palm Springs team, co-producing the event alongside Kristin Schoenstein.

When not immersed in the world of eCommerce conferences, she calls Queens home, sharing her space with her cat Wednesday.

Kristin Schoenstein has been a Program Director at Worldwide Business Research since 2010 and has been producing events since 2004. She currently specializes in the retail and eCommerce sector where she is the Portfolio Director for eTail, which includes producing eTail Boston and co-producing eTail Palm Springs.

In her free time, Kristin lives on the East End of Long Island where she enjoys boating, yoga, running and days at the beach with her husband and three daughters.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:49] Intro
• [01:21] Being a program director for industry conferences
• [02:28] Trend #1: the role of AI in retail businesses
• [03:09] Trend #2: Social commerce and live shopping
• [03:32] Trend #3: Launching partnerships to expand reach
• [05:04] Conferences bring like-minded people together
• [06:10] Creating opportunities for people to network
• [07:21] Curating relevant content from outstanding speakers
• [08:22] Inviting panels across different fields
• [09:12] eTail’s 25th anniversary: walk down the memory lane
• [09:56] A fun time for both attendees and staff members
• [10:40] Don’t do everything, divide and conquer

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• A community of retailers launching industry conferences etailwest.wbresearch.com/
• Follow Kristin Schoenstein linkedin.com/in/kristin-paulick-schoenstein-0a7aa95/
• Follow Elizabeth Robillard linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-robillard-a3141150/

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Transcript

Kristin Schoenstein

Lots of great panels. I think the dynamics on the panels are always fun to see different people come together. Panels on leadership and social commerce.

Chase Clymer 

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show. 

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. 

Today, I'm bringing to the show not one, but two amazing women. 

Kristin Schoenstein and Elizabeth Robillard are the program directors for eTail Palm Springs, an amazing conference that I personally am going to here in a couple of weeks. 

Shawn is also going, if you know my business partner. 

And this is a wild one. They're celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. 

Kristin and Elizabeth, welcome to the show. 

Kristin Schoenstein

Thanks, Chase. Thanks for having us. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Thank you. 

Chase Clymer 

I'm excited to get into it. 

So I'm going to try to direct these questions to each of you so we can keep from talking over ourselves because I know we're so excited about this conference. 

So Kristin, quickly. Talk to me a bit about your job. 

What are you supposed to do for the conference? How does this relate to the industry as a whole? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Sure. I'm the program director for the show along with Liz, so we co-produce the event. 

And basically, our role is to conduct research every year, get a feel for what's going on in the retail landscape, and use that information to write a program. So we put together all the program content and recruit the speakers for the show, and just work with our advisory board and develop the event every year. 

So, we handle all kinds of pre-planning related to the program. And then on site, we're doing a lot of speaker wrangling and just making sure the show runs smoothly and all the presentations are what they're supposed to be. 

So, yeah, it's an interesting role. It's fun. It's great to just be able to talk to so many different people in the industry and then see it all come together, of course, in a couple of weeks. 

We're like six and a half weeks out. So we're getting really close.

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. 

So Elizabeth, Kristen just mentioned that you look at the trends and it helps you figure out what the conference is, some of the talk tracks, etc., who's going to talk about these things.

What were some of the trends that you guys noticed this year? 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, I think we've got 5 major trends that we're seeing. And Kristen can talk about a couple of them too. 

But obviously, AI is all across the board. And I think not just... 

Kristin Schoenstein

No surprise. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, no surprise.

Not just kind of like the general concept of it. I feel like there's a lot of just chatter about just kind of big sky thinking about the concept, but really dialing down to every different department, how they can use it, how they are actually using it. 

I think we've got a lot of practical information that we've taken in that will be interesting. We've got sessions on that at the event, but definitely AI, I think, first big one. 

What else? Social commerce.

Lots going on in the social world. Obviously, we've got some cool sessions on the program that's going to cover a lot of that. Anything having to do with TikTok shops, you know, obviously anything under the sun or having to do with Instagram, that kind of stuff. 

So those are two. Kristin? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Live shopping. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, live shopping. Yes.

Kristin Schoenstein

It can fall in that bucket. That's a big one. 

Partnerships is again, another big area. So many different collaborations. I'm sure, maybe when you think of partnerships, you might think of Mattel and the Barbie partnerships that we saw everywhere this year. 

But yeah, retailers are really taking advantage of that. And we do have some sessions highlighting very cool partnerships. 

I just added one to the program this week that we're excited about. She used the word ‘newsjacked’ a media moment and the media moment was the Kelsey-Taylor Swift thing that happened and this was in October. 

This is Minted. 

So the head of social for Minted is going to be talking about a partnership that they did with the Kelsey family with Jason Kelsey and his family and how they talked about their, you know, holiday season. 

And so she'll talk about that whole partnership that they put together in 10 days with the Kelsey family. So that's one example of a partnership that we're excited to share. 

We just added that to the program. 

Liz has one too, I think. Liz, don't you have the... Target's going to be talking about partnerships too? 

Elizabeth Robillard

Target's going to be talking about partnerships, which is great. And then we've got one with... I don't know if you've seen the ads for P-Volve. It's that at-home fitness thing, but they partnered with Jennifer Aniston. So she's all over their ads. 

So they're going to be talking a little bit about that partnership too. But yeah, anything partnerships. We got lots of it. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. 

Now, if I'm a listener to this show, I work in Ecommerce, why should I go to conferences? What's in it for me? What are the cool things I should be getting out of it? 

Elizabeth Robillard

That's a great question. For me, I think one of the best things about conferences, while we do have a lot of great content, I think the one thing that you get at a live show that you wouldn't get anywhere else is the opportunity to chat in small groups with people. 

I think what we always hear is that the most valuable part of the event is really that sort of quick moment you have with someone at lunch or that moment at a roundtable. There's 2,000 people there that you could meet that are going through the same issues that you're going through, that might have some small fix that you haven't tried, some little fine tuning that you could do to up your game. 

So I would say that networking piece might seem overwhelming with the amount of people that are there, but we always try to make sure that there's really opportunities for some of those more small, quiet moments. 

I don't know why I keep saying ‘quiet’, but in those more intimate moments, you can have a really good conversation with a new person. So that's what I think. 

Kristin, what do you think? 

Kristin Schoenstein

I agree. 

I mean, we spend a lot of time making sure we include different formats on the program and different opportunities for people. 

Like, we have women in retail and we have something specific to the C-suite, like a C-suite retreat. 

We have these round tables that are just retailer-led round tables. We have round tables based on revenue. 

So we try to come up with lots of different opportunities for people to meet and network and just exchange ideas outside of just your traditional general session, keynote scenario. 

And of course, the expo is always buzzing and lots going on there. Opportunities to meet vendors. You know the expo. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, if you want a free knockoff Stanley Cup, I'm sure you're going to get a dozen there. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Free stuff.

Kristin Schoenstein

Yeah. Lots of free stuff. That's for sure. 

Chase Clymer

I would love to see your guys' data on... Because I know every time I go, you ask me what I got out of it at the end. 

Number one is networking. I can personally tell you that the people you will meet and interact with, that's the reason to go. 

But the content is also super exciting, and you mentioned some stuff about the partnerships and the content. Is there any other kind of content that you're allowed to speak about that you're excited about? 

Elizabeth Robillard

Yeah, absolutely. I think...What are some of our other exciting sessions? We've got a great session with VF Corp, the VP of Diversity and Inclusion, VF. 

Lauren Guthrie, she's going to be talking about their big mission to take D&I and put it in action, not just talk about it, but really how they've managed to, across all of their brands, which is a lot of brands, they've managed to create this action plan, get involved with different communities. 

So I'm super excited about that session. What else do we have going on?

Kristin Schoenstein

Just lots of fireside chats with executives, which is fun. So bringing in media and having them do an interview and talking about everything from career path to digital transformation, whatever it is, that's always a fun format to see an executive chat through what they're doing. 

So we'll do a bunch of those. We have one with Michael's, one with Lowe's, one with PetSmart. We have Sam's Club coming to do that. 

Busy mornings are filled with those types of sessions. 

And then lots of great panels. I think the dynamics on the panels are always fun to see different people kind of come together. Panels on leadership and social commerce, of course, lots of topics. 

The program is jammed. 

Elizabeth Robillard

Very full.

Kristin Schoenstein

Yeah, and our panels are very full this year, which is good. We have over 200 retail speakers confirmed and more that are trying to speak. 

As of today, I was sending the last two panel spots that I have left. 

So it's a packed program. Lots to do and say, that's for sure. 

Chase Clymer

That's exciting. And it's also just wild to me that the event itself, legally, can now rent a car. This is the 25th anniversary of this thing. But I guess the Internet's been around for a while.

So with it being the 25th anniversary, is there anything that you can share about that? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Sure. We have a few surprises. 

But I think just knowing that the event is 25 years old, and we've had people who have been coming to the show for 10, 15, 20 years, we're going to play some fun kind of games just to kind of see the history of the show, who's been coming and recognize those people and just have some fun with looking back to over the history of the show and seeing how we've evolved and how the industry's evolved. 

And it started with 100 people in the room. So 100 to 2,500. It's a long time, a lot of progression. So we're going to have some fun with that.

 Elizabeth Robillard

We have some staff members that have been working on it for 20+ years as well. So just getting everyone together, it's a pretty long standing team. So it's kind of a fun little reunion for us every year too, because there's people that we don't get to see all the time.

It’ll be kind of fun for our team as well. But also, yeah, lots of fun stuff happening for attendees as well. 

Chase Clymer

Well, you forgot that you're excited to meet me in real life, Elizabeth. 

 Elizabeth Robillard

Absolutely. Yes, definitely, Chase.

Chase Clymer

Kristin, when she's in show mode, she's looking... It's crazy, but she's very nice. So you can say that to all of us. 

Kristin Schoenstein

I'm moving quickly. 

Chase Clymer

Yes. And there's a podcast booth this year that they've told me is amazing. So you will find me lurking about there.

But no, I'm super excited about it. 

If there's one thing that you wanted a retailer to keep in mind about 2024, what would that be? 

Kristin Schoenstein

Maybe don't overdo it. We always say, sometimes you can go to the show and you want to do everything, but you really do have to plan your time and make sure... 

And it's always good to divide and conquer too. So bring a group. That's the best. Because then you can all go in different directions and then come back and collaborate. 

 Elizabeth Robillard

I would agree with that. Yeah. I think that that's good. 

Chase Clymer

Elizabeth, Kristen, thank you so much for coming on. 

For everyone listening, I will be in attendance at that conference. I think it's very useful for anyone that is in this Ecommerce industry to get out to network to learn. 

It's going to be an amazing program. There's gonna be a bunch of information in the show notes. And I'm sure I'll have you guys back on in a couple months and we'll talk about the one that's going to be on the East Coast. 

Kristin Schoenstein

Awesome. Thanks, Chase. 

 Elizabeth Robillard

Awesome. Thanks so much, Chase.

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

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Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.

Until next time!