Markable AI CEO Sees Creator Influence Reshaping Ecommerce

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Welcome back to Next Street Investing. It's time to welcome in our next guest, that's Joy Tang, the CEO of Markable. Here to discuss the outlook for the two-day event. I believe it kicks off this evening, midnight Pacific time, which is the Amazon Fall Event, the prime big deal days. The names just keep getting better and better on those. But Joy, good morning, good afternoon to you. Let's talk a little bit of this event, because it seems these big sale events are becoming more and more frequent, but they're also driving more and more commerce. Just kind of your general thoughts going into this and what to expect.

Joy Tang (0:42)

Yeah. Thank you, Alex. So Adobe actually forecast this year, US online sales spending will be $9.9 billion, which is like a 9.2 percent increase from last year.

For this Prime Day particular season in October, we expect fashion, home, essentials, household product to be especially strong. Because we have a couple of shopping occasion coming together in October. We have upgrading your fall wardrobe, Halloween, and of course, buying products for the holiday gifts.

Last year, like 23 percent of shoppers said they bought items for their loved ones' early holiday gifts. And then 45 percent shoppers said they've been waiting to purchase items on sale.

SPEAKER_1 (1:31)

Yeah, this is where things are fascinating to me, because someone who's so last-minute and a procrastinator, the idea of being that far ahead and that well-planned to take advantage of this is, it's, you know, completely lost on me. But I know that there are those out there that are able to, and I wish I was one of them.

My question to you, though, is I know Markable sort of operates in that space between the creators, which are dominating more and more of sort of digital advertising as we roll on, and the company that is looking to sell things. Kind of the role that creators will play as one, flagging that this is even happening, and two, maybe showing some of the big deals that are out there that maybe would be overlooked.

Joy Tang (2:21)

Well, sure. I mean, creators are becoming more and more important for consumers' purchase decisions. I mean, there's simply too much products on Amazon.

And consumers are basically looking for deals, and looking for deals they can trust. And what creators does, they quickly show why this product is worth buying and why now. So, consumers are relying more and more on creators' recommendation on what to purchase during the prime sale.

SPEAKER_1 (2:48)

Okay. And so, this is where it will tie in. I'm sure we got other big companies that will run, sort of, side-by-side sales as well.

Adobe does a good job, as you mentioned, is showing the dollar and cents impact. Typically, those even undershoot. So, we can even say, hey, they'll probably beat those expectations. My question to you is, this is sort of a show aimed for the next generation investor. We may have those who were just embarking upon their careers for the first time and thinking about opportunities. You're an entrepreneur who started their own business, but you also work with entrepreneurs or connect them through this creator world.

How saturated is that space right now? I'm sure if you were to ask a bunch of high school age students what their dream career is, everyone used to say athlete or movie star. I'm sure nowadays people want to be a YouTube star. They want to be a creator. How saturated is that space?

Joy Tang (3:48)

Actually, there's a survey recently that says 70% of high school graduates want to become a content creator, an influencer in today's world.

I think people see athletes and actresses, actors back then as influencers, but social media influencers, a new wave of influencers. I think we only caught the beginning of it. We only touched the iceberg because right now, the US consumer spending, 6% of consumer spending online is from creators' recommendation. But this trend is expected to grow to 30% in the next three to five years.

SPEAKER_1 (4:24)

Well, and I think also, too, as we sort of explore that, I think of all these companies over the last several years, whether it was, like, the AG1s or, in the public space, the Celsius Energy Drinks, that really leaned into that pathway as a way to market and sort of almost zig when everyone else zagged in their space. And it allowed them to really level up pretty quickly. I think of Celsius, you know, becoming a household name seemingly overnight. I know it wasn't, but it seemed that way.

Are some of these bigger companies, the Amazons of the world, taking notice of that and also starting to partner up a little bit more aggressively with the creator space?