Why Every Retailer Needs a Marketplace Strategy With Kroger's Brooke Chambers | 5IM

Joining us now for five insightful minutes is Brooke Chambers, the director of digital marketplaces at Kroger, to share her expertise on just that topic, marketplaces.

Brooke, your background is very interesting, so let's start off by having you share a little bit about yourself.

I have been in marketplaces since 2013.

It's an exciting time for me.

It's over a decade.

Um, you know, I started my retail career at Sears and spent some time at Walmart and at Kroger now.

So it's really exciting.

That's, you know, a little bit about the journey from a company perspective and, you know, managed and, you know, worked in a variety of different facets in marketplaces, which is exciting.

So that depth of knowledge and experience is there.

And I'm also a student of retail, so I appreciate marketplaces and the representation that it gives in the space of retail, both online and in stores.

Brooke, let's get started with this.

Give us the lay of the land.

What's the current state of platforms and marketplaces?

We are now at a space where platforms and marketplaces are partners.

And it's so synergy.

It's so much synergy between the two of them.

If you go back to 2013, when I started in marketplaces, it was a seller acquisition and business development, really funnel.

And now it's so much more than that.

You have a partner, a consultant, someone to walk you through that journey, both from a technical standpoint, but it's also helping usher in that seller experience component at the same time.

That's why you see so many new marketplaces going the route of a platform.

And Miracle has done a phenomenal job, Adrian, and team with how they're articulating that message with Miracle.

Right.

It's other, you know, platforms in the space, but they're doing such a phenomenal job.

But it's going to continue to get interesting.

And I think that's why you've seen the shift of so many of the more new emerging marketplaces in the United States, specifically and globally have been going the platform route for that reason.

So, yeah.

And Adrian, the CEO of Miracle.

So I'm curious because, you know, you've been in.

You've been in retail a long time.

You've been in digital commerce a long time.

You know, retailers can.

There's a lot of different investment opportunities in digital commerce, particularly.

So when you think about it, why, compared to other investments in digital commerce, what is the value that a marketplace brings?

Why should retailers invest there?

You think, one, it's customer retention.

It is the Stickiness, both offline and online.

And when you think about it, that offline component isn't talked about enough about, you know, the marketplaces who have fully scaled and said, hey, we're going to bring the customer to the store to keep that experience tight with returns.

Just as an example, think about it.

You have a customer walking in the door and they may do a return, but they're going to walk back and figure out, man, I may need to get X item for my home or whatever that is.

So that whole synergy is there and really it's a fight for the customer right now.

Right.

Everyone going in to marketplaces is how do I keep my customer, how do I expand my offering?

Right?

And that is the key.

And that's why it's such an important component to any online strategy right now.

And anyone in retail entering that space understands that.

Well, Brooke, with the fight for the customer going on right now, what advice do you have for other e commerce leaders who are kind of considering a marketplace platform model right now to accelerate their growth and reach those customers?

Do it, do it.

There's no question it's such an important facet of any retailer strategy right now because it is low investment, high profit, and the fight for the customer is going to win as long as you're keeping that customer experience tight and really understanding the ethos of your customer while you're going down that path.

Um, so it's, it's not really a question about should you do it, you should do it.

Um, and I think a lot you.

We're starting to see that in the.

Space and there's so many, so many areas it's still expanding into.

Like, we haven't even touched on the retail media aspect as well.

So.

So I want to get you out here on this.

What are your thoughts on the future?

Like, how do you think marketplaces are going to continue to evolve?

I think about social selling, um, you think about TikTok and what they're doing right now is really interesting.

I think the interesting debate between Temu and what Amazon is doing to fight for that lower price point apparel customer is really interesting as well.

But I also think that it's going to continue to evolve into new categories, specifically with retailers who are online and offline, with brick and mortar presence that could expand and do so much more.

Like David.

David's Bridal is a great example.

I just think that's a really interesting space.

It would be really interesting to see if they were to go into the marketplace space because I think it would be amazing.

And then it's going to continue to evolve, just using them as an example, because bridal is so specific.

But I think it's going to continue to bridge the gap with online, offline, social selling.

And listen, the United States specifically, we have a new generation that's about to evolve into a more mature spender and their whole mindset is, is really different towards shopping.

So it's going to continue to evolve as retail evolves, but it will be a staple in retail strategies for the very long term.

Brooke, that was great.

Thanks so much.