Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Brian Rigney, CEO of Zmags (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So this is happening off the catalog where it publishes back into the catalog?

Brian Rigney: Correct. With Publicator, you start with a PDF and you end up with a richer, more engaging version of that PDF online. It still looks like the printed version.

Sramana Mitra: Where would we find a good example of this. Does Ethan Allen have live examples?

Brian Rigney: It does. Let me find one for you. Go to the Ethan Allen website and you’ll see catalogs at the bottom of the page.

Sramana Mitra: Catalogs, okay.

Brian Rigney: Artworks and Mirrors is our product.

Sramana Mitra: I see.

Brian Rigney: They use this to showcase their products online as well as inside the store. Inside their store, they have touchscreens that allow visitors to explore. It’s great for engagement.

Sramana Mitra: What does the competitive landscape look like for what you do in terms of enriching the content for retailers? Who else is in this business?

Brian Rigney: You’ve got larger organisations like Adobe. We frankly have not run into anyone who directly competes with us. We fill a gap between e-commerce systems and content management systems. I’ll give you an example. If you go to the New York & Company website, and in the Trends section on the top left, go to the All About Eva section.

Creator has allowed them to create this initial image of Eva Mendes with a plus sign to the right of her hand, which means that you can shop for that look. Creator allows New York and Company to very quickly and easily create these very rich and engaging experiences. It’s shoppable content.

Sramana Mitra: You’re saying that the catalog vendors are not providing this level of richness in the content experience.

Brian Rigney: The e-commerce players do not, nor do the content management systems. Here’s why. If we were to go to the Neiman Marcus website and click on the Designers tab on the top left. Now, click on Alice + Olivia, and then click on Apparel on the left-hand side. You will see a slider with different looks.

Here’s the gap. There are large enterprise systems like Adobe, Oracle, or SAP that have flaws. In the case of Creator, we’re taking advantage of one of those flaws. Neiman Marcus, where you now see a slider, used to have only one image. That image could only have one link to it. If you click on the link, it took you to a product page or it took you down to a grid. The effort is beautiful of course, but it’s not a very engaging shopping experience.

Now if in the slider on the third slide, you’ll see woman in red sleeveless top and white bell bottom pants. Click on that plus sign and you can shop the look. It’s very easy to do. We’ve created this solution for both large retailers as well as small ones.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Brian Rigney, CEO of Zmags
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