Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mark Lavelle, CEO of Magento Commerce (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What about the mid-market? Unless you’re an enterprise-scale company where you can afford very expensive software, can you afford to do complex personalization in the mid-market through platforms like Magento?

Mark Lavelle: Not today. I think it’s the hardest thing out there. It’s still early for true personalization. We need to get modest personalization right first. We also need to Segment customers by the life cycle. There are a lot of signals that we get that we don’t have to turn to personalization. Just because I bought a brown sweater doesn’t mean that you have to keep showing me brown sweaters. Now it’s re-targeting that same damn brown sweater.

There’s a lot of basics that we need to figure out. The information is there. It’s being collected in this massive treasure trove of cloud computing. I was with a marketer the other day who said, “I’d rather have 12 data scientists than 24 marketers.” The data will tell us what we need to do around personalization. It’s a tough one, but the payoff is huge. That’s the Holy Grail.

Sramana Mitra: The point at which the user experience of intense personalization coupled with unique and differentiated merchandising will come together, and somehow there’s the third-party logistics provider that can match Amazon’s level of service, that’s where the field becomes leveled.

Mark Lavelle: I think so. The optimistic side is, you can see a day where the level of computing power that Amazon, Google, and eBay enjoy is made available to everybody.

Sramana Mitra: That part of it has been leveled.

Mark Lavelle: I think payments companies have leveled. The sophistication around taking payments at a global scale is being democratized. Magento is playing its role in that part by providing the software to create great experiences. Lastly, the fulfillment aspect that Amazon enjoys will also become democratized and available to everybody. That will be a natural impact of the Amazon effect. Then we’ll be back to who can assemble these things to create truly unique products that can personalize it to the user delivered in a delightful way. That is the game.

Sramana Mitra: Out of our conversation, there are a couple of opportunities. One is to create third-party logistics providers that can match Amazon in service levels. There is an opportunity for creating AI to do personalization and offer it to the mid-market maybe through partnerships with players like Magento or doing it inside of Magento.

I imagine that if a startup came and showed you they can do this, you can just buy that startup or partner with that startup, which would differentiate your platform hugely.

Mark Lavelle: We’ve made four acquisitions in the last 14 months. We’re buying applications that developers have developed on top of the Magento platform. We love developers. We encourage all the folks in your sphere of influence to look at what’s happening at Magento. There are a lot of opportunities.

Sramana Mitra: It was very nice talking to you.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Mark Lavelle, CEO of Magento Commerce
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