Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Interview with Andrew Schydlowsky, TrackStreet: Brand Protection Using AI
Our interview today is with Andrew Schydlowsky, the CEO and founder of Santa Barbara-based TrackStreet (www.trackstreet.com), a startup which is backed by Okapi Capital, The Cove Fund, Early Light Ventures, SaaS Venture Capital, and Stage Venture Partners. Andrew spoke to us about TrackStreet's brand protection software and artificial intelligence efforts.
What is TrackStreet?
Andrew Schydlowsky: We work with manufacturers of products, things you might use, the clothes you might wear, things you use around the house, things you use in the car, and what you buy in stores, and are now buying online. We work with those companies, who tend to know a lot about what happens with their product in the retail sense, but who tend to lose track of what is happening with their products on the Internet. We enable them to protect and grow their brands, by giving them the ability to look at the landscape of where their products are being sold online, who is selling them, for how much, and if they are breaking any rules. We're here to help them solve the problem of compliance and retail policy enforcement, and to understand what people are saying about their products next to their buy buttons, what kind of reviews they are getting, and to understand other things that influence sales. We provide analytics on the velocity of sales across their channels. Essentially, we are giving the control back to them on the e-commerce channel, to make sure they are making the right sales, to the right places, to the right people, and to lock down an optimized sales channel through their partners. We're also giving them the technology to grow their sales, both through online and offline channels.
How are you able to do all this?
Andrew Schydlowsky: We track over 100,000 websites daily, and gather billions of data points. The first piece of this is getting really great visibility of the landscape of e-commerce. We can very quickly determine who is authorized and who is unauthorized to sell a product, detect violations of policy, and while our clients sleep at night, have an automated system which takes all of the next steps of enforcement. It allows us to start peeling the onion. At the same time, our technology allows us to get deep insights into the amount of inventory held by each seller on such sites a Amazon, how long that inventory has been on Amazon, and to start putting data together to understand inventory, sales velocity, merchant profiles, and how those are all related, and how the market is fitting together. We look at two things for our clients, protection, and growth. Protection is the phase of locking things down, in terms of channel controls, to make sure all the holes in the buckets are filled. We then allow them to understand the true potential velocity of markets online. Once you have that data, you can make strategic plans and executive, and start growing and driving your sales. That's through authorized partners, online and offline, creating a flywheel. All of that is done on a foundation of control, which is established during the protection phase.
How long have you been doing this, and who is backing you?
Andrew Schydlowsky: We entered this market in 2015, and we are backed by a combination of institutional investors, and some family offices, as well as some very experienced and successful angels and operators. There are several Southern California firms you know, such as Stage Venture partners and Okapi.
How did you start the business?
Andrew Schydlowsky: I'm a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business, bringing a product directly to consumers online via the internet, in 1998, so I've been touching products online for a really long time. My last business expanded to include other people's products online, also with retail and distribution components, and it became a pretty significant sized business. While I was working with other brands, and while we were really the top sellers for quite a few brands for many categories, I saw a huge gap between what they know, and what they wanted to know about how the Internet works. I saw an incredible opportunity with technology, which we could apply to solve their problems and close the gap between them and their market. We originally started around a simple piece of this, market visibility, which is figuring out where's your stuff selling. From there, we went into figuring out who was breaking rules around price points, and automating figure out who was selling products too cheap. We evolved and expanded from there.
How has your business done with this pandemic?
Andrew Schydlowsky: There has been a dramatic shift in the market during COVID, because the market is now e-commerce, first and foremost. It's really accelerated the need of our clients to control their digital shelf. People were doing this for retail, but they weren't doing this online. They've really been forced to rapidly come up to speed. Online distribution and ecommerce is really what's driving their sales now, as stores are not fully open, or are still closed. For a company like us, it's really worked out well.
How are you clients adapting as there's been more a shift with new direct-to-consumer brands?
Andrew Schydlowsky: What I think happens, is brands have never been farther from consumers than they are now. I don't know how many realized that until this pandemic happened, and it's sounded the alarms for many brands worldwide. Although retail is not going to go away, it will re-form and be different, and I think it's been forever altered. I think a lot of companies and brands are now thinking about how to get closer to the consumer. Direct-to-consumer is just part of that. The partners they have online are also more important, and they're starting to drive a lot more education and brand loyalty. Marketplaces, and Amazon, in particular, has so much more impact on consumer experience for brands now. I think that direct-to-consumer channels, which brands have only whispered about until recently, are now part of the overall strategy. Although they'll still rely on their partner network, they will be integrated in a different way. They'll be much closer to the consumer channel, and there's an interesting opportunity to use technology to create a direct-to-consumer model which also involves partners, which splits revenues, and creates synergistic programs, which brings every together. I think there are new models for commerce coming, with the goal of increasing touchpoints for brands and the consumer, creating a connection between products and people, and brands.
How have you managed running a company mostly virtually?
Andrew Schydlowsky: We already have a distributed team, and it's in our DNA. Right now, we are working completely remotely, and we've even given our office space back. We were looking for a space when this happened, and we've moved to a completely remote model, until we have clarity on when we can go back to an office. It has made us rethink how we can efficiently collaborate, and shifted how we communicate internally. It makes you rethink things. We've had to create a lot of internal training tools, We've created something called Trackstreet University for us and our clients, and we've looked a lot at internal processes. In particular, as people work from home, we're helping to figure out how to manage distractions, and trying to understand how we can help our employees find balance and productivity. It's a continuing conversation.
Finally, what's next for Trackstreet?
Andrew Schydlowsky: We are in a relatively new space, which is wide open, with a lot of green field in front of us. We are extremely excited about growth, and we have a lot of low-hanging fruit. We have some IP we are waiting on to put a wedge in the market, and we have quite a bit of backlog in our product. You can expect to see us innovating and providing leadership in our space, and we have lots of investments coming, which is pretty exciting.
Thanks!