Rapid Response: How Main Street retailers are out-pivoting big-box giants, w/Faire’s Max Rhodes
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
Small, independent store owners have been perpetually hit by waves of disruption: from malls to big box stores to e-commerce giants. But Max Rhodes, co-founder and CEO of the $12 billion online wholesale marketplace Faire, argues that Main Street retailers are actually better positioned right now to navigate today’s stormy shopping landscape than the competition. Max digs into how Faire is using technology and data to help stores maximize their advantages — nimbleness, adaptability, and smaller inventories — and combine them with the scale benefits enjoyed by the likes of Amazon and Target.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We don't really know what things are going to look like next year as the Fed continues to raise interest rates as inflation continues to be a concern. |
| 0:11.0 | Our retailers, they're worried but they're also optimistic. |
| 0:17.0 | Actually, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, both out-performed expectations. |
| 0:24.0 | As Walmart and all these category killers, the best buy and that method beyond popped up. |
| 0:30.0 | They've made life really difficult for small retailers. |
| 0:33.0 | And then stores started to fight back where they really compete on experience, on curation, on community. |
| 0:41.0 | Independent retailers are actually better positioned than the larger players. |
| 0:46.0 | They can just be so much nimble. |
| 0:49.0 | Our ability to take the advantages of fragmentation, combine them with the advantages of scale. |
| 0:54.0 | You know, it's one of the reasons why we're so excited about the future of fair. |
| 0:58.0 | We're leveling the playing field with the structural advantages that large at-scale players have been using for the past 50 years. |
| 1:09.0 | That's Max Rhodes, CEO and co-founder of Fair, a wholesale online marketplace for independent retail businesses. |
| 1:16.0 | Valued at more than $12 billion in its last fundraise, fair serves more than 500,000 stores, |
| 1:23.0 | connecting them with 85,000 independent vendors and brands. |
| 1:27.0 | I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response. |
| 1:35.0 | I wanted to talk to Max because he's got inside access to on-the-ground retail trends in a way few others do. |
| 1:42.0 | In a holiday season where shopping has become a key barometer of the changes rippling through our economy. |
| 1:49.0 | Fair's mission is to even the playing field for small business owners by offering tech-driven advantages and data |
| 1:55.0 | to help them better compete with giants like Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy. |
| 2:00.0 | The retail landscape isn't easy, Max admits, and Fair itself restructured recently, trimming headcount by 7%. |
| 2:07.0 | But Max continues to seek opportunity, including geographic expansion to 21 different countries. |
| 2:13.0 | By meshing small and local with broad and global, Fair is working to translate the advantages of scale to main street entrepreneurs everywhere. |
... |
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