How Video is Revolutionizing E-Commerce Insights from Vimmi’s Eitan Koter

Episode Overview

Eitan Koter is the founder and CEO of Vimmi, a leading platform that helps businesses create interactive and shoppable video experiences. With over a decade of experience in the video technology space, Eitan has played a pivotal role in transforming how e-commerce brands engage with their customers. Recognizing the potential of video in driving sales, he launched Vimmi in 2014 to provide brands with the tools to create seamless, engaging video content that allows viewers to shop directly from the video. His vision for integrating video into the retail experience has made Vimmi a key player in the evolution of online shopping.

Before founding Vimy, Eitan spent years working in video technology, helping companies transition from analog to digital formats. His early career saw him involved with Skopos Networks, where he helped pioneer video delivery over IP, making it easier for broadcasters and content creators to deliver high-quality video over the internet. His work has been integral in shaping video distribution technologies, and this background in video engineering has given him the expertise to create Vimmi’s groundbreaking video commerce platform, now used by numerous global brands to drive customer engagement and increase sales.

Eitan’s leadership in the video commerce space has made him a thought leader in both e-commerce and digital marketing. Through Vimmi, he has provided businesses with the ability to host live shoppable events and create short-form videos that boost conversion rates, particularly on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. His emphasis on authenticity, combined with cutting-edge technology, ensures that brands can connect with their audiences in real-time, delivering an engaging and interactive shopping experience.

Episode Transcript

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey, welcome to Pay Pod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. Anyone familiar with marketing and sales has heard the phrase content is king, and if content is king, then video is the king’s right hand man. Eitan Koter founded Vimmi Way back in 2014. His background in video helped him realize the potential of video in e-commerce, and it has blown up over the past few years. With Vimmi, you can create shoppable video experiences for your customers where they can actually purchase and interact directly within the video. There’s also the ability to create live shoppable events, too, allowing businesses to connect with their audience in a whole new way. It is an incredible platform and I’m excited for you to hear my conversation with Ashton Kutcher. I’m going to show my age here, but when I was a kid, I remember a song called Video Killed the Radio Star. Yes. Is video poised to take over e-commerce too?

Eitan Koter: Yes. I mean, video is the future of e-commerce, right? Interactive video or interactive e-commerce is what we believe is happening and we see the rise of just video overall in the marketing. Right. For any business. Yeah. And obviously video is being more emotional type of engagement right. It triggers more connection from users. It increases brand awareness, brand loyalty. Right. Obviously like pure data like conversion rates and sales. So I mean, brands are trying to find more and more ways to implement video into their strategies. It’s not easy right to do. But there are tools out there and there are processes out there that make sense for them to use. And that’s why I think we’re going to discuss it today.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, it definitely it’s a lot more effort than doing other things, other forms of marketing, other forms of interaction, content creation. But with all the different tools you have at your disposal now, especially now with AI and all the stuff you can do with that, it’s getting easier for the everyday person to to create video.

Eitan Koter: Yes, I think people are still expecting this authentic, uh, you know, person or real person behind, uh, behind the camera. But I obviously helped with so many things around pre-production, post-production. And this is very, very helpful for a lot of the businesses because, I mean, even the creativity just generating the scripts for the videos, obviously, the selection of the right, you know, influencers or creators around that, all the post-production is can be done very fast with AI these days. So that helps a lot in terms of the process. But I think the video itself, people want to see people want to be delivered by people, so they want to get the experience from the seller or from the influencer or from the content creator or even the brand owner. They want to see, you know, the true story of the brand, and they want to see who are the people involved. So they want to see the real, real faces behind the camera. But yeah, I helps in so many ways. Obviously with AI you can create a lot of content that is probably, you know, kind of helps with the educational side of things, maybe customer support, obviously like customer support. Video like on the rise, I see a lot of data that is actually like live steer. It’s, you know, reduced customer support calls by 63%, which is crazy by using video versus companies that are not using video. So all these like automated type of videos that you can pre-record or even create with AI, with tools that are very helpful if you deliver, like quick response. But if you’re on the other side of the business, if you want to promote a product, if you want to create more of the engagement with users, maybe on the on the marketing and sales side of things, then I guess you need still you need you need to have the right the real person behind it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I, as a fellow podcaster, you know, like there’s some, you know, editing the editing process can take some time and some effort and all that. There are some tools that just do it for you now. Yeah, I guess they just do like multi-camera editing for you now. And it’s exactly, you know, that and that, like you have to have some technical knowledge to do that on your own. But with some of these tools, you don’t need to know much. You just kind of click a button.

Eitan Koter: I mean, I’m running a podcast for the last almost ten, ten months. There is no way in the world I could push 2 or 3 episodes in a week without all these AI tools to support me, I mean, and to support the team. I mean, there’s no way to do that. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: So I’m a contract content creator myself, so I know how impactful video is. And as far as demographics go, I have no doubt that Gen Z and millennials make up a large part of the video audience. But what kind of data have you seen from, you know, for older generations, the Gen Xers, the boomers, like, are they also as into video these days?

Eitan Koter: Yes. I mean, obviously like the number one I think is still, according to the reports or the distribution around is millennials like number one and Gen X and Gen Z. That’s really strange right. But I mean but this is what it is because I guess still the purchasing power is still with the millennials. Right? So Gen Z is obviously are coming over. They are obviously big on TikTok and those new platforms with the short form videos. But in terms of what we do here and what we try to promote is all the ability to convert with video, right? And obviously in the in create this in the, in the sales funnels, use video for you know, enticing people to purchase. And that’s still on the millennial side and Gen X and then also Gen Z. This is what the data shows. And this is across all platforms. So it’s across the.com of the brands. And also in terms of purchasing on social platforms, which is can be, you know, called like social commerce aspect of the business, which is obviously is getting a lot, a lot bigger in every year.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow. So Gen X is above Gen Z?

Eitan Koter: Yes, of course in purchasing because of online through video. Of course, of course. And like I think social commerce is a big impact of that. Right. So social commerce the majority I mean video is like in the corner is the center of everything, right? Like TikTok shop out there. And then obviously purchases and new capabilities around YouTube. Obviously Facebook shops and Instagram, Instagram both on Reels and Stories. Right. So they are each platform to have their own, let’s say, rules how you can make video shoppable. You know, you need to have like if you have 1000 followers on Instagram. So you can do a story and you can provide the link to checkout. Right. And you cannot do that. For example, on reels you need to have like 10,000 or you go to advertising. So we are in terms of our, you know, what we do here with Vimeo. So we have a technology platform, SaaS platform that is connected to all these social networks and to the customer website, and making sure videos are properly, properly positioned across all these platforms to enable shop ability. So that’s that’s the idea. And because of TikTok and let’s call it the TikTok effect. Right? So it’s all video based, right? When you do this endless scrolling, right? You do that. You never thought, you know, after two hours that you’re still doing it. But the algorithms work very, very well and can also suggest products that are probably a good fit for you. And we know that e-commerce pulse is e-commerce is primarily an impulse purchase. So video is just taking this to a different new level.

Kevin Rosenquist: That makes sense. Yeah. The impulse, the impulse decision and video, you know, video is, uh, we love watching our videos. I mean, you brought up TikTok. Do you know, you’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean, over, over a decade, I believe. Okay.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah

Kevin Rosenquist: So how impactful was TikTok on what you do.

Eitan Koter: Yeah, I mean, that was a big driver obviously. So we saw the, let’s say, the introduction of video to the commerce space right before the pandemic, right when it started. Probably the big the big push was probably started in China with live shopping. Right. And I mean, we’re in the video space for more than a decade now with Vimmi. And obviously video commerce is something new. Let’s say in the last probably four years, that is becoming a more and more relevant way for marketers to sell products online. Um, and, you know, everyone saw what’s happening in China. I mean, they’re like influencers there or sold probably more than, you know, billions of dollars already as a single show. Right? It is running for hours, right? Every day. And throughout the years they sold, you know, billions of dollars or even hundreds of billions of dollars, some of them. So it’s it’s crazy what’s going on around there, but nothing that is actually can be even come close in the US, for example, in the Western world. So it’s still definitely a viable, uh, marketing, uh, activity, but it’s not even come close to what’s happening in China. And talk specifically about live shopping. And then TikTok came and, you know, it started as an entertainment platform. Then it moves to a search platform, and now they want to become a shopping platform competing with Amazon. Right.

Kevin Rosenquist: And when it first started, it was just like young people dancing basically. I remember TikTok was exactly.

Eitan Koter: Yeah, I mean, they’re already like last year, they already surpassed, I think, $2.5 billion sales on their platform. And this year it’s probably going to increase. Maybe, I don’t know, by five or by seven or by ten. Who knows. We will wait to see the data. Um, and uh, when they’re introduced, first they introduce the ability for every video to, to become shoppable. So you could have associated a product page, a link to a video. Right. So they let you just add a link to redirect to any product page and to make. It to initiate a purchase. And then they introduced TikTok shop and obviously. Obviously they want everyone to consolidate all the shopping activities inside the. Tiktok shop. So there’s no way that they’re not providing you the ability to. To redirect externally to the platform. So if you want to buy anything on TikTok. You need to have a TikTok shop. And they I mean, you must check out inside TikTok with their own checkout functionalities and order fulfillment you can have like. A fulfilled by TikTok like you have fulfilled by Amazon. So they have fulfilled by TikTok. Or you can go to a certified three plus or shipping companies that they work with. Or you can introduce your own shipping. That’s fine. That’s perfectly fine with that. But there is no way. I mean, you cannot redirect user externally to the platform, let’s say checkout on your Shopify or Magento platform unless you are paying them advertising. I mean, if you pay for advertising and I talk only organic, right? I mean, if you pay obviously for PPC and advertising, you can do whatever you want and you can introduce a link there and they don’t care. You can even redirect from TikTok to your Amazon store.

Eitan Koter: They don’t mind. Right. So but yeah. So TikTok pushed in various countries like in the UK and the US. They pushed the TikTok shop very hard. They provided like crazy incentive initially for everyone to jump into the platform, eliminating all their commissions, paying to creators, bringing like marketing budgets to brands and specific categories. So they did a lot. And I think there is a new economy of creators and brands that actually are thriving on TikTok, and there was no other way for them to to grow there. So definitely TikTok just pushed everything and all the others react, right? So YouTube today are also introducing Digital Shelf. So you would have those thumbnails below the video player on TikTok where you can just check out again and again. Redirect to any product page that you like. Obviously, Instagram are doing that with your ability to tag products. We have Facebook shop, Pinterest. Obviously. It’s also interesting. Twitch. They all providing some form of commerce and checkout within their own platform, which is very, very interesting. Even Amazon going to introduce like short form videos functionalities on their platform Walmart as well. So we see this happening all over. And of course another important category which is like retail media with let’s say CTV, right. So we all know that like Netflix and Disney and Amazon are now they have advertising based Avod like packages, right. And the ability to insert QR codes to create all these checkout functionalities. So we see that all over. Obviously each one of those platforms is a different type of experience, but it’s really, really interesting what’s happening. And we’re just I guess in the early days.

Eitan Koter: Of this.

Eitan Koter: Whole transition.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, you mentioned, you know, you just said the early days. What did it look like in the beginning, like when you guys first started Vimeo? What was your vision?

Eitan Koter: So I can tell you that I started in video in the year two. I think it was 2000, right? This was the days of the transition from analog video to digital video on the traditional, you know, pay TV satellite companies or cable companies, right. And then I think I worked for a company back then called Skopos Networks Company, that we also floated in Nasdaq in 2005. We were one of the pioneer in the world to start delivering video over IP on those point to point links. So for example, you had a stadium with a football game or a basketball game. So instead of, you know, ordering this OB van where you need to use satellite to stream to to contribute to that video, you just purchase from the local telco a point to point IP connectivity. Activity, and then we could deliver video on that one location to location A to location B. There are so many. There were so many problems like packet loss and jitter. So there were. We’ve developed technology to overcome this. Point to point IP. And this is before iPhone. Before everything. Right. Yeah. And then when iPhone introduced if you remember Windows Media Player starting to experiment and introduce video on on our PCs or on our Macs. Right. And it was the video on the distribution side right to the mass users. Right. And then with the iPhone, we saw this big explosion of boom of video being used on the distribution side.

Eitan Koter: And then we’re like major global CDNs like Akamai, right. And others starting to evolve and develop all these caching servers all around the world in all the ISPs, making sure the video is delivered perfectly to, to consumers. And and then we saw the migration from traditional networks like cable networks and satellite networks to IP. And everything is IP and all the video has been used for IP, and it took a decade at least for this evolution to happen. And now it’s clear that you can you can receive 4K video almost everywhere with a decent connectivity to the internet. Right. So that’s a that’s a huge breakthrough, I think, for very, very complicated task on the network side to support millions of users all around the world or watching a game. And the problem is when you want to stream video in a concurrent level, for example, like there is a game, right? And there are like, like in a certain area, 10 million users or want to use. So all of them are in the same second, want to consume the same type of content. And that creates a big burden on the network and a lot of technologies that the industry developed. And they may by the way, also, most of our patents are in this video distribution side of things. So we came from the video engineering, let’s say background. And we initially.

Eitan Koter: In the initial years, we were busy working with large mobile operators and content providers, and we built them kind of a Netflix like white label services. So think of the local mobile operator launching a video service like direct to consumer video service, or they need application for all the devices. They need a back end system to manage the content, users management, streaming technology. So we’ve worked in the in the first, I think six years on specifically on this industry, and we did very nice and various projects around the world. And as I said, around four years ago, we saw the potential of video going very, you know, big way into commerce. And this is where we launched our video commerce platform, which is used by brands around, around the world, primarily in the US, using video both for managing their shoppable video, which is these Non-live videos can be short form videos or long form videos. Manage them professionally. Deploy them across their storefront and social commerce and social media stores, but also managing the live shopping events and making sure that it’s been published in multiple channels simultaneously, and enable the users to check out where they’re where they want to, not just on the customer’s storefront, but also on other platforms. You know, let people shop, whatever they want, whatever they want to spend time in a seamless way through a technology platform which just takes care about everything.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. And it makes sense. I mean, when you think about how huge video is that putting it together with e-commerce, it kind of feels like a no brainer.

Kevin Rosenquist: But yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: But you get what did what did Vimmi look like at the beginning before TikTok came out? You know, what was that? 14. You know, 2014?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. I mean.

Eitan Koter: Tiktok, I think TikTok is quite new. Right. So. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Very TikTok.

Eitan Koter: Shop. I don’t know, maybe it’s, I don’t know, two years or so, and even before that they tried to experiment. So TikTok is maybe three years or so. And before that, uh, we used so a lot of traditional media and entertainment companies, let’s call them trying to implement commerce into their, uh, you know, suite of services. So think about a broadcaster or a TV channel or even a pay TV operator who doesn’t matter if it’s satellite or cable or even, you know, an OTT player, or like an online video platform that is trying to introduce commerce through probably introducing QR codes right into the different, uh, TV series or even inside movies. So you can just scan the QR code and it gives you the ability to just redirect to a product page or just save it in your own account, so you can just continue to purchase it after that, not interrupting your experience. Yeah. So I think what’s really interesting is that currently we see the.

Eitan Koter: Merge of.

Eitan Koter: Commerce and media, right? Coming together as well, both from the traditional media and entertainment. Com ecosystem wanted to introduce commerce and also from the commerce ecosystem wanted to introduce more content and media into the into the mix of capabilities. Uh, and you see the rise. I mean, internet is like 90% of the worldwide internet traffic, right? And there is a reason for that, right? Because people are better and people prefer to watch video versus, you know, to read or even even to, to to hear something. And yeah, so before TikTok, it was, uh, as I said initially from the traditional players that did video, media, entertainment, mobile operators, online video platforms, and then we saw the rise of like the creator economy. So they they probably launched a website, right. Or they created content content on Instagram and started to do these, these brand deals. Right. So that’s starting to become influencers and promoting products, sponsors, deals through, you know, payments they get from brands or through gifting or seeding. So that’s another sector that we work with and I think still very, very interesting one. And lately I think the last three years is primarily, you know, brands and retailers who are heavily relying on on video creator like UGC content and influencer content. So they started probably with just providing like a coupon code. So think about an influencer working with a brand saying, hey, look at this amazing products. Maybe, you know, just doing kind of unboxing or just, you know, explaining about a product and said, hey, here’s the coupon code, go to this website. So it’s all verbal, probably with captions. There were no links, no interactivity, nothing.

Kevin Rosenquist: And today, my.

Kevin Rosenquist: First podcast, we did a thing with a company like a promotion. And yeah, that was exactly what it was. I gave a coupon code on the air.

Eitan Koter: You can attribute that influencer to that coupon code. Right. But now, because of the use of interactivity and links. So you can just everything is much more seamless, right? Yeah. People just clicking a button they can check out. So this is where the industry is going. And just making it kind of a frictionless experience for for the shoppers.

Kevin Rosenquist: I mean I’m impressed. Like you saw this with a very early point. Like you saw the potential for this well before the technology was really there to make it work. What do you see? What was it that drove you to to start Vimmi?

Kevin Rosenquist: I mean, right.

Eitan Koter: Now when you say today, I mean, it’s really it’s also interesting for, for me, because it was even before the pandemic. I mean, no one knows that, you know, everything is going to shut down. And people need e-commerce and they need online tools to sell. It was even before that, right? I mean, for us, it was like taking an existing technology, right? It was already in place, serving millions of users all around the world and just let’s say productize it or creating the product market fit process shifted towards commerce ecosystem which is brands retailers and and marketplaces. So from the from the technology point of view, it was really an easy and fast move for us. But it took time for the industry to to evolve. It’s it’s first time. It’s not this is not my first company. I never had to spend time on, you know, market education or even explaining to people why video works, right? This was never the issue until today. Even people, everyone understand that video works and it’s a very powerful tool. The challenges are, you know, somewhere else. I mean, how to create those videos, how to make sure the ROI justify it. I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough budget.

Eitan Koter: And probably we can discuss about some of these pain points and how we overcome them. But but yeah, we saw that transition in a very, very early. And because we already been there with the technology that’s, you know, just needs a small, let’s call it adaptation or productization. It was really easy for us, um, to, to jump in and try to experiment. And I believe in, you know, lean methodology and probably lean startup, you know, processes. Just go there, experiment. You know, you can kill initiative very fast and you can continue to invest and make them, you know, much more stronger and powerful. So we just throw it out there, got some initial customer feedback. We were very, very agile to release software versions like almost every day trying to quickly accommodate the demand. And initially it was really amazing. Like in the US, we want some major, uh, you know, enterprise deals. And it was very fast and clear that it’s going to be a big opportunity. So yeah, I mean, it’s probably just realizing and finding the right opportunity and the right time and have the right technology in place. That’s always it’s always good.

Kevin Rosenquist: Mhm. Yeah that’s very.

Kevin Rosenquist: True. I was I thought the, the, the shoppable live streaming events that you guys offer, I thought that was a really interesting thing. It’s almost like a modern day version of the Home Shopping Network. I remember as a kid once once again I’m showing my age.

Kevin Rosenquist: But yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Our brands seeing success with these live shopping experiences.

Eitan Koter: That’s a very, very good question. And it depends. It’s a very good question. First of all. Right. And in the initial days you could have seen, you know, the hype around live shopping. For example, in the US there are companies raising raising hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean Vimmi, I mean we are a bootstrap company. I mean, we’ve been bootstrapping for more than ten years. We do that in a very solid and profitable way in taking, you know, small decisions in every step of the way. I believe there was a big hype, but this hasn’t matured to be, you know, a niche in the market which is can become like huge, right? And I’m talking about the technology aspect of things from GMV perspective. I think the numbers are expected to be somewhere like between 20 to 30 billion sales just for live shoppable video, again from GMV product sold. I think the next, you know, probably next year or so. But from the technology side of things, uh, with the way that you can create, you know, technology through AI and there are a lot of buzz, you know, out there of, uh, companies or trying to launch. But at the end of the day, video is a very complicated kind of thing because it’s not just a web technology.

Eitan Koter: Right? Back end, front end, whatever. You need to have this slower foundation of actually delivering the bits of video from a host to the viewer. Right. And the video travels and the networks and there are problems and there are challenges and and, you know, you need to make sure you do that in a very, very professional way. So everyone are happy, both the host, the presenter and the viewers. And you have to do it in a very, very low cost. And that’s something that I think, I think we are very, very good at because we control, we have the entire technology for this video delivery layer, right. So this is the thing where we are different and we are providing the solution, which obviously enables everyone to go live and invite co-host and remote production capabilities, but also making sure that videos are like an amazing quality. The events are, are can scale to any type of concurrency or viewers who are watching, and the cost is very, very, very low. Right? So it’s a SaaS platform. We have like various packages, and you need to make sure that users are happy. Now, technology is not just it’s not everything, right? Of course it’s the foundation. It’s important. But who is the host that you.

Eitan Koter: Are.

Eitan Koter: Going.

Eitan Koter: To choose for the specific event, right? We saw a lot.

Eitan Koter: Of examples of brands wanting to work with like mega influencers and like celebrities.

Kevin Rosenquist: Celebrities. Yeah.

Eitan Koter: And they were like like after two minutes in a camera, you see that it’s going nowhere. I mean, a live shopping event may take 20 minutes, may take 30 minutes or even more. It needs to be exciting. You need to captivate the audience. You need to bring new things. You need to produce various activities along the way to make people you know, still stick to the to the to the screen and enjoy the experience. Kind of a combination of entertainment and commerce, right? So people go there, probably they want to see someone explaining about the product. Maybe there is a special deal like a serious discount or something, which is important for the people to to listen. They want to they go there because they want to purchase, but they want to have fun as well. And this is some of the things that, um, usually brands are struggling with. And we’ve been asked always, who is the best host? What is the structure of this event? How do we deliver the right messaging? Not pitching too much about features and benefits, but also bringing value to users? How do we interact with users? Remember, these events have where there is also a chat system so consumers can ask questions. You need to have some kind of a response team to help you, you know, to help you answer those questions. So all these issues so what do we think today that is working very, very well is authenticity okay. So right. Even if you are a big brand bring the CEO, bring the owner, bring those who just started the company real.

Kevin Rosenquist: They want to feel people.

Eitan Koter: Want to see, to hear the foundation of the business, people going back to basics, trying to understand why you founded this company, what’s your unique story? Why are you so differentiated in the market? And it can be someone that you just hire, you know, one week before he can’t deliver. No one can deliver that level of authenticity, and its people can identify it, like in the in the first five seconds. Right. So those event needs to be real. They need to be authentic. People need to know how to answer all the questions they need to deliver the value they need to create a the correct balance between pitching selling features versus providing value quality content that is enlightening and and helpful. And if you’re planning to write and if you market it right before the event and post the event, this can be a you can run like a weekly show or even a daily show that can be like a substantial, um, uh, part of the of your marketing effort and make it kind of a nice to have to a must have. So I can tell you that we have customers like some of the businesses, like everything they do is just live shopping. Again, it works for the smaller for the smaller brands. But this is the number one, uh, go to market strategy and it works for them very, very well because they captivated enough audience to go on these events. And because we stream these events across all the networks, so they see a lot of, um, you know, people are going to the, um, participating in their event and they’re providing they do it very, very well.

Eitan Koter: But this is something that so you have the brand owner, the manager, right. And, and is delivering the content. And it’s a very, very good like like any marketer today, you know, you’re spending time on podcasts, you’re spending time on creating content. People are spending time also doing these live events, which are very, very powerful for building loyalty with your customers. This is a great, uh, event, like a goldmine of analytics data, right. Because video versus text or audio, video, we know so much, uh, and we deliver all this data to our customers. Like, we know when they start watching, when they stopped, why they stopped, which device they’re using. I mean, the amount of data is very, very powerful. You can ask questions, you get answers. So it’s an experience that is building trust, create loyalty. Obviously, people that are already visiting the event are they are already they have intent to purchase. And this is why conversion rates are obviously high. But you need to do that in a in a correct way. And usually brands are thinking they need this really high end polish you know scripted way. No people are looking for the authenticity. They are looking for the, you know, the real answers.

Kevin Rosenquist: It’s content. Right.

Kevin Rosenquist: And that’s that’s content marketing is content marketing is experience. It’s real. It’s it’s it’s they don’t want to be sold to they want to talk about what the value is to them, not just pitch your product. I mean, yeah, it’s it’s all kind of speaks together. Yes.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Eitan Koter: So it’s all about like the right storytelling and not just pitching the story or the right mix. And there and once you have that video, we record all the videos or everything is like everything. All the events are recorded and automatically we because we know exactly Where those shoppable buttons were like, you can have one live event with maybe 5 or 10 products that I launch in a certain time throughout the event. Our system will automatically create short form videos out of these long form live event that is being recorded, and these short form videos are done automatically. So you can take this for a quick editing and just post them all over the network again through the platform. And you I mean, you have so much content you can reuse on, on various, uh, activities, both in the short form videos, also creating a lot of content around text content and even continue to promote this event. Hey, we see that sometimes 50% of the sales are happening 24 hours after the live event. That’s interesting because the brand continued.

Kevin Rosenquist: Because they can put their.

Kevin Rosenquist: Marketing efforts.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Really interesting.

Eitan Koter: So if you know how to do it right, there are some best practices how to do that. And we help a lot. And by the way, we worked a lot with like industry experts and consultants that we also bring on board to work with us, with brands. So to make sure that everything works, uh, you know, the way it should be, and then we can justify the investment and the ROI of those of those events.

Kevin Rosenquist: We’ve all heard about how in-person retail is is down, is struggling. My family and I recently went to an outlet mall near our house, and honestly, I was surprised at how crowded it was. Is yeah. In your opinion, is there is there room for both in-person and online retail to exist and be successful together?

Eitan Koter: Yeah, I mean, look, in the US for some sectors, like 90% like in furniture, for example, I think that the data I think is like more than 80, I think 85% of sales are still offline, right? And so like if you go to China, I think it’s 70% or even 80% online versus retail in the US overall. Yeah, in the US overall. Right. I think still e-commerce is probably around 20 plus something percent online. That’s it. Okay. And there is no e-commerce growth versus overall e-commerce retail sales. I think it’s in stagnation, right? Okay. So this is the data. People I think still needs the human interaction going there. I mean, we are like social creatures, right. And sometimes yes, we do buy online. Sure. But it’s important. It’s important for us to go out there to talk to people, to probably check things and check the product.

Kevin Rosenquist: Sure. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Certain things you want to touch and feel and see and all that. Yeah.

Eitan Koter: Exactly, exactly. It’s always, uh. And look, I mean, retailers, you know, they are creating, like, really good, you know, marketing campaigns, you can call it probably, you know, fire sale discount, but they know how to attract users as well. And you see some of the models that are probably like completely empty. And you go there and some others like. Yeah, fully packed, jam packed. Right. Shops are.

Eitan Koter: Literally.

Eitan Koter: Long queues, so everything is happening. Still. Retailing is the majority of the business and it’s not going to change in the next year. In the US, it’s still the majority of the business of.

Eitan Koter: The retail business is offline. Mm.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s interesting. Well, if people want to get involved with Vimmi, what’s the best way to get started?

Eitan Koter: Yeah. So our platform in terms of knowing about living is vimmi. That’s Vimmi dot net. Uh, I’m also posting a lot on LinkedIn so you can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter. It’s e I t a n Qatar. Qatar. It’s a great place to start. I would love to answer and talk to people, to brands around anything not primarily about business, but about talking about what can work, what’s not going to work that doesn’t fit everyone, right. Specifically the live aspect of things. And just to, you know, we have we talked about live, but there’s also the other aspect of it, we call it shoppable video. These are the really short form vertical videos. This is like the majority of the video. Businesses today are around these type of videos and everyone needs to do that. All businesses need to do that, whether they use influencer marketing or creating their own content through creators or UGC, that should be like a fundamental aspect of any marketers out there. Yeah, I’d love to help in any in any aspect of it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, awesome. Ethan, thank you so much for being here. That’s really fascinating data on the video stuff. It’s only going to grow. So I’m sure you guys will be very successful in what you’re doing. And thanks for, for giving us the rundown of what you guys do.
Eitan Koter: Amazing, Kevin, thank you for the opportunity and good luck. Thank you, thank you.