John Lawson’s ICE Retailer Conference just finished up its second year in Atlanta, Georgia, and we at SkuVault can say we’ll definitely be attending year three as well.
SkuVault's booth at ICE Retailer 2013.
What is ICE Retailer 2013?
ICE Retailer is an eCommerce conference designed to educate eCommerce retailers and identify new strategies and actions they can take to grow their business and brand. It's hosted in Atlanta, Georgia, and this is the second year SkuVault has attended. The first year we attended just to check it out - we liked it so much that we decided to sponsor the event this year.
Why is ICE Retailer 2013 so exciting?
The conference brought together all different kinds of retailers to share ideas and strategies. Some of the sellers were marketplace only, while some were really focusing on their own websites. The speakers were eCommerce professionals and consultants whose histories are very exciting. I was a sponsor/vendor and I came away with a ton of notes of ideas to execute.
Some of the main subjects covered that I remember:
- Website Design Practices
- SEO
- Marketplaces
- Social Media
- Branding (personal and company)
- Inbound Marketing Strategies
- Process Improvement
I like attending conferences like this one because of all the networking, the good information, and inspiration. I always come home with tons of notes with actionable items. To be completely honest, I usually get to a few of them then get busy trying to catch up from being gone and many of those great ideas go on the backburner. One of my more interesting notes from this year was “prioritize the executable items from conference notes and make sure those three get done”. So we'll see how that works out for me this year.
Highlights:
Andy Eastes speaking at ICE Retailer 2013.
One thing I remember in particular was how Alaa Hassan, someone I have looked up to in the eCommerce world for years now, talking about how he plans big new projects throughout the year. He was saying how he tries to take on 3 new projects a year. One a quarter for first 3 quarters then just focuses on running the business in Q4 during holiday craziness. Within the quarter the project goes through three phases; Phase 1 is to implement the idea in the first month. Phase 2 is to review effectiveness of project in month 2. Phase 3 is to implement changes needed from review. I think this is a great strategy that I'm going to adopt myself. Other speakers that stuck out to me were Shirley Tan, Brandon Eley, and Randy Smythe. Of course John Lawson with the Original Kings of Technology was very informative and inspiring, not to mention hilarious. They had the whole crowd cracking up while still delivering valuable content - I'm very excited to see the video from the conference.
Why we’ll be going back next year:
ICE Retailer 2013 networking.
The networking events were great. Speaking with other business owners and talking to them about strategies they have successfully used is always helpful to me. I also had the chance to talk with some current SkuVault clients at the conference; it's always great to meet with clients in person, discuss their business’ and how they're using SkuVault, where we can improve, and what they love about SkuVault Inventory and Warehouse Management system. We hope to see you at ICE Retailer 2014!
