Dennis Yao Yu: CEO and Co-founder at The Other Group

^{Joe Fox (00:00.875)}
Hey audience, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain growth, right? The grow wave podcast. I'm your host Joe Fox, the president at grow wave. Today I am joined by not only a man who was very, very, very, very, very well dressed and always polite and very well spoken. He's an absolute legend in our industry and he's got a ton of experience. I'm very excited to introduce Dennis Yao Yu from

the other half group and today he's gonna be diving in right into everything, partnerships, right into everything that he's focused on. And I really wanna make sure that we get a lot of focus on his career because Dennis has achieved so much, very, you know, one of the pioneers who was early days at Shopify achieved some incredible things there. He sits on a lot of advisory boards and does a lot.

^{Joe Fox (00:52.796)}
And he also travels a lot. So I'm looking forward to digging into, into that a little bit as well. But without further ado, thank you so much for joining us, Dennis. How are you doing?

_{Dennis Yao Yu (01:03.08)}
I'm doing well, Joe. Thanks for having me. You perhaps you can't see, but with all the compliments I'm blushing right now, probably can't see from the color, but I appreciate that as well. you you as well being a very well dressed person and I'm glad we're just black on black. I think that's a color polo as well. So great minds think alike. I'm excited for this conversation.

^{Joe Fox (01:23.174)}
Absolutely, absolutely Dennis. I did pick it up my friend. see every time that we're at the same events like Rachel's events or anything like that, I always pick it up that you're definitely, definitely one of the top and most well-dressed gentlemen in the room. So I appreciate that. think after COVID, I think sometimes people may have gotten a little bit too comfortable.

being in sweats and those sorts of things all the time. So I'm glad that that's obviously a clear expression of your personality and you always have a good watch, which we'll think about and riff about offline after this being a fellow watch enthusiast. yeah, appreciate that a lot.

^{Joe Fox (02:11.293)}
I'm so Dennis, tell me tell me a look, you know, you have a very, very long, illustrious career in this space. I mean, super early, early days at Shopify. You have a very interesting business now that you're leading and I know that you guys are crushing it. It's something that you and I have kind of spoken about in the background. But for the audience's sake, do you want to give us a little bit of a background around

you know, your career and where you're at now and what your focus is now.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (02:44.494)}
Yeah, no, absolutely. think my career is a little bit unique, I would say, compared to a lot of our peers and also friends in this space. Actually, I've been in commerce pretty much my entire career, so 20 years plus. I actually started on my career in finance and I was working, got a good, you know, after I got out of college with an econ degree, worked at Merrill Lynch for a while.

quickly realized I don't want to look at Excel spreadsheet all day and I want to do something a little bit more fun. So I went to retail and I think at the end of the day it would all make sense. as I look back into my career, like how that happened, I actually, you my family started manufacturing for sportswear like Nike, JCPenney in the eighties in Asia. I never really got into the business.

^{Joe Fox (03:33.319)}
Wow. Yep. Yep.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (03:36.556)}
My uncle still runs the business and runs one of the biggest factories in the world for sportswear, what, you know, 30,000 employees and so on. Yeah. It's one of those things where, you know, I don't bring up too much being that I never really got into that side of the business. I've always been the sort of the brand side, the marketing side, technology side. But I like to think there's a little bit sort of DNA, know, osmosis as I kind of go into entrepreneurship.

^{Joe Fox (03:44.401)}
Wow, that's amazing. I had no idea. That's fascinating.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (04:06.754)}
But after I was able to pivot from finance into retail, I started working with different brands as beginning my career. So working with brands like Casio, G-Shop, Incase, like Apple accessories companies, I learned the ropes in sales from doing wholesale. So this is the part where you're literally back in the days taking samples, you go into the buying offices of Macy's showing samples, selling and...

you know, taking POS, taking orders, and understanding the merchandising, how that affects sales and from seasonality standpoint. So really cut my teeth in that sort of traditional branded wholesale environment. And I will say my second part of my career was when I was about, I would say five, six years in doing that. And I started seeing the shift of the growth not coming from physical retail and coming from e-commerce and marketplace. was like, okay, crap. Like I better.

^{Joe Fox (04:57.234)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (05:01.398)}
you know, ship my career. Otherwise, this is getting tougher and tougher. I was lucky enough to start working for a company called Leaf Group. It was called Demand Media in Santa Monica. They're a small cap, public traded company that owns like media publishing entities like eHow.com, Livestrong, Well and Good. And then they own a bunch of e-commerce entities like Society6, Sachi Art, Denied Design. So I was brought in as a head of BD there.

and doing a lot of strategic alliances, M &A transactions, and just a lot of enterprise type of deals. And spent three years there, grew that sort of the B2B side of the business to threefold. And then at one point, Society6 still exists right now and still a great platform. And at one point, it's like a $200 million company. So taking that sort of learning, I went to my next stop, which is art.com, A-R-T.

Been around for a while, Like e-commerce marketplace, the world's largest art marketplace, vertically integrated. Yeah. And it was fun. that was a different experience because I was brought in along with their change management. They hired the CMO from Lyft as the CEO. So restructuring, reorg with the goal of selling off the business at some point. So I was brought in to head up the entire B2B enterprise revenue. So I sales teams.

^{Joe Fox (06:02.114)}
Absolutely. Yes, yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (06:25.582)}
That's all account management team under me and spend about a little bit over a year there in a turnaround situation. And we're able to sell out, sell out the company to Walmart. And so after that, I'll quickly kind of go over, but I spent a couple of years in academia at USC, which is my alma mater. It was by chance somebody over there reached out and said, Hey, Dennis, like, would you like to come here, run this supply chain Institute? I exactly right. Like that was my sort of.

^{Joe Fox (06:48.742)}
Amazing.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (06:53.378)}
That was one part of what I was thinking about. The other part was like, crap, like I'm not a supply chain person. I don't know anything about supply chain. And they're like, well, it's okay. We have the experts, right? Like we have the PhDs. You come here, run the business side of it. Now looking back, it was such a wonderful two years of experience because I was managing the board governance there. And so you have a lot of PEs and you have SVP executives from like Fortune 10s.

^{Joe Fox (06:58.159)}
Yeah.

Yes.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (07:20.876)}
which gave me different lens, a different sort of network of community of folks that were not startup oriented. Spent two years there, loved it, still love academics and academia. And the next year I joined Shopify and I was managing the customer success organization on the West Coast, on the second ends of the large and a little bit more strategic as well. So in my portfolio, we had about $8 billion in GNV.

a team of MSM, so customer success reps that were managing like true classic teas, Dr. Squatch, some of the highest growing brands on Shopify. That gave me a learning a lens on wholesale. So you look at it from that standpoint, once again, been in sales, been in customer success, and then joined another, after about three years or so, joined another Series B startup at video commerce space, was the VP of revenue and then VP of partnerships there.

^{Joe Fox (08:05.743)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (08:19.598)}
Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. I don't want to cut you off, but that is such an impressive career and so incredible. I mean, you mentioned about the opportunity that came your way. That to me is like, you aren't that, you deserve that. People can clearly see that talent because every sort of single role that you mentioned there, it's...

_{Dennis Yao Yu (08:19.8)}
Stop all that to say it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (08:47.372)}
all incredible, like, you know, high, high risk, high opportunity, high reward, you know, kind of opportunities. And I think that's absolutely amazing. And it makes sense to me knowing you, you know what I mean? And I think what, what an interesting, cool life really, you know what I mean? Like, like being able to have that, that broad experience. I'd be remiss if we didn't dive into the Shopify component. mean,

_{Dennis Yao Yu (09:06.328)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (09:16.344)}
The majority of our audience, you know, are our customers and all of our customers at Shopify and grow over Shopify only. and we're leaning more and more to getting out, you know, kind of built for Shopify certification. So I'd love to know Dennis, because you fired off some really cool brands there that, would have, I imagine being, you know, some of the largest brands that Shopify was working at working with, at that time. And obviously that.

fed very well into, as you said, that kind of post purchase experience. How do you feel? And this is this is just, you know, purely opinion based. But how have you seen Shopify evolve from when you were kind of there working on that growing and managing those those teams to where it is now? You know, obviously, I feel like now they're really going after the whole commerce experience.

They're not just focused on, you know, D to C or B to C. They're really going after that B to B. Obviously you had a lot of B to B enterprise sales experience. Where are your thoughts around where that's headed and what it may look like soon?

_{Dennis Yao Yu (10:31.15)}
Yeah, so it's very interesting. When I first joined Shopify, it was during early years of COVID time. And obviously during that time, everything was changing. The commerce landscape was changing. As you remember, before COVID, I think e-commerce was only 3%, 4 % of entire retail. It was growing, but it was still a small percentage. And then essentially accelerated that growth to double digits of the entire retail.

^{Joe Fox (10:45.72)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (10:51.535)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (10:58.358)}
And there's no looking back in a sense, even though it kind of course correct a little bit. But you still remember like, you know, buy now pay later. Like that was launched then, you know, buy online, pick up a store, right? Like people really, really creative. And I think Shopify sort of show its own spring and its own nature of who it is. In short, it's a beast during that time, because during that time.

^{Joe Fox (11:06.755)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (11:25.622)}
you as any sort of platform, any of the competitors, they have to pivot and really launch a product and features at a very, very fast pace, fast pace. And Shopify was able to do that. So to answer your question, when I first joined Shopify, what it was was Shopify was targeting, had a strong foothold and still does in SMBs of the market, right?

^{Joe Fox (11:47.811)}
Yes. Yup.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (11:49.23)}
You know, it's almost a joke, but not to sound like cocky, but just being a customer success. We, we, we almost, we almost dare the merchants to, to, I want to be careful. Not there. We almost say, you know, that the churn rate was so low and we were so confident if you churn for any reason, other than financial challenges, you're going to come back. We saw a lot of boomerang. It's like,

^{Joe Fox (12:15.862)}
Yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (12:18.582)}
In a way, it's like, where are you going to go? Especially for that size segments of the customers, right? Because the product is so good, because that ecosystem is so special. No other platform has an ecosystem like Shopify, as you know. That's really the value for the merchants of brands to say, it's a self-service type of platform. I can launch a brand in such a short time, and I can plug and play.

^{Joe Fox (12:23.596)}
Yes, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (12:30.304)}
Nah. Yes, yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (12:43.246)}
know, grow, grow away, you know, other type of technology platforms, technology apps to help me grow to the point where it's a hundred million dollar plus. Right. So that's where we were at that time. And as Shopify's grown during that transition and took me more, more, I wouldn't say focus, but to expand up market into the enterprise, things were changing. So I think the learning understanding of

^{Joe Fox (13:07.95)}
Yes.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (13:11.118)}
the needs of enterprises are very different than mid markets SMB as you know. The complexity, the role of a composable, like that was due to enterprise. The more focused on B2B, POS, that's due to enterprise. Because if you're going to service the best buys of the world, like they need that POS to work with, you know, sort of online in all ways possible, right? So I think that's kind of where it's evolving.

^{Joe Fox (13:26.967)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (13:35.14)}
Absolutely. Yup. Yup.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (13:41.398)}
And where I see Shopify as a player or where it is from ecosystem perspective, I think where they play, there's just nobody that's even close to it. And the way they're growing. Yeah. yeah, no. I think, I think it's, it's a very, it's a very, it's a great team. They have the right team to kind of take it to the next level.

^{Joe Fox (13:54.039)}
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. Yes. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (14:08.194)}
They still got some ways to go in the enterprise space. Cause when you look at B2B, for example, I was also at the big summit or right now it's called, you know, the big conference. There are a lot of B2B distributors, a lot of B2B clients over there. There's a very distinct difference between the B2B world and also where Shopify plays. But I think because of that, there's opportunities, right?

^{Joe Fox (14:17.761)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (14:32.15)}
Yes.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (14:35.01)}
Like these clients, when can Shopify service a B2B like Ingram Micro's of the world? I don't know. There's ways to go, but I think that's where the opportunities lie. So.

^{Joe Fox (14:41.408)}
Yes, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (14:46.783)}
No, absolutely Dennis. That's such an accurate assessment and I agree with it a hundred percent. And I think, you know, it's, it's interesting to see the things like, you you mentioned, around the POS kind of things and all of that. And I feel like one thing I've noticed on a product side at Grow Wave is like when we work with the Shopify team,

And we say, okay, we want to make sure that we have the best in class loyalty, you know, POS to compliment what you're doing. I really love that community aspect where they're like, here is exactly what we're planning on doing. You know, as a partner, if you guys want to align on this, it's going to help our merchants even more. Feel free to get super involved. And so I love that. And I don't think, you know, the, the,

other platform you mentioned. I have a lot of great relationships over there too. But it's, it's to me, it's amazing to see how much Shopify really supports the community of partners the way they do. And, and as you said, you know, essentially relies on us to be able to serve their merchants in essence who become our customers. So yeah, it's, it's a very fascinating space. I, I

_{Dennis Yao Yu (15:44.376)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (16:09.377)}
We could talk about this for a very long time. I know that you and I talk about these things offline, but I really want the audience to understand what you're doing at the other group. think the culmination of your career and the knowledge and the experience that you have is really being put to work for your clients now. So I'd loved for you to kind of dive into that a little bit. I think it'd be really cool for the audience to understand that. And I think

well, I know that some of the audience, you know, are perfect fits for you and for the other group. So are you able to dive into that a little bit? Is that okay, Dennis?

_{Dennis Yao Yu (16:48.142)}
Yeah, no, absolutely. think so. The other group is sort of the amalgamations of my career, essentially. It's not a sort of typical agency. It's more of an e-commerce consultancy. So essentially what the other group is, the other group is an e-commerce consultancy that helps companies and brands that are going through sort of digital transformation. And to take out all those buzzwords, what that actually means is

We work with lot of brands and companies as kind of like a fractional CMO or fractional head of e-commerce. Given an example, we work with a sort of mid-market low enterprise brand that's based in New York. They've been the sponsor for Olympic swimming team for about 40, 50 years. So they've been around for a long time. And so they're probably about $200 million in general. D2C is just one aspect of that business.

^{Joe Fox (17:36.001)}
Wow. Wow.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (17:43.318)}
And they brought us on because they're like, well, we have a team, but this is not our expertise. We're wholesale first. so help us understand, diagnose where the issues are, diagnose where the opportunities are. So we basically came in and do the whole entire audit for DTC as a confrational CMO, right? At the end of the day, they were on Magento and Shopify is going be happy to hear this. Like they were on Magento.

your business doesn't garner what magenta should, you shouldn't be on it, right? We have made the recommendation. We're able to convince them to migrate in two months, Shopify sales reps, obviously really happy. They're like, hey, I've been working on this for 18 months, but I was like, that's basically where our influence come in because we're more of a trusted source in that sense. We're embedded with the CEOs and the founders. So.

^{Joe Fox (18:17.193)}
Yes. Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (18:27.862)}
haha

^{Joe Fox (18:35.059)}
Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (18:40.992)}
That's one type of situation. And we run the DTC, we partially own the P &L, and then we bring in partners like you guys, like even like agencies partner for any other technical stuff. We handle retention ourselves. That's something that we do actually very well ourselves. We are on the team. Another situation is more of SMB. So the SMB, it's company called Phenomenal Foods. They've been around for maybe five years or so.

They wholesale into Costco Kroger's of the world and they sell like Jackfruit chips. sell, you know, like dry noodles and so on. They do really well on wholesale, but DTC once again isn't their forte. They brought us on in three months. We revamped the website. We are running the retention and growth and we're seeing, you know, triple digit growth on a to month basis. Right. So there's a lot of, I would say like in general, that thread line is

^{Joe Fox (19:31.346)}
Nice, nice, I love that. Yes, yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (19:38.222)}
We love working with Omnichannel brands. And by Omnichannel, I mean, they're not native D2C. Because if they know how to run it, they don't need us. But they're like, OK, come in here. We're going through a digital transformation. Or we're trying to expand the US market, like some of European brands that reach out to us. So let's sort of run this as a fractional strategist for D2C. And we're pretty nimble in that way. We have a team of five people. We have the former VP of Ecom.

former VP for content strategy, as well as data and also tech. So we're pretty flexible and nimble in that way. yeah, so we just, at the end of the day, we look for opportunities and we customize that strategy according to where the needs are.

^{Joe Fox (20:24.67)}
I love that. And I feel like, I mean, I can only imagine the A team you've assembled, right? Because it's like your background, your strengths, your career, being able to apply all of that knowledge to these, you know, I wouldn't say they're problems, but to these opportunities, identify where those opportunities are. I can only imagine the, you know, the team that you've brought in to help do that. And I think the

_{Dennis Yao Yu (20:41.528)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (20:51.492)}
skillset and ability that you possess to be able to work with the C-suite and the founders is so valuable. Right. And that's why you have that trust to say, you know, look, you know, Magento is cool and all, but it's, it's or Adobe, it's not the right move for you at the moment, or it doesn't fit your use case. This is where we need to pivot and this is why you should do it now. And I love that. I think that's really, really special. And, what a, what a cool.

company that you're building and that you've built over there. mean, and the ability to be able to pivot that from, you know, enterprise to SMB is awesome. I think one of the things I used to love about, you know, when I had my agency in Australia was being able to apply that creative knowledge and those processes to businesses of any size and seeing what the impact would be. So yeah, that's really, really cool, Dennis. I love that. And

Do you have any particular, you know, obviously that's a, that's a wide range. Um, and you really hit the nail on the head of like, they're progressing, they're digitizing, they're going through a digital transformation. Do you have particular verticals that you prefer just for the audience's sake? mean, I'm sure that you're going to get a lot of, you know, people reaching out after this, but is there, you know, if, say for example, if there's someone, you know, who's watching this and they say, I really want to chat with Dennis.

this sounds exactly like what my business needs. You know, is there particular verticals that you look to work with or?

_{Dennis Yao Yu (22:25.678)}
Yeah, no, I think we align really well within sort Shopify's verticals, right? So your lifestyle vertical, whether it's like apparel, fashion, footwear, obviously just having the experience from a retail perspective, like back in my days, like really helps in terms of understanding the product, merchandising, sell through and so on, and how that translates online as well. The other vertical we're focusing quite a bit on is CPG.

Like I mentioned, there are a lot of these, you know, we do work with enterprise, course, like mid market, but I would say a lot of founders because of what we do, we bring even more value to a lot of, you know, companies are generating anywhere between like three to like 30, 40 million overall in general. And usually they have a good foundation of revenue from wholesale where they want to start investing into the DTC.

^{Joe Fox (22:55.154)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (23:13.734)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (23:21.548)}
the CPGs have a lot of those types of scenarios, right? It's like their primary channel could be like Amazon or wholesale, but DDC is one aspect of it. Like depending on what that product category is, they want to grow more. So we fit in really well in that sense. Yeah, so I think that that lines pretty well, once again, like some of the verticals that Shopify is also focusing on and, you know, partnering up with them as a platform, as a product has been

you know, has been really good, valuable for both sides.

^{Joe Fox (23:54.32)}
Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I hope you get lots of samples from all of the brands that you're working with. Cause that's really cool. I think, I remember once again with my agency days, like we did a lot of, we worked with a lot of food service brands and, and CPG brands too. And you'd always get these big goodie boxes and, or everyone in the office, particularly the developers would be like into these snacks and everything like that. Yeah. Doing, their sprint. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (24:14.54)}
Yeah, yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (24:20.697)}
Yeah, I have a fun story for you, right? So I went to Expo West this year and that was my first time being at Expo West. And you know, like when you go to a lot of conferences, a lot of shows, most of the time you're walking and you're walking and you don't have time to eat and you just gobble down whatever. But that was the first show is, you know, go to Expo West, you never get hungry because everywhere you go, you're just picking up samples and they're all like delicious. I know like that was...

^{Joe Fox (24:43.953)}
Yeah. Snacks everywhere. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (24:49.506)}
I was like, this is the best conference ever.

^{Joe Fox (24:52.143)}
Yeah. It's like walking around Costco on a Saturday or a Sunday. There's just samples everywhere. I love it. I'm a big, big fan of that. And I always think like, you know, with those, you know, with CPG brands and food brands and food service brands, food is such an emotional connector. And, and, and if you can give someone a sample, I'll use, the Costco example. I think it's, they're built.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (24:54.882)}
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (25:20.135)}
protein collagen bars or something like that, right? And they, you know, my wife and I, we do the Costco run once every couple of weeks. Then we visit the local butcher for like fresh meat and stuff for the week and the local grocer. But when we went to Costco this particular time, they had reps from that built puff protein, you know, bars or whatever. And instead of cutting them up into little pieces,

_{Dennis Yao Yu (25:22.552)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (25:48.145)}
They were just like, here, try one of every flavor. And we've been hooked on these things forever, right? And like we have a subscription set up. They've nailed their strategy of getting out of just being in Costco to really driving customers to their website and having that experience and getting them delivered to your door on repeat. I'm assuming it's probably with, you know,

_{Dennis Yao Yu (25:54.925)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (26:14.811)}
recharge or one of these, but it's really cool the way that they've set all of that up and done that. But that's the power of this, the e-commerce environment that we live in. And I think that's so cool that you're helping brands do that and giving brands that have also been around for some time, a new lease on life and a new opportunity and new channels. think that is amazing. Like that's really, really cool.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (26:18.371)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (26:42.972)}
storytelling that can be done with that. And I, we could talk all day, Dennis, but talking about the storytelling thing, I really want people and encourage people to connect and follow with, follow Dennis on LinkedIn. I'll make sure that his LinkedIn profile is connected below. The reason why is I love your LinkedIn content. The, the, you know, no, I really do. I think it's like so informative.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (26:51.137)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (27:05.934)}
Thank you.

^{Joe Fox (27:10.936)}
It's, it's always got a really good retail commerce angle focus to it. But you know, you use brands and examples that you come across in real life. And I love that. And, one in particular, one in particular, one post you did in particular, I have a love hate relationship with because it was the gap one and I love the content and I loved what you put in that. But I tried to get the jacket that was in the shot, the cam, the camouflage jacket.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (27:40.343)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (27:40.91)}
All sold out in every size, but medium. I was just like, like I was so frustrated because I really like, like, and, for me, you know, gap is an in like coming from Australia, obviously gap has such a, you know, heritage here in the U S and, you know, it's not necessarily a store that I would kind of like go to, right? Like just, just because it's not a part of.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (27:44.558)}
Yeah

_{Dennis Yao Yu (28:04.654)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (28:08.228)}
My heritage, I'm more likely to go to, you know, say a Lululemon because they've been, you know, retail in Australia for a very long time. as well as having a strong econ presence there. But when I saw that gap jacket, I was like, I need that jacket, but I can't find it anywhere. I can't find it on eBay. I can't get it on Depop. It's gone to the ether. So if you. Yeah.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (28:30.382)}
come to Stanford shopping mall. We'll take a ride over there. I think they still have some.

^{Joe Fox (28:33.369)}
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll have to do that. I'll have to do that. We'll have to go shopping for sure. But look, Dennis, thank you so much for today. As I said, I feel like we could, you know, talk forever. I'd love to do a part two of this. I think, you know, the insights that you've provided today are absolutely fascinating. And I know the audience is going to get a lot of value out of them. So I'll make sure all of the links you mentioned included below. I'm going to close out on one last question though, because I asked this

to every single guest. And I know how much you travel because you travel a lot and everyone in our industry travels quite a bit. But I know that you, you know, you've even recently been traveling a lot. So Dennis, what is the one thing that you can't live without when you're traveling? It can be any item. It cannot be a person or an animal.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (29:27.701)}
Yeah, no, for sure. To your point, I have been traveling a lot. And I think that's also something where, you know, started my career in sales, you kind of just accept what it is. And I do enjoy traveling. It does bring me to a lot of different parts of the world. I feel like I wouldn't have the chance to. So it's definitely it's work. But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of personal satisfaction that comes out of it.

^{Joe Fox (29:49.691)}
Absolutely.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (29:55.294)}
I would say what's one thing that I always bring on my travel? Black t-shirts. Black t-shirts. When I travel, it's usually just all black. That's the easiest way to travel. I like to travel light. I think travel easy. you know, like black tops, black bottoms, and whatever shoes that you have, it goes for daytime activities. It goes for nighttime activities. You just can't go wrong.

^{Joe Fox (30:01.305)}
Yes. Yeah.

Joe Fox (30:19.663)
love that. I love that. And it's a it's such a good tip because all it takes is for someone in the seat next to you to accidentally bump their coffee or their orange juice on a morning flight early flight for a full day of meetings in New York and your day is absolutely ruined if you're wearing anything but black. So yeah, couldn't agree more with that one. That's that's a really good one. Okay, so bonus points then any particular brand.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (30:36.748)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (30:47.066)}
Cause I always, I used to always opt for Sunspell black t-shirts made in Portugal, very good Pima cotton. But I think they may have changed manufacturers of light or they've changed something. Cause they're just not quite the same quality. But if you have a tip for some, I'll definitely look them up.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (30:48.609)}
Ooooo

_{Dennis Yao Yu (31:01.614)}
Thank you.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (31:08.31)}
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I found back in the days I used to buy like something basic, whether it's from like Panara Public or, you know, Lululemon and so on. I've recently been buying a lot stocking up on cuts, cuts clothing. Yeah. So what, what, what's different about cuts is, they're, this is where I'm going to keep going on apparel and they're the type of, fabric they use. It's a good blend of cotton and spandex.

^{Joe Fox (31:15.087)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (31:23.488)}
Okay, okay, okay, I'll check that out.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (31:37.772)}
So it has really good stretch to it, but it doesn't feel like you're wearing like a spandex for workout. At the same time on the bottom, you know, sometimes like you feel like the shirts are a little bit short, so you're always kind of pulling it down. You feel like you're wearing a midriff almost. Their bottom is actually in a curved hem shape. It's hemmed in a curved shape. So it covers your front and the back pretty well while, you know, on the sides.

^{Joe Fox (31:38.062)}
Mmm. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (31:44.952)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (31:51.555)}
Yes. Yep, yep.

^{Joe Fox (31:57.751)}
Okay.

^{Joe Fox (32:04.665)}
You're not having to sit there and just fiddle with it the whole time. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. Okay. Now my wife's going to wonder why there's a box of cups arriving at the end of the week, but no, that's perfect. Look, honestly, I, I appreciate that. And I think it's, um, you know, us being in e-commerce, everyone I know in e-commerce, you know, who's embedded in this and, and retail and commerce, all of us like to online shop and all of us practice what we preach.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (32:07.156)}
Right. Exactly. So yeah, so they've been stocking up on those.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (32:16.162)}
Hahaha!

^{Joe Fox (32:34.297)}
So I'm always asking for people's advice on that. So I really appreciate that one. That's a really good one. And no one said that one before too. that's yours Dennis. You own black t-shirts now as the recommendation.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (32:48.078)}
I'm glad.

^{Joe Fox (32:50.234)}
Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Well, look, my friend, thank you so much for coming on board. Really thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Looking forward to when we catch up next. I'm not sure if you're going to KBOSS in September or.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (33:04.59)}
I might go to KBoss before that. I might be at Shop Talk Chicago. Not sure if I'm gonna be there.

^{Joe Fox (33:08.737)}
Okay. Yes. Yeah. I'm not doing, I'm not doing Chicago. I really want to, I still haven't been to Chicago. So it's high on my list, but I will be in K boss for, I will be in Boston for K boss. So hopefully we get to connect in person, but if not, I'm sure we will bump into each other very, very soon.

_{Dennis Yao Yu (33:23.662)}
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for taking the time to chat.

^{Joe Fox (33:31.401)}
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Dennis. Audience. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of retain growth thrive. That was a fantastic conversation with Dennis. He has such an immaculate and outstanding career in the retail and e-commerce space, both on a tech brand and agency side. So I really encourage you to connect with Dennis, follow his LinkedIn. That will be in the show notes for sure.

If you're a merchant who thinks that you would be a good fit for working with Dennis and his crew and his team, I highly encourage you to check them out. Once again, link is in the show notes. And thank you so much for tuning into another episode. If there's a guest that you would like to see me interview on the podcast, please feel free to recommend them in the comments below. If there's anything else that you feel that we could be doing better on the show, please let us know too.

Thank you so much for your attention and your time. really appreciate it. And I'll see you again soon. Bye.