Why We Made Trading Cards for Ecommerce | The Story Behind SHOPPS

collection, an annual and a recurring drop of away for everybody to participate in the hobby.

And so we built shops the first collection of trading cards that come in packs that you get to open

to celebrate the community and to allow everyone to have some fun and enjoy and put some cool figurines on your desk that maybe we'll bring you luck during Black Friday if you get if you get the right one. Welcome to the Commerce Playbook podcast. I'm your special guest host today grants in any CMO of Common Thread Collective. Here with the one and only CEO of CTC Taylor holiday. Taylor, who was last time we were behind a camera together?

I was funny I was looking back through Instagram and I was trying to find when we were looking at stuff from Nick and like the couch in front at Quail maybe? Yeah, there's been a lot of I think. We were, yeah, so that's no reference to anybody listening but it's probably been pre-pandemic where we used to film a lot of stuff sitting on a couch at a rolled office. Oh yeah, though, yeah, I don't want it. Crotty. Yeah, the live web and ours, etc. But

but I'm here today with you and the reason this is such a special appearance is because we're doing something that is very different. If you're listening to this or watching us right now and you work in e-commerce, please stay in hang out. We're not going to get tactical but we are going to talk about something that is you're going to ask yourself why are we doing this? Why is this happening?

“But this is also really cool. I hope that's the response and that's why we're sitting down”

to it because we've been working behind the scenes on something for, it turns me about six months now that you and I have both been really excited about. It's been a labor of love on top of everything else that we have to do. But this is something that I say if you're in e-commerce, keep listening because this is actually built for you and this is what we're here to explain. So I'll set the stage like that and tell us, tell us kind of how some of the started when we got Mr. Bezos sitting here

with your baseball card that people may or may not be able to see right now. Yeah, so this is, this is, I just told this off BG's desk. So we share an office with Skull Candy, at least a small portion of the team, including their CEO, Brian Garfield, good friend. Congrats to them, by the way. Just announced yesterday, sale to Bose. But this is off of his desk, I still it. So this is his Jeff Bezos action figure holding his Taylor holiday baseball card.

So some people probably still don't know this about me, but my first life was as a professional athlete. And while it was a very short-lived professional career, when you drafted your first season, they send over the photographers for Bowman and you sign a licensing agreement and everybody gets a baseball card. So this baseball card has gotten me more cool points with my kids and their friends.

“And the general populace, I think there's a bunch of D to C people who jokingly put this on their”

desk and keep it around and say that he brings them good luck on Black Friday, et cetera. But it's just,

it's fun. And it's a cool thing. And the part of always considered sort of funny is that my

professional career in business has was way more successful than my professional career as an athlete. But yet I have this sort of iconic representation of having made it, of having reached a certain threshold of pursuit that no one can take this away. Like this exists in history. And so it's sort of this marker that I've always appreciated and has been a trophy for me, like in a way that has been really cool. And so because of the engagement that pops up every now and

again and what it's meant to me, I thought, why shouldn't there also be a marker for us as entrepreneurs? For people building. And I know there's things like Forbes or other 30 in these random stuff. But it doesn't exist in the physical world in a way that your kids, your friends, anyone else could see that like, hey, I've built a thing that means something. And I even think about this with my kids.

“My kids sort of conceptual understanding of CTC and what we do and what does my dad do?”

It's like there's something about this representation of the effort that a lot of these entrepreneurs in the community put into it that I think a trading card is sort of this cool significant object that you could point to and be like, hey, look, there. I'm a thing. I did a thing. And I'm not made it happen. And so with that in mind, we thought like, there's got to be a way that we could lean into some of this and create this series of ongoing markers to celebrate the

community to look around and go, there are a bunch of people who have built something. You've made it. You created a thing and it deserves to be celebrated. I'm also a collector. I trade cards. I was in the NFT. I love the hobby of it all. And so I thought, and this would be fun if there was a

recurring way for the community to participate in the hobby in a way that I think ultimately trading

cards are, you've seen them expanded to Pokemon and Disney characters. And I think that they're going to expand into cultural icons as well at some point. I think you could see a pop stars collection. Like, I just don't think there's any reason why this shouldn't be a real thing. And so we started brainstorming this idea of, can we say what it's called? Can we talk about that? Of shops. Obviously

and recurring drop of a way for everybody to participate in the hobby. And so we built shops the first collection of trading cards that come in packs that you get to open to celebrate the community and to allow everyone to have some fun and enjoy and put some cool figurines on your desk that maybe we'll bring you luck during Black Friday if you get, if you get the right one. So that's a little bit of the setup for it and what it meant to me and where it came from. And we have spent

a long time. We've been after this working to find the right card manufacturer to build the parallels to get all the participants to build the prizes, all the things to create the packs, to get them

“size right, to figure out how to get it, make it all happen. We've been working on this, I think for”

almost nine months now, a grant and team have really taken it and ran a lot of our team as well. Shout out Randall. Yeah, so let's, we're going to get into this. But what I think that why this

idea is sort of relatable not only to you, but also to me it was never professional athlete,

but as a kid, collective baseball bugs liked it. But over the, so there's an nostalgia factor as well, to something you remember doing. And then even that wasn't you, as you get older, maybe have your own kids, you kind of see it through their lands potentially. But then like you said, there's things like Pokemon, but the game of vacation element. So there's collectibles, there's gamification, there's nostalgia, all these things that when it comes to this kind of stuff,

but it kind of can unite people in a lot of different ways. Depending on what's important to you, and it's obviously a marker that like, oh, how cool would that be to be recognizing that way? So I think, oh, you take all these things together and it became a no-brainer, but what was really challenging for me? I don't know if it was for you, because we, we operate and think a little

“bit differently, and that's what makes us work. But to me, I said, okay, yes, to all of this, this is”

really exciting, it got us going, but it has to be done in a certain way. Yeah, meaning if the game of vacation is going to be there, you got to create scarcity. If the products, if people want this, you got to make the product worth value of some sort of, right? Otherwise, you can do this a lot of different ways. So to us, it was like, we really got our reliance to invest that time, that money, to do this in the way that we think that the communeer people would want to collect. They see

this a cool product, not a cheap thing. Because it's very, a lot of ways you can do this, and I think that if we don't go with the real card manufacturer, yes, this can be more time, more cost, but like, then it becomes something that people actually want to put on their gas, what people will face. That's just something they want to collect. If we don't create, uh, some type of model with packs and ways for the community to get them, that if it's not about that, and it's about

just selling them, well, then like, now we're trying to compete with tops, one type, or even calling it CDC, like there's all these ways in which it could have been just like a very simple,

“yes, sort of exercise. And, um, I think that we, there's stuff that we understand about the mechanics”

of the trading card market, again, it's a place I spend, it's over to the amount of time. So the idea of scarcity, right? Like, there is so in this collection, we thought, all right, let's, let's

identify a hundred people for the first season that we think are meaningful contributors to

the community in a purely subjective interpretation of our own, not ranked in any way, just like, these are a hundred people that we think are worth celebrating and deserve to be iconically recognized in season one of shops. Um, and we hope that every year, this is the thing that continues to grow and we get to find more people and it becomes a continual ongoing list, but, but the idea was, okay, to your point, scarcity. So one of the fun things in collecting trading cards, and I'm a

big, Bowman Chrome is like my favorite line, um, for baseball collection, and they do what are called the base cards. So think of that as the most common card in the set, usually the Bowman Chrome base is what it's called, and then there are parallels and parallels or different color representations that have varying degrees of scarcity. So a blue might be out of 150, uh, green might be out of 50, or gold would be out of 50, uh, and then there's what's called the superfactor is the

one of one that the card that ends up being worth the most in the series. And so we thought, okay, well, can we mimic that where every player gets 50 cards in the set? I think there's a 100 people, we got 10 cards per pack. 10,000 packs a mail. That's right. So 10,000 total cards. That's roughly, right? So 10,000 packs, 10 cards per pack. Yep. And so 100 people, that means that each person roughly has about 100 cards out there. Right? You have a one of one. You have a five of

five. I think the next one is 10 of 10, 10 of 10, 10 of 10, 10 of 10, and then the rest are base. Yeah. And then we got Chrome parallel. Oh, and Chrome parallel. So there's varying degree, each player has varying degrees of scarcity. So then without, okay, well, that's sort of just manufactured scarcity, which is part of what'll make it cool. And it'll be fun to chase those limited edition cards. So what we did is we talked to each member of the list and we said, hey, would you be willing

to assign a cool prize? And these guys all and girls all stepped up in incredible ways,

ranging from getting to take a trip out to go see four seats of the Thunder. Thanks, Mike Beckham, to consulting hours or product from the brand, all sorts of cool stuff that's associated with it, that will increase the sort of objective value of the asset alongside the fun and community

They're all just will make the chase more fun. And also give you access to these people. So

like the idea that they would represent a way for you to get on a call with Jordan Manard or whoever else and you get to learn from them and participate as their caller to hold their, then there's like sort of this like experiential tie between the object. Because another thing I love to do with trading cards, so like one of my favorite life memories is my kids and I were at game one of the world series when Freddie Freeman hit the walk-up princess. So one of the most expensive cards I own is

tops now did a limited edition print autograph of Freddie Freeman. So I have that card and one of things I believe about cards is that they're like a store of cultural value. Like they represent just like photos due of my family vacation is that that card and buying an expensive version of it, like is me assigning to it that this cultural moment that I have to remember forever. I'm going to give it to my kids someday. They're going to tell the story of it. They're going to give it to their

kids someday. It's like it passes down the energy of that moment in this cool way. And so I think

some of this can be the same. That one of one is going to represent that cool meeting that you had or that experience that you had that will represent some of the experiential value trapped into an object. And I think that'll be a cool way to participate as well. Yeah, that's right. And just like talks and Freddie Freeman and the players and that it's while there might be the face of it, it's allowing the people who participate in it is from experience. You like Freddie for different

reasons you were there for that then you want to cut. You want to collect those things for different

“reasons. Yeah. The same like I think that was really important when we talked about, okay,”

whether I mean we need to land on a hundred mainly because we had to get to it an idea of how many in a path and we wanted to have a limited number. Yep. So we said right off the gates, this isn't so how do people get this back? So I would say, well, we don't want to do one of

sellers and we want to be this about the product. So the whole concept here is can we make the players?

So instead of gifting influencers, everyone gets one cool card and we all celebrate them, that cool person. If this is about the community, they make the influencers the one who get to influence the people. So so the influencers, the way you get Pax, the thousand Pax, isn't not just from CTC. Every player here gets the obligation to see opportunity to now give the Pax to who is following them and who wants that. So the whole point is not just to celebrate them and

here's your one thing. They get Pax the way you're going to earn Pax. You can't buy them. The Pax come from the players. Yep. Okay. And so that was the other thing, too. It's like, how do we make it because you're going to have different experiences, whether you work with Ezra or you've done something with Ezra and you pull this card in a pack. This might be really meaningful to you, right? And so the chase, everyone's going to have a different chase for a different

reason. But Ezra instead of Ezra, we're just getting this cool box in this card and some Pax from self, we said, no, Ezra, if you're going to be a part of this. And so this is the thing that's

“also taking a long time as you bring a hundred people into this. Not only you have to get their”

approval. They get a choose or image. They get choose or give away all these things. That's a lot of wringo. But we say, guys, to participate, you're going to be going to be willing and wanting to get Pax away. And so we'll supply all that. We'll give that to you. And that is the way that your followers, people, your colleagues, people around you. That's the way that you're going to get back to it. So that was the big part of this, too. It's about these Pax here. Yeah. So every

person's going to receive one of these, and they'll also receive them a Pax and to give away one for themselves and one to give away where they then will be able to provide to the community, you guys to participate. And that's the goal, right? I think if the collecting just stopped with giving the individuals the cards, I think the challenge with that. And I think it's important. Let's shout out Jay and what you did at the starters. I think it was super cool. Like the timing

of it was crazy. We were both sort of mind-nulled that they're without realizing it. And that's right. Getting your own card is awesome in a way to celebrate. But I think being able to say, okay, it's not just for the influencers themselves. It's actually for everybody to collect and participate. It's just one level beyond where we can go out and bring more people into the process

“and have fun with it as well. So you're going to be able to get Pax, I think in three ways, right?”

Like there's going to be follow the individuals, the members, and why there's going to be given Pax and different, you're going to see it across social ways that you can earn Pax from now. Yeah. You're going to be able to sign up on the website to for live drops to we're going to do some giveaways and access for some Pax. That's right. And that's what's the domain for that. So shops, cards, dot com. Shops with two P's. Just like top shops, cards, dot com. You can go there

and see when those live viewers are going to three of them where we're going to bring in some players who are part of this in studio virtually. But we're going to actually be opening Pax, ripping Pax, giving away cards. And we can actually, in fact, we should do one here in a minute, we should do this and give it away. But if you join those live or see some of those replays, we're going to be that's ways that you can get 10, 20, 50 Pax from the ripping and handing out

the people in that way. So yeah, through lives. Go ahead. So and for this video, prove it to me or a true collector in the comments of this YouTube video. Either you already on a Taylor holiday Bowman Chrome, you've paid for it on eBay, or you are show me your most valuable card that you collect and will hook somebody up in the comments with a pack for being a true collector. We want to put this in the hands of the real collector. So yeah, YouTube comments

comment, either show me your Taylor holiday Bowman Chrome or the most valuable card you have,

Again, there are only 1,000 Pax. There is a limited edition run. We don't have a

“crap time to give away the first time we just wanted to create an initial batch to show a”

one of what that gets to your card. So this is my one of one. But this is my one of one auto. This is your one of one auto. Okay. So this is another separate. So there are also 101 of one autos. That's right. So in the Pax, you got to imagine that getting the autos into the Pax was just not going to be possible because we had to mail these out to everybody, get them to sign the bring the back. So there was a limitation to getting the autos in the

Pax. By the way, so we will be given way the autos and lives. Well, you're going to see those come up in different ways too. But yeah, it's joined the lives will be part of it. So I've prized is associated with the one of one autos will also be giveaways and opportunities. So you can see this is sort of like a gold print. This is my own signed one of one auto. So those will also be prizes that will be given away by the enforcers by us in various ways. So lots of cool ways

to engage and collect in the hobby. I'm hoping some people submit these to get graded. This one was off center. That was not all these. It could be a piece of 10. But I'm hoping that this one's a lot better. Like some of these actually, it's just like it's funny. It's like if you guys are collectors, you'll know that when the prints happen, they're not all centered perfectly, which is where the grading comes in. And so I was looking at some of these like my base, this base right here is

actually pretty well centered. I might try and submit it for grading. But by one of one is definitely

“not a PSA 10. It's more like a PSA 6. But it's real good. Do you want to show you?”

I want to show you. I want to show you because I want to show you. I actually have an open up. I actually want to keep what I'd open up. You know, you know, there's, you know, there's only been one pack open up. It's me. Is you. Yeah. Well, but I mean, we got, we literally got this is that is

that what you have. What is I brought in your first act. I had to actually really get past. So

let's just, so this gives more visual. So base card, let's carry this out on the base card. Let's ask this. Ezra, great. I mean, what I love is that like each person chose their own image. So there's like sort of an expression of their personality in it. Like, may tab. I think actually leaked his, actually it's like a cartoon of him eating crayons. But it's just like, it's so indicative of everybody's personality in terms of how they see themselves in the way that they express the card.

So I thought that was cool. This is another unique one that pulled in that, the first from the pack out. So Josh Shapiro and Bill Rom from baseball. I said, they together, we're actually, well, we love this idea, but we want to do it. Yeah. Cool. So there's a few that are like pairs. I think they're the same. So many brothers. Yeah. There's who else. There's a husband and wife from from create. Oh, yep, from create wellness. Like, so yeah, there's, there's a few different

multiple people on the same card. So those are, those are a couple of basic rare ones. I do. So here's a fourth 10 Cody. Oh, a four a 10. So that's a out of 10, four of 10 black, Cody plough, correct there. You go into that one. That could be valuable. This one. I like a lot. That's your favorite. Four or five Chrome parallel. Okay. So the X, if anybody does it, so Aria is a brand. We don't know his name. Yeah. Absolutely ridiculous. Um, is a sports baseball brand. I love

them. They do awesome work. We both love you. But he's like, he has, he doesn't, his public persona does not exist. Yeah. And so we reached out. We happen to have, we did not tell him. Like many of the folks in this. We did not know him personally. Yeah. We reached out. He responded. Yeah. Still don't have his name. He goes, but it's X. I'm like a busy email address. But yes. Yeah. So he literally doesn't have his public persona. But he gave us a picture. And you can see his like faces hit in.

So X shot out to you. That's it. And he was an early early doctor. Right? Yeah. He loved him. And right away. So that's an of five X secret hitting card. So yeah, there's some fun story to each one. These are these are four to one. So hey, this also isn't possible to with a couple sponsors that came on early in our part of this. So I'm the Senate for Phil to two people that are behind this idea and been with us and been great partners. So pulled their cards as well. So for Phil,

one of their clients, boys, and native. So investor and partner there. So she's that card,

which is also a really cool card. So that's that's sat in an awesome readest CEO, amazing character,

amazing guy. So you do that what they also do too. And some of the packs, just like everyone else has prizes, you could pull there's 10 golden tickets from Phil. And there's 10 golden tickets from on this end with just insane prizes as well. Yeah. It's given away for hexclad for Phil's given away a full hexclad thousands of dollars and product because that's one of their clients as well. Omicense has a really unique offer. Only specific to this. You can call that no one else can

“get thousands of dollars worth of Omicense stuff. So it's just like I think there's like ad credits in”

here somewhere. Like there's like there's a few other things that are really cool as long. I hope I actually don't pull with those right now. But are we going to? That's just your pack. That's the first one. I want to keep on an open. Okay, so you can keep this one putting this. This is what I have this open this and this is what this one will give away in the comments. So okay. Do you want to do that? Well, no, I think we should because I think it's fun for some of it. Let's we'll set them up. Okay,

fun. Yeah, this is. So we have one. We'll give one on open packed. Yep. And then we'll give one this open. So whatever. Yeah, because if you do full of one on one, then we get it. All right, there we go. And if you're listening right now, audio, sorry, this can be a bit boring, but you can, well, only after a whole episode where we open the box of baseball cards. Okay, that's true. There we go. Right off the rip. Jason Panzer. Who Jason Panzer Base? Nice. We just want to see some

you're gonna stick it into the nice. Oh, Chase Diamond base. Chase Diamond base. Show it.

Katie Carr made the label. Base. Right brand. By the way, really cool brand. This is my favorite one. This is this car. This is top five for me. So John Roman Battlebox to 10. So John, obviously, he's also a flight there. Gatses. Hey, man, Brian McDonnell. Brian has been a big

“advocate for us. Yeah, but his card. I love what he did with it. That's why I love that's fun. Yeah,”

she made it. Oh, Michelle Miller from Vega Moore at a 10. Oh, I got a good one here next time. That's it. Check this out. Okay. So that's the shout to 10. Sean Frank to five. Oh, man, that is, that's what I'm looking at. You have the gold color way 10. He's in front of the McDonald's in a parking lot. That was that was Sean's photo for himself. Yeah, so Sean Frank to five for somebody in the

common. No, that's good. Sorry, Sean Frank to five. I got the boys all leave for Phil card. It's

oh, okay. I got the readus and then let's see Chrome to six Sophia Edelston from pair I wear. There you go. That's a solid pack right there. That's a really good. That's a good pull. So in the comments, you got your Sean Frank to five. You got John Roman to 10. You got some Andrew Ferris, a little Panzer. Yeah, if any of those people are getting into the comments and we'll get you that and then we'll also give away a full pack. I got to get some sleeves. Yeah, some things. All right. So this

this episode or I'm going to film this ahead of time. This is going to be coming out on November 3rd. Okay. November 4th. The next day Wednesday, if you're watching this lie or watching this catch in this early, November 4 tomorrow Wednesday is when this all goes out there. Yep. So this is

when you can start getting pox again. There's not one central place to go check out shops cards.com

for sure. You can learn all about the prizes. Who are the players? How to get it? But there's going to be a lot of different people. The players, again, given it to all of you, get pox, they're going to be free. You got to earn them, got to win them, got to find different ways.

“You can earn it. I think we told it up. It's over 50,000 dollars in different types of”

giveaways and get from these players. And again, just to have this as something that you want in your desk, collect it. People you work with give it alongside is something really rad and like you said, Taylor, I think this is something that we hope goes past this. But hey, let's just look at our dreams like for this is what I love. I think what top says that with top's now is so cool where they're constantly releasing season releases. So you can imagine a Q4, like one of

the things is my dreams. So one of the common things in cards is like that there are these inserts that include like pieces of the jersey. So there's like a logo card or different things. And so we're going to try and get some Q4, the shirt off your back on black Friday. So maybe Connor McDonald was wearing his tea and we get a little piece of it and it's in the card for next year or things like that. So fun ways that maybe the key caps lock off of somebody's keyboard

from black Friday. Like little fun ways that we can create additional inserts and celebrations throughout the year as little bonus is to just keep building on the collection over time, giving out full collections different their ways we can do it. So and then grandnire dreaming like next year, what we'd imagine is that if you're one of the hundred that gets chosen, we could have an event. Maybe we all go take BP and Pecko Park and have a cool dinner. Like some way to celebrate

and continue to build on the collection over time as we go. So check it out, shops cards, shops card, cards with an S and dot com. And November 3rd November 4th November 4th, you'll hear about it in November 4th, you can start getting it. Yeah, we've got people posting our hoodie, we're trying to try to embargo all the posts but there's no way you can wrangle that I've just I've said people don't read emails, shreen, but I read emails and it's really hard and I get

100 people outside of your org to wrangle it's hard enough when they're internal. So I just want to say it's again, thank you to you to allow in this to make come to life, I think that this is something we've had a lot of fun with a lot of late nights, but there's a lot of people behind the scenes, including on on the setting for fill off courses as partners of ours in this, but also a lot of staff here that Randall, Sumai, everyone else involved who's been doing this outside of

their their day-to-day stuff, but I think that we hope that you all love this as much as we have put in this together and it's something that we can go. Yeah, they celebrate this involved. You all deserve to be celebrated, I think that the aspirational identity of being an entrepreneur is something

“that I think is important and hopefully you can show it to your kids, they'll think you're cool”

and it's a fun thing for all of us to collect and celebrate some of these people that we all aspire to be like and learn from and now can collect a little bit of the story and pass it on

yeah, thank you to everybody who helped make it happen and enjoy it. Happy collecting! Happy collecting!