# S3 E24 T79 Ace _ RedVest Media Upfronts with Molly Hjelm

S3 E24 T79 Ace / RedVest Media Upfronts with Molly Hjelm 

[00:00:00] Arrival at Wrigley 

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[00:00:03] Tom Limongello: it's early morning and we are right outside of Wrigley. I'm at my hotel and I am grateful for Molly Hjelm and her stewardship of Red Vest Media at Ace Hardware because she's invited me, other podcasters, but more importantly, lots of brands. I want to hear from them. 

[00:00:23] Tom Limongello: I want to hear from the leadership at Ace, about how they've launched and now within the span of a year started to run upfronts in the retail media space. So it's really exciting.  

[00:00:34] Ace Retail Media Goals 

[00:00:34] Tom Limongello: And if you didn't listen or watch the original episode that we did with Molly about a year ago, what's important to think about is this is a co-op model. 

[00:00:43] Tom Limongello: So the retailer can't force these entrepreneurial owners of stores to do really much of anything. Um, which means that, you know, things like the Elevate program, which brings, in my opinion, almost military grade, uh, signage capabilities [00:01:00] that can be brought into the store and, , really curate, uh, tooling and lawn and garden and the pizza oven slash grilling sections, the work that they've done has to be bulletproof. 

[00:01:15] Tom Limongello: And so what I wanna see is how are advertisers responding to those in-store capabilities? And then are the dollars coming in online, off-site, with their Epsilon partnership, how has that, taken off in the last year? And then what's planned for next year. If you think about what Kim Lefko, the CMO, who moved from being a Weber CMO to coming to Ace, and the state of the country at that time, when it moved from lots and lots of people doing home improvements to really looking at, uh, grilling and lawn care and, you know, sort of almost, uh, more of an entertaining focus. 

[00:01:54] Tom Limongello: And I think that that lends itself well to media. You're working with brands like Gozney. I think nine of the [00:02:00] ten, um, top pizza ovens that they are showing in the section on the mobile app were Gozney's 

[00:02:06] Tom Limongello: And, you know, Matty Matheson's the spokesperson for Gozney, and I think that that's really interesting because it's not a sports hero. That's, that's a chef. That's a chef who has, uh, a unique position of being on The Bear. How are those opportunities for scale and pull from a marketing perspective gonna happen in twenty twenty-seven? 

[00:02:28] Tom Limongello: And I could be totally off base in terms of where the direction is, so I'm really excited to, to hear from the brands and from Ace and where it's going.  

[00:02:36] Wrigley Nostalgia 

[00:02:41] Tom Limongello: I'm also just really excited to be at Wrigley. Uh, I used to live and work in Chicago in the early two thousands, I've been to a rooftop game, I've been in the bleachers, but, um, I think I might even get a chance to do a tour on the field today. 

[00:02:47] Tom Limongello: So I brought my mitt. I'm very excited.  

[00:02:50] Upfront Recap with Molly 

[00:02:50] Tom Limongello: Alright, we did it! I think we're the last slated interview of the day, so take a bow, you did a great job. We are here on the Middlemen Podcast, [00:03:00] again with Molly Hjelm. This is your second time on The Middlemen. Thank you for having us here in these hallowed halls. Uh, we were in the 1914 Club earlier today. Um, you know, back there in the, uh, rooftop seats in 2022 That was a bucket item for me I never thought I'd be sitting on top of the Cubs dugout. So thank you thank you, thank you having us here Um, but this was a work day, and why don't you tell me your first thoughts on uh, are you happy about the result  

[00:03:33] Molly Hjelm: I'm so happy, I mean this is such an iconic venue, and we- and ace is an iconic brand. We just had 100 years so it just felt so special to be able to commandeer this venue for this event. Why this event? It just felt, you know, we wanted to celebrate our first year as a retail media network, and we're movin really really fast. And, so, we also wanted to provide, you know, a snapshot in time right now of what our portfolio [00:04:00] looks and to make sure our vendor community were uniformly aware of some of the new launches that we announced today 

[00:04:08] Tom Limongello: Yes, and so it was the Red Vest Media upfront, the first annual hopefully it's here again, I don't know how you're gonna top this. you're going to have to have us having lunch out on the mound, or ya know having the father-son home run derby, I don't know. But, this was great. Um and I think what's also great about it really is nice a year later to talk to you. When you first came on, if you haven't listened to that podcast you should.  

[00:04:34] Tom Limongello: You explained to me the Co-Op Model, different from the Franchise model, that there are 5,300 stores, and that you have really strong online presence. Mm-hmm. I think something like, 50 million uniques,. So those were the headlines.  

[00:04:48] Elevate Meets Retail Media 

[00:05:10] Tom Limongello: But what I learned from the episode onward, couple things happened. One I live in Philadelphia, in Old City there's a 3rd Street Ace, which is a very traditional small footprint Ace. And then up in Fishtown, there's Benito's which has enough room to have Christmas trees out in the parking lot, and, and they have the full Elevate platform And I didn't understand the elevate platform, but listening to Kim Lefko , your CMO, talk about uh, it was interesting. That was a big redesign of stores, but it was very much a merchandising uh, push. Yeah. Right? What does the added, added service of retail media do your mind with Elevate, know, 'cause the Elevate was really about really big brands- Yeah right? 

[00:05:33] Molly Hjelm: Yeah, there are a few things to unpack there. I think  

[00:05:35] Molly Hjelm: what many vendors heard today, what I hope they came away with from, from our chief merchandising officer, from our chief marketing officer, is that Ace is in the business of building with national brands. Yep. go the national brand businesses, um, that sell through Ace, so go our sales trajectory. 

[00:05:54] Molly Hjelm: And so we truly are in the business of growing national brands. You heard that loud and [00:06:00] clear. Elevate that stool where we are redesigning our stores in order to put some of our biggest brands, our most exclusive  

[00:06:07] Molly Hjelm: lines directly in the sight line of customers. What I think is just, uh, an amazing and compelling opportunity that's now available  

[00:06:15] Molly Hjelm: to ubiquitously to vendors through Red Vest Media is that all vendors have the opportunity to be able to be front and center with the valuable Ace customer Um, we have tools that are available at every investment level, um, and it's available to all brands so that they have a toolkit to grow their business at Ace. 

[00:06:34] Tools for Smaller Brands 

[00:06:34] Tom Limongello: Yeah, I was able to talk to some of the smaller brands here, and it's, it's hot today. I won't, I won't shy away from that. And the idea was, you know, what about a Vornado fan? 

[00:06:43] Tom Limongello: Um, you know, electric fans are big. Um, walk me through sort of if the Elevate platform was really about Milwaukee and DeWalt and, you know, the tooling, the grills- Mm ... like really exciting big, marquee brands. How do these smaller brands fit in? You launched some new things today that I think really [00:07:00] help them. 

[00:07:00] Tom Limongello: Mm-hmm. So I wanted to hear sort of in more detail, how do the smaller brands get to play, and what are the tools and tactics that are- Yeah ... available to them? 

[00:07:07] Molly Hjelm: One of the biggest learnings now 10 months in is that we do have, we have uptake from the most strategic, Ace calls them our best brands, the most strategic best brands that sell through Ace. 

[00:07:18] Molly Hjelm: They are using this toolkit, and also those that have just one or two SKUs at Ace or that are trying to grow their distribution at Ace also are using this retail media toolkit among the hundreds of brands that are now, uh, on our platform. What, has been most compelling to them has been kind of the table stakes of retail media. 

[00:07:39] Molly Hjelm: It's the ability to customer on our platform, on search, and on display. We launched our Retailer Reach program, which allows new brands at Ace to engage our retailer community, which has been, phenomenally successful in getting hundreds of retailers to place orders, uh, for some of these emerging brands. 

[00:07:58] Tom Limongello: Yeah, I think it would be interesting to- And so that's a toolkit for [00:08:00] growth ... double click a little on the Retailer Reach, 'cause that was a new term for me.  

[00:08:03] Molly Hjelm: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:08:04] Retailer Reach Explained 

[00:08:04] Tom Limongello: "The best part about Ace, yeah. 

[00:08:06] Tom Limongello: "5,300 stores." . Maiello. The worst part about Ace? 5,300 stores." Yeah. So tell m- tell me about that double-edged sword there. 

[00:08:11] Molly Hjelm: Yeah, and I think it's why Red Vest Media has gotten so much, uh, positive reception both from merchants and from vendors. Because being a co-op has inherent complexity. 

[00:08:21] Molly Hjelm: Yeah. We've got 2,800, over 2,800 independent store owners managing 5,300 stores across the US. When you are looking to grow your distribution at Ace, it's not as simple as engaging with a merchant and getting on a planogram. That's just one step of the journey. From there, a brand then is going to the Ace shows in order to engage with retailers one-to-one, and some of them have field teams that are going out to every store individually trying to convince them to bring their product in. And so retail media actually is of help to our merchants who are trying grow their categories and bring in products that are beneficial to retailers, um, but also to the vendors that are trying to increase their distribution, 'cause it allows them [00:09:00] to get marketing messaging in front of retailers in their ordering Yeah 

[00:09:05] Molly Hjelm: through an email that's in their inboxes daily, and then, um, we're able to educate them on the data behind bringing in certain brands into their stores.  

[00:09:12] Tom Limongello: Yeah, so that was, uh, Anthony Maiello at Stanley Black & Decker- That's right. Yep ... was, was, was the one quoted there. I think that what's interesting about what you said was the beginnings, and I wanna hear, you know, sort of what your take is on this, of Fully, full transparency, full collaboration between retail media and merchandising it sounds like. 

[00:09:32] Tom Limongello: Yeah. 'Cause you had another announcement around, "We're gonna help you get distribution." Yeah. And so I think that's what you started talking about. 

[00:09:37] Molly Hjelm: Yeah, that was our retailer reach solution. 

[00:09:38] Molly Hjelm: That's retailer reach? Yes. Okay. Yes, precisely. But you heard it here we started off the day intentionally and by design with our chief merchandising officer coming in and talking about retail media as a new playbook that vendors can embrace in order to grow their business here. That it's no longer as simple as get your product on shelf and promote it. We need to [00:10:00] collectively work with all the tools in our arsenal in order to grow awareness of and consideration of those products to ensure they're successful on shelf. Um, so you can see it reflected in the agenda of the day, the people that wanted to participate in this day. We had over 50 merchants join us today, um, in the stands, which, um, is fantastic and reflective of that dynamic.  

[00:10:21] Measurement and Impact 

[00:10:28] Molly Hjelm: The biggest areas that the, our merchant team actually, if you don't mind me going there, has pushed us, has been our, in our measurement. Okay. What they... We made some announcements about measurement today, and one of those is reflective of- Our merchants were, in our early days, they were seeing campaign-level results, and I was thrilled to be sharing with them. 

[00:10:40] Molly Hjelm: You know, we're seeing incredible campaign returns, like this is amazing, expecting them to kn- you know, to get it, be excited about it. And I'm looking around the room at kind of blank looks, and our chief mar- merchandising officer turns to me and he's like, "Okay, but what was the total business impact of that campaign?" And it's a challenge I've heard many times [00:11:00] in my retail media career, but here it felt like there was an opportunity to do something different. Let's not ignore the challenge. Let's embrace that friction of if it's just a good campaign and it doesn't move the needle at a market level, it's not good enough. 

[00:11:15] Molly Hjelm: We're in the business of growing brands. How do we build programs that can actually do that for the short and long term? And so we've brought in metrics into our wrap reporting that allows us to see total business impact, not just campaign-level impact, uh, on promoted products, um, of the media that we're running. 

[00:11:33] Social and Influencers 

[00:11:33] Tom Limongello: Not to get to a place where sponsored search and super low funnel performance is the whole shebang you also talked about introducing more social capabilities. And I think that that part of it, we're seeing that from a lot of retailers. We were talking about that with Kroger, with others, um, bringing your I, I think you had some good audience discussions as well today. 'Cause you're a measurement person, let's talk about why social would work with [00:12:00] a retailer. Yeah. Because things, you know, talk to a brand, we're very protective of our social. Mm-hmm. And we wanna be Switzerland, we don't wanna force a hand or something like that. Um, but then, you know, you look and, and other retailers, especially in grocery, are having, what seems like a lot of success getting onto YouTube, getting, social audiences on TikTok. So what do you see? And- Yeah ... what's the job of this upfront to sort of teach that capability as, as something that they should be doing? 

[00:12:30] Molly Hjelm: Great question. You  

[00:12:32] Molly Hjelm: know, expanded our portfolio really intentionally in this first year, and it felt imperative that social be one of the first things that we launch and one of the biggest announcements that we make today. Today, we announced our influencer network through Influential and our social amplification capabilities. 

[00:12:51] Molly Hjelm: Now, why did we do that? Trust is inherent to the Ace brand. Yep. You know when you come into our store you're gonna have a strong experience you're gonna trust the [00:13:00] person that you're working with, that they know the products, that they know the pros and cons, that they know how to use them. We know also that the landscape of customer trust is shifting away from brands, from national brands, and to creators and influencers. 

[00:13:13] Molly Hjelm: Right. And so as a trusted retailer, it felt really important for us to be able to offer tools that allowed us to intercept customers really at that nexus of customer trust in the social platforms.  

[00:13:24] Molly Hjelm: But there's tension there, right? The measurement component, there's tension. Because as you go to the walled gardens, you lose the signal, you lose the ability to close the loop and measure. 

[00:13:34] Molly Hjelm: Right. And so the second half of that announcement in social, the social amplification  

[00:13:39] Molly Hjelm: aspect, is what allows us to take those campaigns, take the creative, amplify it to a deterministic set of Ace customers- Right and measure the impact that,  

[00:13:47] Molly Hjelm: yeah, I think  

[00:13:47] Tom Limongello: that's where the grocers have been seeing some success. I hope that that translates here. Mm-hmm. But I can imagine it, it's difficult for, brands that are in the hardware space where a paint [00:14:00] roller versus paint or, you know, somebody who's a little bit less, sophisticated in this situation. Mm. How do they get to that. level of comfort? So- Yeah ... interesting. I think the amplification one probably the easier of the two. 

[00:14:12] Molly Hjelm: Easy. Yeah. Yep. And, you know, I've that a couple times today, and I... So I'll clarify that one of the other reasons we launched social is in response to the feedback of our vendor community "We see the landscape of trust shifting into social." 

[00:14:26] Molly Hjelm: Yeah. "And so our National Campaigns are shifting to social." Right. "How can you help your toolkit reflect the way that we're investing nationally?" And so we do have the grilling brands, the power tool brands, the, um, pest control brands, where people are doing their research, they're gonna place an investment in something, they wanna feel confident that it works, and they wanna see somebody interacting with that product to build that confidence. 

[00:14:49] Tom Limongello: Yeah. I mean, I, I was looking at the ace app today, which, you know, a really good app for a retailer. There's not a lot of retailers out there that are really nailing the app space. Um, I saw you have almost like a Netflix [00:15:00] style what are the top selling, uh, grills? 

[00:15:02] Tom Limongello: Yeah. And it was Gozney, Gozney, Gozney, Gozney, Gozney, Oon- I think it was nine out of 10 were Gozney. And I was like, so that's an interesting one, not only because it's a h- a very high-end brand, but it's Matty Matheson from The Bear. Mm. And it's like, okay, you know, what type of social are we talking about? Are we talking about- you know, football players and baseball players as the spokesperson? Are we talking about, creators that have a following but are still niche?  

[00:15:32] Tom Limongello: Are they, creators that are very specific to your category? Or are they like micro-influencers- Yeah ...who just sort of like are near the stores, I don't know if there's an answer for that, but- 

[00:15:40] Molly Hjelm: Yeah. I the answer for us is what we're now is not celebrity influencers, um, as far as our Influential partnership. They have a range of kind of the size And scale of The influencers that our, our brands are able to engage, primarily micro-influencers. Yeah. the value is the creator content that then can live on. That [00:16:00] said, we work with vendors and brands that have some of these amazing celebrity partnerships or influencers behind their brands. 

[00:16:06] Molly Hjelm: And so the beauty of the social amplification aspect is if they have a strong campaign, if they've created content, we can amplify that and help that live on through programmatic.  

[00:16:14] Tom Limongello: And I guess that that also helps smooth out the demographics, finding the people who are in the younger generations. Mm-hmm.  

[00:16:21] DoorDash Partnership 

[00:16:21] Tom Limongello: But you also, uh, had a big announcement with doorDash- That's right ... 'cause you That's right. Um, and that was one where JR, in addition to telling us every time we see JR, whether it's at Cannes or here, he's telling us about his sob story, uh- uh, shopping trips or whatever. 

[00:16:36] Tom Limongello: This time it w- he called out somebody from Dap in the audience- Yeah ... and was like, "I needed white caulk." Mm-hmm. "And I needed clear tape for my pool after, you know, some terrible hail- hailstorm." I thought it was great. I think we're probably gonna need to get him on the podcast. He's a lot of fun. But I, I was interested in the, in the discussion more about, um, two things. One was Gen Z. Mm-hmm. He was like, "This is..." And I think you guys said it was, 90% of the [00:17:00] consumers that are coming from there are brand new to Ace or to brand, I forget. What was it? New to Ace. New to Ace. So that's huge. But then it was also your, your, uh, uh, gardening failure story- Oh, yeah ... where, and my wife does this too, which is you didn't buy enough dirt. Yep. For some reason, dirt is, uh, is a difficult one- It's tough ...to gauge. It's a volume thing, I mean. Yeah. Um, know, your answer was, "okay, I I went I worked for Ace, but I don't need to go again. Let's use DoorDash." Yep. So talk to us about what do you... how do you see that as, you know, is it, is it mostly a customer acquisition tool? Mm. it the channel that you wanna blow out? Like, how does it work?  

[00:17:39] Molly Hjelm: Oh, partnership with DoorDash. in general, I'm so bullish on each of these last mile fulfillment partners because they are, as a brick-and-mortar within 15 minutes of 75% of Americans and three miles from 50% of Americans- the ability to get product in hand and kind of have each of those stores [00:18:00] be fulfillment centers for our customer- Yep is what allows us to compete with pure play e-commerce. and so we love this partnership with DoorDash. It's helpful for our retailers who otherwise would need to get into their vehicle and deliver that product to the door. Yep. It's helpful for customers, and as you pointed out, it's extremely helpful for customers that don't even shop at ace right now. 

[00:18:19] Molly Hjelm: It's helping us get in front of a different demographic that maybe isn't gonna come into the store because they're not, you know, they don't own a home, or they're not fixing up their home on a regular basis. they just want the product. And so, um, especially for those in a project mindset, Where you're in the midst of building, you're so locked in, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I forgot the X," or, "My drill went out."  

[00:18:41] Molly Hjelm: And to be able to get it to your door in 30 minutes without having to leave your home allows you to continue to make progress on what you're doing And not have that disruption.  

[00:18:49] Growth and In Store Future 

[00:18:49] Tom Limongello: It was really great to hear all of your execs talk from their different- Mm-hmm uh, position. But you had one at the end, John Surane , who is, um, the chief growth 

[00:18:58] Tom Limongello: officer. Now, first thing when I [00:19:00] saw his name on the agenda, I was like, "Oh, they have a chief growth officer." Mm-hmm. Um, so Seth Dallaire at Walmart is a chief growth officer now after re- leading retail media. Um- he had this great story about how  

[00:19:14] Tom Limongello: Wrigley, uh, you know, was sort of, uh, you know, they were the lovable losers. The Cubs were, Mm-hmm ......you know, not winning. Um, they had a sort of... It wasn't run down, but the stadium could use a facelift, and what he talked about specifically was that the new owners put in these great signs  

[00:19:30] Tom Limongello: which have Red Vest- Mm-hmm ... uh, you know, a baseball diamond on them right now, but you know, also the LED strips . And I think he made a really nice connection to you also need to do that in the store. And so I guess my question to you is, answered it, are you... You know, when you first came on last year, you were like, "Yeah, we're just doing paper signage. Is that okay?" Like, is the hat... Is that not cool enough? Where are you with in-store, either signage, I know there's a partnership with Vuion. Mm-hmm. Like, what's happening in the store, and is it [00:20:00] going fast enough for you? Yeah. Yeah. Um, we did not make any substantial in-store announcements today on stage. Yep. Um, we are absolutely though in exploring and test-and-learn already doing, you're already doing signage, which is part of the retail media program. 

[00:20:16] Tom Limongello: Exactly. Right? Exactly. And that's, in a lot of cases, that's merchandising. Yeah. It isn't seen as retail media, although I think anything where it's messaging and not price and item should be considered, uh, retail media because otherwise at some point you're gonna be like, "Well, if it's all digital"- Yep, yep then w- you know. Um, but I, I am interested in, in sort of generally, like the facelift that wrigley got- Mm-hmm ...Um, is very analogous to what you did with Elevate. Yep. And I think he talked about some really interesting stats that I never heard. 

[00:20:46] Tom Limongello: Um, you went from spending 30 million in enterprise marketing to 240. Yeah. And you've grown from 3 billion to 10 billion, and similar to the cubs, you've, you know, basically he's saying you guys have won some World Series- Mm-hmm ...because [00:21:00] instead of people saying, "I love ace, but I never shop there," they're now shopping there. So tell me about- what is his role as in the upfronts? What w- you know, how does he look at where retail media is? How does it all fit into the organization? Has that changed in the last year? 

[00:21:17] Molly Hjelm: Yeah, So right now, retail media sits within our marketing org. Um, John is a peer to Kim's as our chief growth officer. Historically, the ways to achieve growth  

[00:21:28] Molly Hjelm: were through retail footprint growth. Yeah. And so a lot of... what he has been accountable for has been international growth and our international businesses, our retail footprint businesses, our retail media footprint. 

[00:21:37] Tom Limongello: So a- I honestly, I didn't even think of, I didn't even know you guys were really international. Yeah. I think you might have talked about that. 

[00:21:40] Molly Hjelm: We've got 9,000 stores- Oh, wow. Okay ... internationally. Yeah. We've got 5,300 here. So right now I think it's reflective of the fact that this is so new as a toolkit within Ace. Yes, there are other entities that have really started thinking about retail media as their growth engine, as what somebody in that role would be charged to do, and [00:22:00] I think it was very powerful to have him on stage talking about this as a new as a new toolkit that we're figuring out, and as a way to grow foot traffic to stores and grow retail. 

[00:22:09] Tom Limongello: What do you think is gonna be the impact of this upfront? Obviously, you want it to be a success, um, but you know, the people who you had up here, you had kohler talking about plumbing. Yeah. Yeah. We did. We did. And, and- 

[00:22:21] Molly Hjelm: Plumbing is sexy again, every- 

[00:22:22] Tom Limongello: everybody was very excited about that. You had, uh, as I mentioned, Black & decker talking about you had, um, uh, who was, it? 

[00:22:29] Tom Limongello: There was, there was somebody, Blackstone maybe? Yeah, from 

[00:22:31] Molly Hjelm: blackstone. Or maybe? Blackstone Or pepsiCo pepsiCo 

[00:22:33] Tom Limongello: no, but well, yeah, PepsiCo was interesting as well, but Blackstone talked about the tension in retail media. Yeah. Um, and I was like, I was waiting, like with bated breath to see is anybody gonna, you know, is, is this gonna be seen as a negative comment? But it was that, merchandising and, uh, retail media generally fight and, you know, it's nothing new. But it was interesting to hear a brand talk about it- Mm-hmm saying like, "Are we getting what we want out... of this? Are the budgets too high?" All that stuff. But I think what his [00:23:00] message was, and I heard that echoed when I talked to people over at the batting cages- Mm. ...um, and in the 1914 club, they were all saying like "We love this team." Mm. You and Tyler, you're you're basically, uh, collaborating at a level that even small brands, uh, can benefit from. Yes, this is hard, but the collaboration of merchant and retailer is showing through. Mm. So I guess how do you sort of leverage that good feeling that i'm, I'm hearing? 

[00:23:30] Molly Hjelm: Yeah.  

[00:23:30] Team and Vendor Education 

[00:23:30] Molly Hjelm: I'm proud of that. I wanna click in on that with you for one minute- Yeah ... 'cause I wish I would've said on stage today, and I didn't get the chance, just to highlight the amazing team that we have. One of my biggest surprises coming in as the GM of this network, you- you're- 

[00:23:44] Tom Limongello: Yeah, it's only been a year, 

[00:23:44] Molly Hjelm: so yeah It's only been a year. Good. You typically think like, "I need to go out..." There's been so much conversation about how do you find retail media talent? Media talent? Like, there's these pools of retail media talent. I'm a- an example of that, of somebody that came up from other retail- Yeah ... media networks that they wanted to bring them build it. [00:24:00] I thought I would need to go out and look for retail media talent and r- and recruit them to ace. What I found, I- is that I was able to build a team of folks that have been here for nine years, 12 years, have been in inventory roles, merchandising roles, e-com merchandising roles. And so they have the heart of a merchant, they understand The ace ecosystem, And when my team is working hand-in-hand with vendors, they're with a holistic full business mindset. And I, I think that that's really unusual, but that is part of the stickiness, that's part of what they're experiencing, and I'm so proud that it came out, completely, you know, unscripted and unplanned here on stage today. Um, I forgot where our question is going. What- what- 

[00:24:40] Tom Limongello: Well, I mean, I- I was looking at, you know, if- if you're seeing the- Oh, what- what happens next, if you're seeing the, the smaller brands, like the smaller brands, whenever I talk to pet food brands or other brands in the CPG space- Mm-hmm ...they're always like, "You gotta do one tactic," or- Yeah. Oh, sure, yeah ... you gotta do- you gotta- you can only do so much. Yeah. Right? And so I guess you guys have a- a different approach where [00:25:00] you're- you're merging some of the merchandising and retail capabilities, you're helping people with distribution in store, and things like that, And so- what do you think you need to do to make sure that this all-hands, you know, this, this great team- Mm-hmm that you have- Yeah ...is helping those smaller brands, or even the bigger ones, in ways where the next level of scale- Yeah, yeah ... 'cause, you know, my, my guess is that you guys, you know, had... Some of the people who were on stage were obviously the, the rookies of the year mm-hmm. Um, but the, some of the people in the crowd were, are just dipping their toe in, or they only have been here since July. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So what do you see as the, you know, looking into '27? Yeah. 

[00:25:35] Molly Hjelm: You're saying, what's the goal of this event? What are we doing? Yeah. The event is one thing. What happens after this event? Yeah. For me I said it on stage, one of the things that has surprised me in this past year is just that not every vendor has had a ubiquitously positive experience of retail media coming in. Yeah. Um, and so in executing their first campaigns with us, we were maybe their very first measured and positive experience, a [00:26:00] performant experience of retail media. The benefit of an event like this is we can share with our full vendor community in one room. We can show how does it fit into the landscape of what we're building at Ace. What's the foundation underlying the media network? Who's behind it? And then for them to hear firsthand from their peers how it works, what they've learned. So it's an educational event, but coming after that, I'm hoping that the partnership conversations we can have are more brass tacks around, all right, here's where your business is. You understand now what's available to you and the power of it. Let's build a plan that makes sense for you, and we're gonna help you win in 2027 and beyond.  

[00:26:37] Wrap Up and Next Stops 

[00:26:37] Molly Hjelm: All right. And so we will see you at Ascendant Next. 

[00:26:41] Molly Hjelm: Um, are you doing Adweek? Like, what's, what's next for you? Where can people find you? We will be, we'll be at Ascendant next week in New York. 

[00:26:48] Molly Hjelm: We'll be, um, we will be at Adweek. kind of the retail media circuit. Um- Mm-hmm ... but they can find us, they can find us right here in Oak Park. They can find me in Cincinnati . 

[00:26:57] Tom Limongello: Wow. It was a delight to be here in [00:27:00] Chicago Um, thanks again. 

[00:27:02] Molly Hjelm: Thank you so much, Tom. Thanks for being here for the day, and thank you for the interview. All right. Fantastic. ​