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Chris Grouchy
Co-founder at Convictional - Supplier Enablement for Enterprise Retailers
Chris Grouchy is the President and Co-founder of Convictional, a company that focuses on enabling brands to sell through third-party retailers. Under his leadership, Convictional has grown significantly, and he has been recognized for his contributions to the retail and e-commerce sectors.
Background and Experience
- Previous Roles: Before founding Convictional, Chris worked in sales at Shopify Plus, where he gained valuable experience in e-commerce and retail technology.
- Leadership at OSTA: He served as CEO of the Ontario Student Trustee Association (OSTA), where he implemented initiatives aimed at increasing transparency and engagement among educational stakeholders in Ontario. His tenure there was marked by the launch of an annual survey that informed education policy-making in the province.1
Recognition
Chris Grouchy has recently been honored as part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2024 in the Retail & E-commerce category, highlighting his impact and innovation in the industry.3
Current Focus
As of August 2024, Chris announced that he will be stepping down from his role at Convictional to pursue new opportunities, marking nearly seven years of building the company.2
His vision and collaborative approach have been instrumental in shaping both his ventures and the organizations he has been involved with.
Highlights
Mind blown when @LouisKnightWebb told me that >800B lines of COBOL still run on mainframes within financial services, aviation, health care, insurance, government, retail, etc.
bloop (@bloopdotai) is single-handedly modernizing enterprises. Very bullish
https://t.co/N4wfBQY3ed
STOP THE TAX ON WHOLESALE
Over the past 2 months, Becca, Bill, Roger, and I talked to dozens of brands (mainly CEOs, CFOs, VPs of Finance etc.) about hard problems involved in selling to large retailers.
Most talked about a recurring theme: wholesale chargebacks.
What are wholesale chargebacks?
A tax (or fine) that brands pay to retailers for a variety of potential issues — mislabeling a box, short shipping on a pallet, EDI data issues (par for the course), not using the correct hangers for a clothing item (seriously), and literally hundreds of other possible reasons.
They range in size. 1-5% of wholesale revenue is lost or disputed to chargebacks. Insane.
Our learning:
- Wholesale chargebacks create misaligned incentives:
- They are VERY profitable for retailers. They may want to grow wholesale chargebacks.
- Vendors hate wholesale chargebacks because it eats into their margins.
- The net result is usually a game of cat and mouse with the price of goods.
So the supplier raises prices to the retailer, and the retailer passes those higher prices on to the consumer. It’s a zero sum game.
- No wholesale PO is safe from chargebacks
- Up to 5% of wholesale revenue can be disputed or, worse, result in hard-earned wholesale revenue being withheld.
- Each wholesale order needs to comply perfectly with a retailer’s requirements.
Requirements are buried in 100+ pages worth of compliance documents that the retailer imposes to their vendors. It's an obstacle course.
- Wholesale chargebacks are painful to dispute and resolve
- Retailers usually give the vendor an opportunity to provide evidence or respond to a chargeback claim — the analogy is like fighting a parking ticket, but multiply the amount of each ticket by 10-100x
- Some retailers just agree to voiding the chargeback if a supplier even bothers to submit a response (!)
Depending on the reason for the chargeback, this could result in hours of time spent communicating with the retailer, collecting and organizing evidence (like a lawyer defending their client — or a supplier defending their revenue).
- Most brands/vendors don’t respond meaningfully
- When chargeback volume is high, then it’s up to someone (usually in finance or ops within the brand) to spend time managing and fighting them.
- A lot of brands just allow chargebacks to happen and move on with their time because of how time-consuming they are to deal with.
It’s time for brands to reclaim all of their hard-earned wholesale revenue. Today, we're launching a new product:
Introducing Convictional Chargebacks.
Chargebacks helps brands manage wholesale chargebacks and dispute them without effort.
We make it super easy for brands to retrieve evidence and dispute incoming chargeback tickets — taking response times from months to just minutes. It also works with any retailer.
If you’re a brand who wants to test it out, you can skip our waitlist by DM’ing me directly. Check out the post below!
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Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
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Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
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Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
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Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
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