Get ready for the holiday rush with this special Omni Talk Retail Spotlight episode!

Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga sit down with Natalija Pavic, the Senior Product Marketing Manager at Salesforce Commerce Cloud and host of the Commerce Cloud Innovations podcast, and Melissa Dallmeyer, the Global Leader of Enterprise & Mid-market Partnerships at Avalara, to discuss how retailers can best prepare for the busy holiday season.

From the benefits of composable and headless commerce to the critical importance of tax compliance, our guests break down the tools and strategies retailers need to ensure a smooth, profitable holiday season. Whether it’s optimizing site speed, managing customer personalization, or avoiding costly mistakes during peak shopping times, this episode is packed with insights to help your business succeed.

Key moments from the interview include:

• [0:08] – Introduction
• [1:04] – Kicking off the holiday retail prep conversation: What retailers should expect?
• [5:04] – Natalija explains headless vs. composable commerce and why it’s essential for holiday preparation.
• [10:06] – Melissa covers the importance of tax compliance and seamless integrations for retail success.
• [13:12] – How composable architectures help retailers react quickly to unexpected crises during the holiday season.
• [17:00] – Real-world examples of costly mistakes retailers make and how to avoid them.
• [24:50] – Final advice on testing systems, ensuring fast checkouts, and keeping operations running smoothly during peak times.
• [31:03] – Wrapping up: Last-minute tips for holiday retail success and how to connect with today’s guests.

Tune in to learn how to prepare for a successful holiday season and get ahead of potential crises before they happen!

For content like this and more from Natalija Pavic listen to the Salesforce Commerce Cloud Innovations Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/3Ishg29W

#ecommerce #taxcompliance #tax #retail

Music by hooksounds.com

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I am one of your co hosts for today's interview, Chris Walton. Thanks And I'm in Mazinga and it's late September and retail is heating up. And that can mean only one thing. And you know what that is? Uh, it's holiday time. It is. Yes. You nailed it. Yes. We are getting ready for the holidays. Every retail, pumpkin spice lattes are coming out, Chris.

I mean, it's time, like, we're going to have prime week in two weeks. Like let's just, let's bring it all on. Let's it's time. The holidays are here. Forget fall. Yeah. Yeah. Starbucks has had their pumpkin spice latte at the ready here for a while now, but yes, yes, any retailer worth their salt is got their heads down and they're getting ready for the holidays.

So as is typical, uh, our OmniTalk followers are likely going to see hundreds, if not thousands of different holiday preparation guides out there over the next month or so. And so Anne and I, we got together, we said, we want to approach this holiday preparation season a little bit differently. We want to do something different.

So we got to thinking and we said to ourselves, you know, the service providers, they always see the mistakes that retailers run into each and every year. So why not bring them onto our program to get their perspectives on how to make the most of the holiday season. And so it is with great pleasure that we introduce today's guests.

Natalia Pavic, the product man, the product marketer at Salesforce commerce cloud, and Melissa Dallmeyer, the global leader of enterprise and mid market partnerships at Avalara. Natalia, Melissa, welcome to OmniTalk. Hello. Thank you for having me. Hi there. It's great to have you both. Yeah. We're so excited to have both of you on.

And I love this approach. You see so much happen during the holidays. So it's so fun to actually hear from you in advance. Like what are the mistakes that most of the retailers, uh, and brands listening can avoid this holiday. But before we do that, I love if we can just give a little bit of each of your backgrounds, um, and kind of your roles at your companies.

So Melissa, why don't we have you go first? Yeah. Hi, everyone. Again, Melissa Dahlmeyer. Uh, and I manage a team of experts that are responsible for Avalara's most important partnerships, both on the ERP and the e commerce side. Uh, you know, it's so exciting to talk today about all the cool new innovations and ways that retailers can touch their customers and transact quickly.

We live, we're kind of the biggest company that you don't know exists in that magic moment of commerce, where our job is to make sure Any tax compliance needs are managed. And so my team makes sure we not only do we have all the tax needs that you have from a compliance sales tax perspective, but the integrations that we work well within technologies, like key partners, like Salesforce.

Uh, yes, we know firsthand that, uh, you definitely need to have your taxes in order before the holidays because trying to figure it out on December 31st before the year is over is not a good solution. Right, Chris? That is a hundred percent. Right. Yes. And Melissa, I would take umbrage with that because I think our Omnitalk fans definitely know about Avalara for sure.

Our most loyal listeners definitely know about you all. So. Natalia, why don't we go to you next? Yeah. And I love Chris. You call me the product marketer. Yeah. Right. I did. I noticed that when I did that. I'll take it. I'll take it. Thanks for just letting me out on that. Yes. I'm a product marketer here at Salesforce.

I I'm actually in the commerce cloud team, which is our e commerce platform. I don't know how many people know that we run some of the, you know, Best and biggest retailers worldwide. And we have a lot riding on our shoulders in terms of responsibility for uptime this holiday season. Um, so it's really interesting to dive into both.

Like what the data says, we have a ton of aggregate anonymized data from our customers and how they're performing. And also just to talk a little bit about the platform and what's out there, since we are, of course, the most, I would say, trusted and performant platform out there for the holidays. So excited to talk about that and more with you.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks. both for being here again. Thanks for those introductions. So. You know, I, we, when, and I were talking about this podcast, you know, we thought it was probably a, probably a good idea before we get too deep into it to set some guardrails or some, some definitions on some of the phrases or words that are going to, that are going to come up a lot in this discussion.

So, so I want to do that to start. So this idea of composable versus headless commerce, what's the difference. Are those actually the same thing? Can you set the table for us and give us a little background history lesson on how the average retailer is approaching their e commerce architectures today with, with those terms in mind?

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I mean, look, first I'll define headless. So headless means where you own your own front end and the vendor doesn't own it for you. Um, so that means that you're responsible for managing that front end. So a lot of people may not be familiar, but mobile and kiosks are the OG headless applications because those are typically not owned by the vendor.

Um, so I think. Most retailers have always done headless. They may not be aware of that, but a lot of people have moved to do the big digital storefront to go headless. Um, and they've sort of, you know, used to bolt on their own CMSs or a CMS plus their own stuff. Um, and so that's really headless in a nutshell, um, where you're just sort of interacting with the vendor from an API only perspective.

And then composable is sort of the aftermath of headless, not. You know, not sort of meeting the industry standards or the industry requirements all the time. Uh, we know that if you are owning your own front end, then you have to worry about your own uptime. That's really scary to be like, yeah, ha we are responsible for a holiday uptime.

You have to own your own hosting, your own security ISIS certifications, and that's a lot of responsibility to put on a brand or retailer is so composable like the next iteration evolution of headless where vendors are providing solutions in that composable space. I think, you know, we, we offer obviously something called managed runtime where we take care of your hosting, we take care of your uptime.

And we give you a set of tools to build your composable, your composable storefront. But there's a ton of sort of, um, variation in this definition. It's not set in stone. It's still being like defined by the market. And so different people have different versions of what composable means to them. So it's more like a philosophy.

It's like if we could do best to breed technologies and, and still, you know, basically get everything we want, that's composable. Natalia, what does it take for a retailer who may have been doing headless sales for to go to Composable? Like, is there, what's that transition like? That's an excellent question.

So it's actually, I would say it's a lot easier to go from headless to Composable than to go from an all in one solution to a headless solution. Um, there are some API only vendors out there where every single API has to be connected and functioning day one for your entire operation before you can even turn on the site.

And that's really, really, really hard. Um, but we offer a solution called, which we are calling hybrid composable. Uh, which is like, yeah, Salesforce is really bad because we like to pander to our customers and just like give them whatever they want. And so we're like, okay. You want to keep some of your site on a sort of all in one solution you can.

If you want to put some of your site on a composable solution you can. And so that, that means you can take the checkout, something that's tried and true, keep it as is until you've sort of moved other bits to our composable storefront. And so we have sort of like a, a layered approach. We say that composability is a spectrum, and you can sort of on one end be all in one, on the other one be headless, completely headless, and somewhere in the middle is where most brands are now moving towards.

Yeah, is that the bulk of what most brands are moving towards? And what's the history been to in this conversation? Like, where did we, where were we and where did we, where are we, where are we now? And where have we been? I think, I think Headless blew up because, um, when we take a look at sort of the existing storefronts.

Uh, there was a lot of like, well, I want to improve and innovate my experience, and I don't want my site to look like what the site looks like for everybody that has this vendor. Um, and then it became very like tech driven conversations. So the techies and the developers kind of love the idea because a created more work for them.

Let's be real. Um, but it also gave them more freedom of flexibility, and then they were sort of burdened with technical debt. Because what happened is they Vendors were not ready to meet the API first, um, situation and so they provided solutions, but then what happened is in order to connect all those APIs and best of breed solutions, they had to create a lot of what's called glue code, meaning code that holds different, um, a connector basically to different API first systems.

And so that has created Created a lot of technical debt, difficult to manage. Um, now we have, you know, I see, I'm biased, I think Salesforce is the leading solution, but we have incredible composable, um, solutions out there that are lifting people out of that technical debt into a more performance system.

And I think the future is very bright. Like if you want to ask me about the future now, I could like talk about that or later because it might take a while, but I'm very, very excited about, uh, the next phase of composable. Well, Melissa, I'd love for you to jump in here too. Um, why, why is composability so key as retailers are really like looking to be successful during the holidays?

Yeah. Well, and I, I echo Natalia's enthusiasm. One from a technology perspective, especially within the Avalare, you need a, a way to tether into all those different solutions and all those different technologies and being API first. So making sure that tech works is super exciting. And now, you know, it used to be about growth, growth, growth.

Now it's all about innovation versus profitability. Like how quickly can you get time to value? How quickly can you get things to your customer in a personalized way? So that is all very exciting to me from a creating new experiences and new channels. And obviously that adds more complexity to tax. So we want to, we want to cover that for customers and make sure they've got that going.

Um, what, what I am also thinking about too, is from a business perspective, Using the retailer at the center. Like, where are you transacting? What avenues do you want to go in? What additional marketplaces you like? What is the world look like for the consumer you're trying to get to and making sure you're covering that with like the business purpose first.

So there's the tech stuff, which is super, super cool. But then getting at the center of what they're trying to do. And there's all the sorts of cool things that, you know, Natalia has been talking about from a personalization search perspective. So there's the tech stuff that's super sweet. And then it's the.

Actual experience part, um, that, that's also super thrilling. Melissa, one question I have too is like, compo, when I think of the word, just the word composability, I often think of the term flexibility too, like that those two words go hand in hand. So, so why is, why is that so important as we head into the holidays particularly?

I mean, I know Natalia said let's talk, let's talk about where the future's going. Well, yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about the next two months, what we're gonna see here. So why is composability flexibility so important as we head into the holiday season? Yeah, when I can, I can just start it out is, is that, uh, there is, you have to get to your customer and, and time to value time to getting what they want needs to be done much more quickly.

It's been very cool. If you go to any conference now, everything's AI, AI, AI, AI, and like. The consumer is getting much more comfortable that you can use their data as long as you use their data, as long as you use it in a ethical way that gets in the solution they want. So retailers looking today to say, okay, what are all the avenues?

I can, I have a very short period of time of getting my, my product, the product that customer wants. In a very short period of time. How do I create that experience? That part is really thrilling to us. Our job on the backend is just to make sure no matter how avenue, however flexible you go, we've got you covered from a compliance standpoint.

We want you to do the fun stuff and just sell, sell, sell, and be able to provide those expensive, those experiences for retailers. Our job on the backend is to make sure you're able to do that at scale. And, and tax is not even something you think about. Um, but I'll, I'll, I'll leave it to Natalia to talk about some of the other cool stuff she's seeing from like how they're actually changing the experience for customers.

Well, yeah, and the other point that I want to ask Natalia about, ask Natalia about right off the bat too is, you know, the other thing that happens during the holidays is there's tons of crises that come up. And so I would imagine that the architectural theories that you've been espousing help retailers to respond more effectively to that.

Is that a correct assumption? Yeah, but I think actually the narrative's changing a bit. I don't think in the past we thought about composability as a holiday assistant. Um, I think that's something that we're considering more and more. There's two reasons why composability can help. The primary is like really site speed and it's how it arrives at site speed because we know.

Obviously, performance is important during the holidays, there's a huge peak and we know from research that we've done here at Salesforce, um, shout out to Kayla Schwartz, one of our directors of research and insight. This is going to be the most peaky holiday season, meaning that the volume is going to spike in a smaller time frame and consumers are going to be more value driven than ever before because of that.

you know, the entire economic climate. And so I think what some retailers are considering, maybe not enough, I don't know if enough of them are considering this is when you go composable, you move from a page that loads in its entirety to a page that loads in components, AKA. Right. That's why it's composable.

And so it increases the speed, but also you can, uh, manage some pages on composable and so you can make some aspect of the site faster without jeopardizing your core set of operations. And that's, what's great about our partners like Avalara that are creating composable solutions and, uh, enabling, uh, Um, that aspect.

So that's, that's sort of one reason is, is really kind of like focusing on site speed, but there's obviously a risk, right? Um, the risk is the API calls then go shoot through the roof because now you're functioning, you know, in this more sort of, uh, best to read, um, environment and then you have third parties.

So there's, um, A whole bunch of trust stuff that you have to consider if you're going to do that. And so therefore selecting the right partner, right vendor is key that has performance support for API calls, right? So that's hopefully, sorry, hopefully I'm not going too into the weeds. No, it's great. Yeah.

Well, the only other thing I'd add is, is, and this is all logical. It's like in those, as you're adding these new components, you have to test, test, test, right? Prepare for the unexpected, uh, load balancing any, and just have a plan. So, I mean, this is not rocket science, but more than ever, as the complexity continues, you need to test that much further.

Well, and one question that you're both making me think of, and we kind of joked about at the beginning about like holiday season starting in two weeks, but prime day starting in two weeks and Walmart's going to be doing things and target we'll be doing all these other major retailers are going to be doing things Earlier.

And so I imagine based on what you're saying, Natalia, that the, the peaks will be a longer for a longer period of time than they maybe ever have before. Is there a time that retailers in order to be successful, like, is there a time that they should be doing this? Like, should they be, they be reorganizing their sites or converting to composable commerce?

Like, months in advance, year in advance, like, how does that all come together? How do you think about that? Um, definitely at least six months in advance of the holiday, there should be like, to Melissa's point, a team in place to be prepared, contingency plans. But I think you're, you're hitting on something interesting, which is that like, it's not just the holiday season.

Um, there are some companies like Party City. That gets a spike during Halloween, right? So you've got different times of the year that are peaky for different businesses. For B2B commerce, this is fascinating, it's end of quarter, end of fiscal. Um, and so you have different peak times for different types of industries and different types of businesses.

So performance is, unfortunately, something that will both keep you up at night, but also you should be thinking about constantly. And so that's not good for your anxiety. Um, but you should probably be thinking about that on a longer term basis and sort of anticipating the unexpected in case it does happen.

Yeah, and before I get to that, I just wanted to add on to what you just said, um, I think one of the most fascinating use cases of, um, handling a high traffic is our, is the American Red Cross. So the American Red Cross is actually a customer of ours. And during hurricanes, they get a lot of visits. to order first aid kits.

So could you imagine, like look, we may not get our Christmas wish list, but could you imagine if that site went down when people needed it the most? Um, and so what's fascinating is the way people are using what we've traditionally built for holiday season for retailers to literally save lives. Whenever I think about that, it gives me goosebumps.

So anyway, just wanted to leave you with that little tidbit, but back to your question. Oh, it's a great, it's a great example. Yeah. It's a great example of like this problem that you're talking about exists in many different industries at different times of the year. Yeah. So I think personalization is one that, uh, frequently is either something that retailers are like, Oh, we got to do more of, but I don't know if they're connecting that to the holidays necessarily.

And search is an under optimized area. We find that search could be a lot better, uh, for, uh, for a lot of our retailers out there. Um, but holidays are, you know, The one time of the year that like you don't actually want your customers to linger. Most of the time you're benchmarking how long they stay on your site, but the holidays you're like, how can I get them off ASAP?

So you actually want them to be there, mission critical, find what they're looking for, and then off road them off to the cart, off to the checkout. And that's gonna make it so that you're not handling, um, high traffic at all times, and that's impeding the purchaser conversion. So. And predictive has, like, there's obviously a lot of us are talking about generative these days, but predictive, um, AI still has a good amount to grow and have retailers adopt that technology, but everything from product recommendations to, like, search, like, affinity search or vector search, affinity being, like, cool, this is what you're looking for, but based on your profile, we think that this is actually what you need, and so it's, like, next level, and so we have, um, companies like Constructor, who are one of our partners that do that, um, Um, those are really, really important.

And like, also, just shout out to Melissa and Avelera, being able to see the right tax information ahead so that you're not surprised, so that there's no, um, abandoned cart, right? So that you're not like thinking twice, oh, I didn't factor in the tax. Uh, that's all really, really important. Um, and then third parties as well, I will say.

So if you've got a ton of different systems, um, maybe even turning off some of the functionality that is extra or extraneous, just until you survive this period and then turning it back on later. Yeah, that's really, that's really interesting. The idea that you want to actually get people off your site as quickly as possible through checkout as quickly as possible.

Get out of here. Get that present. Which Melissa is definitely your sweet spot. So like, uh, what, what, when you start thinking about checkout, what is it that the retailers have to get right from your standpoint? Ooh, yes. Yes. Uh, so if everything You know, there's a direct correlation between the flexibility and the various ways that you can co, that you can do commerce to the tax complexity.

The most important is really understanding where you are transacting, not only your physical location, but also where you're actually, um, having your commerce take place. There's a thing called economic nexus where you know if you are transactioning in a state in a certain volume, um, mm-hmm, . It requires you to pay tax, and it's not just you have to understand where, then you have to actually register within those states.

If there's obviously other global implications, and then you've got to calculate the right tax at the right time. You do not want to make that mistake at the magic moment of commerce because you know, you're never going to get that back. Uh, and then there's also, you know, making sure that you track things if there are areas where you have an exemption, uh, and then, then you've got to actually, uh, remit.

So all of those steps. Every time you're adding a new avenue to sell. If you're working in a marketplace that all has implications and just keep changing. So our goal is to make sure that is not something that you think about. It never holds you up. Um, so we want to make sure we have that happening. And then the other thing is resiliency.

You cannot be stuck in checkout, right? That that is a key piece. We make sure we are transacting. There are a zillion, uh, like a trillion transactions happening at a moment. So we make sure underneath it all, you know, things, things that other companies can model, but retailers is that from a reliability standpoint, we are in multiple data centers.

We are in multiple public clouds. We understand how to move and pivot so that we have that resiliency, especially when you've got those peaks coming up, especially for, for the season coming up ahead of time. Well, and the other thing too, that I think we forget about, and you know, there's, this is one from, I know it's a big thing in fraud, but also when you're shipping to a different location than where you're buying from, right.

Melissa, like that's a big deal because the tax implications. You kind of get thrown for a loop there too, because you're paying based on where it's going versus not where it's being purchased. Right? Yes. Yes. And that's, I mean, this is not the fun things. Those are the scary things. We just, our job is to help you with risk mitigation so that you can go in those new channels.

It gets sloppy. So in the, obviously it gets sloppy. Yeah. Mistakes to make is just make sure you've got a digital solution that is compliant with those, all those composable pieces you're putting together. Make sure you have something that, that is not going to hold you up. And you pick a vendor that is able to touch in all those different avenues.

Um, so once you've got that covered, then you get to do, just keep adding on those building blocks to touch your customers. Well, I, I think some of the best ways to illustrate what you both been talking about sometimes are to talk about maybe some anecdotes or any examples where retailers or brands have made really big mistakes.

What have they done wrong, um, along these dimensions during the holiday season that could have been avoided? And of course you don't have to name names, but it's really fun when you can so that we can know I'm just kidding. But, uh, but no, if you wouldn't mind giving, uh, giving some examples, each of you that maybe would help illustrate again for our audience, just where they really need to pay attention.

Melissa, anything that comes to mind for you first? Oh, I don't want to call out because we work with lots and lots of what would typically come. I won't make you do it. No, you don't Melissa. We know you don't it's fine in times of crisis, right? They're either getting audited or they realize way after the fact that they You know, uh, they should have remitted certain taxes or, or they should have collected additional taxes because they were transacting in a certain area that they didn't account for.

So, I mean, knowledge is power and then just make sure, and I mean, now we're in an age where most people are having automated solutions that can keep up and integrate before. I think in past conversations, we're like, don't try to do this on your own. Like, it'll be a mess. I think we're past that. It's just make sure you're picking a vendor that is changing with the speed of technology.

If you have an on prem disparate. They're not going to be able to keep up. You might have to refresh or, or, or. Implement, implement a new integration that's missing those components. So like, I won't call, I don't want to call it any names, but, but we've definitely had lots where, where, uh, customers were like, Oh my gosh, like this has cost me multiple millions of dollars to take that I didn't realize.

And I could, I could think of business, right? So that's just the, that's the non, we like to focus on the areas for what way to expand them and have them make more money areas. You can, uh, you have exemption certificates. You don't need to pay tax here and here. Just make sure you track this and keep this out.

That's the fun stuff we try to do. But ultimately we just got a lot of war stories. So we're trying to, I appreciate you let me speak on podcasts like this, to be like, let's get ahead of it. Right. Well, no, I think it's so important too, because I mean, it's, it's just tackling, tackling those things can be overwhelming for the audience listening, like at any time of the year, but on top of, you know, the holiday season, when you are at, you know, peak traffic coming to your site and you're trying to get things delivered on time, like there's, it's just, it's not the time to be faced with these types of crises.

Yeah. And retailers want to relax after the holidays and they don't want to go back and true up their accounting mistakes, you know, like that's the last thing any retailer wants to do. Right. Well, Natalia, I'd love to hear from you too, because I'm sure in your role, you see all kinds of examples. Um, what's, what are some kind of watchouts that you would give the audience?

Uh, yeah, absolutely. And actually, I totally forgot that I came here to promote my podcast and I like forgot to mention it in my intro. So I just wanted to say like, I'm also the host, founder and host of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud Innovations podcast. And the story I'm going to tell today is actually a story from my colleague who's going to interview on the podcast.

Um, this is my story. Yeah. Uh, but I will shout out and say, um, Sorry, Salesforce has 100 percent uptime during Cyber Week, so I don't really have any horror stories. Um, but it will speak to non Salesforce customers. Um, so I think something that's come up for us and is this idea of a commerce island. We have a lot of single point vendors that are focused and purpose built for single function, but what's happening with e commerce is we're noticing more and more that the E is getting dropped, and E is not up.

e commerce anywhere. It's actually just commerce. And so this concept of omni channel is kind of going away and we have commerce anywhere. Um, and so data is becoming more and more important. So of course we've got data cloud, we're releasing it, you know, agent force, and we're releasing a ton of stuff to connect and personalize.

And I think actually The personalization is where the mistakes happen. Um, so I'll give you a story. I actually don't know who it is, but, uh, my colleague's mother in law was purchasing a wedding dress, a dress for a wedding. And um, she bought it, got it fitted, loved it, took it home, but she had shopped and researched for it online and left a version of that dress in the cart.

And then she went in store and purchased it. And three weeks later, or sometime later, the retailer sent her. 30 percent off promotion for things in her cart when she had already purchased the item. Oh, wow. Can you guess what she did? She returned the existing dress and bought the dress online again. And so this is another sort of similar to Melissa's example is kind of leaving money on the table because you're not connecting your order history with your abandoned cart information and you're not understanding where, not actually understanding where the customer is in their journey.

And so you're giving out. uncoordinated promotions, you may be losing 30 percent of that sale that you've already made. So you're losing sale, you're sort of losing money post purchase. But then also you're, you're giving the customer a bad taste because it already paid for that dress, already settled on it, was very happy with it.

Now she had to go through this whole rigmarole of return and purchase, which was a hassle. Um, even though, hey, good news is she got 30 percent off, right? But that's a, that's a great example of like what we want to avoid, especially during the holiday season. You don't want to double, double tack transactions.

Yeah. You don't want to leak profit either as a result, right? Yeah, exactly. That's the key there. Well, um, any, any other closing advice that you would have, um, as we wrap up the conversation, anything that, you know, you'd advise in the, in the last few weeks that retailers have to, to make changes or updates or to prioritize.

Um, Melissa, we'll start with you. Maybe. Yeah. Well, in the stage where everyone is right now, now it's, it's, it's, it's. Testing and making sure you are ready. Like that at this point, like come call me after we'll talk about tax and have all that fun stuff, get through the holidays. But right now it's just making sure as you add, making sure all of those, the flexible APIs are working the way they should test things out, um, and just, um, get ready for some fun.

I think my advice is mostly for the future because I think to Melissa's point, it's really close to go time right now. Um, I think what you could consider next year, um, is, so I'm a bit of a, I would like to call myself like your worst shopper because I always complain about everything, but also like I'm maniacal about gift giving and I think about gifts through the whole year.

And so I would love to have. holiday wishlist gift registry so that I can keep all of my gift ideas organized and ready to go. Um, and so if you could, you know, if you're listening to this, you can oblige me, please create those. Um, yeah. Yeah. I like to ask for things. I come on pods and ask for stuff. So thank you.

That's great. That's great. Um, Yeah. And you know, I'm going to jump in on this one too. I don't usually do this, but you know, having spent two years in the field running stores and then three years roughly in the holiday, uh, war rooms for e commerce at Target, like the two things I would say is you can't continuity and contingency plan enough, and also lots and lots of coffee.

You got to have a lot of coffee to get you through the holidays each and every year. That would be my two pieces of advice for everyone listening. Definitely coffee machine is on my wishlist. Yes, exactly. Well, thank you both so much. I want to just let you know how much we really appreciate you sharing all of your insights with our audience.

Um, if people want to get in touch with each of you, um, let's give them a way to do that. Natalia, I'll start with you first. Cool. So first you can follow my podcast and only then, no, I'm just kidding. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, um, just search Natalia Pavic, I'm happy to connect and yeah. Follow for more.

All right. Excellent. Melissa. Yeah. So appreciate the time. Uh, uh, you can contact me also through LinkedIn or my emails, Melissa. dollmeyer at avalara. com. Excited to chat more. That wraps us up. Thank you so much to Natalia and Melissa for sitting down with us today. Thanks to all of you who listened in and as always on behalf of all of us here at Amitak, be careful out there.