Specialty Retail needs help. I know this as the founder and owner of San Francisco Running Company, a running specialty store in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Seemingly daily headlines announce generic big box retailers closing because of the catch-all “Amazon effect.” Ultimately this is consumers choosing to replace an uninspiring brick-and-mortar shopping experience with marginally more convenient online shopping. If you dig deeper though, you’ll see there is plenty of room for success for specialty retailers who offer experiential retail environments and who build community centered around the category that is served. Paramount to this success is a retail staff that is best in breed when it comes to service, knowledge and advice when helping customers with purchase decisions.

Specialty retailers (as an example in the sports world — think stores focused specifically on running, cycling, ski/snow, surf/skate, fly fishing, etc) can be successful if they have staff that is trained on the latest technical aspects of the products that they offer. Customers travel to San Francisco Running Company from all over the country for expert advice on footwear, apparel and gear that can help with achieving running goals, be it to lose weight, break a time goal in the marathon or to complete a 100 mile race through the mountains. Specialty retail service and advice is not easily replicated in an online shopping experience. A knowledgeable staff is instrumental in knowing every small detail in the gear that they offer so that they can outfit customers with the products most appropriate to help each customer achieve their own specific goals.

Sales training, especially technical product training is basically non existent in the running specialty space. Running is the largest adult sport in the USA as measured by participation. Suffice it to say that technical product training has also been lacking in other specialty retail channels such as the categories listed earlier in the article.

Specialty retailers are often staffed first by enthusiasts of the category that the retailer is focused on and that is a great thing, though at a certain point that does not scale. As product count and employee count increase there needs to be an easier way for all employees to be trained on the details of the latest product releases and updates. Web 2.0 has tried to solve this but the results thus far are lacking.

Experticity has made a feeble attempt at solving retail training in the active-lifestyle space. If you are a brand/product manufacturer reading this I can honestly say that the Experticity training modules leave much to be desired. I personally enjoy the steep discounts on gear that we don’t already carry at the shop, but if you are a brand thinking that Experticity is a site that is providing anything close to adequate sales training for retailers or influencers, then you are being egregiously misled.

Myagi is a more recent service focused on creating the conduit for brands to more effectively train retail staff. The Myagi product is lightyears ahead of Experticity with regards to media integration for sales training and aspects of the product are fun (gamification! leaderboards!), however they still seem to be missing the key aspect of light incentives to drive participation both from brands and retailers. To me the loop still feels open and incomplete.

This is all great, but you mentioned Simple Token in the title, what does any of this have to do with a B2B blockchain company?

I do believe we are living through the next major inflection point in internet technology. It is no single day or year, but we are in the period that will be looked back on as when blockchain gave rise to new protocols and businesses building the next development stage of the internet. If you are unfamiliar with Simple Token check out this Medium post or head to the Simple Token website to familiarize yourself with the product they are developing.

Remember the open (incomplete) loop of the Myagi product? Simple Token is the plug-in product to complete that loop between brand, retailer and retail associate. The right incentives can be a powerful dynamic to build an ecosystem that empowers retail employees to provide the highest level of service to customers hungry for knowledge and advice.

Simple Token provides the protocol for businesses to offer a private token economy on side blockchains. In our use case this allows a sales training service to provide incentives for retail associates to verifiably complete product training modules and stay up to date on the specifics of the latest product that they are selling.

Lets create a fake company called Cedar Retail Training to use as an example. With Simple Token integration Cedar could easily launch their own private token economy, and for sake of argument let’s call this Cedarcoin. Are you a brand wanting to educate sales associates in a particular retail vertical or even at a particular store? Create the training modules for your latest product, purchase Cedarcoin from Cedar, and use it to reward retail associates when they complete your sales training. When Cedarcoin is redeemed, Cedar could then also monetize on a smaller scale on the redemption side.

What are retail associates supposed to do with all of this Cedarcoin that they have accumulated? Cash it in for incentives offered through the Cedar token economy. Maybe this incentive is product or a discount from the brands on Cedar, or even something as basic as a $5+ Starbucks gift card. I guarantee you would be surprised how popular a $5 coffee gift card would be for those of us working in retail.

The point is, Simple Token now makes this possible in an easy-to-manage way. Maybe Myagi will roll this out or maybe a couple 20-something women and men itching to build a great new company will do this in the next year or two.

Either way I know a running shop who would be happy to be your first retail client.

-Brett Rivers

It should be noted that this is an opinionated article written by a retailer in the running/outdoor space who first sees problems through that lens. I encourage you to think about this even more broadly and how this applies to a wide range of industries where there is friction in the sales training process. In my opinion the Simple Token product is incredibly interesting and my next post will be a unique look at its use for retail loyalty programs. I was not compensated by Simple Token for this post but I did take part in their November token sale because I see long-term use in their product.

Brett Rivers is the founder and owner of San Francisco Running Company, on Twitter and Instagram @sfrunco. You can follow his (in)frequent running on Strava or his infrequent posts on Twitter @brettriv and Instagram @cincorivers. Want to chat? Let’s meet for a creative long run on the trails of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, California.