Retail Orphan Initiative Super Saturday Analyst Day 2024 – What You Need to Know

[00:00:04] Jeff Roster: Hello everyone and welcome back to season three of This Week in Innovation. Hey, I hope everyone's had a great summer. I know I have, , done a lot of things, been doing some traveling, took a little time off, but now it's time to jump back in and get ready for NRF. So I thought I'd start the season off with a with about a four or five part series called Run Up to NRF 2024, because it is coming and it's coming fast.

[00:00:27] Jeff Roster: And so What what I tell vendors when they ask how to make a big show at NRF, I think there's really four very interesting events to, that they should be considering. It's Vicky Cantrell's VIP Awards, that's Friday night, typically Friday night. Retail Orphanage is Super Saturday. We'll be talking about that today.

[00:00:43] Jeff Roster: And then the other two big events that I think are really important to consider is Kathy Hakka's Retail Insiders Party. That's Sunday night. And then the new on the scene is the Rethink Retail Bash, which is Monday night. We were, I was at that last year, phenomenal event.

[00:00:56] Jeff Roster: But to really help us unpack the values of Retail Orphanage [00:01:00] Super Saturday, I'm going to invite my good friend, Mr. Ricardo Belmar to join us. Ricardo, how you doing today? I'm doing

[00:01:07] Ricardo Belmar: great,

[00:01:07] Jeff Roster: Jeff. Thanks for having me. Great. Yeah. Good summer so far. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:12] Ricardo Belmar: Pretty good. Just back from a recent vacation.

[00:01:15] Ricardo Belmar: Nice and refreshed and ready to

[00:01:16] Jeff Roster: jump into things. Fantastic. You're probably, when I think about a vendor executive you're probably the guy that, that I think knows the most about how to engage with with events. And so what do you think about when you look at the layout for retail orphanage and super Saturday?

[00:01:30] Jeff Roster: How do you how do you approach that?

[00:01:33] Ricardo Belmar: One of the things you really want as a vendor for any of these additional events during that NRF week is you're looking for. Something that's got impacted in and of itself as an event. So something that you can point to and say, we participated in that and it has an impact on its own.

[00:01:48] Ricardo Belmar: You want something that retailers, right at the end of the day, right? Why do you go to an event as a vendor? You want to meet retailers. You want a good, strong retail audience that's there at the right. [00:02:00] Senior levels and it also at the right level to engage with in conversation and talk about, what's keeping them up at night?

[00:02:06] Ricardo Belmar: What are their challenges? Are they trying to accomplish? And you want to do that in an environment that is, doesn't feel like a salesy environment. Because the fact is you come across a retailer walking the show floor at NRF, what's happening, right? Half the retailers there are afraid to walk down that aisle because they know 50 vendors are going to jump all over them.

[00:02:27] Ricardo Belmar: And that's not the way you want a conversation to start, right? You want it to start like a normal conversation, like the conversation we're having right here, right? You just want it to be a normal conversation and kind of get to know each other and learn about what's going on. And I think the number one advantage really with with Super Saturday is that it creates that environment.

[00:02:45] Ricardo Belmar: Because everyone's there for a common cause and it's a really good cause.

[00:02:48] Jeff Roster: Yeah. That's a great setup for what Super Saturday is. But to really understand what that event the nuts and bolts of that, I thought it, only right to invite Mr. Greg music to join us and Greg welcome to the [00:03:00] show.

[00:03:00] Jeff Roster: Thanks for taking some time out. Why don't you introduce yourself and and then let's talk a little bit about what retail orphanage of super Saturday is.

[00:03:07] Greg Buzek: Hey, everybody. It's good to be with you.

[00:03:09] Greg Buzek: Yeah, Retail Orphan Initiative is a group of people in the retail industry that want to use our skill sets to help solve real problems that affect the most vulnerable group in our society, which is the more than 400 million people. Orphans and vulnerable kids around the world. And we do that by three ways.

[00:03:27] Greg Buzek: Number one, we spread the word about this is the issues that we're dealing with. And this is how big the problem is there. So that's number one. Number two is we leverage our skill sets and our networks and our companies to make a difference leveraging our skills. So a great example of that is we had a school in Honduras that had 80, 000, which was enough to either pay their teachers.

[00:03:49] Greg Buzek: For the 600 students or to buy food for the kids for a year, and they came to us, so we looked at it and found out that what they need is basically two train cars worth of corn. [00:04:00] So we actually went to Cargill and asked Cargill if they would donate the corn. For that. But the problem was it came in individual pieces, and so we took that, and we had somebody that was willing to bag it up that was a seed company, and we had the train car shifted to that location, and then we had a group that a lady that does shipping and logistics for a living.

[00:04:23] Greg Buzek: She bought the container. She got the FDA inspection, organized the shipping, and we were able to feed 600 kids plus teachers for 7, 500 delivered to Honduras from the United States. So our why number one, orphan kids are the number one most vulnerable people in our society. That's not even close compared to other groups.

[00:04:48] Greg Buzek: Number two, the need is so great. So if orphans were a country, they'd be the eighth largest country in the world, larger than the population of Russia. And the circumstances are [00:05:00] devastating. If you think about what our biggest problems are in our country today, here, we're dealing with homelessness, we're dealing with rapid crime.

[00:05:08] Greg Buzek: We're dealing with large prison population. All of those things have roots in foster kids and the foster system. Basically, a child that ages out of the foster system has an 85% chance of ending up in prison. And the girls are often pregnant before they even reach the age of 18 and often have two or more kids by age 21.

[00:05:33] Greg Buzek: By age 26 this amounts to a cost to society of Almost 7 billion for one class of kids that age out of our systems. And so using our skill sets, our networks and our funding there, and then coming alongside great charities where we can double, triple, or quadruple that work is what we do.

[00:05:56] Greg Buzek: Since 2009 we should probably give you a little bit of background of [00:06:00] how Retail ROI started. We started on the day that Lehman Brothers went under. We were at Oracle OpenWorld, and I had started a adoption care ministry, an orphan care ministry at my church. And I met up with a guy by the name of Paul Singer, and Paul was the Chief Information Officer at SuperValue, but previously CIO of Target Stores.

[00:06:23] Greg Buzek: And Paul's the guy that took over for Dave Thomas of Wendy's lobbying Congress for funds for foster kids. And we met there and said, Hey, wouldn't it be great to do something together? The name Retail ROI popped into my mind. I realized it's the worst name ever for a consumer charity. But for for us geeks in the IT side of things, the Return on Investment and Retail Orphan Initiative seemed to fit.

[00:06:47] Greg Buzek: We walked out of that room and there were six friends there. Jeff was there, Kathy Hottke was there, Kathy Marder was there, Mark Milstein, Rose Spicer. And we all agreed to do this, to start this. [00:07:00] And since 2009, we've now had over 311 projects in 28 countries and everything from computer labs to schools that have been built.

[00:07:12] Greg Buzek: And. We estimate that we've been able to help over 325, 000 people for

[00:07:17] that.

[00:07:17] Jeff Roster: Yeah. It was interesting. One little antidote about that session and that is the only time all those players are in the same place. And one time there was never been a place where that many people trade press analysts really interesting thing.

[00:07:33] Greg Buzek: So the focus of our super Saturday event this year is really getting to the pressing issue of what's happening in our society. What we have found is we have an exponential increase in homelessness and crime in our country right now, and a lot of that has its roots in foster care. 25% of our inmates in the Prison system today spent time in foster care at one point and what we've discovered through the [00:08:00] help of Nicole Taylor, who's been a longtime partner with retail ROI is that the number one linchpin of whether a kid gets?

[00:08:09] Greg Buzek: permanence in the into a family, once they go into foster care, or they age out of the system, is turnover among social workers. They are really the forgotten first responders. And the statistic that is just shocking is when a child has one social worker, one advocate, that is behind them in the system to find them a permanent home, they find permanence 74% of the time.

[00:08:35] Greg Buzek: However, once that turnover happens. That drops to less than 20% of the time, and what's so critical about that is right now, caseworkers, social worker caseworkers, less than 50% last more than two years on the job because the job is so tough. There was an example that was given that when a child is removed from the home, there are two people [00:09:00] that go into that house.

[00:09:01] Greg Buzek: One is a police officer with a bulletproof vest and a gun. The other one's the one that walks out with a child. It is a tough job. It's a tough emotional job. And Nicole and her group have found a way to dramatically reduce the impact and the instance of turnover among foster care workers.

[00:09:24] Greg Buzek: They saw in their community in Mecklenburg County a drop from 69% turnover to less than 29% in the first year, and now it's down to 19%. And just a three year period of time through their program called social life. And so the situation is so dire out there right now. We have some cities that the kids, their caseworker is now listed as temp worker number four.

[00:09:49] Greg Buzek: And you can't really consider that you're going to get permanence when you don't even know the name of the caseworker there. And so everything is stacked against these kids once they go into the system [00:10:00] and it has massive impacts on us as a society.

[00:10:05] Greg Buzek: So just to give you a little more detail on societal impact of kids that are aging out of the system. So aging out is usually age 18 for most children who age out of the foster care system. As I mentioned earlier, 71% of the girls have at least one child by age 18. Why is that? Because they get more money and more support.

[00:10:27] Greg Buzek: If they have a child there and 62% have two or more children by age 21. And what that, what happens there is those women as well as those kids, they amount a 19,000. 350 kids aged out in 2021. By age 26, that becomes over 41, 000 people that are on government aid as a result of just that. Those kids happening from just the girls.

[00:10:56] Greg Buzek: We didn't even track the boys. The boys are seven times more [00:11:00]likely to be arrested and the girls 64 times more likely to be arrested if they're in foster care, but they can't afford the, the attorneys. And so the conviction rates are up to 18 times higher there. They are 300% more likely to be a victim of violent crime.

[00:11:17] Greg Buzek: They are seven times more likely to be caught up in a sex trafficking scheme and up to 85% experience homelessness by age 21. This is a problem that is exponentially increasing and the single linchpin Is social worker turnover. And if we can impact that's a huge huge opportunity. And that's what our focus is and what our plan is for Super Saturday, along with the retail content and everything else there.

[00:11:44] Greg Buzek: That's huge. At age 26, there's 74% less likely to be employed there and their average income is only 43% that of the general population. Overall, that just The statistics are just devastating when there's [00:12:00] turnover among social workers and what that does to a child in there. And the key thing is less than 7% of the kids that go into foster care go in for any behavioral issue on their, of themselves.

[00:12:10] Greg Buzek: It is because of their parents and the scourge of drug addiction in most cases now that it creates the abuse and neglect. that requires a child to be removed from their home.

[00:12:20] Greg Buzek: So as I mentioned, we have 19, 130 kids who aged out in the latest year. We have statistics on that. Those young adults turn into 37, 949 people on government assistance by age 26. Once again, we're only counting the girls. in that situation here. So what does that all cost? When you add up the cost of incarceration, you add up the cost of the arrest, the legal cost, the court costs, the government aid, food stamps, etcetera.

[00:12:49] Greg Buzek: One class of kids that age out of foster care amounts to 6. 9 billion in cost to society. And if we look at the next [00:13:00] 10 years, The next 10 classes that are aging out just to age 26, that's 88. 6 billion in cost to our society. The numbers are just staggering.

[00:13:11] Greg Buzek: So we can make a huge difference. When it comes to foster kids, up to 50% of kids who enter the system, not because there's abuse or neglect, but because there was a, point of crisis, there was no safety net. They didn't have a safe place for the Children. Perhaps mom has to get out of a domestic violence situation.

[00:13:29] Greg Buzek: Perhaps there's short term incarceration that's required for crime or something else. But those kids have no place to go. So where you and I might have siblings or friends where our kids could stay in place there. Oftentimes that doesn't happen in other cases. So that's a huge thing that we can impact.

[00:13:48] Greg Buzek: And once again, reducing that case worker turnover is the single most important factor at play here. It's a 25 to 40 times multiplier in terms [00:14:00] of cost and the likelihood that a child is going to age out of the system. That's there. As I mentioned earlier, our partner CFK, they helped reduce turnover 62% in two years and was even greater in three years.

[00:14:14] Greg Buzek: But we truly need an army of people to help do that. We have an opportunity to impact this. As an industry and every one of the companies that's represented as an opportunity to impact the local community, and we're going to teach you how to do that as well as give you great retail content at our Super Saturday event.

[00:14:33] Greg Buzek: I know we've talked a lot about charity, but Super Saturday really is an analyst day. We are going to talk about AI and the impact of AI and best practices. How do you get your data in order? Where do we think the biggest impacts are going to be due to that? We're going to look at other leading things beyond AI, because that seems to have sucked the entire.

[00:14:55] Greg Buzek: Landscape of narrative and retail technology, other areas in [00:15:00] retail technology as well. But we're actually going to share and have examples of how you can actively get involved and how this social light program works and how you can get involved in your community with the tools. And the list of people you can talk to as a result of that.

[00:15:15] Greg Buzek: And for retailers, we're offering tickets to the final four as a chance to win for the first 100 retailers who register and attend. And you can find out more information at retail ROI. org slash super Saturday. And that's it.

[00:15:31] Jeff Roster: Wow. Fantastic. Ricardo. You have that, that vendor expertise and I have that analyst expertise at Greg and I both do.

[00:15:41] Jeff Roster: Greg's, obviously this is his passion. This is all of our passion. So maybe just you and I talk about how a vendor should, could take advantage of this. First of all Greg, do you want to share what it costs for a vendor, a small vendor to to play at Super Saturday or do you want to?

[00:15:55] Greg Buzek: Yeah, sure. Sure. The vendor prices start at 2, 500 to be in the room, 6, [00:16:00] 000 for a sponsorship there with your logo and being presented as well as in the press releases and on our website as well. And the prices go up from that depending on how many people and what benefits that you're interested in.

[00:16:13] Jeff Roster: , let me talk to the vendor community about, from an analyst perspective, what's really unique about super Saturday is the number of influencers that are there.

[00:16:21] Jeff Roster: And I honestly hate the term I'm too old to be used using the word influencer, but it's true. There's a lot of trade press that covers that show. There's a lot of analysts that show up at that show and it's. It's an opportunity to get way ahead of NRF to be able to start to build those relationships.

[00:16:36] Jeff Roster: And let me tell you startups, inventors this is a relationship game. That's, I get asked all the time, how do you make an impact in the space? You do it by first of all, just getting to know people. And this is such a unique environment done well ahead of the show. A day ahead of the show and a chance to be able to make an impact.

[00:16:53] Jeff Roster: Ricardo, I know you've worked the show from a vendor perspective for years. I don't know. What are your thoughts? I

[00:16:58] Ricardo Belmar: think, from the vendor side of it, maybe one [00:17:00] of the key things I want to mention here is that it, this is part of an overall strategy you're going to follow to make the most out of NRF.

[00:17:07] Ricardo Belmar: And We've talked about this before. Just right when you're a vendor and you're approaching NRF, the one thing you don't want to do is to just say I'm going to have a booth and let people come to me at NRF because that's the point of the show. And the short answer is no, that's the wrong answer because people's schedule.

[00:17:22] Ricardo Belmar: Their visit to NRF. And one of the unique things with Super Saturday is it's safe to say that, and I have experienced this over the years at this event, that the majority of retailers that will come to Super Saturday they're motivated, I would say, probably for two reasons to be there. One is obviously they're supporting retail ROI.

[00:17:41] Ricardo Belmar: They're participating in other retail ROI activities. They have a vested interest in some of the charities that retail ROI is working with. Now, so that's one aspect. But then the other is they know how Super Saturday is used, right? Super Saturday at the end of the day is a fundraising event, right?

[00:17:57] Ricardo Belmar: For the charities. So the sponsor [00:18:00] companies that come in, those dollars are going to fuel all the great work that these charities are doing. And the retailers that attend understand that's the model. And that kind of puts you as one of those vendors in a slightly different category as other vendors at the show.

[00:18:15] Ricardo Belmar: Because now you're not just a vendor that's At the show to sell something. You're a vendor that's there supporting the cause, right? And supporting something that matters to the retailer. So you'll find the quality of the conversations you have with the retailers that attend is different than if you just met them on the show floor.

[00:18:30] Ricardo Belmar: The second thing you find too, is that a pretty good number of the retailers that will attend Super Saturday, you won't see them wandering the show floor the next day. Right now. Why is that? Because you might find the CIO or CMO of a major retail that comes to Super Saturday. They have such a packed schedule themselves for the rest of NRF.

[00:18:51] Ricardo Belmar: They don't have time in their day to just walk the show floor. They're going from meeting to meeting. That's they prearranged probably two months out. Before they ever set [00:19:00] foot in New York for the event. So you're not only capturing them at a moment where there's a stronger willingness to have an open conversation with you because you're supporting retail ROI, but it may also be the only chance you get to see them if you didn't already have a prearranged meeting with them.

[00:19:16] Ricardo Belmar: And that gives you an advantage, right? That gives you an advantage for striking the right. Kind of conversation that leads to a follow up after the show.

[00:19:24] Greg Buzek: Yeah. And I would add to this you're dealing with retailers who know that talking to you build schools and help solve this problem that we're talking about with foster care and helping to reduce social worker turnover.

[00:19:40] Greg Buzek: So they know that. So they are motivated to actually talk to you rather than get away. Type of situation, which is basically the norm at NRF, just cause they, they feel like chum in the water at most events there. And it's also not as rushed as any other event at the [00:20:00] show and not as loud.

[00:20:01] Greg Buzek: So you can actually talk to somebody in a real environment rather than being in the middle of a cocktail party. If you can get somebody's attention for five minutes, you actually have time to network there as a result. Plus the. Potential from a partner perspective as well in the room. Last year, we had companies that represented 2.

[00:20:22] Greg Buzek: 6 trillion in annual revenue. Now, to put that in perspective, that's larger than the GDP of Italy there. So there are a lot of people there, a lot of opportunities to build networks and relationships there, and you get access to people that you just won't get a chance to talk to anywhere else.

[00:20:40] Jeff Roster: Yeah, very cool.

[00:20:41] Jeff Roster: There is something new this year this upcoming year. Ricardo, you want to talk about that?

[00:20:47] Ricardo Belmar: Sure. Yeah. So one of the things that we're adding in to the options for sponsorship, it's in some of the packages and it can be added on at others is an, some advanced exposure as a sponsor or retailer through some.

[00:20:59] Ricardo Belmar: [00:21:00] Video recordings and a lot of releases of of these video recordings, leading up to the event. And also during N R F. So you have the option to do that, you, and this is content that can be released as part of video clips across social media content that can be purposed as podcast material.

[00:21:16] Ricardo Belmar: But I think the main thing is that, when you sponsor an event, usually what you think about as a vendor is the sponsorship gets me there. And it gets me access to the people at the events, but wouldn't it be great if that sponsorship also gives you something tangible you can use before the events so you can help raise awareness that you'll be there and why you're there and then after the event as well, right?

[00:21:37] Ricardo Belmar: We've talked about how this is the great opening event. It happens on that Saturday, the day before NRF really starts and it sets you up for that event. So if you can after the event. Have additional pieces of content that keep you top of mind with that retail community, then isn't that an even better benefit than on top of being there and having those conversations.

[00:21:59] Ricardo Belmar: So that's [00:22:00] something that's new that we're enabling this year by working with us to, to create these recordings in advance.

[00:22:06] Jeff Roster: Yeah. And as part of that package, I will not be using my very expensive new Sony camera that continues to overheat. And reboot. But one thing you learn about working in the Orford business is you're going to bump into hurdles and you just need to overcome them.

[00:22:19] Jeff Roster: So fortunately my audio is separate from my video, but it's all a learning experience, and something to add on about what I think we're building. we're going to do, Ricardo, is we're going to be see, how do I say this? Live streaming some of those recorded videos and dumping those into into somebody's LinkedIn profile, mine or anybody else's, and then topple those into the Twitter stream for NRF.

[00:22:42] Jeff Roster: So in other words prepared comments for the sponsors that now pop into the pop into the Twitter stream. A day before the conference. So I'm pretty excited about that. I see some of the uptake I get on some of the stuff I've been doing lately and it's, it's pretty cool.

[00:22:56] Jeff Roster: So I'm excited about that. Greg, how can how [00:23:00] can vendors reach out to you? It's we'll have your, I guess your contact in the show notes. Anybody else that they they should be getting in touch with.

[00:23:06] Greg Buzek: Yeah, I mean they can get in touch with myself or you guys as well. Dave Winan at Incisive or Kathy Hodka.

[00:23:14] Greg Buzek: They're also helping as well to put together these sponsorships and put together packages for you. That's awesome.

[00:23:20] Jeff Roster: Greg, I tell ya I can speak for my family, both My two kids and myself we've been, greatly impacted on, on, on your vision. And I think both my kids, when they talk professionally, they talk about some of the experiences of being on vision trips and the impact it's made on them.

[00:23:37] Jeff Roster: For the roster family, I think I speak For Ricardo and the rest of the industry, thanks for taking this point on. And I know it's basically your second full time job. But a grateful nation and a grateful world, says thanks for all your efforts.

[00:23:49] Greg Buzek: Thank you guys for investing in it and going on trips and seeing the work firsthand and seeing the impact that we've been able to make by coming to this event and having this [00:24:00] event.

[00:24:00] Greg Buzek: You guys have been a great. Evangelists for the program and pushing it out there and we're just grateful for you and we're helping kids that we may never meet. I'm glad you guys have got to meet some of them. There, but there's a great purpose for this and there's the story of the starfish on the shore there where the guy's walking by and he sees a young child holding a starfish.

[00:24:23] Greg Buzek: He picked it up and he throws it back in the water and the guy goes, why are you doing this? There's just so many, you can't really impact them. And he says I helped that one. And that's what this is all about. How do we change family trees by giving kids an opportunity that they would otherwise not have.

[00:24:40] Greg Buzek: And so that's what the day's about. However, you get to use it and do great business content and build great business relationships as well. Fantastic.

[00:24:49] Jeff Roster: We'll put a pin in it there. Ricardo, I will see you, I think at shop talk thanks again for everybody.

[00:24:54] Jeff Roster: And start of the run up to NREF series. We're deep into it. Looking forward to the next three interviews coming up. See you [00:25:00] guys. Thanks. Thanks.

[00:25:03]