It's new eCommerce MasterPlan Episode Day!
Time to wrap your ears around our latest interview.
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Guest = Mark Howell, Rithum
Mark Howell is the Director Retailers EMEA at Rithum, where they help the world’s leading brands and retailers list, market, fulfill, and optimise products across every major commerce channel – from catalog to consumer. Rithum’s single connected network now has over 40,000 brands, suppliers and retailers including Walmart, Marks & Spencer, Samsung, and many more. Before his decade at Rithum Mark spent 10 years at Tesco supporting all drop ship and marketplace sellers to list and launch on Tesco.
What are we talking about?
How Products Get to Market Faster and How AI helps Shoppers Find Them
In this episode, Chloe and Mark unpack the hidden engine behind modern eCommerce growth: product data. They explore how brands can get products to market faster, manage listings across multiple marketplaces, and prepare their data for the next wave of AI-powered shopping and search.
Hit PLAY to hear:
🤖 Why AI search is making product data more important than ever
⚡ The “time to online” metric that directly affects revenue
🛒 How to sell on multiple marketplaces without managing 20 separate stores
🔍 The product data mistakes that lead to costly returns
🧠 How leading brands structure data for both humans and AI shoppers
🚨 Why retailers are becoming stricter about claims like “sustainable”
Listen Now:
You can find the show on all the top podcast players including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
OR just search 'eCommerce MasterPlan' on your favourite podcast app.
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You can also find the notes and listen on the website, just click here for this week's new episode.
Key timestamps to dive straight in:
[05:53] Describing products with evidence
[08:06] Managing different retail platforms
[12:19] Brands asserting eCommerce guidelines
[15:21] Negotiating retail brand guidelines
[17:20] Handling Marketplace Customer Expectations
[22:33] AI implementation challenges and oversight
[23:22] Legal challenges in agentic commerce
[29:34] Storing and sharing business data
[32:04] Listen to Mark’s Top Tips!
[36:17] Episode sponsored by Rithum. Connect with Rithum to find out how they can help you and your business.
Episodes you may have missed
Tariq Kazemi reveals how BLD BRO scaled fast with Shopify, Amazon, and community.
What would you do in the CFO seat? Dan Major puts your instincts to the test.
Want loyal customers who keep coming back? James Cowdale shares the &Sons playbook.
Thanks to our Sponsors
When an AI recommends a product to your customer, is it recommending yours? Rithum surveyed over a thousand US and UK shoppers on how they use AI to find, compare, and choose.
One in five shoppers had bought from a brand they’d never heard of because AI recommended it — and only five percent verify what AI tells them by visiting the brand’s own site.
AI is answering these questions already. The data you publish decides what it says.
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