>> from Seattle. Washington. It's the Q covering AWS. Imagine nonprofit brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already, Jeff. Rick here with the Cube were in Seattle, Washington, right on the waterfront. It's a beautiful day. Unfortunately, a lot of the topics we're talking about today are not so beautiful. We're here at the AWS. Imagine not for profit. Imagine of it. Great event. Little under 1000 people here talking about solving very, very, very big important problems in AWS is helping him. We're excited to have our next guest on. He is Paul Shapiro, President and CEO of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Paul, great to see you. >> Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> I mean, the title of your organization says that this is not a not a happy problem. I wonder if you can speak a little bit too, You know, kind of the scale of this, this issue and, you know, I know that's part of the reason why you got involved. >> Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Someone once said to me, How do you do this for a living every single day and this person put it into perspective, I think in a profound way. It's a woman who works on our team in the education space. She works with teachers all over the world to help them in the prevention and response of sexually abused and exploited children. Right? And she said, to be in this job to do this every day you give up a little bit of your own innocence to preserve the innocence of others. And when she said that to me, it really hit home. And while it can be challenging every single day, you know, we we realized that the work that we do is very, very important. And, you know, someone has to be there for these children that are very much alone. And that's what drives us every single day. >> Very much God's work, and it's a it's great great for you to do it. So give us a little bit of background on the actual organization. What do you do every day? What kind of the mission and how are you >> executing around the world? >> Well, the mission, as as we like to say, is summarized up in just a few words, and that is no child stands alone And when you think about the children that are out there and the children that we typically focus on our first missing children and why do we focus on missing children? Because when a child goes missing, they become extremely vulnerable, and the urgency to find them quickly is extraordinarily important, the kind of things that can happen to them when they're alone. And for those of us who have children, there's a sense of panic when they're out of our sight for even a moment. Will. You can imagine what happens when a child actually goes missing for a period of time. It's so very important to find them quickly within the first few hours. If not, they're vulnerable, and they're vulnerable to things like trafficking to things like sexual abuse, things that that oftentimes lead toe very negative outcomes so way need to get on it quickly and to build. Um, this would be hard enough if we were just doing in the United States, but our organization was really built out of a necessary out of the necessity to build a global solution for this. So we've activated emergency response in over 30 countries, things like the you've heard of Amber Alerts in the United States? Well, we've helped activate those in over 30 countries. We've helped with building a technology platform that takes images of children and allows us to geo target those images in countries all over the world with just the push of the button sending out millions of images through redundant advertising space through our technology partners that allows for that to happen and a lot more. So when you think about us about the scale of the problem, I mean, how how big do you think the missing >> children probably want? I don't even want to guess, right? I mean, it's, it's, uh, knows all kind of in everyone's face back in the in the milk carton >> days right, which we don't really get seats so much on the milk cartons in the back of trucks. But it's it's >> hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands. But to your point, if it's the one, if it's that that one is is every one is as important as the other hundreds and hundreds of thousands. >> I guess what we do is a modern day milk carton, right? It's It's a way of activating um, the communities through a alert system that is constantly searching for a child on there's there's lots of different ways that we do that, but just getting back to the point of the size of the problem. I mean, there's there's well over 400,000 children missing in the United States. It's enough. If I think 424,000 I believe, is the number in the U. S. Alone. That's enough. That's what Is that the population of Miami? Too many, right? There's, um, 80,000 children missing in the UK That's that's enough children that are missing to Philip Wembley Stadium, Australia. 24,000 children are missing, right? >> So clearly, most of those kids didn't get picked up within hours of becoming missing, as you said, which is such an important piece. So you know what's kind of the ongoing, um, you know, kind of process to keep to keep those keep those faces alive and to use kind of >> modern methods to find them. Clearly, the milk carton was something that that was available a long >> time ago was kind of mass distribution kind of creative at the time. But I have a lot more tools at your disposal today. >> Yeah, you know what? One? One thing that is so important is just making sure a a country is ready and that that is an easy work. That means finding partners that are out there that want to make a difference in this area. Law enforcement is a huge piece of this. Other NGOs are a huge piece of this. And, of course, technology, with the help of organizations like Amazon really enable us to be able to do that on. And that's where things like facial recognition software come in. And, you know, we're big proponents of the partnership and advocacy that we have with a W S that allows us tow Dr that intelligence through our platform and will make it more possible to find more children. >> Right. So you say you're relatively new to the organization. Was there a specific charge in your mind in terms of, you know, kind of fresh blood, fresh energy, fresh point of view that you saw on this opportunity or they saw in you that was kind of York and a new strategic directive that maybe a little bit different than what was happening before, only >> as your new Yeah. Meanwhile, while this is all this has always been so important to me, you know, finding a way to give back and make the world a better place. I mean, that is something that has driven me my entire career. And, you know, ironically, 17 years ago, I worked for a company that really took on missing children as the purpose of their organization. So that's when I got my first exposure to this. If things have come back rather full circle in this new pursuit, by the way, missing children isn't isn't all that we D'oh. But my, uh, my day job over the last 15 years was really ah was organizational transformation. It was it was helping organ organization standardize and scale, um, so that they could be more productive. They can leverage technology so that they can engage a workforce thio drive the right behaviors, Did a lot of organizational training trained tens of thousands of individuals over the last 15 or so years. And when I had an opportunity to come to this organization, you know, I really saw an extraordinary team of people that were very effective at training countries. This organization is a very sensitive organization. What I mean by that is they're very sensitive understanding where country is in its readiness for child protection. And we go in the countries with that sensibility and make sure that the programs that we build first, that there is policy and legislation in place so that the country even recognizes that there's a problem. And by the way we've driven. We've driven policy and legislation where we've had significant influence in over 150 countries over the last 20 years, which is extraordinary work. That's very important foundational e to us being able to understand where countries that trying to go in and provide a cookie cutter solution doesn't work when you're talking about international work, the sensitivities of ah, of a country's culture and understanding of how law enforcement how the education system, how the political system hell healthcare views this problem is ready for this problem is really what we focus on. So that's really where we've built our core competencies are in those very areas and what along with my team and I, we're looking to do right now is to take these silos that we've been focusing on for nearly 20 years where we've been where we've trained, you know, tens of thousands of law enforcement professionals, educators and health care nationals. And we're taking that to the next level. We're building it into a global training academy that is going to take a multidisciplinary look at this that brings these teams together. And instead of us just going in with instructor led training, which is what so many organizations do, we're gonna be taking a look at a blended learning curriculum, using technology to take it online where we can, and to make sure that the time that we spend in these countries is really focused on helping these countries get to a level of certification where they are international center certified. And there will be accountability and expectations built in two. How they get there and how they stay there. And there will be a commitment, ongoing support from us to be able to, you know, keep them moving in the right direction. That's really the vision for the organization. >> Yeah, a CZ you're talking, you know, it's going through my mind is is is the surveillance >> society that we live in right We've got cameras everywhere as you talk to. You know, we're talking about the milk carton, So I'm thinking about pictures of these of these kids rights. We've got surveillance everywhere. We've got all types of laws around how that surveillance is used. We've got facial recognition software all over the place now, which is developing. And I just, you know, are >> these are these tools that you currently use that you envision using? I mean, I would would you know, there's always the privacy security, >> you know, kind of trade off and complexity. That said, I would imagine tools like surveillance at airports and tools like facial recognition and tools like a I and machine learning to do projected aging of individuals must be tremendous new assets for you guys to leverage in your mission. >> Yeah, they've been around for a while, but it's getting better and better, and I know the downward pressure that effects organizations like a W s relative to facial recognition. There's so many privacy laws that cause this this'll challenge for organizations like AWS and also organizations like ours. I guess where where I'm at with it all is we need, there's there's not a question about privacy in my mind, when it comes to protecting children, it's the one great unifier that we have. So we need to find ways to work within the confines of privacy, and that varies wildly country to country, right. But these are the tools that we need that are gonna be just absolutely vital to finding more children to protecting more children, whether these air children that are being trafficked in an airport or child that goes missing after two hours. And we need toe alert a community and feed their images into our system that constantly searches for them. Whether it's in the first hour or just spoke to a parent who had been on his 45th day of his missing son, his son had gone missing. And and and you see the desperation that a parent has when they have nowhere else to turn. It's our job to find places for them to turn toe, employ technology that never stops. I mean, that's you talked about how dark of, ah of a of a job this could be, Yeah, but you know, the hope that we provide really is is the light that keeps us going >> right. So, Paul, final question. What do people not >> know about the space that they should? If you if you could just say, you know, this is kind of the reality, but, >> you know, this is this is where I'm very careful, Thio to make sure that people are ready to hear the realities of the space. I spoke to a judge in the Philippines recently who talked about just the, you know, the kind of cases that she's trying when it comes to sexual abuse, when it comes to children who are trafficked. And I said, What? What exactly are we talking about here? And by the way, this is a conversation I'll have with a lot of people, especially in law enforcement, you know? What kind of age are we talking about? You'd be shocked to find out how high the percentage of children are under 10 years old. You'd be shocked to find out the percentage of children that are under one. And you say to yourself, How can this be? Well, it is. It is the reality of what we're dealing with. So, you know, you talk about something that drives you when you find out children that are that vulnerable in the scale that truly exists, the numbers that exist. You wake up every day and you run to this job and you try to find partners out there in every sector that you can. I don't care if it's in sports. I don't care if it's an entertainment. I don't care if it's in technology. I don't care if it's in religion or government. You find partners that have the ability to make you stronger. And that's a big part of our remit. And it's it's why I feel so fortunate to be here. Um, at this a w s conference, learning more about how we can employ even more technology to make us strong, >> right? Well, certainly with a w s behind you got all the technology >> could ever, ever hope Thio deploy. So hopefully that will help >> you be more effective in your work and >> your team's work. And thank you for taking a few minutes. >> You got Jeff. Thank you so much. >> All right, thanks. He's Paul on Jeff. You're watching the cube. Where? Need of us. Imagined nonprofit in Seattle. Thanks >> for watching. See you next time

>> Narrator: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering Magento Imagine 2018. Brought to you by, Magento. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, our continuing coverage of Magento Imagine 2018. We're at the Wynn in Las Vegas. You can see it's happy hour behind me. I'm Lisa Martin, we are joined by Mark Teperson the Chief Digital Officer of Accent Group, customer of Magentos'. Thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and having a chat. >> Thanks Lisa, great to be here. >> So you are an award finalist, the Imagined Excellence Awards are what, in just about an hour and a half. But this is really cool, you are a finalist in several categories. The best in class fulfillment with Platypus Shoes. The best mobile experience with Athlete's Foot. And you yourself are up for Commerce Leader of the Year, wow. >> Yeah. >> I feel like I should be asking for your autograph. >> No please, please, look it's really humbling to have been nominated for so many awards. I think, the thing for me is that it's a huge acknowledgement of the work of the entire team that makes this happen. You know, I have the privilege of being the face of it. But it is an extraordinary team that I get to lead and work with across the organization that really kind of makes all of the magic happen. So, I'm representing them tonight as well. >> Awesome. So tell our viewers who Accent Group is. Where you're located. All that good stuff before we kind of get into all the magic. >> Yeah sure. So the Accent Group Limited is a publicly listed company in Australia. We own and operate nine different retail formats and about 13 different wholesale distribution licenses. We are the largest footwear retailer in Australia. We have 445 stores across both Australia and New Zealand. We turn over in excess of around $800,000,000. So a big business in Australia. >> A big business, many many brands as well from Doc Martens to Timberlands to Sperry Top-sider. So quite a diverse set of brands as well. >> Yeah, look it's, one of the great things about my role is I get to work across the continuum of kind of consumers. And the way I describe it is, is I get to work, that we see everything from first walkers to last walkers and everything in between. And so, from a digital perspective that gives us a really unique opportunity to track and observe the behavior of consumers and their adoption rates of different technologies and different consumer patterns. Which allows us to perhaps be a little bit more responsive and a little bit more considered in our investments of technology. >> That's what we want as consumers right, we want a personalized experience. Mobile, huge. Mobile, pointing at the wrong thing, tablet whatever. We want that, we want, wouldn't we be marketed to but we want to have an experience that's relevant as that's seamless as well. How did you go about, well talk to us about the digital transformation of Accent Group. You've been there a long time. >> Mark: Yeah. >> How are you leveraging technology over the last few years to transform and be able to facilitate a true omni-channel business. >> Yeah look its a great question, it's been a long journey for us. You know this didn't happen overnight. This has been a very long journey. It was initially really backed by our board and we started on this journey five years ago. I've had fantastic support from our CEO, through the transformation process. And that really set the path for us to be able to start transforming ourselves. I think lots of retailers get it wrong when it comes to technology. They make the cardinal sin of building monuments to themselves. You know they build things that they think are great representations of their brand. But if they just stopped and considered you know, what does the consumer really want, what is that unmet need of the consumer or what is that problem that I'm trying to solve? I think we'd all make better investments and deliver better experiences for consumers. And, so we've been really diligent in kind of thinking about and understanding what our consumer was looking for, from us. And, really prioritizing, you know, the million things that we could be doing to a really strong set of, of foundation building blocks, that would set ourselves up for a digital transformation and hopefully a very prosperous future. >> So we mentioned the awards that your a finalist for. Talk to us about what you're doing with Magento, from your seat as the Chief Digital Officer. What were some of the key criteria that you said, you know we don't want to fall into the same trap that we've seen a lot of other retailers fall into and build a monument to ourselves. We're going to listen to consumers and be able to create this responsive experience for them that obviously reaps a lot of financial rewards for us. What were some of the key criteria that you set out with, saying we've got to be able to have technology that enables A, B, C. >> Yeah look, so when we were thinking about how to bring our strategy and our vision to life, there were a couple of things that we were really looking for. One was flexibility and the ability to, realize, I suppose, re-imagine a consumer experience. So we needed that flexibility and because we have so many brands that we retail and we represent, we needed something that could be multi-site, multi-platform as well. So that was some of the key considerations that we came to. But when we were thinking about the consumer experience it was really about the delivery of that front end experience. So, how do you deliver a really great click and collect experience for a consumer. How do we deliver, ship from store, with a high level in degree of accuracy for the consumer so that we don't disappoint them. And now as we kind of look forward, we're looking at how we can deliver same day delivery in three hour delivery, not just in a single city but across the entire country of Australia and even New Zealand. By re-imagining our stores not only as experience centers for consumers to really touch and feel the product but as distribution centers to be able to get product to customer much faster. And Magento has really enabled us to transform and realize that experience that we re-imagined for our customers. >> So I was telling you before we went live that I watched the video. The video testimonial that you guys have done with Magento and with the case study. And, I am a stats person. I love stats because it's really the voice of the customer is the best brand validation any vendor can get. But being able to show a positive business outcome that is quantitative, is huge. >> Mark: Yeah >> You guys achieved with one of your brands, a 10X increase in sales growth, in 10 months. >> Mark: Yeah >> Tell us a little bit about that. >> Look that was unexpected. I think it blew everybody away. We took a great brand and a great business, Platypus Shoes. And this brand is really geared up for the Millennial consumer. Really deeply ingrained in the culture of Millennial life. We sell fantastic brands, Nike, Addi, Vans and Timberlands through that business. And we have a fantastic in-store experience. And so our digital experience was just really kind of dragging the chain. It wasn't living up to that expectation that the consumer had, once they've experienced our physical retail. So we took an old platform and we decided to take the plunge into M2. We were one of the very first enterprise customers on M2. And in the delivery of that platform we launched and very soon after, followed up with click and collect. And ship from store, to really enhance and connect the consumer experience. Lots of people talk to this vision of omni-channel. It's much harder to execute. It's much easier in theory than it is in practice. >> Of course, yeah. >> But what we learnt in a very short period of time was that the consumers really wanted to transcend our channels. And they loved the experience that they were getting in each of the channels, separately but together as well. And so this halo effect, we had so much brand equity with our Platypus business that as soon as we were able to deliver on that unmet need that the customers were telling us that they wanted, they came to us in droves. And so we had a 10X increase in sales in 10 months which is a pretty staggering outcome. It's been fantastic for the whole business. >> It's interesting that you talk about the in-store experience. What are some of the other benefits that the stores are getting? I imagine if you can do like ship to store, there's going to be more store traffic as a result of having this seamless experience for the customers. >> Yeah. In the whole strategy when we think about omni-channel strategy, the best, the very best channel for a consumer to actually engage with us in and purchase is click and collect. And I'll tell you why. Because in click and collect, what you've done is you have captured that online demand that exists for products and they've said to you that I actually want to come and pick it up in your store. And when they come and pick it up in your store, by doing that the 12 other retailers that they have to walk through in the mall to kind of get to you. There not going to shop there because they have committed money, they've committed funds to your business. And so that gives us a fantastic opportunity when that customer walks into your store, you know that they are a serious consumer. And that gives us great additional opportunities to introduce new products or experiences to that customer. So by capturing that demand online and driving them into that in-store experience, we get to showcase the best of both environments. That really savvy fast, fun, content lead digital experience and that sensory experience in-store. Where you get to feel and touch the product and talk to our awesome team members. And really have a fun experience buying shoes. You know the wonderful thing about footwear is and I always joke about it, is that unlike the apparel space and fashion, shoes don't make you feel fat or thin. They just make you feel good. >> That is true. I feel really good in the shoes I'm wearing today. >> There you go. >> So, huge success with launching this with Platypus. Like you said, it even kind of surprised you guys. Do you have a line out the door of the next, from a strategic vision perspective, the dominoes all lined up. Ready to just launch this thing. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the things that's led us to be really successful is the discipline that we have around how we roll out strategy. And supported by a phenomenal team across the entire Accent Group. I think what's really important to kind of acknowledge is, is that it's not one person, it's not one division that makes this stuff possible. It's an entire organization. And it's entire groups of people that come together to really make this possible. So some of these initiatives involve more than 50 people across the entire organization representing every facet of the business. And so through the discipline that we bring to our strategy process, we've got a really, well planned pipeline of product and innovation that comes over the next 12 months. In fact our pipeline feels pretty full at the moment. Some of that looks like endless aisles. So what we've done was ship from store for our digital business in terms of driving and fueling sales, is in reverse. So endless aisle gives stores that same capability. So our regional store that might not have the full assortment of product can now tap into $110,000,000 worth of inventory across our entire business. >> Lisa: Find it anywhere. >> Find it anywhere and we can get it to that customer and not only will we get it to them free of charge. We'll do that next day. And that's a pretty amazing proposition for a consumer. In addition to that we're looking to roll out same day and three hour delivery again across the entire country. Both Australia and New Zealand. That requires a huge amount of coordinated effort a lot of integration, a lot of sales process. To make sure that we can, I'm not even sure if it's a word, systematize you know, how you do this because it's all very well to have this capability plugged into a business, but you've got to be able to deliver that fantastic experience for the consumer. When they un-box that product or when they come in-store to pick up that click and collect order, that it doesn't feel like a foreign experience for the sales team who are serving those customers. And the customer feels like it's a really well thought out process. >> So as we look back at your last question. The digital transformation that you're on with the Accent Group and the time that you've spent there, what excites you about you know the rest of 2018. Is it being able to take on advanced technologies like machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to make that experience transcendent across digital and physical stores, even better? >> Yeah you know, I often get asked the question, "What keeps you awake at night?" And they're two things. The first one is, the competition that doesn't exist today. And that includes technology so the rapid evolution and adoption of technology and how that can disrupt the market. And the second thing is, what the customer wants tomorrow. Those are two very salient things that keep me awake at night. So what keeps me excited I suppose is looking at the success and the way in which we adopt and roll technology and strategy through the business. It's not technology for technology sake. It's really easy to get caught up in the hype around some things so I've been following the A.I. trend now for three years. It finally feels like it's reaching commercialization in the market. And I think in the next 12 months we certainly will see a much greater adoption of parts of Artificial Intelligence in how it can power better consumer experiences and perhaps even better intelligence in decision making in our organization. It's a very humbling thought to think that, you know whilst I know a lot about the industry and space, there a 1,500 things that happened yesterday and the day before that and you just can't keep up. And nobody has the monopoly on good ideas so events like this and getting out and talking to people and figuring out you know, what is that next big idea. What is that trend that's riding you know in the market. That's how we try and figure out what the next big thing is going to be. >> And we've felt that all day with commerce is limitless, opportunities are limitless as well. Mark, thanks so much for, >> Not a problem. >> stopping by and telling us about what guys are doing down in A (mumbles), it sounds, pretty awesome. >> Fantastic, thanks for having me. >> Absolutely our pleasure. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE, we are live at Magento Imagine 2018, in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin. Stick around, we'll be right back to wrap up the day. (light music)