Gen Z Retail Insights: Work, Side Hustle, Gaming, and the Rise of Chinese Commerce Platforms

our first presenter is going to be Eddie from and he is the co-founder and CEO of copper banking he's going to be presenting on j z retail insights which we're very excited about and that's what we're all here to hear not me so I'm going to fade into the background I'm gonna let Eddie do his thing awesome thanks Bill uh great to see everybody it's early early in the morning here in in Seattle um really excited to to share um our background and uh let me just go ahead and get [Music] started all right can I just get a thumbs up and I'm sharing the right screen here it's always the fun part of of Technology make sure we're doing that doing the right thing okay thumbs up all right sounds good um really excited to to connect with everybody um the really the focus of today is really we're going to get started um kind of talking through our unique background at Copper um you know a full disclosure I am not the uh seasoned uh research and insights professional uh we uh really fell into building a pretty large uh gen Z teen and family panel by way of building really the first primary bank account for this generation that truly teaches them about money so what we're going to do is get started um and really kind of go through just kind of how we built this this panel that is deriving a lot of I think really quality observed uh behavior that we see and then obviously the qualitative side of um you know a lot of the research uh that that we'll show today um so go through kind of how we built that unique perspective um although I haven't been a market research professional for 20 years I have uh my co-founder and I are um Extreme Experts for the last 17 years building technology companies uh for Gen z uh in in uh previous generations throughout those years so um very very versed in large consumer scale uh for teens parents uh and families then what we're going to get into I think hopefully this will be a fun one um you know as far as the the content goes for today really talk about work side hustle um in games and how how the heck that actually is translating into China Domin dominating the next generation of shopping carts um so my hope is to uh weave that story together for you um in a pretty unique way with a lot of the insights that that we've derived um and then yeah would love to open it up for a Q&A um you know we spent a lot of time in this space and uh have have been doing a lot of research recently and and would love to to get questions feedback um and and get started from there all right so um this is you know who we are is really the first of it its kind um Banking and investing platform for teens and parents um the reason we built this business really comes as I mentioned on you know just quick background on myself about 17 years building trust really at large consumer scale with teens and families the last business we co-founded about eight years ago was the first fundraising platform for schools that actually brought that whole door to-door process of selling candy bars cookie dough if you've had kids you've had to go door too um and and have them sell uh these products for fundraisers we actually brought that whole process online so that you could ask friends and family um for money raise a lot more money and a lot less time um built that uh audience up to about 17 million teens and parents and really the Catalyst um if you're wondering how we got to build a banking product was we had a lot of uh Banks reach out to us and say hey you've got this large captive customer base that you build trust with in this teen and parent segment have you ever thought of putting a credit card in their hands early um would you build us a family banking product so that we could really bring all these customers to our bank and what that got us realizing was just how low the bar has been set for under 18 banking um if there's some parents on the call I'm sure you guys know this firsthand you know your Big Five bank account is just not really focused on teaching your te about money the other thing we realized is that there really was very little Financial education being taught in schools and so what's been unique about how we built this large panel um and user base is we literally go into high schools Across America run free financial education workshops to really introduce our product at kind of the age of 14 which has become the really the the first consumer banking inflection point so we're going to talk a lot today about what's changed in the last 10 years um that's one of the biggest things that's changed is that you know historically you would set up your first bank account you know when you would go to the Student Union building in college um I had that experience where you'd go and and get pitch the Discover Card within um the Student Union building now that cash has become obsolete that first consumer banking inflection point is now happening freshman year of high school um and so we spent a tremendous amount of time in this space um and really excited to to share how we've gotten there so quite simply as I mentioned we got started um it seems like a pretty obvious uh thing to build but we wanted to build really the first bank account for a young person that truly taught them about money so what this includes today is they have a real debit card um there's a mobile banking app that's attached to that as well and really at the end of the day we want to build Financial education directly into the product that you're using every single day one thing I'm just going to touch on a little bit is really how uniquely we've thought about this space and how it's driven a lot of the insights that we're going to go into here kind of in the second half of the presentation the biggest Insight that we've really derived is is how we actually had targeted customers and so if I would have went to my mom when I was in high school and said hey I found this great banking product um it provides me you know the ability to invest um send money within our family start to learn about money through through this account uh she probably would have smacked me right because if you're a parent um you've historically made that decision on where your family Banks the big Insight we're going to talk about today and it's really proven out in our traction is that this generation is really powerful within decision- making in the household and what that has translated to is we actually have introduced our product to the teen first um and so this is one of the kind of core cornerstones of of a jenzie insight that we'll talk about as far as family decision making but really just at a high level that has allowed us to acquire these these bank accounts at a cost uh 10 you know over 10 to 100 times lower than consumer banks are paying the median ages I mentioned about 14 years old and then the average time to set up an account you know Bill talked a little bit about um how tough Co was Co was actually awesome for copper and the reason that that was is that Bank branches weren't open and we pride ourselves in a very very quick time from the time that you register to getting your digital card issued to set up an account in less than 10 minutes so what's really unique about this wedge and all this will really start to make sense here in a second is far as how we've thought about you know building the panel and driving these insights is that as I mentioned before we actually had found that genz as the teen first wedge for us has basically been the wedge into building trust within families so on our platform we have 1.9 teens per family we acquire that teen first through the financial education workshops that we do across the country again parents will um approve those accounts fund them but really we want what we found is that we want that that genzer to feel like they're driving the process right even though legally underneath the hood parents are involved as they've been for the last 20 30 years um it's been really essential to how we actually built the product and then from there we obviously bring across the rest of the family so half of Americans are divorced um and uh as we know managing those finances within the family are really really huge especially from that you know divorced parent and so with that one wedge we start to go down this family Network and build a very very sticky um relationship that really hasn't existed before and again that Insight that we have is really U that gen Zer as being the driver of the whole account relationship so I think as a lot of folks we kind of fell into this pretty incredible panel um we've grown as far as scale to over three million members in the last two years um a lot of that has just been built on our expertise of again going to Market within the space um and what's been pretty cool about that as we think about what that you know provides access to from an insights perspective is really the 360 degrees of insight within not just um the spend side of it but also being able to really provide um access from a permission perspective to teens um we had an awesome time at sample con it was my first personally uh and didn't really realize I think how difficult it's been within the research industry to do qualitative research and really uh know for 100% fact that you have not the parent but the team that's providing the survey responses um the other thing that we're going to touch on within the presentation is really a lot of The observed Behavior because we are that first primary bank account so what we're able to observe is Merchant level data down to the skew level as well with our receipt capture product which again is a core pillar of financial education as we provide teens the ability to also earn money through copper um and really drive those insights there as well so um really excited to kind of walk through some of those insights that that we've learned today what I want to start with though is really you know our our our frame of reference with the genen Gen Z Revolution the slide used to say that they're coming they're definitely here now we're starting even moving into gen Alpha for a lot of the customers on our platform but is really a gen ation that has been built you know from the online world is now entering the workforce and is really comparing really compelling other generations to adapt to them and not VI vice versa and what this really means and why this is such a big deal is that you know this slide when I first built it we're at about 30% of the global population genzi now makes up um 40% plus of the global population from an income and spending power perspective um is a massive consumer segment um as we know and then what we learned really early on is that jenz is very powerful within decision- making in the household so um if you're a parent of a genzer I think you know this firsthand and I'm probably preaching to the choir but whether that's what um technology is consumed um what's bought at the grocery store and what we've seen in our over 3 million members which I think is the most telling is that of all of the the parents that bank with copper that have big five banking relationships at Chase Bank of America Wells large Regional Banks they've all decided to open their first primary bank account for their kid at Copper and what's unique about that is that we've introduced the product to that team first and they've been successful um in actually getting their parent to trust us with their most you know arguably sensitive part of their financial life and so I think that this is a really really key insight as we think about how this generation not only motivates purchasing behavior for themselves but for the entire family as a whole um the smartphone statistic I think at this point is is pretty much of course now we get it um but is obviously a smartphone first generation where everything is consumed you know digitally within that foam that they have within their hand um and is obviously a key part of of how they motivate decision making within the household so the first thing that I really want to touch on is really these insights of on Independence um we sit at this unique intersection of really being able to understand uh where you know since since we have their first primary bank account we also have all the data from a direct deposit perspective um understanding really how Independence um plays into you know views around employment so what we see is a a very cons compelling consumer shift into the digital forms of employment um when we look at our observe direct deposit data so what's really interesting here is there is a massive attention with about 57% of genz sees becoming an influencer as a reputable career um what's interesting about that is you know about the same percentage of them would like to be an influencer if they'd get be given a chance and then a similar percentage and even more at 65% would prefer to work for themselves versus a company um and so what I think is really interesting here is you see this uh cultural thought of Independence really starting to redefine you know the thought of traditional W2 employment um I think that we also see this extend you know much further Beyond just gen Z into gen Alpha and then even into how Millennials are thinking about work as well there's 200 million influencers worldwide and one of the things that we wanted to dive into is this is a pretty hot topic around how work is being redefined um but is is this here yet or is it coming what we see in looking directly at the direct deposit data uh and payments data we have again at pretty large scale with over three million members um and and millions and pond millions of monthly transactions is that the Creator economy is still likely more of a side Hustle but one in which a massive percentage of this generation is is engaging in so when we look at that data we see that about 72% of folks um still have less than $500 in annual earnings so it is still um from an adoption perspective more of a side Hustle than it is truly just despite what you may see in the headlines their first um their first job or their primary form of employment we then see that you know we have about 177% of folks that are in those 500 to about five 5,000 in annual earnings and then a really small percentage at about 2% um that are at 50,000 plus um in annual earnings you know within this Creator economy um what I think is really interesting here is that you know our takeaway is that side hustle is very alive uh it's definitely growing but it's not at a point where um you know it is uh the primary form of employment if we look at kind of more of the macro Trends I think we see that we have an inflection point that is already coming if you look at self-employment continuing to Rise um you know at about 10% since the pandemic despite you know that overall um you know Flatline of of total workers um entering the workforce uh from that perspective as well so there's a lot of side hustle money out there where is it going um so what we look at look at um and in this specific qualitative study uh the end was about 7,000 for this one we wanted to really understand where from we from when we observe our card data and looking at obviously top spending categories and and top three being in gaming where within gaming are most of of these transactions going uh for the parents on the call uh you may know this all too well um if you have a copper card but if you don't um I'm sure there's been a lot of conversations within the household around this um but there is a tremendous amount of this money that is going to gaming um 68% of the respondents in the study are making we weekly ingame purchases and so 23% of them are spending more than $10 a week within app purchases um what we see here are you know this isn't just the subscriptions um you know to an Xbox Live or a PlayStation account that just gives them access to play with their friends but these are an an actual inapp purchases so um buying skins within games um needing to uh spend uh money to uplevel faster within the games that they're playing and it is a massive massive multi-billion dollar economy that this generation is is heavily investing in when we look at our you know top three spending categories we obviously see gaming as as one of the top ones um and also um have you know obviously a tremendous amount being spent within retail um and then quick surve food as well so really how does this you know contribute um to China dominating the Next Generation shopping carts so the the graph on the right here is really looking at the last 36 months of high volume purchase data um and and really looking at um The Surge of both Sheen and timu uh relative to um you know the the typical um large retail marketers like Walmart um and obviously amazon.com and so what we've seen here you know over really starting in the the start of 2023 is just the massive um surge uh Within These platforms especially teu um and taking market share really within this generation specifically um what we've seen you know is really that massive Pace um of Teemo really really accelerating in the past you know Chinese warehouses were really just pure suppliers but what jenz has really provided is is an opportunity to change all of that one of the core things we've seen is really how gamification and social commerce and then the side hustle nature of Drop Shipping has really all converged into what we start to see as a domination of where a lot of this generation is is spending their money um it's really interesting when we have you know conversations with our teens just really around how they've thought about um engaging these platforms at the end of the day um you know the lowest price always wins especially with a price sensitive generation but it's been pretty incredible to see how quickly this Resurgence has has come if you build if you go deeper with into how you know some of these products are really structured and built gamification um is really at the core of the entire user experience in a way that you haven't seen within Commerce I think ever and so you obviously have a generation that um for better worse has you know uh really uh very quick attention spans um when we look at the top um you know the the top used social media platforms Tik Tok is obviously one of the primary ones and as you look at kind of the conditioning of how fast they're consuming media and understanding how they can really get from one place to another these products have done an incredible job of keeping that attention and um you know an ancillary to this is Tik Tock shop as well so again having the ability to have this social commerce and gamification of these products has been massive um in really driving the attention you know across this user base so yeah I'm going to um you know we've got a good amount of time for questions here wanted to open it up uh and and see what questions you all have um we've got a pretty pretty unique perspective at Copper and a lot of the observed data that we can see really across our user base and platforms um and hope this has been helpful at a high level to to kind of dive into the insights of of this next generation okay um yeah if anybody has questions uh drop them in the Q&A or into the chat um and we'll get those right off for for Eddie um I don't know I as the researcher I think I saw the the virtual jaw Jaws hit the floor when you see in of 7,000 for a gen Z research study um that doesn't happen so that's that's fascinating that you have this this captive audience and the behavioral data to to go with um so incredibly interesting um look like Danielle has a has a question um how did you build with regard to the panel how did you build it up and how do you Market that to your customers yeah really good question Danielle so we um this is probably a story that you haven't haven't ever heard before in our space uh but we we go across America and partner with high schools um we've partnered with about 3,000 high schools um and what we do is we have school partnership managers that physically go into high schools and kind of all the key markets key NFL cities um and uh run Financial education workshops and also provide a curriculum that maps to State financial education uh grad requirements and so what's been super cool about this is when we started zero States required personal finance to graduate from high school now we're upwards of 30 and what ended up happening was um you know we'd go into a school we'd run a financial education workshop and the teachers would say hey this is awesome uh but my district is telling me I need to get my kids to graduate to these personal finance standards um can you give me a curriculum um so we invested about four to five million of our own money to build a curriculum that maps to the state standards and really just a long-winded way of saying we introduce Financial education through your first primary bank account the teen invites the parent um the parent approves and kycs the account what's cool about kyc is it is we're required for um you know banking secrecy laws and and to open a bank account in the US to have them be as verified as they humanly can be right we have a social security number um a a photo ID a selfie verification and then the parent um if they'd like their kid to be able to earn through copper allows them to enable earn provide them provide us permission to access so that when we want to run a study um it shows up within their app um we profiled them um you know within this process and then what's been really cool um as we talk to you know folks within cpg or other wise we can actually also bring in the transaction level data um into the targeting there and so um the panel is is very large um we have I think the ability to fulfill some studies with some pretty Niche targeting um we're doing we're not really doing any research at Copper right now so um we just want to provide this awesome panel to you know to to folks like yourselves um but yeah that's that's kind of how we built it um I can tell you it's a lot of work work uh we weren't planning on um kind of doing this and just realized wow there's there's a pretty unique um opportunity here to and again jenzy wants to give their feedback and so I think the last thing we're trying to figure out is if there's a way for us to really connect the impact of their feedback and research to the decisions that large companies are making um I think that would be really cool other questions for Eddie um I I have one and that's just I guess what types of Of Studies have you I guess found you know most appetite for you know I mean this is a fairly new Endeavor and and you know what types of Interest have you had and research have you conducted yeah so we've we've done all kinds of stuff um I think as far as you know we've done um we've done a couple studies uh really focused on you know large large social media um where you have um what I would recommend is Loi is super important here um you know we we've done studies that are 30 plus minutes um from an lii perspective um but the the content of those studies does need to be pretty engaging um you know the preference here would be really focusing on the the research and Survey design to be as direct and concise as possible um so you know ideally being kind of in in the 12 to 15 minute um you know Loi on on the high end um so yeah I mean that the the a couple of those studies I'm specifically thinking about we're we're pretty involved um with you know going to specific social media platforms um and and doing the qu the quantitative side of it um we've also had the unique opportunity since we have this School presence and this Regional presence to do qualitative research as well um so you know we have um you know kind of what you might think to be really tough kind of product testing um you know type of qualitative work um that we can provide um access to as well okay and obviously the platform and the you know value proposition is is targeted at teens obviously but um as folks adopt use and begin to you know age out as it were um what's that process T tending to look like yeah so we have um you know we have a pretty big panel now building um really kind of in the young adult um 18 to 25 demographic as well um you know candidly as I mentioned we we just we we knew that there's there's four million new 14-year-olds that enter freshman year of high school every year um and that was a moment in which as I mentioned before they have the pain with their families of you know historically it's 20s flying out of the ATM so you can give your kids money well the pandemic made cash um you know kind of obsolete from that perspective and so a lot of those families are now aging up going to college getting their first jobs and so we have a pretty active panel now that's um you know kind of in the 18 to 25 range now we've been at at this um four plus years um and so you know I think uh that those panelists are are remaining on the platform um and again we'll continue to build um that side of of the audience there as well okay um it looks like Judy has a question uh curious about if this is available for students not yet in high school yeah yeah absolutely so we have um we users on copper that are as young as you know seven eight years old um and uh obviously from a a pii perspective and Copa um you know we we don't allow those those customers to go through and register on their own parents have to actually get started um but then invite invite their kid to the platform um if you guys haven't checked it out it's an awesome product um we spend a lot of time and money where banks have it so there's um you can you can set up an investing account for your kid where they're investing real money um but getting rich slow right so what's cooler than only one one ticker Tesla is owning Tesla and another thousand stocks um so we put them in a risk adjusted portfolio that's just for um you know much like you'd get if you had a private wealth manager um but again really kind of teaching them this get-rich slow mentality got a feature card called divy where you can take a percentage of any money that's sent from ons and uncles from their paycheck that automatically gets divvied into their investing bucket their spend bucket um it's a really really cool product from that perspective and then the earned product is is honestly our most popular because what what kid doesn't want to earn a little bit of extra money um and do it in a way that they can then budget it and um and really understand how to to build build up their financial uh knowledge very cool um any final questions ready yeah just it fascinating I mean I've spent you know a lot of my career in in Financial Services Research in fintech and this is just this is just a very unique sort of you know offshoot of of all that and just very cool that's all I got well yeah um yeah my email's on here as well um so if you uh have any kind of followup questions or thoughts or any thoughts on the study side and getting access to the panel we're we're here and we love to work with you all and Bill really really appreciate uh having us on