Retail Check In With Loie Maxwell

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: I'm here with Loy Maxwell, who is an absolute genius in the creative field and particularly has had a lot of awesome experience with the retail section, which was why we were so honored to have her join us recently at nrf, the National Retail Federation's big show. And if you don't mind, Lloyd, could you kind of just tell us a little bit about your background in retail?

Speaker A: Absolutely. And thanks for having me, Clint. I have had a, uh, long storied corporate career at several major retailers including Target, uh, CVS Pharmacy, Starbucks and just most recently Amazon Fresh. I was very involved in the branding and the marketing and et cetera and mostly on an Omni Channel level.

Speaker B: It's so impressive that you've had such a breadth across retail and you've had other experience too. But we're just going to focus on retail right now because that's a theme. Oh, and I, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that you were also the featured speaker at ah, Crossroads two years ago and you'll be back again this year. Um, do you know what we're talking about this year?

Speaker A: I'm going to probably moderate, ah, a couple talks for our panel and super excited to do so.

Speaker B: Perfect. I can't wait. Last year was absolutely, or two years ago was absolutely amazing. Super awesome to have you back. I'm so excited. Um, but let's dig into what the show was like. I don't know about you, but I was personally just uh, really off the bat blown away by the size. It was so large. I knew it was going to be big, but I wasn't expecting it to be as big as it was.

Speaker A: I've been to this trade show before. I knew it was going to be incredibly, almost overwhelming quite frankly. But uh, what I found so interesting at this particular event or uh, the big show this year, 2026 is how prevalent and actually domineering and dominant the tech sector of what is surrounding retail was present. They had robots, go karts, everything.

Speaker B: Yeah. And, and I think everyone's trying to throw the magic word AI and everything. When we were doing our go karts, we were actually going through an AI uh system for restaurants. And like uh, I said I knew the game had changed when I saw a state of the art robot greeting me when I walked through the, walked through the halls of the convention center. Obviously in 2026 you have to be um, on the global stage if you're going to be a retailer. And I was wondering if you'd kind of talk about what does that mean for the B2B world?

Speaker A: Well, it's no doubt that retailers, especially big box, mid size, small, they've got to figure out new ways to grow their business. The margins are so tight, closer, uh, stores are closing control, retailers are consolidating. So how are you going to survive this? Well it's really trying to find new customers. And one of the things that I think is really exciting, especially as Trevibay has over 30 plus different currencies it supports, is the fact that you can seamlessly engage with customers internationally and grow those markets for your business. And the best part is that Trevipay handles a lot of the compliance, um, and the processing of uh, the money. It's absolutely a seamless process. Whereas before it would be quite a big stretch to get your infrastructure ready to handle international business, now it's a very quick on ramp.

Speaker B: Sure. One of the major growth areas in retail is going to be focusing on um, loyalty. And so what are some of the ways that you think that retailers can strengthen their loyalty in B2B?

Speaker A: I think what's great is, you know, retailers are dealing with so much complexity, not just the market and customer satisfaction and product assortment and all those things they do so well. But when you provide lean standardized invoices and sync directly with the system, um, for reconciliation, you become least resistance. Right. So that alone is going to really make a big difference in building that loyalty and trust that is so hard to earn that this way you can actually get it quite quickly. I, I, you know, I just know from being involved with my finance partners and, and uh, buyers and all the people involved in a retail organization, they're always looking for faster way to do the bureaucracy.

Speaker B: Makes total sense. And another interesting insight has been that the data shows that a lot of valuable future B2B clients are likely already shopping with them. But they look like regular consumers using their own cards.

Speaker A: Retailers do not want to leave a dead basket. You cannot like leave money on the table that way. You want them to spend all their money with you, as much money as they can. And the last thing is to create that point of friction where they can't actually make a purchase or because it's on their own card that they have to get reimbursed or they have no idea what will and will not be approved because then there's a whole other step of bureaucracy. The best thing for any, um, buyer within an organization making these type of purchases is going to want the, that frictionless payment. And that is where Trev Pay can actually Issue a card and the customer can spend more, not think twice about getting reimbursed.

Speaker B: Yeah. And the data shows they, uh, actually spend a lot more money.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Speaking of getting rid of that friction, the tolerance for manually onboarding in the B2B retail world is, is effectively zero. Because in retail, you know, um, they basically want that Amazon like speed.

Speaker A: Well, I think it's all about the experience. I mean, as with anything that builds a brand experience and brand loyalty, it's about how your customer engages with you. And I believe that if you could make it as simple as the B2C experience, if the B2B experience could be as simple as the B2C experience, I think you're going to be winning right away, uh, nearly because of the steps that you cut out and all those different levels of approvals and billing and purchasing and all that paperwork goes away. You essentially have a purchasing power that is just like a B2C experience. But now it's in B2B.

Speaker B: So as we're thinking about this, one thing that also came up was the importance of data and what data will mean.

Speaker A: Well, I would say that Triviapay is one of the most trusted B2B payment and invoicing systems. And I think that to know, uh, that your data is safe and being aggregated for you, you are going to be setting yourself up in the future. You're going to have the information at your fingertips and the level of service that you're going to receive is where you can carve up and build those reports with trevipay as a partner so that you can ultimately use that information to grow your business. And um, I think you mentioned, I don't know if I can say this, but you guys are working on a quote unquote growth set center, which is a new product that ultimately will help your customers.

Speaker B: And, and yes, safe. Safe to say we're proud to say it.

Speaker A: So, yeah, and with that growth center, I, I'm, I'm not fully educated on it because it's, you know, it's a hot. With that growth center trip can actually help you utilize that towards any of your growth needs. And it, it even to the point where, um, they're developing ways to incentivize your customers and uh, promotional programs that will ultimately, uh, draw in more customers and keep the best customers you have. So it's pretty exciting. I think that you guys are going in this direction.

Speaker B: It is exciting. Thank you. And we mentioned you're going to be at Crossroads this year, but so will more information about the growth center. So that's two awesome reasons to visit Crossroads.

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: And Loy, I want to talk a little bit about what's in your future. I know you're doing lots of amazing things with women in business, so I just wanted to kind of get into that a little bit. What's next?

Speaker A: Yes, I am very excited to talk about my, uh, podcast out of the Office with Loy Maxwell. O O G O with Lloyd Maxwell.

Speaker B: Such a great title, I have to say. I'm just extremely jealous at the the perfect title. So fun.

Speaker A: You know, I was asked to speak at my alma mater and I just more or less felt the most important thing I could tell all these young women, uh, is all the things that people don't talk about in TED talks or influencers don't bring up when they try to motivate you. I think it's really about finding your own level of happiness and not trying to compete with every other female CEO out there in the world because there are only so many of them, and sometimes they're not as happy as you can be doing something else. So my whole point is, ah, what is really, truly going to make your you happy, whether it's in your career growth or your personal growth, and making sure that you make those decisions, or at least understand those decisions around your finances and, uh, how to be in control of your life by making your own money.

Speaker B: I love it. So exciting. So looking forward to that for you and looking forward to talking more about the growth center at Crossroads and, uh, the exciting thing that you'll be moderating and all the discussions we'll have very, very soon continuing on these topics and more. So thank you so much. It's always wonderful to talk to you and, uh, can't wait to do it again.

Speaker A: Thanks, Clint. Likewise.

Speaker B: All right, awesome.