Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to check in to check out the E Commerce growth podcast from Mobile first.
My name is Justin Ehrenstein and my co host is Connor Burke.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Welcome to check in to check out. My name is just Snarenstein. Alongside me I got Connor Burke this week. Our guest is Grace Edinger. Grace, what's your role right now?
[00:00:29] Speaker B: So I am the director of e commerce product management at Stanley Black and Decker. We own iconic brands like Dewalt and Craftsman, of course Stanley and Black and White Decker Power Tools.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Nice. So in that role, what's your team look like? What's that?
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've been with Stanley Black and Decker four and a half years and I really joined to help build out direct to consumer e commerce. My background is mostly in direct to consumer e commerce and I worked actually at l' Oreal Beauty Products before I came to Power Tools. It's kind of a unusual trajectory but after I had joined everyone said kind of, oh, we're not totally sure we're ready to do direct to consumer e commerce because really a manufacturer and we are, we have a wholesale business.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Exactly. And we also have a, we also own Cub Cadet lawnmower. So we have a big dealer.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Network and independent retail network of distributors and dealers who also sell our products in addition to the like big box stores.
So it's been a evolution over the last four and a half years of does the company really need. What does direct to consumer e commerce look at a company like Stanley Black and Decker and it's been part of my job to help figure that out and, and pockets where we are experimenting with, with direct, you know, what does that look like and is it different than what you would traditionally have where you would just have a website and ship products to customers.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: So you do do experimentation and, and have a team for that or is it.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: No, we don't. I would say we want to get to a point where we are more focused on UX experimentation. I would say we are at the point right now where we are building a foundation. It is really interesting too coming beauty which is so much more mature in the like space. Like they how to talk to their end users.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Their customers in the digital space, whether that's on TikTok or their websites or through email. Like they know how to do that because that's where their customers expect them to be like our end users. When we say customer, like when Stanley Black and Decker says customers we're talking about Lowe's and Home Depot. So we have to like it's a real shift to like change to talking about your end users and when you say a customer, who are you really talking about? So, so if I'm muddling that, that's why.
So, but, but our like our end users are going in and like chatting with their guys at Home Depot or chatting at, with their distributors or their pros, their contractors who are buying all their stuff for their projects that they're hired to do. And those are like completely different use cases than somebody scrolling on TikTok and wanting to like buy a lip gloss.
And that's part of the reason too why I was intrigued to come to Stanley, Black and Decker. Because it's different problems to solve. Like I work in product management. I want to find those technological solutions for our business problems. Right.
It's totally different business models and different customer kind of journey that we have to solve for.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: There was something somebody said earlier today that was you fall in love with the problem.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: So what.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Actually who do you interface with on a daily basis?
[00:03:48] Speaker B: I mean I have business stakeholders. So the brands of E commerce at the brands, they have certain things that they're trying to push for from their brand strategy.
And so it's hey, I need this thing, can you build it for me? Huge part of my job is to say, do you really need this?
You know, what is the impact that this is going to have on the business?
Because I think brands tend to ask for a lot of stuff without really being able to back it up with the data of why they need it. And that's a big part of my job is to say, okay, I know you would like this. Is it the right thing for the customer? Do we have the data to back that up? Whether it's doing competitive research or looking at like I had a request this week to add a question, like a first party data question while you're creating an account on your website. Is that really the best thing for the customer or is it just the best thing for the company because we're trying to, to collect the data? So those are kind of, that's a big piece of what I do is to like ask those questions and make sure we're spending our time.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: Feel like that's maybe the, the biggest struggle in your job or maybe the hardest part of it is that's one of them.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Although I actually like, I don't think that, I don't find that a struggle so much because you have the data to back you up and you just like that's the job you know, I think the struggle is maybe once you decide what you're going to build, getting everybody all on the same page, figure out the how of how we're going to build it. And especially in a huge organization like Stanley, Black and Decker. This was true at l' Oreal also. There are, like, these very matrixed organizations, global organizations, where everybody has different goals that they're trying to accomplish. And then you prioritize that. You got to get, you know, the dev team, the design team, the creative team, the brands teams, the market team, all on the same page, prioritize all of that work, and then actually make sure it gets done for whatever brand activation is happening at a given time.
[00:05:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I asked that because one of the questions that we're always. Or the thing that we're interested in when we talk to people in the industry is like, what is it that you dread the most? Because I think a lot of people, we get some interesting answers, but just like, there's so many different aspects of the job that it's fascinating to me to see. Like, what is it exactly that people struggle with or don't look forward to? You know, what is their point of.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Friction in their job being stalled with, like, no way to move.
[00:06:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: And everything solved for political reasons.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: I would say more.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: And.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: We need to do. I know what the priorities are. I've looked at the data. Right. Like, this is what our customers need. But then just being like, someone be.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Like, I don't like that. You're like, but it. It works.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Or this is too big a problem to solve. I have all these other small problems that I can, like, check off my list. I'm, like, not willing to engage with you on the, like, big problem. But those big problems are really where we're going to make the difference in our consumer experience at the end of the day.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Solve. That's why no one's done. No one's solved them yet.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah. That's one of the things I. I've always found, like, when we go and work with clients that we come in and there's always, like, something that I feel like we identify as being. Not necessarily like an aha moment, but this. This thing where, like, this is what you need to do. And it's almost always the most obvious thing that everyone else is aware of, and they're all like, yeah, good luck. It just never seems to work out. And there's. It's strange to me how every company always has this weird, like, elephant in the room of they. They all know what needs to be done. But for some reason everybody's just in this, this gridlock and they. They can't do it.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: So, so frustrating.
[00:07:31] Speaker C: It's a very pervasive problem. And yeah, it is.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Well.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: And I think it's. I mean, it's really meaningful if you can be the person to figure out how to crack.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: Yes. Which is what we always want to be. But yeah.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: It is very hard.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:41] Speaker C: So that's a good answer.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: So in, in your role, what resources do you actually control? This highly matrix.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So my role is actually, like I mentioned, we were, you know, I was hired to help build direct to consumer. My role's kind of transitioning and has been over the last six months or so. We're building a new digital backbone like for the organization for all of our websites. Some that have E commerce and some that don't. And so that has been. This is the foundation that we're building here.
And I mean, I actually worked on a very similar project at l' Oreal where it's a. It's a huge. Should be a huge unlock.
You know, it used to be that. And this is. Was true at l' Oreal would have. We had hundreds of websites worldwide and you know, Lancome France would build something and then Lancome in the US Wanted to. Wanted to use the same thing. Product finder or whatever, whatever feature functionality you want to build and they pay for it and build it all again. So being able to consolidate everything together so that we're all on the same code base, that's incredible. Yeah, but it, I mean, it's a. So we've launched. We launched Craftsman a month and a half ago on this new code base and we're starting to roll out. And that's my role is really to understand what we. To build the global roadmap for that backbone. Right. So we have new brands coming. There are new requirements for as we, as we onboard, new brands. Commerce. For example, we don't have commerce today as we bring on some of our outdoor brands that have commerce currently, we're have those. We have to have commerce capabilities. We need a cart, we need a check total.
And then, you know, other things as well. Like our outdoor business has a huge business in parts. So again, different problems to solve. Right. Fitment. Does this part fit on my machine?
What parts can fit on my machine? All the different ways that you might want to like access that information.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: So how do you decide what features a certain site will build? Do you have like a revenue Threshold when some director of E commerce says, hey, we need this feature that's specific for us and maybe it can be used across another site, maybe not.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Well, if it can't be used across any other site, like I think the answer is generally no. Unless it's like, hey, this, this one feature is going to, you know, drive $4 million in sales, then yes, maybe you could have it, you know. But yeah, the revenue, I wouldn't say there's a specific number. And, and I think the, the KPI behind it doesn't necessarily have to be revenue. Right? It could, sure it could. There could be other things. Especially for a company that primarily doesn't sell direct to consumer. And so revenue is a. Has its own kind of place in, in that.
But I think that my, one of my big goals is to try to build things that are going to benefit the ecosystem as a whole.
So for fitment, for example, we do this today on our outdoor sites. Cub Cadet, Troy built but we have a separate website. And this is one of the things of at Stanley, a company like Stanley Black and Decker. I mean the amount of domains is just yeah, insane.
It's been around for years. We're maintaining like service on one website and B2B over here and B2C over there. And somebody sent me a website yesterday. There's a lawnmower shoe that they were like shoe design. You can't buy it from the website. But there's like a subdomain that has like a lawnmower shoe while you're sitting on your ride on walk through the grass.
[00:11:04] Speaker C: That would be.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that was.
[00:11:07] Speaker C: It's another product say yeah, so we'll copyright that.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Anyway. So some of it is to say like we have this service website where all of this fitment stuff is happening today for our tools versus our outdoor business. Right. Which is happening on our brand.com website.
If we build fitment capabilities into our global digital backbone, then can we put some of that service stuff to that exists today on a.
That into the digital and maintain it all in one place, try to consolidate. And so that's a huge part of the goal. It's like how do we lay that foundation so that we have to spend less development resources, product resources on maintaining things in all these different places. Tech debt alone.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Clean keeping stuff clean, keeping stuff modern. And then we can focus on like okay, what are the next needs that our business businesses have that our business stakeholder needs to try and like move things forward?
[00:12:06] Speaker A: I love that. So it sounds like a lot of your Customer, your specific customers like these business owners and directors of E commerce. What is your process? And so you're talking sometimes to an internal team to empower them.
What's your process of finding insights of like hey, this is what we need to build.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Or this is what were our roadmap's going to look like.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean it comes from a lot of different conversations.
Our business stakeholders. Right. Some of it is driven by the STRAT plan. We are putting QR codes on our cadet mower buses. We need this to lead to a post purchase hub on the website where you're going to be able to access your manual and videos about how to et cetera. Like great idea. Cool, let's do it. Also this is a brand initiative. Like so you kind of have to then I think like customer support reviews.
Like there are all of these places where there are like, I mean especially in the tool space like there is so much good stuff there about like the pain points that, that our end users have with these specific brands.
Some of it is stuff that we like we know that's a problem, we're like not totally sure how to fix it but you know, then we know about it, it's on the roadmap somewhere. We're going to figure it in the backlog. Like we'll figure out how to get to it once we have the capacity to do so.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: And then analytics also. Right. We look at, you know, where people are spending time. That's always the question I ask of like we want to optimize this page. Okay. How many people are actually going to that page? How much revenue is that driving?
And then on this new.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: The new backbone that we're building, it's going to be not just talking to the brand stakeholders about what they're doing for the brand but it will support different markets. So it's talking to your different markets and you're talking to customer, the cross functional teams. So including customer support CRM, everybody has different goals. Merchandising product information is a huge opportunity.
Again one of these like beasts of a problem to say we want to make the product information do this on the front end. We want to be able to choose this bit by length. I don't know that much about tools but.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Pack size.
There's some other like technical stuff that I don't totally understand but I know that other people do understand it and it's important to them. Right. But the product information organized in a way where we can really make that front end. I could build the front end Experience, but nothing will feed into it in the way that we want it to to make it possible for the customer.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: How, how many differences do you want to support or do you think is necessary to support by market? For example, your NA market versus your Latam versus how do you.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: As few as possible.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: But what is, what's necessary?
[00:14:59] Speaker B: It's a good question.
So our kind of motto as we build this foundation is no special snowflakes.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: And, and this was something we talked about a lot at l' Oreal too. I mean I actually think you have more people asking for specific, very special things for per brand.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Because brands are, this is just how you are as a brand.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Your brand is so special. It's unique, it has to be.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: And no other tool company has had to solve this exact problem.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Exactly. And you have come up with like product finder that like is so different from any other product finder that has ever existed. And like in fact. No, like, in fact, like it is very similar to every other product finder that has existed. There might be tiny tweaks.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: And so my goal, again, let's build something that is going to benefit the ecosystem, but build it in a way that is flexible and configurable so it can support the needs of multiple markets. Right. So that we don't have to build something that is like slightly similar but a little bit different.
And a big piece of that too is just like taking in as much information as possible in order to help like build out what that roadmap looks like so that we don't, you know, LATAM doesn't come to us later and say I needed that but like a little.
And this is that we're like building too is like what's.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Like, what are the meetings. You need to go out and say I'm building this. Give me your feedback of like, does this work for your market, for your brand? If I tweaked it a little bit, like tell me that information and maybe they're going to say you have to tweak this so much for it to work for me. But that's my job then to say, okay, I understand you need a big tweak. But like, in fact I think that if I make this small change, it will meet your needs. 80% of the.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: And if anything, Shopify over the past 5, 10 years has taught us that a single unified shopping experience is probably better than your novelty experience.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean this, and this is again like part of the reason that I like was interested to go to Stanley Black and Techer where there are different problems to solve is like E Commerce in and of itself is like pretty straightforward. You, I mean especially in. I worked in fashion before I was at l'. Oreal. But like fashion, beauty, like you send a beautiful picture, like evocative picture of like someone really cool wearing clothes that like, like speaks to your customers in a certain way. And like people want to buy that.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: You know, I think when you are trying to create an experience for a contractor who is trying to get, you know, thousands of different products to support him on a site, he has really different needs.
[00:17:35] Speaker C: Yeah, just put Harry Styles in a, you know, a drill and it may.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Work for some people, right?
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Sure. I don't know.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know the customers. Yeah, that might work.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: But I think, I mean, so this is something that we've rolled out for out our outdoor business that I think is really unique to. I mean it's, it's dropship. It's not like super unique, but it is a way to support both our customer end users and our dealer network in that when we take orders on cubcadet.com, we send those orders to our dealer network so that they can do a white glove delivery to customers who are within a certain radius of where they are. If you don't have white glove delivery, your lawnmower is going to get dropped in a cake crate at the end of your driveway and you're going to have to figure it out on your own. So it is supporting our dealer network by sending them business creating, giving them an opportunity to create relationships with customers who might need to come in to install an accessory or to get service. Right. And those are other areas that we like want to expand in the future. But to me that model is like what we should build to support direct to consumer at a company like Stanley, Stanley, Black and Decker, to use our capabilities from a development e commerce website point of view to support our distributors who are not going to have or have that capability.
Make it easier. It's so much easier to like and especially like younger people don't want to go into a store, they want to go online. They don't want to talk to anyone.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Depending what you're buying. Right. But that contractor could like put their list together and not have to, you know, go, go in necessarily. Maybe they want, maybe they do. But, but we need to like those different experiences for each person's unique like situation of how they want to shop.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Do you see a shift in that with, I mean with that generation I guess millennials and Gen Z kind of moving in. Do you see them being less hands on, less, you know, wanting to do things more digital?
[00:19:28] Speaker B: I keep seeing mixed things about this because apparently stores are also back. Gen Z likes to stop and I don't know, I can't keep up. I don't want to talk to human beings. But they want shop in actual stores, right? Yeah, it's a. It's something that comes up a lot of, like the younger consumers have different needs from a digital perspective and that need to like, modernize for them. I don't think we've cracked it yet. But again, like, the industry as a whole is a little behind in terms of digitization and like digital transformation.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: I mean, and also, I mean, I just know this because I'm working on my house now and we see a problem. The contractor says, I'm gonna run to Home Depot and go fix it. Like, that's, that's just his thing. He has his account at Home Depot.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: And he's just like, I'm gonna go run to Home Depot. Could he pull it up on the site? Sure. But that's just what he's done.
That's. They drive from shop to. From job to job.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: And see what's the problem is great.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: This job, I mean, and we love Home Depot.
Like, we. Home Depot does a huge amount of business for us. We also want to support Home Depot in that what we do on our sites is drive. Right now, most of our sites drive traffic to retail.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: So if we have like a where to buy button and you can choose if you want to shop at Home Depot or Lowe's or Ace or wherever it is.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: It's interesting. I actually did apartment maintenance when I was in college for a while, and going to Home Depot was like my way of getting out of work for the day. So I'm. I'm curious if there is a shift, because I imagine that will always, always be the case because you just basically you roll something up and then you're like, I'm gonna have to go get a park. And then you go to a guitar center and for a bit, hop on over to Home Depot, grab the part, and you come back and say there's a line. And that's. I mean, that was almost every day. So I'm kind of curious. Like, there's gotta be so many in.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: I don't know how.
[00:21:17] Speaker C: I don't how to describe it, but just very strange intricacies with the model that you're working with. And.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it is. It's super complex. There's lots of different people who want to shop in lots of different ways. And so how can we meet the needs of all of those different folks?
[00:21:30] Speaker A: I love it. So shifting gears a little, it sounds like you're at least right now working a little more on the infrastructure, empowering other teams. Do you have any fires that you have to fight where it's. You're not building towards the longer term thing but you're having to fight a fire?
[00:21:45] Speaker B: You know, I have particular. I've specifically kind of gotten into this role so that I did not have to do the like typical director of E Commerce, like firefighter.
I started out where I was working on web beyond actual websites, helping to support from a customer experience perspective. Like an actual. A director of E Commerce who had a P and L like to meet and to drive sales. And I did not like that piece. The like having to fight fires, somebody freaking out especially. I mean then sometimes it would be like the website's down, people can't place an order right. Which is like, like it's the worst. You gotta fix it. But you know, I would say 50% of the time it was also like the padding is wrong on the homepage, the color is.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: And I like, I don't care. I know that this is so important to some people. Like it is. If you have a strong opinion about that, like go for it. Like have that argument, fight that fight. Like ultimately that image on the like homepage is probably not going to make or break the, whether the consumer purchases or in an email. Right. Like that color or that padding or whatever it is. So I, I mean I think I took kind of a circuitous route to getting into like product.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: But it was deliberate in trying to do more of the things that I like which are create really exciting, seamless, pleasant, delightful experience for our users and not have to focus so much on the things that I don't think are, that I don't really care about because people who do care about them should care about them and they should like do whatever they need to do to feel like they are fulfilled at the end of the day by what they're trying to accomplish there.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: So you work on like a lot of like digital transformation, large infrastructure probably takes years to see your work come to fruition. Is that frustrating? Is that enjoyable?
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Like it. I like having like a really big picture to drive toward and being able to like put the blocks together and like it's really satisfying to me to like have that vision of where we're going, even if it's going to take a while to get there.
It's like so much harder for me when there's not a destination. And it's like here are the seven things we're going to do this year that don't tie into a larger strategy or don't tie into like a bigger idea of what we want commerce to be at Stanley, Black and Decker or, or what we're thinking about. So, so having this kind of like human he large vision which is, you know, right now, build our foundation, build a feature roadmap, move sites onto the foundation because without sites on it, who cares? But like we're thinking bigger too beyond that, right? Like what does service look like it's happening somewhere else right now? Like what does B2B look like? Probably B2B will stay its own thing, but like how does that interact with us? And like in a company where so much of the business is about the profession, like that's a part of B2B in and of itself. And like how does that interact? Maybe they're not shopping on our websites, but they're going to interact with our websites in some way, whether that's product research or something else. So then how do we build those journeys and make sure that like at the end of May there's probably no end but like at the end of where we're going in five years, in 10 years, we are meeting as many needs as we can. Even if those needs change along the way.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Can you give us any insight into what the infrastructure looks like?
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's a headless.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Drupal website.
So we use services to support product registration, product information and product data.
Sorry, not product. So product data and customer data as well.
Universal user profile. So those are kind of the front end. Is then like a design system that we lay the skin over the top of it for each of the brands, but it's component based. And so you have all these components that in theory every brand should be able to flexible and configurable, put together what they need when they need to build a content page, when they need to build a form to collect data, like any of those things. And it's really about trying to put ownership onto the brands in the markets to have what they want on their website versus it being controlled at a central level, which is where it has been done before. And then where I really want to get to is how can we then build an experimentation platform on top of that so that we're in and Learning. And then what are those, what is that feedback loop of? Hey, we tested this on this brand. It really worked. Let's make sure rolling it out across all.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Well, that was going to be my question. How do you so these tests, if could be small incremental ones, but I assume you're going to want to test bigger things because if you get a small win, we'll say on one site in latam. Yeah, let's say Black and Decker, latam. Are you going to allow them to make that small change or are you going to. How do you take that into account?
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Mostly it will depend what the change is. Right. If it's a content change, then it's market by market, but.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Like a global change. Like, yeah, we might make it at the, at the main level, but I also think those open lines of communication about like, we learned this thing, we're going to do this for you to benefit you, like those kinds of things. I mean, and we, we actually built this at, at l'. Oreal.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: We had a really lovely like feedback loop of brands sharing with each other different tests that they were running, especially from a content perspective where a brand have, has more ownership of it. We'd get together. I can't remember, I think it was monthly. You know, we ran these tests, we learned these, this information.
Other people would be like, what a great idea. Or oh, that reminds me of this test. Maybe I can do so.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Like, what a fun meeting.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Building that like community and like being able to, to around ideas and like share what you're learning is, is so fun. I mean that's, that's the beauty of it, right? Is like, I mean that's what I love about my job is taking in all these perspectives and then figuring out what, where we go from there.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: I love it. Have you, have you had any failures at Black and Decker?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: I, I don't think I've had any failures at Black and Decker except I.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Want to be you.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: I am like, well, maybe the fact that I, like, was hired to do a job that ended up not existing.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: I've been there too.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: I think that like, and again, like the part of that is the position that I've placed myself in, right? I mean, to like be in a role where a lot of it is connecting people and understanding what needs to get done and then helping to facilitate what, what is getting done? Right. I mean, I suppose if I built the wrong thing, that would be a failure.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: You won't find out for a couple years, right?
[00:28:17] Speaker B: That'll be long.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: What have you learned Working with directors of E Commerce and supporting them and building tools for them to do their job.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that we talked about this a little bit of like everyone wants something that they think is really special to, to themselves. And I, I think I have learned that mostly what you want is not so special yourself, but I think like it is a.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Conversation with them and, and building those lines of communication and like really understanding why they, they want a particular thing to be able to say. I can't give you this, but maybe we can do it with this other thing. I think that saying no is a big piece of something that I have had to learn.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Like you should say that with a little more confidence.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yes, it's, it is. But you try and say it in a subtle understanding.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: So they don't feel like they have been completely denied. They feel like they've been heard and understood and then, you know, they still don't get the thing that they asked for. At the end of the day, all.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: We want as humans is to be seen, heard and understood.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: What do you admire about the director of E Commerce?
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Think that like, it's a hard job, especially in a huge company like a l' Oreal or a Stanley Black and Decker like you.
Seems like you should have a ton of resources.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: They never do.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: You have people like me saying, well, I'm not going to give you this thing that you were asked for.
I ultimately have control over what gets built.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: And I think like the passion and excitement of like when you are making those numbers. I will, I will never forget our first million dollar day on heels.
I was at a conference and I don't remember now what one, but I was like in Las Vegas at a conference and I saw the guy who ran our 3 PL like multiple times over the course of the day and he would be just be like, hi.
Like this is like crazy, but the excitement and like adrenaline from being able to like really make it happen.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Is.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Because you know that nine months of like work that didn't.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: No one is actually planning for nine months. Okay.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: But like the development life cycle.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: And then the two weeks before the promotion. But. And all that work that went into it that no one noticed and you were checking the emails and the promotion codes worked, et cetera, et cetera. And then it finally works.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: This is, this is absolutely amazing. What is something that you wish like your executive team knew about your job?
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: That they don't.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: I mean, I would say my entire job. I am constantly trying to have to explain to people like what product management is, why this role is important. So executive team, everyone I work with and it's actually something that is, is really like there's a lot of interest in, I think right now in terms of like digital transformation and how do we move from a more project based model to a product based model. But like it's been a huge part of my role in my last two companies to evangelize why working this way is better. It's not one conversation. Right. It is small conversations along the way. It's examples of, hey, like we can't build this thing seven times. Like if we move to this working this way or hey, we in this, in the past, like we spent resources on this thing that didn't actually impact the business at all.
How can we move to thinking about this? And it's not an easy transition.
It is a really challenging transition to move from a model where it takes direction of a brand wants this and then they, they just build it to a let's ask questions and consider this and challenge this. And I give you as IT or product right junction the empowerment to say, is this the right thing to build? And so that I think also is a big part of what I am trying to do is to move from like an execution model to allowing everybody to have a little bit more empowerment and accountability in terms of like, yeah, I don't want to spend my time like, even if it's a small change, if no one's going to see it, it's even a small change takes time and energy from people who could be working on something that is ultimately those big problems that we want to solve.
Right. Let's stop thinking about the little things that are making no difference and like really spend that time trying to solve these bigger ideas, these bigger problems that people are writing about on Reddit. And we're like, it's too big, we'll get to it later.
[00:33:03] Speaker C: And this is the problems that people want to solve too. So there's a morale aspect of that as well. You know, you have them working on stuff that doesn't mean anything and no one really wants to do. Yeah, you get burnt out. I had a question actually and I forgot what it was.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Now we'll come back to it. Yes.
You said you want to get into experimentation. Is that going to be easy for you? Is the brand, are they ready for. I'm sure the directors of E commerce say, hey, I want to test this creative but like real experimentation that changes user behavior. So that's Is that going to be an easy hill for you to climb?
[00:33:36] Speaker B: I think, I think there are changes happening in the organization right now that will enable that.
We did a test, actually, we didn't test it, we just put it live.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: We'd made a change, I think earlier this year for extended warranty. We sell extended warranty on our lawnmowers.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: All margin.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: It's all margin. I mean, what a great idea. It's amazing.
Huge business.
And it used to be that you would have a pop up after you added to your cart that said you've added it to your cart. Do you want it on an extended warranty? This is, this is not rocket science. Like we stole this from Home Depot and Best Buy and everybody else who does it. It was, you know, so we changed it where you have to accept or decline the prot. We saw a 30% increase in attachment rate. We like met the goals, those high margin goals of what the brand had been trying to do. And so I think examples like that where a change to your user, like such a small change to the user flow that can like drive the results that you want are going to help enable, you know, that like we can make real difference, we can drive real dollars from these changes that we make.
[00:34:46] Speaker C: Is there anything from that that y' all might iterate on or any plans to?
[00:34:49] Speaker B: I mean we'd love to expand extended warranty to our other brands as well.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: So. Okay, so you still need to kind of spread that out.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's, it's happening. We have a, we have a pretty robust E commerce business with what we call E dealer where we send some drop ship some of these orders to our E dealers on cupcade. And I think there's a, there's a big opportunity to take a lot of what we've learned from cupcade from a commerce perspective and spread it out where it makes sense to some of the other brands. Even if we're not selling direct, we could still sell extended warranties. Right too. Which is interesting. But then you have a bigger question of how do you, what's that journey?
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: To get your customer there to buy those extended warranties from you.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: It's a good answer.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: So where do you think the opportunities for you, your team in the next 6 to 12 months really lie?
[00:35:32] Speaker B: I mean there is a never ending list of we like could do.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: I mean we're, we're building this foundation. Right. And that is like going to take the next, I don't know, three years.
Like we have a lot of we, we want to move our other, like, big brands onto it. We want to add commerce.
It's. It's nothing but opportunity. And that's a big part of, like, why as the Stanley Black. And a job at Stanley Black and Decker has kind of mutated and changed while I've been there. Like, the opportunity is just huge. Like, I can't state how big it is, how much improvement there that we could make from what we have today.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: And is commerce going to be driven through Drupal, or do you.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So the plan is to do headless commerce.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: Headless commerce using. What's the back end? Okay. I'm sure you're looking at Salesforce commerce clouds and Shopify. Shopify.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: I mean, we have sites on Salesforce commerce cloud and on Shopify today we have our tool sites on Shopify and our. And our web. The Salesforce commerce cloud sites were part of an acquisition. So opportunity. Right. To consolidate that. We also have at least four ERPs in North America alone.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Whoa. Okay. That's fun to deal with.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: And that's because of acquisitions. And so now it's your job to bring it all together into a single unified.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: I mean, maybe like, whatever the customer experiences has to be a single unified. Right. Whether it was actually such a joke because the single CEO was like, enough. The mtd, like, brands that we bought is complete.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: And we were all like, no, it has not started. Like, nothing is integrated. What are you talking about?
[00:37:16] Speaker A: That's really funny.
[00:37:17] Speaker C: Well, I was kind of curious, and I don't know if I'm jumping ahead or anything, but if you weren't working with e commerce directors and weren't in this field, what would you be doing?
[00:37:25] Speaker B: Well.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: So this is also a fun thing, as I was, like, walking on my way over here. When I was in college, I worked in the costume shop sewing the costumes for all of the productions.
And that was the most fun job I've ever had.
[00:37:40] Speaker C: Is that why you got into fashion?
[00:37:42] Speaker B: I mean, I always loved fashion probably also because I knew. I learned. My mom taught me how to sew when I was a kid.
I, like, always just, like, did that for fun. And then I got this job. I have the girl who lived in my dorm across the hall from me. Like, we're also had that job. And she was like, you should come if you know how to sew. Like, check it out. And we got to make all of these really cool. I built a corset one year. They call it building. So. And that is part of. Yeah, I think why I was, like, looking for A job in fashion. And then when I started at, I worked at Club Monica. I was the assistant to the CEO there.
And they launched E Commerce in 2012. A little late to the game, but.
So Club Monica was owned by Ralph Lauren at the time. And the Ralph Lauren team launched the E commerce site and the CEO was like, oh, no. Like, they don't know what. They don't know our brand. They don't know how to do this. Like, they cannot be running this. And he was like, we're getting rid of all of them. We're going to build it all in house knowing nothing about E commerce.
And. And he, he. I like, wanted to be a merchant. And he was like, you go and like, and you can report back to me on like, what's going on. So I was like an assistant E commerce merchant, like, trying to learn merchandising and also like, with no one who understood how any of the systems worked or talked to each other or anything. And it turned out I actually like, really liked that piece of it of like, what is the technology? How is this working? We were on gsi.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
[00:39:05] Speaker C: Huh.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: Or maybe it was ebay enterprises at that point.
But I, like, this is like a cool thing to learn and that's kind of how I started on the E commerce side.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: Love it.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And yeah, I mean, the other thing that I think is interest. It was like I wanted to be a merchant because a merchant's job in fashion is to take the point of view of the business, what sell and the point of view of the designers. Right. What's creative? Like, how are we representing the brand? Like, what is the, like, cool stuff that, that we're doing and make sure what you're putting on the shelves is like the right balance of all of those things.
And I think what I'm doing in product is like actually very similar to that. It's like taking all of the different points. You then developing the thing at the end of the day that is going to be right for your customer.
[00:39:53] Speaker C: It's fascinating. We talked in the past about how there's just really.
I haven't met him yet, but no one started out wanting to be an E Commerce director. They always kind of fall into that. So my degree was in screenwriting. I don't know what his was in, but you know, it's writing code.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:40:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: And yeah. No one goes to school for that.
[00:40:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: So kind of wrap up. What are you listening to reading to see Stay on top of E commerce. Or maybe you're not Maybe, yeah.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: I mean so I like on the my list of like things that I'm like interested in learning about, we haven't even talked about AI at all.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Some intention.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: I almost threw one out.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Is there something unique that perspective do you have on AI?
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I am like really interested in like AI product management.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: In terms of I think not because I want to be an AI PM someday. This is actually also something that I think is really interesting about being a product manager in this space because I, my product is our website. Right. And it's so different to be a product manager supporting a, a digital product that is really exists only to sell physical product, something else that is like the physical product. The companies that I have worked for have always been about selling something else, not about selling the actual product. And it changes like what that means.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: In a software company is everything. They're coming up with the ideas, they're driving the vision of the company. Like that's not what I'm doing. I am figuring out how we can best make some the vision of what the physical product is available in the most in the best way. Totally customers. So I don't think I'm going to be an AI PM any day, any, anytime. But I am kind of interested in just like what needs to happen to shift this mindset of I want to build something and I'm going to tell you what it is and then you're going to build it and it's going to turn out the way that you want to. Right. That like deterministic to a probabilistic of like I'm going to build something and then I'm going to have to take another look at it and like try it and use it in a bunch of different ways and like I'm not going to know what's going to come out at the end of the day.
And to me it's like fascinating because it's, it's. We're all interacting with these things like in there in, in some way shape form. We're going to do that more and more I think. And so there's a guy on LinkedIn who like does all this stuff about like learning to be an AI.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: What's his name?
[00:42:18] Speaker B: Akash Gupta. I think I said it to you.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: But I think like, like kind of learning what's happening in that space, even not something I actually do will give me a better sense of like how I am interacting. And then when the time comes to help build these kinds of experiences which like we're all going to be Doing, like, anyone who's on the Internet in the next five years is going to be, like, interacting with and. Or building these. These kinds of things. So getting. Getting started on that and, like, kind of doing these. These overviews of. Of what that looks like and how it's changing the way that we think and build.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Awesome. And are you building AI into your ecosystem? Is that on the roadmap?
[00:43:01] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, we have, like, a big. There's a lot of initiative coming down of.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Using I. How are we using AI? What is coming in? Which is, like, I think, kind of silly, because using AI in and of itself is. Should not be a KPI that you're trying to measure.
I think the big problems, right. The product data, the organization of the product data, the organization of the customer data.
Like, AI cannot fix those things unless you get organized about those things first or you think specifically about how AI can help you solve those problems. Maybe it can help. I don't know for sure, but I. I both, like, I both think AI is coming and it's really cool and we need to figure it out. And I also hate all the talk about AI because it's still ignoring foundational things that we need to change in order to, like, actually make AI be able to work for us and do the things that we.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: And that's why we saved it for the last possible moment.
[00:43:55] Speaker C: I was kind of curious, and you kind of spoke to this a second ago, just about how you're integrating it in. And within the next five years, people are going to be using AI a lot more. Do you feel like that's something that y' all might actually. Let me try to phrase it a different way. We're seeing a lot of people try to optimize their sites for AI in the same way that you might do, like, SEO for Reddit posts. Like, we're seeing the same thing. Yes, exactly. Do you. Do you feel like that's something that y' all are focused on or maybe might look into? And then also I think we need.
[00:44:23] Speaker B: To look into it.
[00:44:24] Speaker C: Gotcha.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Okay, I will share. This is, like, not specifically related to work, but I know someone who's building a, like, what's supposed to be a household concierge AI chatbot. And I'm in the alpha for that. And she wants it to eventually be a shop. It will shop for you, right?
[00:44:38] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: I'm looking to look at your calendar. I see that you have a birthday party coming up. Like, let me get a gift for you.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Your kid is. I have a 7 year old. Your kid is probably outgrowing all of their clothes. It's fall. Can I buy them a new wardrobe based on the things that I know you've bought for them in the past? Because I have access to your email. So I was like, oh, this is cool. Like, like, maybe this will go somewhere. I went on to ask ChatGPT, like, could you buy a wardrobe, like, for my daughter? Here are the brands she likes. Like, could you do this? It was terrible. Like, so bad. Like, it gave me like a onesie for a baby. Like, like, it was like, impossible.
Like, I will never do it again, you know, like, and, and so it's like, well, there is so much work to be done.
I think the question is, do we know exactly what that work is? Is that work constantly changing? Probably in this moment in time.
And that is a big question mark of like, how do brands prepare for that? Are bots really going to shop for us? Like, we think yes, but like, when and how?
So, like, yeah, we need to think about it. But like, what does that look like?
[00:45:50] Speaker C: Don't know what the solution is? Yeah, yeah, that's a great answer.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: I'm skeptical that bots are shopping for me in the next five years. I'll put it like, I buy five things of clothes a year and.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: But maybe they won't shop for clothes for you. Maybe it'll be something else.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Okay, maybe.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: Airplane ticket. That's true. Yeah, I'll take the airplane ticket. Where can people find you? Where do you.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: I'm on LinkedIn.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: Yeah, perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Amazing insights, great story.
Really appreciate everything you had to say. Thank you.
[00:46:18] Speaker C: This is great.
[00:46:18] Speaker B: Great to meet you.
