Mobile First

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Kristoffer is a brand evangelist with solid expertise in visual design. He is a multi-disciplinary brand strategist with an international experience in content development for consumer experiences and brand positioning. He designed for brands like IKEA, H&M, Brooks Brothers, Lagos, Luxotica, Bloomingdales, David Yurman, Bjorn Borg, and Oakley.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Getting to know Kristoffer as a dad of two, how he shifted interest dramatically, him being a passionate runner and biker and why he loves sports which forces you to get out of your comfort zone. He also shares how his upbringing and his sightseeing tours to churches during his early age relates to his current profession.

The characteristics of the company that he goes for and how he views brand experience: having the will to adapt to change and knowing who you are.

What he thinks is his strongest point and how he mends brands which had lost their purpose. Kristoffer gives detailed examples on how he focuses on a certain brand’s opportunities, does his magic and ignites them again.

He also discusses creating sub-brands without the risk of fragmentation, how to succeed using this strategy and names companies who had done this successfully.

Why he thinks that some big brands, such as IKEA, can take stupid steps and gives scenarios supporting his opinion.

His thoughts on how digital can and cannot be useful depending on how you utilize it. Kristoffer also shares his strong belief why we have to stop thinking mobile as a revolution and in contrast, just think about it as a different vehicle. He throws in examples of how you can misuse this channel but also featured small brands that had excellently used digital: Black Sheep Cycling, Rapha, and I Love Ugly.

What he thinks is the next disruptor in retail and where he thinks the future lays in brand experience: how far can you customize a product from the consumer from the get go.

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Mike McGuire is the Vice President of Research in Gartner for Marketing Leaders which specializes in mobile marketing, guiding digital marketers on how context, community, location and time converge on a consumer's mobile device to change the relationship between customers, prospects and brands. He is responsible for the mobile marketing research agenda and also covers the online music segment specifically, digital distribution and also looks after Gartner’s coverage of legal and regulatory issues that affect media companies.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

01:12: As VP of Research, Mike enumerates the areas he focuses on in the mobile marketing agenda. This includes their marketing team’s dedication on mobile marketing research. In here, they zoom in on the breadth and depth of the tools and techniques which are important to mobile marketing.

02:55: Mike’s definition of how context, community, location and time are changing the relationship between the consumer and the brands. He also provides examples of how you can now do fine-grained distinctions from the cues derived from data gathered by mobile technology and change user experience leverage on this information.

06:46: With the massive push towards mobile, we discuss where a brand can start and how they can pull in contextual data to use for a certain return to justify investment.

13:51: If there is an opportunity for unique mobile engagement but a company that missed the boat in terms of being mobile first, should the company start with being mobile responsive/mobile friendly or invest more in mobile engagement? Mike devotes time in discussing why, since becoming a mobile responsive site isn’t a flip of a switch; the next big investment of a company should be towards being one.

21:09: The exciting things which Mike thinks are coming next including the extreme line of convenience which voice interfaces and the notion of virtual private assistants can possibly bring. We add in the positive and potential negative of VPAs and how it will affect brands and products.

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Ariel Avila started his career in Wall Street as an investment banking analyst at JP Morgan in the retail and consumer bank. He then joined JP Morgan’s equity research practice before attending Harvard Business School. The then joined Sears and later on, Trunk Club. He is focused on developing and executing strategic, operational and growth initiative. He currently lives in Chicago, speaks English and Spanish, is a runner and enjoys travelling.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Ariel shares how he enjoys travelling, in fact, he has been to about 30 countries and his recent trips where Hungary, Austria, Budapest and Vienna. He also loves eating out and discovering new places, is planning to do his first marathon, and is passionate about mentoring and teaching people.

Ariel started in college as a Political Science major but learned that it was not a practical route. Investment banking caught his attention as it sets a foundation of a career and you get to develop a rigorous analytical skill set. There are also lots of opportunities in this field as you get to work with smart, talented individuals; and get lots of responsibilities at early age. He was assigned in the consumer retail group and tis sparked his interest in retail.

What his role entails and about his focus on two areas: rolling out test concepts for the brick and mortar side of the business and the alterations group. He adds how he keeps the business going, monitors demand and supply, and keeps an eye on their KPIs.

How forecasting needs makes them successful and allows them to scale, their rigorous process to onboard tailors, how they source tailors and some of their challenges in hiring.

Their peaks and valleys and sales patterns for Trunk Club; the hurdles and bottlenecks they experience especially in the people side – stylist to serve customers; and the concepts they are currently introducing to meet their goals in improving customer experience.

How their back end operations work; and how they ensure that customers enjoy cohesive brand experience while providing individualized service at the same time.

How mobile impacts Trunk Club customer experience and the initiatives they rolled out -- such as messaging, digitizing their tailoring tickets -- which enhanced responsiveness and engagement and introduced innovations to an old industry.

Ariel shares Trunk Club’s differences, similarities and edge compared to its competitors.

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

A former magazine editor with a focus on the outdoor and sports industry, Kyle has successfully merged design, sales and best practice into his ecommerce career. His knowledge of the space and how it relates to ecommerce is unparalleled, working with companies like Dr Martens, Chrome Industries, KEEN, Nau, Xterra Wetsuits, Retül, Ski Racing, Rudy Project, SKORA Running, Blue Seventy Wetsuits, Nuun, Endurance Conspiracy, Inside Triathlon and Carmichael Training Systems, among others.

His specialties of both on- and off-site optimization, plus his digital marketing and A/B testing acumen is the basis of how he builds teams focused on a "test, learn, repeat" philosophy. Kyle is also an expert email marketer and has had many campaigns on Campaign Monitor's annual Top 100 list. He has led teams by collaborating with buyers and merchandisers, producers and marketing specialists, site managers (domestic, European and Asian), and analysts to fulfill an overarching global digital/ecommerce strategy.

As a Magento expert, he was also a 2012 Webby Award honoree for Best Practices. He is a noted speaker on oft-controversial topics on the direction of ecommerce.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Starting off in magazine because of his love for storytelling, Kyle shares what drove his fascination in writing and his adventures brought about by being a writer who elaborates on things.

About his mentor, Dave, and how he drove him to cut his teeth in analytics, forced him to read stats, get out of his comfort zone and inspired him to innovate.

How abstract thinking and thinking about the big picture is pivotal to success in the ecommerce industry.

What drew him to transition to the brand side and how it can sometimes be challenging more than others.

A story about what led him to Dr Martens and what he enjoys most working in there.

His roles, responsibilities and what he focuses on in line with his role as Vice President for Global Digital at Dr Martens.

Kyle expounds on the three things for a business to be successful and which will set a foundation for growth: great consumer experience, have your SEO dialed, and your email system.

What they are doing to segment and tailor fit experiences and resources that he finds useful.

Head over to www.EmergeMobileFirst.com and select "Get Free Resources" to get the full list of resources from all of our guest emailed to you!

Our Guest

Julia Kaplan brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in product development, delivery and innovation. She is responsible for driving ThredUP product and user experience. She started her career as a software engineer in financial services and then moved on to work in technology for companies in healthcare, e-commerce, advertising, and media. Prior to joining thredUP, Julia held product leadership roles at @WalmartLabs, Kosmix, and Yahoo! Julia earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Julia was born and raised in Eastern Europe and it took three months for her family to move to the US before collapse of Soviet Union in 1989. She shares how she did not speak a word of English when she arrived, how she worked to put herself through college, choosing Berkeley on price, how the educational system differs in the West and how, through it all, everything was still a rewarding experience.

While she worked as a software engineer, Julia became interested in venture capitalism so she set her sights on entrepreneurial strategy and finance after school. Despite this, she ended up enrolling in product management, which she did not regret.

Julia’s journey started with Visa followed by becoming a certified trainer for Microsoft where she taught people who wanted to learn web development when it was very new before. She then worked with Ford where she got exposed to product management. This is where she got the bug and decided to pursue her MBA. After business school, she came back to California to work for Visa as a contractor and in Yahoo where she took care of the platform side and eventually moved to the media side during the latter years. She joined Kosmix in 2010 where her team became WalmartLabs when it was acquired.

Her core responsibilities as a VP of Product at ThredUP involves managing a small but dynamic team. Their tasks revolve around product culture and they maintain a very strong discipline around user research and user testing. They reiterate a lot and are pursuing the mobile first approach in line with their focus on amazing customer experience mainly through product findability.

Julia gives us examples to show how her team uses research, user testing and iteration on one of their two-week engineering sprints. She shares take aways, challenges and unexpected surprises which can arise from this cycle.

We learn about the key things that happened when they transitioned to mobile responsive and invested in mobile apps. Julia also shares why how ThredUP uses qualitative and quantitative data from user research and what KPIs they look at for the data to drive iterations.

Rapid Fire Questions

What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation is thinking of things – may it be technology or process or something else – and applying this in a new way to create better customer experiences or better way to solve customer problems.

Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why?

I agree with the quote that an idea without execution is just a hallucination. Great ideas with bad execution are not going to succeed. Ideas are important but I’ll put more emphasis on execution. I would say 20% - 80%.

What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far?

Customers are going to go for better pastures. If somebody else gives them better experience, better price, better assortment…they are going to go there. So it’s very important to stay on top of things, to innovate and always listen to your customers.

What is your favorite business book?

Competing Against Luck by Clayton Christensen

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan

The Membership Economy by Robbie Baxter

What is your favorite digital resource?

Marvel

UserTesting.com

Looker

What is your favorite app and why?

Uber

Houzz

What is the coolest thing that you are working on right now that you want everyone to know about?

We are about to launch a beta of a new app that some people will call comparative shopping but it’s more than that. It will inspire consumers to think 2nd hand first.