Mobile First

Our Guest

Aki Iido is the Head of Mobile at Zappos Family of Companies. He holds lead link roles to the mobile and engineering circles, as well as a CTO role.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Getting to know Aki’s background from being originally from Japan but born in Guatemala, having a Japanese dad and a mom from Central America. He also shares going to college in the US, getting a job in LinkExchange which was acquired by Microsoft, and his initial hesitations in joining Zappos.

How Aki was led by his roommate, who was then a Computer Science major, to the engineering space.

The pivots and transitions that he made when he worked in Zappos and some challenging things that they had encountered such as learning new systems and tools, and doing some back end work such as developing workhouses systems. Coming from this, Aki then shares the take aways that he learned from all the experience in modernizing the supply chain.

How it is working the full gamut of the business from the internal to consumer-facing facets of the business.

The big things that are prohibiting scaling in mobile and how he takes advantage of the new agonies and leverage on these experiences.

The exciting aspects in working in the mobile team and the pros and cons in developing in two platforms, Android and iOS.

Aki shares the biggest ability that you should have get the biggest return such as the need to look at the data, understanding where the user need is by reviewing your web server logs (how many visitors are checking your site is, what mobile devices do they use and what platform are they in) and using these to improve your user experience and make your decisions.

Looking at data and seeing that most of the traffic is coming from mobile, Aki suggests what experiences retail should be natively building for a better web experience and how you should go about planning your strategy to have the least investment impact.

Rapid Fire Questions

What is your definition of innovation?

Always look ahead. Embrace and drive change. Never be scared and try to have fun.

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

If the execution is terrible, no matter how good your idea is, that’s not going to help you. Execution is 99% and 1% is idea.

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

Apart from learning and solving problems, working with folks who are passionate in what they do, that’s when you see great things happen.

What is your favorite business book?

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh

What is your favorite digital resource?

Safari Books

iTunes

What is your favorite app and why?

Zappos Apple TV app

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

We are excited about all of our apps as we are making big investments and changes in this area so check out Zappos mobile.

Our Guest

Luvleen Sidhu is the Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder of the BankMobile Foundation. She's been recognized in the industry, including being named one of Bank Innovation’s Top 10 ‘Innovators to Watch’ worldwide in 2016; the Lehigh Valley Business Women of Influence - Woman to Watch Honoree in 2016; a winner of New York Business Journal's Women of Influence Awards in 2016; one of Auto Finance News’ ‘10 Executives to Watch in Auto Finance’ in 2015; and one of Bank Innovation’s ‘2015 Innovators to Watch.’

She holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Government from Harvard.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Luvleen shares how her desire to have a positive impact to the society drove her to find ways to explore means of doing so. Government is a good vehicle to serve as a catalyst to change but she later found out that a combination of business and exponential growth in technology can positivity impact -- from local to global – people’s lives. She had always been drawn to leadership roles and this was the start on how this father-daughter duo disrupted the mobile banking industry.

Learning how working in Lehman Brothers and her exposure in Wharton stirred up the entrepreneurial bug in her. Business school had provided Luvleen exposure in case study methods analyzing how start-ups address unmet needs and this inspired and started her entrepreneurial journey.

From a corporate job in investment banking to financial services consulting, Luvleen took the leap to working full time in BankMobile and was successful. She shares how they did this by starting with the non-subjective things such as looking at the market and their current behavior like interacting with their banks via mobile; identifying the opportunities the current banking model; and instituting the BOYB concept to grow and scale exponentially.

Luvleen shares it is good to have a goal in mind work towards that goal but it is also essential to have the flexibility to pivot and experiment. From testers and concepts, she mentions that they got to their first milestones through marketing innovations such as digital advertising, word of mouth, PR and content development.

About her book, ‘Why Can’t Banks Be As Easy As Uber?’, her motivation in getting it out and how it is an extension of her passion to get the community to be aware of the gaps in the current system and how they can look forward to a more futuristic banking.

About their College BankMobilist Program, a nationwide campus ambassador program where they run workshops and seminars to educate students to make the best financial decisions in their lives. Luvleen shares details on this program which is a means of how to spread financial education across America and an extension of her passion to the education realm.

How mobile has allowed them to scale, enable their mission and improve banking experience through things like biometrics and geolocation.

Their main focus in BankMobile: make banking as effortless as possible and add value to consumers moment by moment by utilizing what technologies are out there to proactively identify the current market hurdles for banking to be more than just money management to help people in a day-to-day basis.

How the elections impact the mobile banking market and Luvleen’s hopes in the coming administration.

The things she is excited about in the future of mobile banking with the technology that we have in our fingertips which is untapped by the banking industry.

Rapid Fire Questions

What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation has two components: First, the product should be more affordable, easier to use, has a model that should be sustainable and overall, should be a better product than one that currently exists in the market. And, no matter how good a product is, if you do not have customer acquisition and retention strategy, it does not matter at the end of the day. Your innovation has to have these to be a disruptor.

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

The ideal situation is that you have a good idea and execute well but no one has ever been successful with a great idea and lousy execution. I think a mediocre idea with excellent execution will lead to great success so I would say 80%-85% execution, 15%-20% idea.

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

It comes down to always having a clear vision on where you want to go then have a strategy in achieving this vision. But my biggest learning is that you should be open to the fact that that strategy and vision should be open to change and you have to be flexible and open-minded because without this, you can lose an opportunity of where you want to go.

What is your favorite business book?

The Third Wave by Steve Case

What is your favorite digital resource?

TechCrunch

Engadget

Tech section of the New York Times

What is your favorite app and why?

WeeChat

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

We are rolling out the next innovation of the BankMobile app coming out on December 8th with the most exponentially better user experience that I’m so excited in bringing to the market.

Our Guest

Dan Armstrong is the Chief Digital Officer at BankMobile, America’s first fee- free mobile first bank. With mobile banking and financial services, telecommunications and technology projects in 40+ countries, Dan brings unique expertise in developing new products, technologies and distribution strategies that accurately match technology with consumers’ needs. For the past 20 years, Dan has worked in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America start-ups, mobile banking/payments, instant-account opening and correspondent banking, telecommunications, NFC, cards, alliances, regulatory, feasibility and automation programs.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Getting to know Daniel more including his travels, e-telco projects and his learnings regarding the ubiquity of mobile around the world after being in many other continents.

As takeaways from trying things out from the rest of the world, Dan shares the bigger things and functionalities that we should bring back.

Dan’s observations of countries who are early adopters of technology vis-à-vis the user behavior that they are exhibiting.

Dan’s background from having a degree in Philosophy, his real first job as a museum and exhibit designer for an architecture company and how this line of work did him well during his transition to designing websites. He also shares how he transitioned to banking and when the realization that having a mobile services package can very impactful to a lot of markets came about; and the different, interesting ways of how to get people to get a bank account from country to country.

The main things that Dan is currently facing and the solutions that he feels would be a great fit to the market. This includes innovating by setting up an entire software services division with his CTO; white labelling by establishing a platform which can be sold to other channels which can be rebranded and repositioned; and doing what they do best: controlling experiences and enabling capabilities without necessarily conquering the world with your own brand.

With all the new ways that they are working on in entering the platform, we inquire if Dan notices any user fragmentation and if they have plans to centralize these channels into one platform; plus what their core model differentiator is compared to others in the market.

Where he sees the mobile banking will be in the near future and the interesting things that may come about.

Rapid Fire Questions

What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation is a good term but is overused these days. I like the term partnership better – a lot of suppliers and vendors call their customers ‘partners’. Real innovation is doing something that fundamentally takes a step forward or sideways and not just incremental capabilities or UI…I want to take innovation at a higher standard.

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

I believe that the key is really execution. Execute in a way that is so much more unique and attractive to people as execution is the trick to success. In our market, it’s all execution so it’s probably its 80% execution and 20% ideas.

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

One size fits all is certainly not the way this world functions. Look at each market differently and it’s dynamics.

What is your favorite business book?

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction by David Quammen

What is your favorite digital resource?

TechCrunch

Krebs on Security

What is your favorite app and why?

Communications apps such as WhatsApp

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

We are involved in the working on the patent on the UI of our new app which will change a number of things that mobile banking has never done before.

Our Guest

Diane Loviglio is the Co-Founder & CEO of Boon + Gable whose vision is to make shopping less time-intensive and more enjoyable. Boon + Gable sends a personal stylist to your home with clothes from brick and mortar retailers. The stylist advises what best fits for you and you pay only for what you keep. When not being a CEO, she can often be found in her favorite pair of AG jeans and playing with her 2-year-old daughter.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Diane shares how Boon + Gable was born from a personal pain point, her background in architecture and her hobbies which include trying new recipes out, staircase walks in San Francisco, and exploring cities.

Why Boon + Gable means ‘a favor to your home’ and why Diane choose this name for the company.

What inspired Diane to transition from architecture to start up, her frustrations about the way she shopped before, and how she came up with the current model of their company.

Diane introduces Clark, the company’s algorithm and how he interprets data; where and when your stylists come into play; and the oath which comes with signing up.

Their strategies in driving ratings up and getting to their current Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 85% ; and where they are getting their consumer insights to get them to understand their customers more.

How they figure out what to bring during their first and succeeding customer visits and their unique mobile-only model.

Why she decided to go with a mobile-only approach; things that they are working on such a shortening sign up flows and tweaks in in-person visits; and her visions for Boon + Gable to take the business further.

Rapid Fire Questions

What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation is doing things differently but not just for the sake of doing thing differently. It’s doing things differently so you can save the resource or create one.

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

Totally execution. It’s like 1% idea and 99% execution. You can sketch up as many ideas as you want but execution is where the rubber meets the road, that’s the hard part. It’s where the nitty-gritty details are, it’s what makes or breaks the service.

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

Being a founder and being able to grow a team, my biggest learning lesson is understanding the motivation of your team mates. It helps everyone align themselves.

What is your favorite business book?

Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work by Dan Roam

What is your favorite digital resource?

Google

What is your favorite app and why?

Instagram and Tumblr

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

We’re bringing on some large retail partners which means that our catalog will triple our current 46k.

Our Guest

Joshua Behar, Junior Director of Marketing for the brand, Ike Behar Apparel and Design, has worked in the company since the age of 15 and currently, is responsible in allocating ad dollars to create comprehensive marketing strategies in order to maximize brand exposure, awareness, and ROI. He also developed numerous corporate and promotional partnerships to promote brand awareness. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: All about Josh: from starting the job at a young age, his reverence for his grandfather who started the company, and how he got into digital marketing. When and why he pivoted towards new media and content marketing, and how being part of Gen Y gave him a fresh perspective to move towards implementation and adoption of modern methodologies in the seasoned company. How he drew their company, which is not too susceptible to change, to embrace and transition to the new concepts he had introduced and see the value of technology and his ideas. About the first campaigns that he built that proved return on investments, the KPIs that he associated revenue with and tools he used in tracking metrics. How he leveled up his next campaigns where he tried other different ways to sell and engage to the customers, all the while still capturing essential business KPIs. The other channels that he expanded on and how he went about achieving these milestones. How long it took for the company to transition and reframe their perspective towards the needing to make the shift. Josh shares how creating one uniform feeling across their social spaces can get your customers to take action and the value their brand got from their partnerships with Boyz II Men and the Dallas Cowboys. The digital infrastructures they had in place to land the partnerships that they had. Other technology which enabled their success besides social media, digital advertising and e-commerce. Rapid Fire Questions Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why? Even if you have the best idea but can’t show people how to engage with you, the idea will mean nothing. If you have a crappy idea and it is executed really well, it is still a crappy idea. So it’s 50 / 50 for me. What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far? In execution, you got to handle your end. In retail, it’s so easy for people to find options so you need to have your message on point. There are so many easy things that can go out of your control so those which are, you have to handle properly. What is your favorite business book? Who Moved My Cheese Money Ball by Michael Lewis What is your favorite mobile app resource? Google Display Network and Google Analytics What is your favorite app and why? Prime Now What is the coolest thing that you are working on right now that you want everyone to know about? Modernizing our digital custom experience. We want to bring the feeling of coming into a tailor shop over to the web and to mobile.

Our Guest

Daniel is a designer with nine years of professional experience, focused on creating memorable, cutting edge web experiences. Daniel has worked in print and web for both product companies as well as in client services— serving such clients as ID90T, The National Geographic Society, Starbucks, Freeman, ComData, Nintendo, and Funimation. He is currently Vinli's EVP of Experience, leading all design and front-end development for the connected car company. Daniel is responsible for ensuring a consistent experience across the entire Vinli ecosystem.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Getting to know Daniel more from his passion for technology and products up to their interesting version of pillow talk.

How a pirated copy of Dreamweaver and Photoshop and the necessity of promoting a band led and inspired Daniel to pursue web design and development at the age of 14.

The reasons on what drove him to transition from client services to the world of product and the challenges -- such as safety and the phase of how infrastructure moves together with ideas -- that he has encountered now that he is in product design and how these obstacles had helped him grow.

Daniel expounds on why it’s taking so long for tech and infrastructure to advance to allow the speed of adoption and gives examples such as its application in the auto industry.

The biggest changes he has experienced so far which opened up the way he thinks about mobile including the growing consumer demands for applications for their car and the fact that the shift towards digital is now much faster than anyone would expect.

The new approaches in technology that he anticipates will come next for mobile and automotive such as radical advances in automobile apps, connectivity in cars, transparency from automakers and connection of cars to outside sources for data gathering.

Rapid Fire Questions

What is your definition of innovation?

Doing significant things that no one thinks they need.

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

Act from thought should quickly follow. Ideas are great and great ideas are even better but you are not going to know if it’s a great idea until you try to do it. The best way to do it is just try it and try it the best way you can. 40% Idea, 60% execution.

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

The first idea is probably not the best one. If you think you have a great idea, there’s probably a better one. Keep working on it and don’t be afraid of failing.

What is your favorite business book?

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

What is your favorite digital resource?

A List Apart

What is your favorite app and why?

Two Dots

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

First is our connective service shop launch, which will change the way people get their cars serviced.

Second is our connective dealership program which is such a shift from the way that car dealerships manage their inventory and how customers buy and own cars.

Our Guest

Joe Blecha is the Global Director for Product Development at Stance Socks whose cause is to make a product as imaginative, as expressive and uncommonly cool as the people who wear it. Joe has over 16 years of experience the field of outer wear and has worked with companies like Nike, DC and Burton. He has worked for projects for the US Olympics Snowboarding team and mini clothing collections like the Nike SB and Jordan, to name a few.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Getting to know Joe, what keeps him busy, and about his love for surfing, snowboarding, meditation and yoga.

How his passion for outdoor clothing had budded from his love for individual sports and how these sports, which he started enjoying at a young age, had appealed to him tremendously and made him decide that this is what he wanted to do with his life. Joe also shares how he came to join the industry and his interesting beginnings.

His journey in product development starting from gaining insights from customer feedback, coming up with ideas to make the product better, looking at possibilities and testing them out, arriving with a product, up until getting it out there for consumer validation.

Reasons why he made the transition from working in Nike to joining a start-up including the advantages of being hands on with your product, innovation, the wider reach you get from a smaller group and growth.

As Global Director for Product Development, Joe shares how he makes his impact through technology and creation of new processes.

Technologies that he sees which enable process changes and which impacts supply chains.

The attributes that Stance imbibes which allows it to scale; such a having a forward-thinking mentality and the ability to grow supply chains and produce committed supplies.

What Joe thinks the company should focus more on: consumer experience, modernizing the supply chain by working inside out or focusing on digital products and systems?

Channels that they have in place to measure how consumers get introduced to Stance; their spending habits; and comparing and contrasting results of various marketing campaigns.

How they incorporate an approach which is a balance of art and science to come up with fresh ideas to improve customer experience; the timelines in implementing these; and the some of the limiting factors that they encounter during the process.

Joe shares an internal initiative -- the Idea Innovation Hopper – how it’s structured and how it works; and how he sees mobile integrated in this process.

The future of product development in Joe’s perspective, how mobile plays into it and where Stance is going to make that leap.

Rapid Fire Questions

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

The execution is slightly more important than the idea. Everybody can have a great idea but being able to execute on it is more important. It’s 60 – 40 for me.

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

Be passionate in what you do and embrace adversity.

What is your favorite business book?

Autobiography of Elon Musk

Shoe Dog

Crucial Conversations

What is your favorite digital resource?

Ted Talks

What is your favorite app and why?

Insight Timer

Headspace

YogaGlo

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

We are the official on-field sock provider of the MLB.

Our Guest

Mina Aiken is the Director of Customer Experience at Taylor Stitch where she focuses on creating the most humanized online shopping experience possible. She oversees all e-commerce, customer service and logistics. She believes that educating your customer and telling your brand story in an inclusive way makes a happier individual and a lifetime value customer.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest:

Getting to know Mina and how much she loves what she is doing, her favorite hobby during her free time: designing wedding invitations, and how it was like growing up in sunny Florida.

How she came to be an ambassador for customer experience and hospitality at a young age initially because of her first job being in the restaurant industry and how her love for talking to adults and working with this crowd grew naturally. She also shared how her passion for provenance and to share the story behind a product or service to gain someone’s trust and how that led her to the field of brand development.

What led her to take on the lead role in Taylor Stitch’s Customer Experience department, how she got hired, how the company grew after she joined and the things that she, and her team, focuses on a day to day basis.

Attributes which make Mina effective in her role and some scenarios she had encountered wherein the customer was the one who gave them something that she didn’t know they wanted.

The biggest changes in the industry that she had experienced so far including going digital and managing the e-commerce experience. She expands that customers nowadays expect to get something they want in a very timely manner, the increasing demand to interact with someone human when they have a question and making an interaction personal to someone who is on the other side of the globe.

The omni-channels that Mina thinks are the key to retail and the importance in delivering consistent messages across channels, establishing trust and making the customer feel that they are connected to the brand at all times.

Pain points the she sees in the industry, which needs to be addressed from the back end to the customer-facing sides such as Returns and Exchanges.

In her perspective, how the major uptake in mobile influences the industry including the amazing things it has done in the field of retail, opening brands up to millions of potential customers, tracking, and the creation of completion which pushes for better customer experience.

How social media, such as Instagram, can help humanize your brand and what she thinks about Snap Chat Periscope.

Mina shares how she is most excited see how mobile experiences can be improved as better mobile technology can mean better shopping experience. On the business side, she continues how eager she is to see how technology will develop real time analytics for ongoing sales and customer engagement.

Rapid Fire Questions

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

You start with a great idea but to give that idea real shape, you got to hustle. People will then see how clear your idea is, what you are doing to perpetuate that and they want to be with your team, then some real muscle can push your idea forward. An idea is nothing without that muscle behind it and blind execution is just a waste of time but an idea has to come first. 60% for idea and 40% for execution.

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

Listen to your customers. They will tell you everything that you need to know about what they want.

What is your favorite business book?

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

What is your favorite digital resource?

Google Search Engine

What is your favorite app and why?

VSCO

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

We are currently building a community of Taylor Stitch influencers. It’s in the early stages and will start to take some shape this summer.

Scott Emmons is the Head of Digital Innovation Lab for the Neiman Marcus Group. Scott built the Neiman Marcus Group Innovation Lab, also known as iLab, and is responsible for leading the organization in evaluating, designing, testing and piloting cutting-edge technologies and applications for luxury retail.

Scott is working on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) initiatives, as well as Wi-Fi/Local and Wide Area Network infrastructures, mobility, and digital signage initiatives. These innovation projects include the amazing MemoMi Memory Mirror, beautiful 4K touch table look-books, beacon enabled holiday passes, intelligent mobile phone charging stations and gorgeous digital directories for Bergdorf Goodman.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with our guest:

Getting to know Scott --- what usually consumes his day and how a Harley Davison and a pool fills the little free time he has left from time to time.

From starting out as a contractor, to becoming an associate and then an Enterprise Architect, Scott shares the path that led him to head the Digital Innovation Lab at Neiman Marcus.

Scott shares how exposure, being a nerd, his love of having a good problem and being an early adapter had inspired him to be in field of innovation.

The biggest challenge he is seeing in the retail industry: understanding what the next generation of customer looks like and their preferences and trying to build something for them.

Giving the sales associates iPhones and how this huge change of strategy impacted their business as communications improved between associate and customer transforming interactions. Scott also discusses why they opted for iOS rather than Android.

Scott’s definition of an omni-channel approach which is basically, not thinking about individual channels but where the customer is at and where the customer wants to be, and then providing that channel.

The channels where the biggest of their revenues come from and the pain points which Scott feels that the industry is having challenges catching up to.

Innovation is important and Scott emphasizes how equally important it is to collaborate with his associates across the business and get out of the store to see what the customer is doing versus staying in the lab to provide the solution for the real customer problems.

His advice for those who are thinking of moving to digital adoption and the initial actions that they should focus their early efforts on.

Why Scott thinks that augment and virtual reality is the most realistic next hot thing and how it integrates and ties in the field of retail.

The processes they go through, from funneling of idea to requesting funding for full roll out, in implementing innovative experiments and projects and the metrics associated for them to gauge ROI.

Scott’s projected breakthroughs and the things he thinks have promising potentials.

Rapid Fire Questions:

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

I would not put more emphasis on either but the idea has to be good to be worth doing and the execution has to be flawless. It has to be a 50/50 weight for this to work in my world.

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

What the customer wants is what’s the most important thing and the only way you are going to learn that is to get out in the stores and interact with the customers and associates.

What is your favorite business book?

Innovation Engine by Jatin Desai

What is your favorite mobile app resource?

Flipboard

What is your favorite app and why?

Quartz

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

You’ll know about it in six weeks or so.

Joanna Herrick started in the men’s clothing industry over 12 years ago, primarily in custom clothing. She joined Trunk Club in 2013, heading Operations in men’s custom clothing division. During that time, they have grown to be the 2nd largest custom retailer of men’s clothing in the country, using technology to combine a modern interactive experience with this old world craft.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with our guest:

How Joanna picked up tips and tricks through her early experience in the clothing retail industry which gave her knowledge on both frontend and back end processes in this field and bring this expertise to Trunk Club.

From being a French horn player, Joanna shares how she got led to this industry through Craigslist and how she continues to hone her craft especially that the company continues to scale positively.

With Trunk Club’s speedy expansion, the company grew from 3 people to 18 employees pretty quickly and Joanna tells us how Trunk Club was able to scale this fast, the changes they did to keep up with the rapid growth, and how she, herself, had evolved in able to meet demands.

The priorities within their internal and external Operations team which Joanna needs to drive to ensure logistics in both sides work as they should.

From websites to word of mouth, Joanna shares how customers find Trunk Club and how engagement is applied in the end-to-end process of their customer’s journey.

We find out what makes Joanna great at the what she does, including maintaining about 20-30 customers of her own so she can experience firsthand whatever it is that they are building or putting in place.

In building a digital space, what do you integrate first and build early on? Joanna shares the answer to this is being cognizant on where digital makes sense and where customers need human connection. Use technology and going digital to drive sales but do not take the personal aspect out of it.

How Trunk Club gets to know their customers from onboarding to post- sign up; how their technology processes gathered data to arrive with the items to pack inside the ‘trunk’ of the customer; and how their app bring custom clothing to another level.

Their hurdles and areas of improvement, where they are focusing on to make the next big enhancements in the clothing industry; and where they want Trunk Club to be to be ready for the next big growth.

How mobile has affected their approach the digital infrastructure for their supply chain; how their app helps aggregate problems; and the process which takes place in their company to ensure that changes are made timely so they progress at the right pace.

Joanna shares future enhancements and trends that she is foreseeing including the concept of visualization, and talks about the danger of going digital but losing the romance of custom and what makes it work.

Rapid Fire Questions:

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

Execution, for sure. We sit in rooms brainstorming all day but if it doesn’t work well and it doesn’t improve things for our team members, then it doesn’t really matter. No ideas are important because it keeps things fresh and it allows improvement but at the end of the day, it has to work in order to impact your business. Execution is 75%.

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

Never get super attached to your work, just get attached to what works.

What is your favorite business book?

The Tipping Point

What is your favorite digital resource?

Our tech team is my favorite digital resource.

What is your favorite app and why?

HauteLook

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

The communications process I talked to you about and making it visual and seamless. It’s the enhanced Trunk Club version of the Domino’s pizza delivery.