Tru Vue seeks a Director of Ecommerce Business Development (McCook, IL 60525)

Blank’s book lays out his Customer Development model, which demonstrates how entrepreneurs (those who launch startups) and intrapreneurs (those who launch new businesses within existing businesses) can assess, plan, and grow new ventures. The book draws on lessons learned by widely admired companies who lost their shirts on new product introductions. Here’s a partial list of what’s in the product launch graveyard …

• Volkswagen’s Phaeton: VW took all of Toyota’s lessons in launching its high-end Lexus brand and promptly ignored them at a cost of $500 million.
• Kodak’s Photo CD: Kodak offered film camera customers the ability to put their pictures on a compact disc and view them on their TVs. The product was 10 years ahead of its time, and the only viable early adopter market of corporate marketing departments was ignored. Total cost: $150 million.
• R.J. Reynolds’ smokeless cigarettes: The firm well understood what non-smokers wanted, but failed to grasp that smokers didn’t care. Total cost: $450 million.

The list goes on. My point in trotting out Blank’s book is that – depending on whether your product represents a “continuous” or a “discontinuous” innovation – there is very definitely a right way and a wrong way to develop a product and then target, attack, penetrate, and grow a market for it.

Candidates, please realize that when you understand these models, the size and complexity of roles like this become much more manageable. Therefore, in your initial calls with Allan Seibert you can expect a quick overview of these (and other) concepts so that you’ll understand how to drive value in this position through Customer Discovery; Customer Validation; Company Creation; and Company Building. And yes, these steps are the same for startups and established market leaders like Tru Vue.

Tru Vue makes value added glass and acrylic products. The firm focuses primarily on the custom framing and the museum markets. More than 80% of the world’s top museums use Tru Vue anti-reflective acrylic products, including the Smithsonian, the MOMA, the Getty, and the Rijksmuseum. Tru Vue’s glass and acrylic helps protect the artwork underneath the glass from fading, in addition to providing an anti-reflective coating that makes the glass virtually invisible.

In addition to Museums, a huge growth opportunity for the firm lies in marketing to 8,000 independent framers in the United States, the independent distributors and framers in Europe and large custom framing chains.

According to the Unity Marketing Study roughly 11% of households purchased custom frames in 2011. Frames are sold in Picture Framing Stores; Gift Shops & Card Stores; Home Furnishings Stores; Hobby & Toy Stores; Craft Stores; and Small Specialty Retail Stores – in addition to being sold online.

With custom framing, customers select (with the framers design assistance) the moulding (frame), mat, and glazing. Then the framer assembles them and professionally fits the art. Mouldings are manufactured in different styles, such as contemporary and traditional design, and they become a frame when the four sides are assembled. Mat borders surround the framed object, providing distance between the art and frame. Glazing refers to the application of glass or acrylic to cover for the art.

Although acrylic is an alternative to glass that weighs less and doesn’t break as easily, glass remains the standard used in framing. Within the glass category, there is anti-reflective glass as well as “conservation glass,” which blocks harmful ultraviolet rays. Museum glass, considered by the industry as the best glass option, combines features of anti-reflective and conservation glass.

Tru Vue wants provide the benefit of anti-reflective glass and acrylic in ecommerce. Currently, people can upload a photograph of a family vacation and print that image to canvass or some other material.

Tru Vue will be taking this trend one step further by allowing consumers to laser print their own reverse images directly to the back Tru Vue’s state of the art glass or acrylic so that the image appears correctly when viewed through picture’s front. According to Tru Vue’s President, Jane Boyce, “It’s an exploding market, and we like to influence hundreds canvas sites to offer this product.”

Basically, what we want you to do is get photo printing and canvas sites to add a “Print Image to glass or acrylic” option on their websites. It’s almost like affiliate marketing: Your job will be to build and lead Tru Vue’s wall décor initiative, marketing Tru Vue’s products to online companies who sell ‘print your photo to canvas’ photography and art. This will be YOUR business to run, meaning you are free to fine-tune and deploy the business strategy that will grow the business. The buck will stop with you: YOU will get to determine the appropriate product attributes and partners for a successful ongoing business, and YOU will act as primary customer interface and assume P&L responsibility for this business.

To succeed in this role, you need to know how ecommerce works, who the primary decision makers are in an ecommerce environment, and how to develop this market. You’ll need an entrepreneurial spirit, a team mentality, a well developed ability to network, an ability to travel 25-40% of the time. You’ll need to understand how to manage a sales funnel in addition to knowing how to lead generate to thousands of suspects; prospects; and customers. You’ll have plenty of help from Tru Vue’s marketing department — but you’ll still need to know how it’s done.

It’s important to know that marketing success for Tru Vue won’t begin and end with online marketing. Sure, you’ll want to attract your 8,000 prospects with SEO, SEM, display ads, social media, affiliate marketing, email — and maybe even kick it old-school with direct mail. But then what’s your PROCESS going to be for getting your leads all the way down the funnel? What’s your follow up plan?

Given the volume of leads you’ll be generating and nurturing, at some point your sales process will move from “high volume” to “high touch” — a challenge that SMB marketers like Salesforce.com and GoDaddy have been managing for years. Much has been written about generating predictable revenue with inbound marketing, and that model applies here. You’ll need to know how to manage these relationships every step of the way — and Millennials take note: That could very well mean having to dial the phone.

Anyway. If you’ve ever thought of running a startup and are confident that you could handle everything I’ve outlined above, then we’d love to hear from you. These are lovely folks, and they run a fantastic business. This one’s got everything I like to see in a role: Favorable underlying economics; a chance for my candidate to do reputation enhancing work; and I’d want my own kids to work for the firm. Apply below …