Ecommerce Director Jobs: MyCharge seeks a Director of Ecommerce (HOME BASED)

It is nearly impossible for me to market a search using longform copy if the search cannot be “closed on the back of a single story.” Ask anyone in Hollywood: Great stories make money. An average actor telling a wonderful story will always out earn a great actor telling a ho-hum story.

So it is here. I’m an average actor with a knack for identifying and telling great stories. Our model hinges on maximizing the number of “scripts” we see and taking our pick from among the best.

Now then, a great job posting should clearly map out those things that will be “reputation enhancing” for the target candidate, and in my (10 year) experience, the ability of a role to enhance the reputation of a candidate is based on 3 things:

1. The CANDIDATE’S future: What are you good at? What do you enjoy? Where you want to go, geographically? How much money do you need? Etc. We have a handy candidate questionnaire for this topic.
2. The COMPANY’S future: It’s amazing to me how little time candidates spend on researching, evaluating, and understanding potential employers not only from a financial standpoint, but also from nonfinancial standpoints. There are excellent books on this subject, and anyone who works for a living should own one.
3. The ROLE’S future: Most people forget about this one. It’s all well and good to do something you enjoy for a company that has a bright future, but is the company truly committed to whatever it is you are doing? Or, is there a possibility that in 5 years your job will be outsourced? Here it’s useful to understand the difference between “core” and “context” as they pertain to business strategy, and try to pursue job opportunities with companies for which your value add is related to their core.

I’m stepping you through this because this role with MyCharge checks each of these boxes in spades and double, and I’m proud to be working with these folks. I could’ve chosen at least 2 other projects to work on, but this is an opportunity I was keen to present to my list. The opportunity is so good, in fact, that A-player candidates wouldn’t mind relocating for this gig. Keep reading, and you’ll see why.

MyCharge provides portable power solutions for smart phones and tablets. MyCharge offers best in class chargers in terms of their safety, performance, and innovation, and many of its chargers feature built-in cables and connectors so that you can leave your cords at home (because the number one thing left in hotel rooms are charging cables). The company’s flagship product has been called by CNET the “Swiss Army knife of portable power.”

With MyCharge, there’s no reason travelers need to be tethered to a wall outlet or power source in the car. MyCharge allows its users to fully charge their devices no matter where they are. You simply precharge the MyCharge and you can quickly and easily recharge your device anywhere. Check out this TechCrunch coverage from last year’s CES …

During my two-hour project kickoff call with this role’s hiring manager, it became very clear that MyCharge’s strengths included a culture of innovation, product development, and deep engineering ability. The major opportunities that lie before the company include a penetration rate of far less than 1% of an addressable market literally measured in the billions.

In fact, just this week Mary Meeker published her highly anticipated “Internet Trends 2014” report, and the numbers were pretty astounding. Here are a few nuggets from that report:

• Worldwide, there were 315 million smart phones shipped in Q4 2013 alone. That’s an increase of 24 million units from the previous quarter.
• Tablet units are growing faster than PCs ever did, up 52% in 2013.
• Worldwide, there are 1.6 billion smart phones in use, compared with 439 million tablets.
• By 2020, it’s conceivable that more than 10 billion mobile devices will be in use, including tablets, smart phones, e-readers, MP3 players, cameras, portable consoles, and more.

In other words, MyCharge is staring straight down the barrel of a massive, high-growth, addressable, and reachable market of technology addicts — all of whom will be dying for a charge.

Without getting into the numbers, MyCharge is only 4 years old, yet their sales have quickly shot into the tens of millions of dollars with no real end in sight. The company sells its products through brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, Target, Walgreens, Airport stores and many more, and the firm needs a top-flight Director of Ecommerce to develop and manage its overall online business strategy while building a direct to consumer channel from its own website, MyCharge.com

Reporting to the President, this will be a senior management position of major importance and with the highest visibility imaginable within the company. As ever, your job will be to sell more stuff, to more people, more often, for more money. Yet you’ll need to do that in a way that maximizes revenues while minimizing channel conflict.

The good news is that the company has gotten phenomenal coverage in the press, as you can see here and here.

However, because MyCharge is only 4 years old, the company has chosen to outsource many functions such as its call center. Some of these functions will be brought in-house, but you can expect to be pulled into conversations about which DTC disciplines are “core” versus “context,” and which functions need to be not only handle in-house, but built out in a world-class way.

Currently, MyCharge is widely recognized as a leader in terms of safety, product performance, and innovation, so it’s essential that every attribute of its ecommerce customer experience, from beginning to end, reflect those brand attributes. In other words, the ideal Director of Ecommerce must be business-oriented, strategically literate, financially savvy, and understand how to leverage the 80/20 rule in a fast-paced, high-growth entrepreneurial environment.

The good news is the hiring committee is extremely committed to getting this hire right, and they have shared with me massive amounts of highly confidential information about their company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Not all of my clients are this transparent, and client transparency is always a strong leading indicator of how committed a company is to their ecommerce channel.

In other words, the role has a very bright future in a company and an industry with a very bright future. Bottom line: This gig is well worth a relocation if what you’re after is reputation enhancing work.