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One of the coolest Tampa ecommerce jobs around!
We are working with VOLT Lighting in their search for a Director of Ecommerce in Lutz, FL — just north of Tampa.
VOLT Lighting manufactures and distributes high-performance LED light bulbs and LED landscape lights with unconditional lifetime warranties. The firm’s direct-to-consumer model ensures that these pro-quality lights are both available and affordable. The company’s vertically integrated business model allows it to tightly control its products’ design, manufacture, and distribution – which it then follows up with superior customer service.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: Once upon a time, I heard about a lady in my church’s parish who had four sons — each of whom became a Catholic priest. No joke! What are the odds? Infinitesimal, right?
Well, in the Brynjolfsson family there are four brothers, each of whom is hugely successful: Erik Brynjolfsson is the famous Internet industry and artificial intelligence visionary visionary from MIT whose books have appeared on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. Next is finance guru John Brynjolfsson, a former Managing Director at PIMCO; then there’s Olaf Brynjolfsson Johansen, the Mass General-trained Chief of Surgery at a major hospital and finally …
… there’s Alan Brynjolfsson – VOLT Lighting’s CEO.
In 2007, nothing would have led you to believe that Alan would start a business that would completely disrupt the lighting industry. But that’s what happened. Alan has always been an entrepreneur, and his previous company developed imaging systems for the printing industry. After selling out to his partner in 2006, Alan found himself between jobs. With time on his hands, Alan decided to landscape his own yard, hoping to add really nice lighting to it during the project.
Yet when Alan looked online, he could only find cheap consumer grade landscape lighting. Pro-grade supplies were only available to contractors through wholesale distributors and trade-only sales channels. So Alan had the bright idea of becoming the Amazon of pro-grade lighting. Simple, right?
One small problem: Established manufacturers wouldn’t sell to Alan because they didn’t want to disturb their established sales channel of stores, distributors and sales reps. So he did what few other people would do …
Alan researched the market and, after discovering a huge hole in the market for online retail, he started his own brand to manufacturer and sell his own outdoor lighting products online. Ecommerce was the only real way Alan could focus on innovation and quality while lowering prices and improving product availability. With ecom, the value chain could be vertically integrated from product development all the way through manufacturing, sales, and service. By cutting out multiple middlemen, big money could be reallocated towards world-class manufacturing while allowing Alan to still lower prices and raise quality.
It was a great idea, hidden in plain sight, brought to life at exactly the right time.
Today, VOLT is in hyper-growth mode. Sales are in the tens of millions of dollars, and the sky’s the limit for the firm in terms of pent-up demand in its current and adjacent industries. Alan is scaling VOLT’s proven model from the landscape lighting niche into the overall lighting industry in a quest to be the company that revolutionizes the way lighting is purchased. VOLT’s target categories will include the industrial, commercial and residential sectors of the indoor and outdoor lighting industry.
You can’t accuse these guys of thinking small!
Added together, all of VOLT’s current and potential categories amount to a potential online market opportunity in the many hundreds of millions of dollars (I researched it and the client redacted my findings from this post). Take my word for it: This is a HUGE opportunity. So strange that this industry’s powerful vested interests ignored ecommerce for so long, and it took whippersnappers like VOLT to get their attention. However, given that VOLT is a vertically integrated pure play that now designs, manufactures, imports, inventories, markets, sells, and services its own high-quality products, there might not be much the industry’s old guard can do but watch and weep.
But winning won’t come easy.
To begin with, VOLT merchandises an information-intensive product to highly sophisticated customers in both the B2B and B2C arenas. Meaning, VOLT’s ecommerce marketing will have a lot of moving parts. As Director of Ecommerce, you’ll be responsible for everything regarding the firm’s website and managing its overall marketing. You’ll be leading the marketing department and managing a team of 5, including a software developer, a Director of Communications, a UX manager, a Marketing Manager and a Marketing Associate.
Moreover, you’ll be managing the implementation and integration of a new enterprise level ecommerce platform, MOZU that VOLT will be launching this Fall. The platform includes three new websites with plug-ins like Salesforce.com, OMS, inventory, sales tax, shipping, and more. This role involves managing $500K/up in fees to outside agencies doing the integration and development on MOZU’s $125K per year platform.
In addition to VOLT’s site, content, and UX, you’ll be responsible for managing ecommerce channels such as SEO, SEM, email, CSE, display, Amazon, and eBay. Meaning, when it comes to increases in Monthly Unique Visits, Conversion rates, Average Order Value — the buck will stop with YOU. For PPC, you’ll be expected to manage VOLT’s outside agencies and another $500,000 budget.
Beyond that, you’ll be responsible for the marketing implementation of VOLT’s new products and brands — which means you’ll lead the market development road mapping process for niches like Building Contractors. The road mapping process will require strong project management skills, allowing you to coordinate the merchandising of these products on Volt.com, backed by relevant product videos, linkable content, and so forth.
VOLT’s changing marketing strategy.
As it stands today, VOLT sells low voltage landscape lighting though SEO / SEM. Basically, customers seek VOLT (rather than the other way around). However: As the firm adds new “contractor-only” product lines like AMP landscape lighting, VOLT must market directly to contractors. That strategy involves more active targeting, marketing, and selling.
Down the line, as VOLT adds industrial and 120 volt product lines, the firm will need to market to electricians and construction trades. Eventually, VOLT will market commercial products like flat panel lights and high bays to hospitals, industrial warehouse management companies, commercial developers, and bid on large projects. Ultimately, VOLT’s LED bulb business will require it to partner with national builders and energy service companies.
That’s a ton of marketing process complexity!
But you’ll have first-rate help: VOLT retains some of the best agencies on the planet, and your responsibilities will include managing those relationships. Naturally, you can’t be a neophyte in the area of performance marketing, given that one of VOLT’s key agencies literally wrote the book on How to Use Content Marketing and SEO to Communicate with Impact, Generate Sales and Get Found by Search Engines.
Moreover, given how technical fully-integrated SEO / SEM programs have become, we would expect you to have a solid knowledge of programming. You don’t need to be a programmer, but you will be working with internal and external resources who will be throwing around jargon about this-or-that IT-related project slow down, and you will need to manage those situations in a way that is hard on the issues and soft on the people.
Should you apply?
The answer is “YES” if you want to do reputation-enhancing multichannel, multi-touch digital marketing for one of the smartest CEO’s I’ve ever encountered. But … You will need to be a well organized, self-confident, results-oriented A–player who works off of checklists and knows how to set goals that are measurable, objective, relevant, and controllable. Additionally, the ideal candidate will be motivated by competition and the prospect of winning in the marketplace. At VOLT, having a healthy ego is not a bad thing, especially when it can spur the team to accept challenges, take action, and achieve measurable results.
Bottom-line: We’re looking for an accomplished ecommerce marketing leader who values competency, action, concrete results, personal freedom, and challenges. If that’s you, please apply below.
View Harry Joiner’s profile
Requirements:
- Manage the Marketing Department and its employees
- Manage and develop VOLT’s website
- Manage VOLT’s outside agencies (Echidnea for design and implementation of MOZU, the ecommerce platform, Graphic Designers, programmers, and Bruce Clay for the firm’s SEM/SEO/CSE/AdWords initiatives).
- Implement SEO, SEM, AdWords, CSE, Google Remarketing, onsite content, videos, improve UX, utilize programs like market, BazaarVoice and email marketing. Install custom widgets.
- Work with the Product Development Dept to roll out new products (website product listing, photos, videos, spec sheets, content, ad words, announcements, banners, advertisements, email existing customers).
Skills:
- Driven, go-getter, result oriented, make and complete checklists and tasks.
- Deep ecommerce marketing expertise
- Strong project management skills
- People management
- Strategic thinking. VOLT is a high growth organization with huge potential.
UPDATE: THIS SEARCH IS CLOSED.
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