Boston Ecommerce Jobs: Sperry Top-Sider seeks a Director of Ecommerce (Lexington, MA)

Sperry Top-Sider is an iconic American brand that was founded 80 years ago by Paul Sperry – the inventor of the world’s first boat shoe for sailors. The brand is well known by consumers who have a passion for sea life and coastal areas.

The firm is known for designing quality footwear – including Sperry Top-Sider Authentic Original, the best-selling men’s shoe in U.S. department stores, and sandals, dress shoes, and performance boat shoes. You may recall that The Official Preppy Handbook endorses the Sperry Top-Sider Authentic Original as the footwear symbol of classic prep style.

In 2012, Sperry Top-Sider, along with Keds, Stride Rite and Saucony, became part of Wolverine World Wide – a conglomerate of 16 diverse, global lifestyle brands. Wolverine World Wide is focused on extending their brands’ offerings in accessories and apparel. They’re also on a mission to expand consumer-direct initiatives – both in their brands’ brick-and-mortar stores and across the web.

Sperry Top-Sider’s target demographic straddles it between Gen X (b. 1965-1980) and Millennials (b. 1980-2000), which challenges the company to hit on all cylinders with its digital marketing. Millennials in particular can be somewhat fickle, which places pressure on Sperry’s digital team to market in a way that doesn’t seem to salesy.

Earlier this month, there was an interesting article in Internet Retailer magazine about millennial consumers and how they buy. According to the article, the millennial generation is now the largest age demographic in the United States.

Entering their peak spending years, their median income last year was $35,300. Millennials’ shopping preferences change often, making it much harder for retailers to turn a one-time customer into a repeat buyer. In addition to their reliance on social media, millennials tend to be picky about how they spend their money and are loyal to brands that speak their language and appeal to its values.

What that means for Sperry Top-Sider is that growing its online business will involve bringing to life the brand’s affluent, preppy, East Coast chic personality across multiple devices (smartphones, tablets, desktop), through multiple channels (SEO, SEM, mobile, PLAs, etc) in ways that resonate with its youthful clientele.

Without getting into specifics, a significant amount of Sperry’s traffic comes from mobile. Naturally, that places pressure squarely on the shoulders of Sperry’s new Director of Ecommerce to understand the importance of integrated customer acquisition and its impact on getting the brand’s fans through a conversion funnel that often starts with a mobile touchpoint.

Consider this: When I test-drove Sperry’s mobile purchase path, I first Googled sperry and selected the suggested SERP “sperrys for men.” When I selected the proper Sperry result, I was directed to this landing page.

In contrast, when I executed the same search and selected the Zappos result, I encountered an invitation to download the Zappos mobile app, after which I was directed to the Sperry landing page at Zappos.com, at the bottom of which was an invitation for me to click to call with any questions I may have.

The good news is that the brand has more than 1 million Facebook fans, 9.8K Pinterest followers, 36.6 Twitter followers, and 87.5K Instagram followers. The Instagram number is encouraging given teens’ fickleness towards the established social platforms.

Given the high percentage of Sperry.com’s traffic that originates from search, content marketing will be critical to your success in the role. Meaning, your team will need to tie its promotional calendars to Sperry’s editorial calendar and adjust its organic and paid search strategies accordingly. Planning skills are critical here, as will be your ability to see the brand through your customers’ eyes.

Sperry’s organization is one of the most matrixed I’ve ever worked with. There are a good many internal and external stakeholders who play important roles in Sperry’s digital success, and it’s important for candidates to understand that this is a very crowded kitchen. True, you’ll be the head chef, but there are many talented executives whose opinions you must carefully weigh regarding how digital can support the overall business. Therefore, you’ll need a rich understanding of the agency business, logistics, supply chain, brand marketing, retail marketing, inventory management and more as each pertains to multichannel ecommerce.

For example, a strategy to keep inventory levels down might have unsavory consequences for customer satisfaction due to stock outs. Or, the need to aggressively price last quarter’s overruns to get them out of inventory could have negative consequences for the brand. Business is always about reconciling the dynamics of supply and demand, and you’ll have to understand how to manage these trade-offs in ways that maximize the upside and minimize the downside to others’ areas of responsibility.

Amazingly, my kickoff call notes for this search are nearly 4000 words in length. On top of that, we have a number of relevant research reports that will help candidates understand how they can drive value for Sperry in this role. Candidates, you don’t want to apply without this information.

Success in this role will require deep technical skills in mobile commerce, mobile marketing, organic search, paid search, web analytics, and ecommerce platform management. However, as important as ecommerce “hard skills” are in this position, the “soft skills” are what will truly differentiate candidates in this search. There’s an old saying in the recruiting business that “People get hired for what they’ve done and fired for who they are.”

Clearly, you will need to be highly intelligent in order to deal with concepts and complexity very comfortably. Additionally, you’ll need to be very adept at managing and measuring the people and processes in your area and beyond. A deep knowledge of macro and micro cost and revenue drivers will be useful, and you’ll be expected to know how to MAKE MONEY in reality-based, resource-friendly, brand accretive ways.

Moreover, you’ll need to understand how Sperry’s various departments function within the overall organization and understand how to get things done through formal channels and your own informal network. This will take drive and interpersonal savvy. You’ll be expected to relate well to all kinds of people and build constructive and effective relationships. Diplomacy and tact are essential ingredients to success at Sperry.