Ecommerce Marketing Jobs: American Textile Co. seeks an Ecommerce Manager (Duquesne, PA)

American Textile is a consumer products company operating in the bedding space. The company specializes in bringing innovative bedding solutions to market. In the last several years, the bedding industry has become commoditized — leading to flattened differentiations among competitors and price competition.

Inspired by companies like Under Armour which have developed and marketed technical fabrics with specific benefits (like temperature regulation), American Textile has brought its R&D capability to bear on the development of bedding solutions that address specific consumer problems such as allergies.

This is an outstanding strategy that has led to dramatic improvements in the client’s underlying economics, and clarified its brand proposition in the marketplace, which has led to greater pricing power and improved margins. Additionally, by marketing to a well defined, easily addressable, and self-referencing (meaning, they talk to each other) segment of the market, it’s much easier for a company with a phenomenal product to gain traction and develop a lead in the market.

At the risk of repeating myself to my regular readers, one of the questions I ask myself when I’m considering taking a particular search is “Would I invest my own money in this company?” For a company to merit the investment of my hard-earned cash (and by extension, my candidate’s reputation, energy, and time – all of which are irreplaceable), I like to see businesses that are necessary, different, proprietary (in terms of what they do or what they sell) and vertically integrated.

When marketers talk about finding a market’s “point of pain,” normally they’re not referring to actual “pain.” But in the case of American Textile, that’s exactly what we’re talking about. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, allergy is the 5th leading chronic disease in the U.S. among all ages, and the 3rd most common chronic disease among children under 18 years old.

Allergy sufferers may or may not know it yet, but they absolutely need American Textile’s products. In fact, once an allergy sufferer catches a good nights sleep on Aller-Ease bedding, they don’t want to go back. As a marketer, I’m all over that.

And the thing is, very few companies do what American Textile does. Its products are innovative, its brands are trademarked, and the barriers to entry in the textile business are very high. Additionally, the firm adapts its brand to specific situations, which gives it the ability to sell through multiple retailers and multiple channels without serious fear of disintermediation. Again, as a fellow online marketer I love being in control of my product’s destiny.

At the risk of mixing my metaphors, let me start by saying that American Textile’s VP of Marketing is one sharp cookie. He’s a classically trained CPG marketer with an analytical bias. He knows exactly what the firm’s business is about; who the businesses for; and exactly why that slamdunk customer would choose to do business with Aller-Ease versus any option available to them – including doing nothing.

Additionally, American Textile has come to the conclusion that ecommerce is a strategic priority from here on out. Even better, the company has decided that because digital commerce is so important, it’s essential that they put a rock star in the role. Today, the company does a fraction of its business online. In the next 5 years however, American Textile hopes that a double-digit percentage of its total revenues will transact online, both on its own websites and through retailers like Target.com, Walmart.com, and others.

Although I cannot get into it here, I have crunched the numbers with the hiring manager and the online revenue goals are totally attainable. Aggressive maybe, but not at all unrealistic — especially if you are business oriented, strategically literate, and understand multichannel customer acquisition.

We are looking for someone with a very strong commercial sense who can say “Okay, here’s what we need to do: We will drive customer reviews this way; We will merchandise the site like so; We will create product collections to improve the average order value; and so forth.” The role requires a very strong commercial acumen to drive the business in a way that is pie-enlarging, not pie-rearranging.

The role is perfect for an ecommerce A-player who can take initiative and be entrepreneurial about growing the business. Obviously, you’ll need to be a creative problem solver. American Textile is a smallish organization, and we would expect you to come prepared to visualize and shaped the company’s ecommerce initiatives, and then make that happen in a way that is resource friendly, brand accretive, and doesn’t involve a lot of broken glass.

As usual, we have compiled an extraordinary amount of information on this company, this industry, and this particular role (reporting relationships; 100 day KPIs; points of leverage in the firm’s operating model, etc). Candidates, don’t be shy about requesting this information prior to interviewing. You’ll be glad you did.