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One of the coolest ecommerce jobs around!
HARRY’S COMMENTS: We are working with an up-and-coming DTC brand in their search for a Director of Ecommerce based in Dallas, Texas. If you’ve never been to Texas, you’re missing out. It’s actually awesome.
See for yourself …
Altough we’re not listing the company’s name in this posting, you can probably figure it out with a little sleuthing.
The firm designs, manufacturers, and markets two consumer product lines: One is oriented around sleep and the other involves LED lighting. Both product lines are really cool — which, trust me: We get a ton of recruiting opportunities, and if we thought that either the company or its products were lame, we wouldn’t have taken their search.
Both product lines have everything an entrepreneur would need to make a go of it: 1/ an addressable market, 2/ an affordably reachable target customer with a well-defined problem, 3/ an easy path to distribution, 4/ a reality-based revenue model, and 5/ access to the right financial and human capital.
Previously, we have closed searches for companies in the “sleep economy” and even in a down economy, consumers recognize quality sleep as a key component of a healthy lifestyle. According to Casper’s recent S-1, “As consumers become educated around the serious potential health consequences of poor sleep, they are poised to spend more on sleep products in the same way that they have increased spending in other areas of health and wellness.”
Strong Management with a Deep Affinity for its Markets
The company was founded by a seasoned entrepreneur with 20 years of solid CPG experience. During his first go-round in the lighting business, he and his boss started a company from scratch, shipping their first orders from the boss’s home. Eventually, they built a large wholesale business selling to retailers like Sears. When the boss decided to sell the firm, our client’s founder decided to start his own company. After all, he had intimate knowledge of the suppliers, trends, and product development cycles.
This was roughly five years ago — and today, the founder is running a $12 million business selling to Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and so on.
Your job is to build the firm’s DTC ecommerce business. This role will NOT involve selling on 3P markets, aside from lending some guidance to (and coordination with) the firm’s AMS campaigns.
For the most part, you’ll be running TWO online stores; one for each product line. Obviously, we’ve reviewed both sites and in terms of creative, positioning, and messaging, they are pretty darn solid. Both brands have a strong “sense of self” — which is more than we can say of many DTC ecom newbies.
(Not hating, but very often the hardest part of getting started in DTC is knowing one’s brand’s place in the world: Who are you? What do you do? What’s your vision? What wave are you riding? Who shares your brandscape? What makes you the “only?” What should you add or subtract? Etc.)
From a branding and positioning standpoint, you’ll have the wind at your back.
Now the question becomes: How can you make that work to your advantage as you market both DTC sites? The answer lies in your ability to build traction through integrated SEO, PPC, display, programmatic, retargeting, social media advertising, email marketing, and content marketing. Like so …
Short term, we’ll expect you to get the numbers growing: Traffic, Average Order Value, Conversion Rate, 12 Month File, Order Frequency, ROAS, and so forth. The usual.
Longer-term (like 120-180 days out), you’ll be expected to hire someone to manage the firm’s social media marketing. The company has been using agencies for content, social and SEO and would like to dial those back a bit.
The job is based in Dallas, so you’ll need to be local or have the ability to relocate. Some relocation assistance will be provided. Once you get settled, the client doesn’t care if you work from home one day a week. Up to you. But you’ll need to be close enough to the office to see and influence what’s happening.
For example, rumor has it that with such high demand and potential fulfillment constraints, holiday shipment schedules might be disrupted as larger merchants will get most of the capacity by Fedex/UPS, with smaller shippers potentially being left in the cold. Such issues will be yours to manage.
You won’t believe how much we know about this search …
My partner, Allan Seibert, I spent a ton of time on the phone with the client teasing out exactly what you’ll need to KNOW and DO to hit the ground running in this role. Some of the things I can share with highly qualified candidates include …
- The “real” background requirements for this position, along with the top five things all resumes MUST have to be considered for the role.
- The top five problems that exist due to this position being open. These are the little brush fires you will be expected to put out during your first month on the job. Every ecommerce job has these — and this one’s no different.
- What your average day / week will look like in this role. There’s what you read in the standard ecommerce job posting … then there’s reality. We’ve got the reality.
- The leading and lagging KPI’s that will determine your success in this role. In a nutshell: How you keep score.
- The major projects you’ll need to complete by Day 100 to be considered a home-run in this position. We’ve got the lowdown on how you can plug-and-play and drive REAL value in this ecommerce job.
We have a massive amount of proprietary intel to share with qualified candidates. Our industry research for this assignment exceeds 100 pages! Be sure to TEXT Harry Joiner at (404) 281-2025 for this info. Or simply use the email link when you apply for the role below.
View Harry Joiner’s profile
Responsibilities:
- Ownership of website P&L
- Develop and lead strategy for SEO, SEM, and Email channels
- Leverage Internet best practices to ensure the firm’s conformity to customer expectations
- Ownership and management of customer experience including design & aesthetics, content, navigation, checkout funnel, promotional campaigns, branding/marketing, performance, functionality
Requirements:
- Ability to specify technical changes to technical/development teams
- Experience managing pay-per-click / paid programs
- Experience with web analytics tools (Google AdWords preferred)
- Ability to compile and analyze digital KPIs and make fast and accurate decisions
- Demonstrated success building backlinks with result in profitable long-term growth
- Ability to work independently and within a team environment
- Strong independent decision-making, organizational, planning and problem-solving skills
- 5-7 years of experience managing direct to consumer websites the sell consumer goods
