In our 4th episode of Retail Tech Talks, we welcome Debra Sabourin, Senior Manager of eCommerce operations at Perry Ellis brand Original Penguin. Debra is an eCommerce expert with over 15 years of experience at brands like Samsonite and Bose. She joined Yottaa’s Darin Archer for a webinar discussing how she and her team at Original Penguin prepare for holiday shopping season all year long. Check out the clip to learn more about her teams process and mantra for making the holiday shopping season successful:
You can watch the full webinar here.
Video Transcript:
:01 – Most businesses apart from those that are really kind of seasonal, in the summer or otherwise seasonal, the holiday time is really where we’re focusing. So as soon as that holiday time is over, we’re doing our post-mortem what worked, what didn’t work, what didn’t we get to because we didn’t have resources.
:16 – What did we see out there that we liked? We’re usually starting in like the July, August time frame. As far as putting our calendar together, it’s pretty standard. I think pretty much every brand that I’ve worked for, um, for consumer goods usually starts in that July timeframe.
:35 – One of the biggest learnings every year and you kind of have to be reminded of this every year is that, uh, there is something something will go awry. You hope for the best, prepare for the worst type of thing.
1:00: But I think as a direct to consumer business, eComm is special in the fact that for the most part, we can pivot faster than the traditional business model, brick and mortar, um, where we have to align with an omni-channel strategy. You might not have as many levers to adjust, but really knowing what you can be flexible with and where you can pivot is very important.
1:16: Having that second strategy where you can where you can pivot, like can you adjust marketing spend to take advantage of cultural moments, can you adjust inventory spread to account for sellout, can you adjust pricing or promotions like what what’s your process in place for last minute changes,
1:31: Throughout the year, it’s really important to test a lot of these strategies so that you know Come holiday time, “We’ve, we’ve run this, we can turn this on,” or “we’ve done this, we know we can pull that one off if need be.”
