The Retail Journey
Welcome to the Retail Journey where we will cover important topics, interview industry stakeholders, and address emerging trends as we journey through our mission of helping our listeners thrive in retail. Your hosts for this show are CEO James Harris and CGO Charles Greathouse.
The Retail Journey
Building Trust at Walmart with Walmart's Merchandising Power Couple, Grant and Brooke Dooley
Ever wondered how a couple can harmoniously work together in the high-pressure world of retail? Get answers from our engaging chat with Grant and Brooke Dooley, who not only share a household but also a passion for retail merchandising at Walmart. Listen in as they trace their journey from internships to playing critical roles in Walmart's merchandising operations, while juggling work-life balance with three kids at home!
The Dooley couple shares how honesty, data presentation, and a deep understanding of the customer can win Walmart’s trust and amplify your chance of success. You'll also hear them share critical insights on strategic moves and investments Walmart is taking to be the retailer of choice. They also discuss their experiences of using data analysis and gut instinct in unison to identify opportunities and launch successful product lines at Walmart.
Get a taste of their excitement, problem-solving skills, and their secret de-stressing tips. So, buckle up for a unique retail journey with the Dooley's, where you'll learn how they navigate the exciting world of retail merchandising while maintaining a loving household!
Hello and welcome to the Retail Journey podcast. Today we have a very special episode with Grant and Brooke Dooley the Retail Journey through and through. We're really excited to talk to them. I am one of your hosts, Charles Greathouse, and, to my left, your better host, James.
Speaker 2:Harris, and he is not paid to say that, but thanks for joining us today, guys. Brooke currently serves as the Merchandising Director of Preschool Toys at Walmart and has served in Merchant Roll since 2016. And Grant is the Merchandise Director of Adult Bedding, having worked in merchandising in many categories, right.
Speaker 3:All in home.
Speaker 2:And the other thing they have in common, obviously by their last name, is they're married. How about it?
Speaker 4:You got it right too, we should have prepped you, but you nailed it, congrats.
Speaker 1:I'm proud of myself too. Linkedin tells us a lot, so welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you, the Retail.
Speaker 1:Journey takes a deeper, closer look. And first up about marriage. And we're going to talk about the challenges of marriage.
Speaker 4:The Retail.
Speaker 1:Journey of a relationship is the theme today. But no, let's hear about it. The Retail Journey how did you guys end up at Walmart and how did you meet?
Speaker 4:Yeah, go ahead. So, like you actually, and quite a few other people, we came right out of school and met as interns and kind of both fell in love with retail from there. I don't think either of us really planned on doing this right. You're in college. You don't know what buying is, you don't know what you shop. That's all you really know. And today, if you were to ask my family what either of us do, we work in the store. That's what they associate, which is great.
Speaker 4:There's no issue there, but we both fell in love with retail, fell in love with each other.
Speaker 3:I was wondering when you were going to mention that part. The retail was first right.
Speaker 1:We fell in love with retail first. So, brooke, where are you from?
Speaker 4:Pennsylvania Went to school in Florida.
Speaker 1:Okay, Pennsylvania Florida.
Speaker 4:Arkansas.
Speaker 1:Did you know where Arkansas was when you found out you're getting an internship at Walmart?
Speaker 4:I did, I did.
Speaker 1:Some people are like where is that? I have to figure it out.
Speaker 4:I was pleasantly surprised. I mean, obviously Northwest Arkansas has changed a ton, but it was really great when we both got here.
Speaker 2:When did you get here?
Speaker 4:I interned twice. Actually, in the first summer would have been in 2013.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:I mean it was a great community then, reminding me a lot of Pennsylvania have always known we wanted a family. It's very family focused and family friendly and it checked a ton of boxes for us and then we were both really, really lucky in our internship and chips to have incredible people around us.
Speaker 4:And, to be really honest, that's why I think both of us decided to come to Walmart and at the time you can speak for yourself. But Grant probably wanted to leave Arkansas. He was born and raised in Arkansas, he knew and he honestly, we probably wanted to switch. He's like let me get to New.
Speaker 3:York or Dallas.
Speaker 4:And I was like all right, I'm like I've kind of traveled and I'm done with that, but fortunately our jobs allow us to travel a ton.
Speaker 1:Love it. Yeah, grant, so where are you from?
Speaker 3:I am from D Queen, arkansas small town, southwest corner of the state. Yep Ended up going to college in South Arkansas, about two hours from there in Magnolia, Southern Arkansas University. Went there to play football and then, about three years in, realized like I'm probably not going to go to the NFL.
Speaker 4:And you get hurt a lot.
Speaker 3:I get hurt a lot.
Speaker 4:As do our children.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank, goodness the school is you know, for your medical bills, but actually through a business organization at the school, met an alumni of the school and we ended up getting a talk in and he helped connect me with someone to interview for an internship. Love it Before I was even thinking about like interning anywhere doing anything other than sports and ended up coming up interning. Loved it, loved the area, like she said. What's that business program, enactus.
Speaker 4:Enactus. It used to be Scythe. Then it transitioned to Enactus Scythe really is life Scythe, it's Scythe for life.
Speaker 3:We both were part of that. We were both Scyfers, although she's a little different because she was a part of the like national champion team.
Speaker 1:So National champion.
Speaker 3:A little proud yeah.
Speaker 2:We only got a bigger plaque. What's that?
Speaker 4:Do you get fourth we?
Speaker 1:got fourth place when I was, that's pretty good. A Scyther. That's pretty good Students in free enterprise.
Speaker 3:Now it's an act of something close to that. Entrepreneurial action us right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there you go. Yeah, you got recruited for Walmart, then through.
Speaker 1:Scythe. Yeah yeah, scott McCall Same.
Speaker 4:Scott's great. Yeah, that's awesome Same.
Speaker 1:Nationals yeah, that's cool, really small world. The retail journey, well, not linear it's.
Speaker 4:There's a handful of us, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a life to what we do today.
Speaker 4:And the internship at Walmart.
Speaker 1:Kind of, you know, notorious. That may have been the first time you met Twila Brooks.
Speaker 3:Who was recently on?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cause, there is the softball or baseball game with interns and execs. I don't think I got invited to that.
Speaker 4:I see it every year now you had to be really special. Yeah, yeah, seriously.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but no, the internship was great, but I still so. I was actually in product development, private brand consumables, so working on the Equate Razor Brand launch and figuring out if we should do two blades, three blades, four blades. Yeah, what was it? Three blades, three blades. Three blades. But anyway so and then like Equate Sandwich Bags, things like that. So I actually left that summer not really knowing what a buyer was still.
Speaker 3:I was so kind of in my own lane and working on my projects that I still left kind of ignorant of like the total broader structure. But luckily I kind of I applied for the merchant leadership program and got in and then you know, it kind of went from there. But just fun fact about you know how the internship doesn't always Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Absolutely. Send you down the path you're going to end up. Yeah exactly. Did either one of you work in stores?
Speaker 4:I did, yeah, Briefly so my first internship was in electronics and very different experience. I was essentially I'm kidding, but locked in a closet for the entire summer and asked to capture. It was just short of four million data points that I had to capture it was myself and this guy.
Speaker 1:We're going to really recruit for up to Walmart. Put her in a closet.
Speaker 4:And I loved it and it was a grind but it was. It was good work and we ended up using it to completely rehaul space adjacencies in the store. But once I realized I was going to come back to Walmart, I transferred to my college town store and worked in the store there and that was.
Speaker 1:So you kept it ten year.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I did keep those couple months. Yeah, Huge deal, but it was good. No, the store was incredible. We I mean we love.
Speaker 1:Even now we call the Eve what you cooks at Walmart as you know, but we love getting out, let's eat where you cook, let's hear it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so what you cook is is getting out into stores, and it can be a couple of different. It can translate to a couple of different things, but really it's rolling up your sleeves, getting dirty and showing up as a store associate and whether it's setting a mod, whether it's moving fixtures, whether it's working, zoning, pricing I mean it can be really anything that the store associates need to accomplish in their day, but it's it's, it's fun because you learn a ton. It really completes the cycle. So the decisions that we make, you see how they trickle downstream and we figure out when we do well and when we made, you know, stupid mistakes that end up ultimately costing time and money for the company.
Speaker 2:So when I was at Walmart, I was in replenishment and went over to store 100 for what you cook and the department manager said oh, okay, you're here. Oh, you coming from home. Okay, what you cook, got it. What do you? What do you do? I said replenishment in domestics. Oh yeah, and so on. Mm-hmm, follow me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah dangerous, we went in the back room and she goes.
Speaker 2:We don't need all of that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they're always right, but it was a huge like you know, it's not just stuff in a box.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's real stuff, real people, yeah if you go into a store now and you say I'm working in Domestics and someone in that store that's still there, knows what you're saying, like knows the category you're talking about, look out, because they're gonna. Give some good feedback. Yeah you just know they're gonna be a veteran.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a while ago, but yeah, and then on the eat well, but it's I remember.
Speaker 3:Yeah, anyways. So, but the eat what you cook. It's also a way for us to kind of be held accountable.
Speaker 4:For the decisions we're making.
Speaker 3:Yeah you know, if we're making all these changes in kind of an insulated space, and you know it's just us working on the numbers, working on the layout, the packaging and everything's perfect, because Squeezing as many items as you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly fits in pro space, Then you know yeah be able to fit in real life. Yeah, and we're making all these great assumptions.
Speaker 3:I tell you, eat what you cook and you're like oh yeah, but then you go to the store and you actually see it come in in the box, yeah, and open the box. And you know there's been cases where just opening the box with a box cutter, You're like oh, I cut it.
Speaker 3:Oh, crap Like we didn't put it in here, right right and get it shipped right or this isn't a different pack size Then we thought it was or the shade of this packaging is actually a completely different yellow than what we agreed to so, or betting, you know it's drawn in this dimension and the reality? Yeah, exactly, or this much or the worst case scenario, doesn't actually fit on the mod Mm-hmm. And then you're like, wow, good thing we did that's a good.
Speaker 4:I know we're going to get into a lot of great topics, but I think one thing that we've talked a lot about Prior to is just trust.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah our vendor partners and I think you never want to be in an eat what you cook or walking a store and find something you didn't know about, right like that's the worst as a merchant. So some of our best vendor partners help us get ahead of those things and give us visibility and over communicate. But I know both of us have walked into stores before and I've just found some really disappointing anger.
Speaker 4:You know egregious things that never, should have gotten there and could have been avoidable. But it happens. You know, in toys most of the buys that I'm making are off of prototypes. I'm not playing with a product when I'm making a buy, because it takes every single day to get that item to the store on time.
Speaker 4:Yeah so I got to make decisions really far out and a lot of categories are like that. So it's an interesting experience, but it's time really well, we're spent and both of us have brought our vendors into stores to do those with us, and those are probably the best.
Speaker 3:Yeah, ask your merchant. Yeah, we eat what we cook. Can we go? Can we do a store walk and we do a store visit? Can we be a part of the e-mail yeah and if not, or you can't get a hold of somebody, just go do your own, be there when the product setting at a store somewhere and be ready to just give transparent, you know notes and feedback on your findings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that great, great segue, because we are talking about how Suppliers can build great relationships with retailers. So remove some of the mystique from it, of it for it, for for the listeners what, what are, what are Simple, tangible things that suppliers can do to really start developing that trust with their buying team?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's a lot of advice out there and a lot of books you can read and a lot of coaches and a lot of Consultants and and those are they're all helpful, but it really is pretty simple. I mean, the the most important thing is it comes down to trust. You know, can you trust your partner and that they're gonna do what they say they're gonna do? Can you trust what they're saying, what they're selling you and you know? I think a big way to win that trust is to make sure that your buyers should never learn anything before you do if that Makes sense and and be transparent, like if you have an issue. If you notice an issue Somewhere in the supply chain, somewhere in the store, somewhere with the product quality, just reach out. Make sure you're the one that tells us rather than us finding it, because I promise you that's.
Speaker 3:That's a much worse scenario and Even though it's a bad situation, if you come to me with that information, I immediately know that you're someone I can trust and that you're someone I can count on. I may be disappointed in how it happened, but you help me find a solution to it and you called it out to me and that way we can solve it and fix it for the customer a lot faster. Then you know that helps to build trust immediately. Yeah, well, especially the long lead time.
Speaker 1:Yeah you've got an issue, yeah, and you don't find out until it's supposed to be on shelf.
Speaker 3:That sheets are large and they take a long time to weave, so we need to find those quickly, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think a lot about value creation in general. So there is not a merchant at any retailer I would imagine. That has an abundance of time. Retail is changing. Retail is accelerating.
Speaker 4:Somehow I don't know how we can go much faster, but we're finding ways to do that and there's a lot of things Resources and tools and data that is that is encouraging us to do that and that's really exciting. But we have to be more efficient bottom line and you know, for us at Walmart we've got this. You know, big competitor, that we respect a lot, but we're also really hungry to get after and we can't do that with how we operate today if our vendors aren't coming to us with faster ways to solve problems and really focus points of view. So I think for both of us especially if you think about first-time vendors pitching into Walmart or maybe you've pitched a couple times and you've landed a couple items Anytime that you can make it easier for us. Thank you, right, it doesn't mean it's gonna be a yes, but I'm going to have a really thoughtful response that is either gonna help you the next time you present an item or it's gonna help you Further developing craft, whatever you're working on, or I'm gonna say yes and you're gonna come in if you've got that, that item that we're looking for.
Speaker 4:But I think once you have the item it's really about you know, clear, summarize data, help us understand the why. Show us that you have a really good understanding of our customer. If you're presenting something to me and you've never walked my category, you're wasting your time like really there's a lot of fundamental things, but I think just any way that you can find value creation, I know. Going back to what Grant said, I I had a vendor at one point. I was new to a category and and it's footwear and you've got injected footwear, cemented footwear, right, like the regular consumer doesn't know that.
Speaker 4:I didn't know that coming in a widget to widget is our concept, and I went to a vendor that I really had respected pretty quickly and and said, hey, can you produce this shoe for me? And he's like you know, I'd love to produce that shoe for you, but I'm not the guy. I Do Injected molded shoes. You really need to get the quality that you're looking for it, one more at the price points that you're looking for. You need Maybe one of these three guys it's not me Immediately, I Mean just rose up to one of my top three vendors in my heart, right Like that's someone that I'm gonna trust and put a lot of weight into anything that you tell me Because of something as simple as that that's some great go giving just yeah, I mean it was and it was a good lesson for me earlier in my career, but just really really powerful and those relationships are so important.
Speaker 4:So I think, yeah, trust is huge. You're not gonna get very far without it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you mentioned some of the changes in retail and the the fast-paced and and a big Competitor that that Walmart respects and works against that competitor has companies coming to them right marketplace there's. There's all different kinds of models, but what, what can, what is Walmart doing to become that's that retailer of choice? You know, 15 years ago Walmart was the big and now there's two bigs right. So what does that look like in Walmart? Attracting the suppliers.
Speaker 3:Well, I think you could see it's pretty evident like we had that seller summit recently for the first time which is huge.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's what marketplace sellers want. They want an opportunity to come and buy in to what the company's doing. They want to be a part of the momentum. They also want to have someone to talk to. They want to know the processes.
Speaker 3:I think that's been some of the hardest parts for us in terms of managing the online business and, depending on the channel, we're not actually the contact, it's the marketplace, the category manager.
Speaker 3:So making sure they know who to talk to, they have account reps, they have customer service representatives they can work with, and so a lot of it is just really solidifying that process, that framework, and understanding where we're going to make our investments and when, and prioritizing those investments. I think that's what we're doing with eComm in general. But on marketplace, two things at the same time. We are onboarding all the brands, we're improving our PDPs, our site experience, et cetera, and at the same time, on the one P side, we're trying to get more focused. We're trying to make the experience better, offer better value, even if it's a online only, non-store item and it's one P Like. We're probably doing a little bit less of that, but we're doing it better and we want to make sure that the item is getting a lot of visibility, a lot of reviews and has the right value to the customer and let marketplace really grow the breadth side of the assortment I love that.
Speaker 1:And the seller summit so exciting for me. You guys guys remember Unvarnished Truth Sessions at.
Speaker 3:YBM and Holiday. Did they have those?
Speaker 1:So they had an Unvarnished.
Speaker 3:Truth Session with sellers.
Speaker 1:And so if you're a seller that was at the summit, your mind was probably blown, because they're people that walked up to a microphone and said something cruel and true about how Walmart was bad at something, and then a Walmart executive walked up to the mic and said thank you so much, so-and-so, will you get up? Hey, can you solve that by tomorrow afternoon?
Speaker 1:and get back to so-and-so. Does anybody else have this issue? Yes, okay, great. So we're going to work on that and solve it. So, with great humility, with the desire to actually learn, unvarnished Truth Sessions started at the YBM Holiday with store managers who were at the time like all right, why are we here and we're asked to be unvarnished, tell the truth. And then Walmart did something about it and things have improved dramatically, and so I'm very pumped about what that means for marketplace, for sellers overall, and I think next year at the next seller summit, it's going to be an absolute step change in all the right ways, and I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think back to your earlier question just on how we're looking at that and growing it as an organization, we're trying to put more and more power in the seller's hands. We're trying to give them more access to things like Walmart Connect and pay-per-click advertising, where they can control their own destiny, try to drive more traffic, and we're starting to build out more tutorials and educational content for them to utilize, much like one of our competitors is doing. They've done it for a long time, right, and they're digitally native and they definitely got a head start. But we are a very large, successful retail organization and have the resources to play that same game and eventually do it better.
Speaker 2:And the Q2 results that 15% of Walmart's global sales revenue is Ecom now. That's a huge, huge step change.
Speaker 3:And we also I know it's kind of people are probably tired of hearing this at this point but we have something they don't in terms of our brick and mortar, essentially micro-fulfillment centers in our stores and pickup and delivery shift from store. I mean that's a huge, huge advantage for Walmart and it will continue to be an advantage. Well, and to go back, to trust.
Speaker 1:I mean as a merchant.
Speaker 4:That's the most valuable asset, as a for Walmart To be able to have products that you can trust in product development as an intern working on art.
Speaker 1:How many blades in this razor is so that you can build trust and have the right value? And cemented versus injection injection.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you nailed it.
Speaker 1:Shoes about trust.
Speaker 4:Now you're going to start taking your shoes apart.
Speaker 3:Quality. Well, and it's also. Both of us have done a lot of work in private brand categories, and so we, most of our work, has been around the product development lifecycle of the product, launching new products, trends, colors, qualities in private brands, and all of it is with the goal of gaining the customer's trust Totally. And when you think about that from the supplier's perspective, we talk about how to develop a good relationship with Walmart, or how to gain Walmart's trust. First of all, sell us a great item. You can be the greatest salesman in the world, but, especially at that limited store space that we have, it's got to be a great item first and foremost, and so it goes back to earning the customer's trust through the quality, through the assortment that you have curated for them, because that's what we're doing and it has to be the right item.
Speaker 4:I can't stop thinking about that 15%. It just is not big enough.
Speaker 2:It's not big enough, but it's significantly bigger than it was.
Speaker 4:It is. It just is not where it needs to be. And I think it's coming right Like there's so many investments and we're getting better every day as an org and hopefully a lot of the vendors see that and there has been really good input and feedback and we hear all of it. And I think as merchants it's really easy to get frustrated on some of the non-controlables. But the one thing that we can do as merchants that hopefully most vendors are seeing, to build that trust and to be the retailer of choice or transparency. So both of us pride ourselves in Two-way street. Yeah, there's no sense in a way, say anyone's time. So transparency is really really important both ways. I would say kind of depicting on that decisiveness as well, and I would say as a vendor, appreciate the nos as much as the yeses. I'm much more inclined to tell you you're headed in the wrong direction quickly, even if I respectfully stop you halfway through your presentation, Right.
Speaker 4:Right, learn from the nos, but sometimes like you have those situations or sometimes it like we really should stop it doesn't benefit anybody to bring in something that doesn't work it doesn't. And let's be collaborative and let me try to help you, you know, re-re-sear the ship. But I just think those two are so important. And then I would say the other one is we really want to help vendors be disruptive, so we try as much as we can to ideate and, you know, share product ideas Like we don't we work a ton in private brands, but that doesn't mean that we're going to hold everything to our chest.
Speaker 4:Like we, I love working with big vendors to create new things that we're excited to present to our customers and I think if we can do some of those things better than other retailers, I have to hope as a merchant those are things we can control. I have to hope that maybe in some rooms that gives us an advantage you have to help. By the rest of it. It's kind of slowly coming.
Speaker 2:So retail journey, high impact. We like data, big part of what we do and what we think about. Both of you come from our end categories. At the moment that, while you've got a lot of rich Walmart data your internal data, the external data that you might have in dry grocery or consumables it's not as prevalent. How do you gather, coalesce the limited amount of external data to help you, help inform the decisions that you need to make?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's a really good question. It's funny also because Charles actually taught me retail link back in the day.
Speaker 4:Back when I first started my journey. Are you talking about DSS? Are you talking about retail link? Because that's a pet peeve.
Speaker 1:It was our retail link training.
Speaker 4:Okay, brought, so there was multiple ways covered.
Speaker 1:We focused on DSS.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, but the course was called retail link.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I remember they updated the page once the morning of me teaching a retail link class. I came in and I'm like, oh, I've never seen this before Everyone thinks you're phoning, I'm here to train you.
Speaker 3:It's going to be great. Yeah, I would say so. The good news is, walmart has had a best in class data center for a long time, for decades in retail link and despite the fact that I was doing training, with you at the helm of training.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Obviously most of the country shopping our stores every week, and so we had our internal POS. Data is about as good as any market intelligence that you can get, right, so we have a good starting point. But you're right, as things have developed and progressed in grocery and consumables in our GM categories it has been a little slower to develop and I've worked hand in hand with some of these people that are like the associates that are building these tools, and I see exactly why it's so hard to implement in GM versus some of those other categories. But we are continuing to make those investments and, for example, right now I'm utilizing some or I'm on paternity leave right now.
Speaker 1:Do not do it much, yeah, but right yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:We've been utilizing a lot of kind of smart draw systems for our modules, and so I'm really excited about being able to be a lot more localized even in our like betting businesses, because that's going to be a big change for us and a huge benefit to the customer. Once we unlock that capability, we're using things like Luminate, yeah.
Speaker 1:Luminate. Oh wow, yeah, I'm afraid of that.
Speaker 3:And I think for us right now, the key is to know what you need to find. So if there's a certain customer insight out there demographic data, income level, whatever it is I think that's kind of where we can start now and we can find the tool to go find that information, Whereas the difference right now, maybe in some other categories that have all this national and global data, they can kind of start from anywhere and people are bringing them insights. All of the CPG companies have access to these tools and beyond, and so for us right now it's more us as it's kind of the hunter versus the gatherer, but it's coming along and they're continuing to make investments in those tools.
Speaker 1:Have you seen some of your suppliers start getting into the Luminate data and how has that conversation gone?
Speaker 3:I have Actually my first supplier. I had a supplier that signed up and they're the first supplier partner Luminate in my area, but then I went on leave and I haven't gotten a chance to talk to them about it.
Speaker 3:I'm excited to come back and see how they're doing and not to just belabor the point, but because I know that I talked specifically about the data there. But, like I said, we've both been in kind of fashion trend driven categories, quality driven categories, private brands so a lot of it is just getting out, talking to the customer going to market. It is a much more subjective category.
Speaker 2:It's a very subjective the fashion trend yeah.
Speaker 3:The fashion colors and our color and product teams do a great job of saying here are the trends for next year. So like if you want to bring in this blue dinner plate, it needs to be either this blue or this blue, and so that you know at least kind of helps us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you know, for vendors there's a ton of really great trend service companies that you can work with. Be thoughtful in what you're curating. So I, you know, before I came out on leave I had a vendor show us a kitchen set that was kind of like a unique blue, trendy blue. It had gold trim details and it had a little bit of a loud hearing bone.
Speaker 3:This is a toy kitchen set. It's a toy kitchen. Sorry, I didn't ship it at home, no, sorry.
Speaker 4:Toy kitchen toy kitchen Um, it had it had three points from an attribution standpoint that I would classify as trend. That's too too many.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:Um, at Walmart, at most mass retailers, no-transcript. You're trying to hit eight out of 10, nine out of 10, consumable food 10 out of 10,. Right Like you're trying to hit as many people as you can in store.
Speaker 4:We've got our long tail online and we're gonna cater to that. But in store, that's valuable space and, transparently, we're looking at skew reductions across a lot of categories so that we can fulfill in a more meaningful way and pick in a more meaningful way. So when you're showing me an item that's got three trendy, risky kinds of details on them, that's a miss and something that had you had a better hand on. Maybe some trend services, who we are as a company, what we're trying to achieve, what are the productivity figures that you need to hit to even be in store? Do you know dollar productivity we talk a ton about as merchants, so the trend services can't really be understated. And then, at the end of the day, as merchants, we're paid to have a gut, and if you're a fashion merchant, you're expected to know trends and you can figure this out through the services social shopping, talking to customers, tons of different ways but you're paid to have a gut.
Speaker 4:So, we've got to be more right than wrong and we've got to know what the customer is looking for.
Speaker 1:Any favorite stories of when your gut led you right where you wanted it to go, and then maybe, where it turns out.
Speaker 4:You're wrong.
Speaker 1:Not so much the gut was wrong and since Brooke is taking a drink, obviously I have to go first.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I got to think here.
Speaker 3:When were?
Speaker 4:you wrong.
Speaker 3:Oh, rarely I do like to think. You know, if I think about something that's just been an absolute home run, I probably don't have something that's like. I launched this and it did $100 million overnight just unbelievable. But I haven't made a lot of bad decisions right. So it's been an accumulation of a lot of good decisions on top of each other. But I would say like an example of kind of using your gut is when I was in kitchen towels.
Speaker 3:We knew that our better homes and gardens or step up kitchen towels just weren't up to par. It was just a plain terry towel or like a flat weave with an ink print on it, like wasn't good enough to be a step up to mainstays and we had an idea of kind of what we wanted just by seeing. What was that? Like Creighton Barrel, William, sonoma, but since that it was a third part. So we use our design arm earthbound to help us with that kind of on the PD side there and we were talking to vendors but we didn't have like a specific spec for it.
Speaker 3:So we went out and we're just kind of asking and we saw a lot of submissions and it was actually on the trip to India. We were at a factory and we saw it and we're like this is it, like this is the towel line and we launched it ended up double digit growth, let's go. Yeah, it was great Better margin, better product, better quality, and so that was just something I was pretty proud of. But yeah, it was one of those things where, like, there wasn't really a data point to tell me that that's what's gonna happen. It was just kind of you have the right people in the room and you're, like you all agree like this is a pretty awesome, freaking towel.
Speaker 1:There's data that led you to knowing you needed something. Yes, exactly. And then you gotta look around the corner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the data told us where our opportunity was, where we needed to improve, and the market told us where the white space was. Yeah, love it. And then you know my just genius intuition oh no, I'm just kidding, it's great. No, actually the supplier just showed us exactly what the product should be.
Speaker 4:I think in apparel there's been a couple of times where I've over engineered something. You get so excited about offering the customer better quality and sometimes that's not what they're asking for, you know, and it still might be an incredible value, but maybe it's $7 and they needed it to be four. And there's a couple of times in apparel where and they weren't necessarily huge buys but we overestimated or overdeveloped something and probably didn't listen to the consumer well enough. I think the most fun and exciting item and I love key items like Key Merchant learned that from Don LaValle in apparel Like absolutely love finding key items and driving them until you've bought too many and the next merchants marking them all down. It never happens, right.
Speaker 4:But I would say Jojo Siwa, when I was in girl's shoes, was just kind of rising and the vendor was in my ear and Jeff, and Jeff and I have a great relationship, but Jeff was just like Brooke. You know, look at this trending on social Like, look at these numbers. It's similar to whoever from before. Let's get after it. And I just kept saying no, no, have you seen these shoes? They're loud, obnoxious. No one's gonna like. I'm like this is too much, this is too much. And I just kept saying no and he kept. He was persistent and he kept coming back to me with new data and he wasn't rude, right, like he wasn't in my face about it, but just like I really think there's something here. And finally I said, okay, let's buy some blew out.
Speaker 4:I mean, we were talking, some stores were selling 200 in a week which in footwear is insane and we had such a great relationship and he's like let's get after it and we sold a million pairs of those in Q4 that year.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 4:And the only reason it was possible was really because that vendor stayed on it. And then Don let me spend a lot of money and they shifted production lines in multiple factories to accommodate what we needed to go, do and prioritize us.
Speaker 1:That's a trust both ways.
Speaker 4:Both ways both ways, because all two not I shouldn't say all too often, but sometimes we have to cancel things or we have to cut back, or we have to push them out, and when you're, I mean, those were really big quantities, really big quantities, and it could have went south quickly.
Speaker 3:I mean licensed product. We've all been around licensed product we have kids.
Speaker 4:They like it one day, they don't the next.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you remember Duck Dynasty yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice. Well, so often you know you have the space line, you say, well, let's get it 10 or 20% better, and a lot of times that's the right thing to do. Other times you need something brand new. I remember, you know, one of my first retail experiences was in selling into Walmart in the luggage category. So we looked at it and it's okay. Well, it's 1488. So can we do a 16 or should it be a 12? And the merchant at the time, sean Townsend, he said we're gonna do a $10 carry on. It kind of planted the flag and it took a year, I think, to really get it tooled and find the pieces and I think we sold 10 million.
Speaker 4:Incredible, but how great to have that direction that clarity on. We know what we need to go do. We know what the customer wants.
Speaker 2:We know what Walmart wants, but it was new and it was a. It was divergent for a while.
Speaker 4:Super disruptive, yeah, and.
Speaker 3:Walmart's built on stories like that Super disruptive. As someone who's worked under Scott McCall in the past, like I could tell you 15 different stories of where we went through a walkthrough and it was this is gonna be we're gonna sell a million units at $1697,. He's like, no, you're gonna sell two million units at $10. Like it was always inspiring and at the same time it was a challenge, like maybe you don't actually get there, but you work like you know what to get there, and so it was. It's always inspiring when you hear those stories, yeah.
Speaker 2:What's next? How have suppliers that you've worked with and there's going to be dominant players in each of your categories and there's going to be the emergent ones that maybe correct me if I'm wrong that bring some of the newer ideas? How can some of those smaller, emerging mid-tier, along with a great product that's at a good price, how do they bring you into the story if it's something new? Walk us down that road a little ways.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think. Show us you have a really clear understanding of the category and the market. What is everyone doing? I definitely want to understand Target and Amazon as a starting point, and toys. But help us understand that piece. If you can come with customer insights you've already pulled together for that item, it helps. If you can benchmark your item from a quality standpoint, that really helps. If you can give us visibility to cost component tree, that helps, even something high level. It doesn't have to be down to the grommet on an item, but if you can give us something there, that helps. We mentioned it earlier, but be brief, summarize you don't need to drag things out. If it's a hero item, let's get to it. I think those are all a good starting point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love it, I think. Take advantage of complacency from the larger vendors. If you're studying a category and you realize, man, this thing's been on the mod for 10 years, I bet I can do it better.
Speaker 1:There's got to be a better way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's got to be a better way or provide something that's very different. If you're a smaller supplier or wanting to break into a category, the truth is you're going to have to take some risk and try something very different Because, like Brooke mentioned earlier, no merchant at a retailer has a lot of time To take a meeting, to take a phone call, to take a presentation. There's got to be an incentive to take it. There's got to be a chance that we could make a difference in our business and a difference for the customer to take this meeting. So, come with something exciting, something different and even if you're a little uncomfortable, if you have the data to back it up, you have the market insights to support it and you've studied our categories and our assortment. Like bring it, I love it. Be aggressive.
Speaker 1:Start with trust on the one side. Make sure you're studying the customer, bringing the customer to the center all the time, use data where you can and at the end of the day, you've got to look around the corner.
Speaker 3:And use data that you don't think we've seen. Sorry, I don't know. We're probably moving through a different topic.
Speaker 2:No, that's great.
Speaker 3:But I think, like you said, in some of our categories internally we haven't had a lot of access to market and customer insights that we desperately wish we had sometimes. But suppliers have surveys and services that they've paid for or the national syndications have paid for, and bring us that data. Show us that it's unbiased data and that it you know the story that it tells and that it clearly points to like why you're showing us this opportunity. But I would say that's a huge way to kind of set yourself up, for success is to bring us that data that we may not have access to or haven't seen yet.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, most merchants are really focused on share and if you can access good share data, especially if you have something that's already existing in the market that you're trying to get a Walmart merchant interested in in store, summarize the size of the price, right, like make it really easy for us to say yes. If you can come in and say I'm doing $5 million in the market, your fair share is two plus. Like I'm going to listen to you pretty quickly and decide where that needs to go. So I think if you have the ability to do that which not everyone will, but that's going to be it's going to be appetizing for most merchants.
Speaker 3:Size of the price and think about the next level of that Not only make it easy for us to say yes, make it easy for us to get our bosses to say yes, right, that's the thing that suppliers forget is that we have leadership that we need to also present these ideas to, and if we don't have the necessary data to back it up, if we can't convince them 100% that this is a good idea, then it was kind of all for nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we are just about out of time, but to maybe wrap things up, what in 2024 are you most excited about in the business?
Speaker 4:I think for me, I'm really excited about it feels like there's a tremendous amount of momentum, so I think that's just really exciting. We're going to be solving some really big problems. Retail is not going to slow down. We're going to become more efficient. We have to be to survive on both sides. So I'm really excited about how that's going to translate to the stores. But I think just momentum, it's a really. There's just so many exciting things and it's a little overwhelming because it's what do you focus on. It's a conversation. We have a lot, but there's just so much out there. It's endless and that's really exciting.
Speaker 3:It's really exciting. It's going to be an election year, so it'll be really nice and calm All election and predictable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you see your sales down on voting days, it's because people are watching debates instead of shopping.
Speaker 3:But I think it's also. I think she kind of stole my answer when she said solving problems. There's big problems that we're going to we're solving right. We're in the process of solving whether it's more functional in terms of the mods we're building that are a year out, that we're correcting a lot of things that we found and making it better for the customer. We're creating more localized assortments, better quality, better trends, things like that. But on a broader scale, it's thinking about the increased digital acceleration, both pure e-com and our omni business, and it's all the data and the access to customer information that we're going to be getting more and more access to so that we can't better and better at serving our customer's needs, which is our job, and included in that is the implementation of artificial intelligence and how much is that? I know it's scary, but it's also going to help us tremendously and it could even just be in automating some of the tasks that we have to free up our ability.
Speaker 4:More meaningful work.
Speaker 3:To dive in to more meaningful work and more customer insights, and so I think we have so much momentum behind us and more access to things to be able to solve these big problems for our customers.
Speaker 1:So another lightning round question how do you de-stress and relax Dooley's?
Speaker 4:With our three kids.
Speaker 3:We'll get there eventually.
Speaker 2:Yeah, three, five and under. There's not a lot of de-stress. Tbd, TBD.
Speaker 4:Grant's great about getting into the gym. He's aspirational For me. That's going to be my to-do to focus on just fitness, health and wellness. Yeah, take vitamins Super important.
Speaker 3:It works. It works unique in that her working is her de-stress. It's just how she's wired.
Speaker 1:For me.
Speaker 3:I need that kind of time. I love to work and when I'm there I'm focused and driven and working hard. But I need. I love to take lunch by myself. I love to just decompress. She loves to work through lunch because that's kind of energizes her. But then, yeah, three kids at home, we don't de-stress a lot.
Speaker 4:We love the lake. There you go, we get out on the lake. Love it there you go Lake life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love Beaver Lake. What's on your reading list?
Speaker 4:Long reading list with I just started my Life in Full by Andrew Newey we read a lot of what are the Piggy and the Elephant books. And we do a lot of that yeah.
Speaker 3:We have the Full set. Bought it at Sam's Club. It's really good value.
Speaker 4:It was a great value.
Speaker 3:No, I'm actually so I want to start reading more fiction. I never read fiction books. I'm always reading things like Atomic Habits, how to Win Friends, influence People, and then a few other things like Thinking Fast and Slow, things like that Essentialism. A lot of great books. But I've noticed that those books now and I feel like I've learned a lot through them, but now it just makes me like overthink everything and like, okay, I read this book and I need to apply all this. And now I read this book and I need to apply all this. Overlapping frameworks. Yeah, and now I think it's time for me to just read something about like even a mythical creature, you know, conquering some kind of quest.
Speaker 4:I love that.
Speaker 3:And just once again go back to de-stressing it. Yeah, I love it. Take my brain out of it a little bit.
Speaker 2:And engage that right side of the brain a little bit. Yeah, exactly. So thank you both so much for joining us today. It's been a really great conversation.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us. It's been fun. Yeah, thank you, it has been fun, more fun than I thought. That's good.
Speaker 2:And thank you all for listening. As always, you can join us on our website, highimpactanalyticscom, or anywhere fine podcasts are downloaded. Thank you very much.
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