Get to know your customers and build your brand; How the VP of E-commerce at Conn's HomePlus takes what he learns from customers to make a better user experience

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 If it's radical we cover it here's your host Ryan offered
 Hey guys, it's Ryan all for welcome to the latest episode of the Radcast
 We are in the middle of our e-commerce series. It's been going really well and
 Been bringing a lot of great content a lot of great guests and we bring yet another one here today
 He is the VP of e-commerce at cons home plus a lot of you have sure have heard of cons home plus but satia
 Seven Igunta
 Good to have you man. You got me there on the name. You won the contest. Did I do okay?
 Yeah, you're spot on I think
 You can't go really wrong with that name Satya Satya, you know, whatever
 But but I'm glad to be here. So thank you for having me. Yeah, man
 You bring a lot of good experience, which I want to get into here shortly
 You know before we just dive into the standard stuff. I mean you guys have been hanging on through covid and his cons in a good place
 And I know it's somewhat of a new role for you, but it generally speaking things going all right
 It thinks are fantastic. I think covid
 Surfaces a lot of new challenges that none of us have anticipated so it's my job to help cons sort of get to the next level on the
 e-commerce space and
 Cons as a whole is a great company, right? So
 You know, how do I bring that level of e-commerce intelligence and e-commerce talent and team and
 agility and nimbleness and all of those two two cons is what I'm here for you know being with the company only for almost six months now
 So there's a lot of good stuff that we've done, but there's there's another 24 months of
 Hopefully phenomenal stuff that's coming down the road. Great. Well, so Tia
 Let's let's start with maybe you know giving everyone this listening, you know kind of your you know the the cliffs notes on you and your background and you know where you've been and kind of leading up to where you are today
 Sure
 So I come from
 The product design background, you know if you if you look at my career. I started as a designer
 In the user experience space before it was even called UX, right? So all we called it was graphic designer or marketing design back then
 But the the one advantage that I had on for me was I came from a product design like a physical product design
 So touching feeling something and sort of experiencing
 The usability of anything that you build was super important, right?
 So when you when you're like designing a coffee cup or a mug or a pen or whatever you tend to build a prototype in foam or or
 Clay and touch it and feel it and make sure that that's usable
 That's where I was and then when I got hooked onto the computers and then 3D modeling and animation and that's
 That's kind of what pushed me into the
 Computer space and then once I got into it. I said well, I don't have to go
 Where dirty t-shirt and and and keep working with foam and clay all day long
 He a workshop. I could do all that on the computer, right? So so that that what was that triggered me
 On my digital journey and you know, I got my first gig with Nike
 You know as a designer on that on their marketing team and
 You know, I was part of the team that
 Took Nike dot com which was a marketing site to shop dot Nike dot com
 Which was the e-commerce site of Nike, right? So very grateful to be part of that team
 Built out the entire experiences the taxonomy navigation. How does the product details page or how does the transaction work and all that
 um, but that's where I got my you know bearings and you know six 70 years of that time
 Yeah, Nike no big deal. I mean, you know building out those say is it I don't know if you're being one listening is harder than Nike, but yeah, no sweat
 Sounds like it was easy
 I know it's it's you know, it's it's one of the most phenomenal companies that I work for
 No offense to anybody else, you know, I work for some great folks like Microsoft but Nike
 Really grounded me. There's some amazing talented folks that were there that I that I had the fortune to work under get trained under her
 And learn and grow from
 Which would sort of set the foundation of how I operate even till today
 You know, I go back to my days at Nike and say what did we do at back then if we had a problem
 So yeah, I mean all credit Nike for where I am today for sure
 That's great. So we we started at Nike. We was was Microsoft next
 Yeah
 Yeah, no, that's the chain
 You know every every interview that I go to people ask me typically the the CHRO asks me. Oh, why did you move right
 There's a single common
 Element in my journey of my going from job to job gig to gig is I typically have been recruited by somebody or I've followed somebody that I work with
 Right
 That's the same story with with Nike. I had a fantastic boss. She she moved to
 Microsoft to lead their e-commerce team and she said hey such a we need you to come
 part of my team and you know
 gratitude call it gratitude call it whatever
 loyalty, you know
 You know the fantastic team that you know she built I followed her and several others from
 From Nike to join
 Microsoft to lead their
 Product design team and UX team
 I was part of the Microsoft Azure cloud and then also the Microsoft commerce platform
 Microsoft was trying to sell stuff online. They still do today and my team's
 Responsibility was to sort of build out that entire e-commerce experience
 Along with that a few other things, but yeah, mostly it's just the e-commerce
 Um, and then from there went to Ogui, which was again a phenomenal move. I moved all the way from
 Seattle to New York City
 Again, great role great team followed somebody that I had worked for before
 um
 Led banking retail and healthcare
 Primarily product team so we would typically go solve problems for
 When a client comes in and says hey, we're trying to do x or we have a problem. Why
 My team would just go in and and try to understand the problem empathize and quickly come up with some solutions like digital solutions
 Um from there
 Move to Chico's Chico's White House Black Market and Soma down in Florida
 Let their e-commerce teams
 Then you know jc penny worked for
 Two leaders two amazing leaders called my command and treaty saha Mike came from home repo treaty came from target
 Phenomenal leaders learned a ton from them
 Then who went up to Detroit to work for a private equity firm which bought art van furniture
 um
 And then finally to cons home plus back in texas. I guess you know, I was with jc penny when I was in texas
 But back in texas in houston with cons leading their e-commerce
 That's great. I um
 Interesting, you know, being an agency owner
 And you know the time you spend at ogle v and anyone that's listening that knows agency world, you know, there's
 agency world
 May have started ended with david ogle v
 You know, it's some way you shape for form um, but
 Interesting perspective being client side as much as you have but also spending six years
 Agency side that that probably
 Maybe talk a little bit about that that perspective
 As probably armed you pretty well. I imagine on the client side understanding the agency side
 I'm sure most of the the size companies you've been working with you've probably had an agency that worked with you
 Um, how was how's that dynamic? Have it myself been the cmo on the on the
 The client side as well. It's been it's it's been interesting in eye-opening
 You know playing both sides of that fence, but uh, well any perspective there
 Um
 You empathize with your agencies a little more. I do actually it's both sides, right? So
 Every time I I bring in I've got multiple agencies today
 No matter where I go, but every time you bring in an agency
 The internal team feels like the agency doesn't have empathy towards the brand
 Right, they don't spend enough time knowing the brand
 Yeah, no who we are what pains we go through you you are high-flying hot shots
 You think you can come in and solve all my problems. Yeah, that's the internal teams
 Marketing team or whatever
 Right as you said in first slide in our deck. Yeah
 You know, you think you think you can solve a problem in like 12 12 16 18 weeks
 Yeah, exactly and you have and you've been spending 20 years doing it. Yeah
 Uh, but on the other side, I think the agency, uh, what taught me is um
 The agility factor, right? Do you move you know this you move really really fast? You've got really really
 You got a very little time. You've got to understand the problem. You got to empathize. You got to you know
 You know coming from the UX world
 Empathize and then you got a prototype and then you got to test validate iterate and then go back and
 You know build build another prototype and then finally you're sort of ready to go
 Get in front of the customer
 that
 You know typically takes quite a bit of time if you live on the brand side because
 Brands and companies move very very very slow
 um and
 Given the red tape and all that that sort of exists within within an organization
 I think that's where the agencies coming and are able to
 seamlessly navigate and you know empathize with everybody but really be mission focused and getting things done
 That's what I learned, you know, if I have to distill all my six years with ogui
 Is learned agility how to move fast how to how to be nimble
 You know
 And then get your message across within the 30 minutes
 Um that you have with the client even within 30 minutes you really got five minutes to make an impact and then that's it right so yeah
 Yeah, I totally empathize. Yeah
 What got you in the e-commerce and where is there?
 You know obviously doing user experience customer experience is obviously a national trend
 So
 So
 Nike was the beginning of e-commerce that gave me the taste of what it e-commerce looks like but again this was 2009 to 1999 2000 where e-commerce wasn't e-commerce though
 It is today. No
 Microsoft wasn't really e-commerce just you know all candidness. I mean it was we were building for but wasn't there yet
 What ogui did was it gave me three choices really
 I've got a path. I can go down the healthcare path
 Because I work with folks like cardinal health and some of these bigger healthcare clients
 I can go down the banking path or I can go down the retail path
 And I work with JP Morgan Chase on some of the some of the products
 and MX
 What I found about myself was I'm not the type of person
 that
 That I mean I really like the speed and the pace that retail moves
 There are days that I absolutely hate it. I regret every single
 Every single decision that I made to get into retail there are some days, but most days I love it
 Most days I absolutely love it the fact that I wake up in the morning at at at four or five the first thing that I do is look at the
 the hourly reporter the nightly report that comes in
 You know from a revenue standpoint
 From my product teams. What are we pushing out? What are we changing? You know, what was the impact?
 so kpi driven so
 uh
 The amount of impact that you could potentially have by doing a very very small change is enormous in retail
 Given the the amount of traffic that we see and that's where I want it to be
 You know, that's what I love
 Like I said 98 days out of 100. I really love being retail
 is um
 Back to cons and you know the notion of you know being a retailer and a finance
 Bank for a lot of better words because a lot of the financing you know in in your job
 I mean I would think it would be hard thinking about
 Transactions versus branding, you know like our customers because you typically think of banking
 You think of transacting, you know and it's not that you don't the banks don't have a brand
 I don't want to say that at all they most certainly do um
 But in your role is is it purely
 How to drive more transactions or are you charged in any any part of you know the brand lifting
 Um
 The way I would answer that is um
 In today's world in the last uh, I would say in the last uh two to three to five years um
 The brand um has sort of blended with uh a transactional
 Relationship right a brand that you love and you aspire or you get inspired by
 Worses. Oh, this is some this is some company that I just go buy stuff and I've got no no relationship
 You know that that kind of has come together really really. I'm sure you're seeing this
 In all the conversations right these no longer are two separate marketing metrics
 You know commerce metrics and brand metrics are like like very very close. There's quite a bit of overlap
 Um with cons um the challenge or the problem were
 Trying to solve is um
 people
 Know that we we we do offer credit and financing
 People know that we do sell appliances electronics mattresses and home office
 Um, it's about
 When you come to cons, you know, we've got your back no matter what you're where you are
 What your credit profile is right? I think that's the level of messaging that you know from an e-commerce standpoint that I've got
 I've got a challenge to
 Conquer that because think about a firm and after pay and carna there's guys that are doing
 Fantastic work. I mean a firm is one of my favorite friends
 My boss would have liked it if I say that but
 They do a phenomenal job right to think about how they've transformed themselves. So
 that's
 You know when you look at a firm or some of these other guys it's no longer about yeah, I'm transacting with you
 But uh, but I really love the experience the customer experience that you provide the end-to-end experience
 So that's that's the biggest challenge that I have is you know, how do I take these
 transactional
 once a year or once every couple of your transactional moments
 And then sort of you know, marry that with with the brand you know on cons.com through cons.com
 Because the fact is 95% of the people that transact in store
 Start online, you know, COVID. I want to say 100% but really 95 plus percent
 People start online on cons.com and then and then walk into a store, right
 um, so if I can
 If I can't leave an impression on them if I can't build a confidence on the brand messaging that we're putting out there
 um
 Then I've actually essentially set the entire company for failure
 Because they're not going to even be able to walk into the store, right? So
 There's a beautiful analogy that I had um
 In in in the last couple of years is
 People think e-commerce as a store in most traditional companies, you know, you have store one two three four got a hundred and hundred plus stores
 You know cons cons.com is another store
 But you take that and you put the cons.com right in front of every single store
 So you cons.com becomes sort of your entry to
 uh, every store, right? And that's a cultural mind shift internally
 But that's that's the reality out there with the customer. So you know short answer is
 um
 I think I think I weird off a little bit from from your question, but customers experiences brand. I mean, you know
 What you what you feel what you see what you experience is brand, right?
 It's
 You know, it's no longer what we say what we what we play for you the music the colors
 You know, it's just one. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it's it's interesting because you know
 We've had we've had a couple other guests um on this on the e-commerce side and
 they battle the
 The franchisees or the individual stores depending on the model of the business
 Thinking of uh of dot com as competition and
 You know, I don't know if you guys battle that but the reality is
 Like you said the customer journey starts there and you can have friction over that or you can accept it and
 leverage it to complete the customer journey wherever that ends
 So the first time that I experienced the animosity was at pennies a little bit, okay
 There was always this um friction in stores
 um
 But because of the compensation model they're not compensation compensated based on it's not a commission-based
 Business it's you know you're salaried
 There are some KPIs, but it's majority of the store folks are salary
 But when I move to the private PE on art van furniture, it's mostly commissioned to sale staff like in store
 Meaning if you don't hit your numbers, then you get you know
 You're probably you're gonna make minimum wage at the end of the day
 um
 And concy is you know a little bit of a similar model where peep employees are you know
 The downside is if you don't sell you're not gonna make any money
 But upside is if you sell a lot you're a rockstar performer you make a lot of money
 so
 There's been perception in the industry and I've talked to a lot of people in the furniture industry and
 Especially in this type of model where they see e-commerce as the enemy
 And I've had to go through like several you know district manager level meetings with the
 With the store folks in my previous life where we'd go and we'd say this is what we're trying to do to drive traffic
 Here's you know, I know I can't convert 95% of the people that come to the site
 But if I can send
 10% of those 95% that come to the site to a store
 you guys win right so
 I think you know the whole omni channel concept is is is a big one at cons we're trying to
 Really push that in. I've got a tremendous partner at the president of retail
 Rodney he came from target. He was there for almost 15 17 years
 But we believe that it's really omni channel. I know that word is
 Slightly stale and overused and all that but it's really
 Right, but it's really at the end of the day you're going to store for us
 You go I come online. We're here to sell you know build confidence and sell a product for you
 You buy online you buy and store doesn't matter
 I think what we have to do on our side is do a better job of sort of connecting the dots. So
 You're not starting from scratch if you go into a store like a seamless elegant handoff
 You know you build your credit profile you build your application online that we do that by the way today
 You build your credit application then you can go into a store
 So you're not having to spend 15 20 minutes trying to fill up your credit application
 But you can do that online, but then you can just take that and go into a store and you're you can just buy
 In store. Yeah, and that omni channel
 Look when you put the customer first you a lot of these things
 tend to follow the wayside because the customer doesn't care what your internal problems are
 Customer doesn't care about what you're arguing about they want seamless frictionless shopping experience
 From online to in store and if you put your stock better be right online
 Or if that exact store, you know, you better be able to start an application and pick it up, you know the
 Whether it's Amazon or whether it's Nike 20 years ago the expectation has been set
 You know for the convenience factor for the customer
 I think if you know
 Somebody I think five years ago said if you can make an appointment online
 You know a ten dollar appointment to for a haircut
 I don't have a problem, but but you do you know you do good for heck and I
 We got a 50% 50% issue here
 So I mean you could do that five years ago, right? So if you can do that online you should be able to
 Know, you know, you know, where where an item is a store level inventory, you know, is this item in store?
 Online can I get it today, you know or buy today get it by when you know, these are becoming
 I mean convenience, but just table stakes for me, right? Yeah, and if you can't get to that level of clarity with inventory or our promise
 I mean we had a huge huge project called promise at pennies when when Mike was still around back then
 At we still with pennies
 It was it was the project was was just called promise and that entailed
 Um
 Buy buy buy X get buy Y, you know store level inventory
 It you know inventory from other stores meaning if you go into the store
 We had a project called find more at jc penny
 Um, if you go into the store and you're looking for an excel shirt, but you know
 They only have a large
 They're able to tell you you know what can you go to this jc penny at this location?
 You can get it in the excel size. That's one option, but you want to chip home
 I can place the order right now, but then you can you'll just get the delivered to your home address. So I think
 That's all of that Ryan is just table stakes now, you know, if and if you can if you can level the playing ground you're kind of out of the
 Um, you know out of the table. Yeah
 uh
 what um
 Get transition point
 You know, we've got a big holiday season coming up
 Uh, and a unique to say the least uh holiday season
 um
 What are you guys doing, you know, in a
 You know, I keep wanting to say post covid world, but it's just like Freudian slip of what I want it to be what it but what it's not
 Uh, in a covid world
 You know, what what's the black Friday cyber monday like is there anything you can kind of you know share with what what that's doing to your planning and you know what cons is
 You know, get a try to do to kind of combat that and still what
 Make what's a super important time period for any retailer
 I think
 Playing by the covid rules
 um
 The the the sort of biggest challenges that were
 Trying to encounter or solve for are
 The social distancing factor first because
 It is covid it is still covid
 People are not you're not going to see lines, you know, hopefully if you do see lines
 Hopefully people are maintaining six feet social distance or at least wearing masks
 You know or protecting yourself in some way or the other
 um
 It's about
 The promise is what it is uh uh for me this peak right so let me let me explain the inventory promise meaning
 Making sure that if you if you place in order with const calm
 Getting it getting the item um on the day on the time that we promised to you. Okay. That's that's one level of promise
 um number two sort of you know
 We're doing all these other stuff with driving sense of urgency, you know
 You have to do that to to be part of the black Friday game, you know, there are deals and uh, you know
 But what we're trying to do is giving that convenience for the customer to be able to actually just buy online and then
 We we're doing online exclusives, but we're also doing like in store exclusive for people that really want to go into store
 um
 And then
 Given that i'm only here for six months and cons is doing tremendous investment into e-commerce
 It's about stability for me. So the technologist in me is you know uh wants a stable peak
 A site does that that doesn't go down coupons that work
 um, you know the my call center my e-commerce sales and support team
 Uh is available 24 by seven, you know for for that for that week that we're supporting uh
 Uh customers placing orders online getting the items delivered to you quickly
 uh
 Like it or not inventory challenges are real um across the globe and we're not
 We're not uh, I mean, it's because of the covid. It's not uh, we're not unique to that situation
 Just playing with with the inventory and and making sure that the customers get the item
 uh, you know, keeping the promise per se that's really my goal
 Uh, this this covid if you had asked me last day
 It's about driving incremental sales and all that I think it's just about keeping the promise for me at this point. Oh
 That's admirable uh
 being most are
 focused on how many sales they can get but
 Delivering on the promise is the long game and the long game win
 So and that's branding of itself because if you start delivering on those promises
 You that you make and there's going to be a lot of people that probably won't
 Deliver on those promises because if you focus just on the urgency and the sale and the product
 What you're going to do. I'm sure you're going to have that as well. You like you said it's time period specific
 But keeping the promises are pretty key. So as we kind of wrap up
 I mean, what's the man you've you've done a lot you've worked with some of the biggest and best companies in the world
 I mean, what's what's an accomplishment or two that you know stick with you is
 Things that you've you know hold out there that you're proud of
 Uh, I don't know. I mean
 Yeah, I would say
 The best accomplishment
 That I can truly tell my friends and family, you know, uh, easy yet to come. Let me just say that right
 Is that is that okay? I mean, is that acceptable? That that's how I feel. Okay. We have a clown the mountain yet. I like it
 Hey, the journey. It's a journey, right? And you know
 So the best accomplishment. Yeah, I think yeah, it's yet to come but I've learned a lot. So
 You know, I can't discount what I've learned, but there's a tremendous amount of learning that I've
 That I've done, but just not
 Uh, I haven't claimed Mount Everest retail Mount Everest yet
 Ha ha ha
 Well, what's uh, I mean, what does success look like for you then like you've been successful. You are successful
 I mean, what does um, I mean, is do you see yourself? I mean, obviously you're just getting started to con
 I mean, you're six months in and you know
 On your way there, but is
 Do you see it um
 Hey, I want to write a book. I want to you know, I'm gonna start my own company one day like any aspirations out there that are
 Or is it just like take every day as you go
 So personal aspirations um
 Uh, you know
 Is I want to I want to finish my I'm a private pilot. So I want to finish my my my pilot certification my my my not commercial, but
 My instrument rating so that I can actually fly on top of the clouds horses underneath the clouds, right? So
 And then just I think the biggest goal
 Let me say this I think so that's my personal aspiration like me and my daughter. We've got a 60-year-old me and my wife have a 60-year-old
 um, you know, focus on on on on them on her
 Um, and we want to have a certain lifestyle with the planes and you know, just get out there or every every Saturday morning
 fly to a
 You know, nobody's tiny little airport. Get some breakfast
 You know spend a day there and then sort of come back. I think that's
 You know personal
 It doesn't sound much, but again, you know, Covid's kind of questioned a lot of fundamental things for me. So
 That's really what my personal. I like it getting away
 Getting away, right and then but from a from a professional side. I think
 The one thing that I really I'm learning
 Um, um, is to be a good manager, right?
 Um
 Since 2005, I've led teams like started with one one person two people led 150 people 200 people large orgs
 Um, that I think that the biggest accomplishment or the biggest thing um, um
 Accomplishment for me would be um to be a great manager, right? Because it takes
 humility, awareness, compassion
 You think skin firmness and all of that, right? It's very very tough to be a manager that that would be
 You know, a leader. Let me just say that a leader of a team a leader of an organization
 Um, that's where I would see um
 You know, that's where I want to be as as I grow and you know, go up in my career. I love it
 That's great man. Well, uh, you're in Houston and I went to Clemson and the Sean Watson
 I don't know if you've become a
 Houston Texans fan or not, you know, that you're into it. Sean Watson your quarterback is uh
 A beloved uh Clemson tiger. I've got him on the wall in my office actually here just to my left. You're right
 And so uh take good care of the Sean there in Houston and really appreciate your time man and where could people keep up with you
 So uh people uh want to follow you or long
 Imagine LinkedIn, but any other places where they can kind of follow your journey and keep up with everything happening at cons
 Yeah, I mean LinkedIn I I tend to be more active on LinkedIn just because you can write and all that
 You know post thoughts. I've done quite a bit of that in the past
 With every new job it takes a hot second to sort of
 You know know your surround things and and and get back to yourself
 Um, so LinkedIn is a great place people can follow me. I'm happy to connect with people and all that
 I'm on Twitter to less active than uh LinkedIn just because the amount of stuff that I want to say is a lot more than what Twitter can let me
 So I think LinkedIn is fantastic. It's become a video platform. So yeah, look me up on LinkedIn
 on Twitter. It's simple sense underscore co CEO
 That's my Twitter ID
 We'll link to all that on the show notes. So everybody can find you
 Um, but man really appreciate your time and uh appreciate you come on the red cast
 I appreciate your time and you know, thank you for having me. It's been fantastic chatting with you and
 Thank you for your producer Riley for accommodating my time of course and uh
 Go shop cons
 Home plus this holiday season and uh tell them the red cast sent you and uh, we'll see you next time
 credit thanks, right? Thank you
 Really enjoyed to sit down with Sadia the VP of e-commerce at cons home plus
 We really covered the game at across e-commerce and the interesting aspect with this in our e-commerce series is the perspective of customer
 experience and how that builds
 brand
 In times like now not only with e-commerce growing but in covid and the expectations of consumers
 Really fascinating hearing his perspective, you know, both at night key microsoft and now as he transforms
 Cons into a major e-commerce player really enjoyed this in our e-commerce series and I hope you will continue to listen along
 To listen to full episodes or to contact us visit us on the web at the radcast.com
 Or follow our host at Ryan offered on instagram. Thanks for tuning in