Scott Lux audio
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Jeff: [00:00:00] Hey, Scott, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

Scott: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Jeff: Nice. Yeah, no, this is gonna be a fun one. It's it's funny. It's rare. I feel like to find someone who has spent, a lot of career in product, typically people come to it from different angles and this has been one where, we talk to leaders who come to it from sales or from engineering, but you got a nice healthy background in product, which is cool.

So looking forward to digging into that. But before we do, I like to warm up a little bit and just ask a few questions. Think this is my favorite one cause it has just such a wide aperture of what the answers can be. But when you're talking to people who are not, in the tech world or not in the PM, role, how do you describe what product management is?

Like you're talking to your aunt, your uncle, your grandma, how do you tell them what you do and what product management is?

Scott: Oh man. That's a great question. And it's usually comes from my mom. So that's the baseline because I think throughout my career, she will always ask, now, Scott, what do you do? I don't really understand it. [00:01:00] That's the way I describe product management is just around features or capabilities that we as consumers enjoy.

And experience and that could be digital physical or human interactions So that's the context I frame it up in

Jeff: Nice. Yeah, it's great. Some people get very esoteric with it and larger than life. Some people get very functional to, to what the feature is and how we do, how we decide on what we're going to work on and what features you see in, web application or something.

Scott: That's where I would lose her

Jeff: Yeah, it's always great to see the, where the lane someone picks and I like that you went like broad, but still, coherent enough where you can really understand what you do versus a little wider. On top of that, then digging into the role as, a PM leader.

What are three tools you can't live without at work right now?

Scott: Oh, I would say I'll give you two work and one non work. So one is Slack and or teams we go between both. I do prefer [00:02:00] slack over teams second is text And or WhatsApp. So a lot of my team is in Amsterdam and Europe and Hong Kong. So we predominantly use WhatsApp over a text, but in the U S I use text as well, quite a bit.

And then a non work tool is I love my Garmin. So I'm a pretty avid runner. And just love kind of tracking and having that measurement, whether it's for sleep walks or running, just to see how my day is progressing. And I would say there's probably a good tie in to work as well because I do like to see getting off to a good start for the day with a little bit of a cardio.

Jeff: It's funny you're not the first person I've talked to here who talked about getting into your day with a bit of a workout first. So I feel like that's over the past few years, people have become more aware of that, which is great. Where do you like to run?

Scott: I live in New York on the Upper West Side, and city streets, especially when I travel, I still think that's one of the best [00:03:00] ways to get out and explore and see a city. I grew up in Dallas, so I have this natural what I think is a friendly vibe, and so when I pass runners or people, I'm always like, good morning, or saying hello.

And it's interesting how that jives, depending on where I am. Like New York, a lot of times you just get this super aggressive, competitive, don't talk to me. But out West, California surprisingly super friendly. So it's a good way, again, to get out and explore. In my neighborhood, I have Central Park a block away.

So that's where you'll tend to find me if I'm not at work.

Jeff: Oh, nice. Yeah, I I was a runner for a while. I had to give it up, but I live in in nearby ish, but in Boston in the north end. So similarly dense. And and the same thing happens. I switched my running my running kind of cycle from nighttime to daytime. It was really funny seeing the different responses you'd get when you said hi to people versus, 10 p.

m. versus like 6 a. m. So people a lot more intense at 6 a. m.

Scott: Yes 

Jeff: [00:04:00] That's cool to know. I love to talk more about running because I, I do love running and always curious to hear what kind of tech people are using it. The communities and all the stuff that can you can go down quite a rabbit hole there.

To dig into products though, cause that's why we're, that's why we're here. Like I mentioned, your background is, it's funny that it's almost a unique one in that you've been in product for arguably, since 2000 ish, maybe even the late nineties. But e commerce was a really early kind of.

They're really at the Genesis. Like I said, like capital P product role since 2001. And cap that off with e commerce back when people still used to say, are people really going to buy stuff online? Do you really think that's going to happen? In that context, what, how has e commerce changed in the past 20 years?

Like, it seems like there's been a lot of movement in both technology, the public perception and acceptance, but also just like what's expected.

Scott: For sure. And I'll go back to your definition. I love the way you frame up, and I appreciate you considering me [00:05:00] a product person because that's how I've always viewed e com. Even though I may run the business side of it, the P& L but you do have to have kind of that classical understanding, not only of the technology that we talked about earlier, how you define product, What it actually means to the world we operate in but also how we go about building and driving the business on the day to day And what's interesting I started my career as you alluded to with a small company in seattle called go to net so for those of you that are aficionados on search we had one of the very first search engines called Dogpile that was actually born at a university of Washington about a year or two before Google came onto the scene.

So always been in that product mindset, had the opportunity to spend time with Washington Mutual and what was interesting, a learnings I had from Washington Mutual, which ultimately became Chase, were around, we had a [00:06:00] CMO who's like, I don't want to hire. Bankers because I can teach anyone banking. I want people that really understand retail and customer experience because that's where they were trying to push their commoditized product of having a checking account.

And that kind of stuck with me as I thought about e commerce over the last 15 to 20 years. And when I first started on Ecom, I moved over to the agency side, a small digital shop out of Seattle called Zaz. And we ended up getting acquired by Wunderman Thompson, which moved me to New York. And we did a lot of work at the time.

And again, you have to remember, it was pre iPhone, pre social. It was mainly experiential. So at that time, it's like you still have mail order catalogs people were still calling in or you go to a physical location to purchase online at that point was really brochure where, for lack of a better word, and you had a few of the bigger players.

[00:07:00] We did some work early days with Nike and Converse, but I would say a vast majority of the brands were not commerce enabled. Then you had the recession of 2008 and that's where I think you started to see for the first time coming out of that. Part of it, honestly, I give kudos to Demandware for really opening up a SaaS platform.

Where brands could actually move away from on premise and the heavy tech debt that required. It's the first time having a web store that could be cloud based and that kind of brought in this new generation of brands for the first time could really become commerce enabled. And do it on a way that still met their branding needs.

And then of course you had the rapid explosion when they got acquired by Salesforce, Shopify, Direct to Consumer, and where anyone could start a fashion or direct to consumer brand. And now I think you've reached a point where it's almost swung the other direction. [00:08:00] Where e commerce has become a very mature market.

And I think we're even debating what direct consumer really means. So I think that's where it's come full circle a bit.

Jeff: That is such an interesting bit right there that you start to talk about with Salesforce, because this has been something we've actually talked about a lot here. Everyone thinks of Salesforce as a CRM, right? Like that's what they started with, what they, what they're still, probably CRM tower is most, Salesforce tower is mostly built on the revenue from CRM, but if you think and look back to their early, Website and early positioning.

It wasn't, the best CRM in the world. It was no software. And so in that context, people, I talked to folks who haven't been around as long, who kind of wonder how did Salesforce get into, big commerce and all the things they're into as well into now. And if you go back to the original idea, it was, you don't have to run things on premise.

You don't have to run your CRM on premise. You don't have to run your e commerce on premise anymore. [00:09:00] So it's really interesting to see the lens you put on it there that this is where we are now a lot because of that move where it made a lot simpler. I want to key in real quick on one thing that you, I saw you mentioned you've talked a bit about basically you feel like e commerce has maybe commoditized a little bit over the past bit and people have become numb to like the pain that, that you have to go through or negative experiences.

I, I feel like though, Conversely to that, you see a lot of data from Google that people have the lowest tolerance ever for, slow load, page speed. They expect everything to just be like, zip. And they. any slight delay, they'll bail. How do you rationalize that with the view that people have become a bit numb to these experiences?

Scott: Yeah. So I think part of it and the way I would define or separate those two is one, you're absolutely right. From a Google perspective, tech perspective, we all just expect things to work. So it's if you go into a store where everyone's used to tap and pay like you're saying, if I [00:10:00] load a page on my phone and it takes forever, I will bail or bounce.

However, from a customer experience standpoint, I think that's where there's still quite a bit of friction. And customers are willing to put up with a brand that skews too heavy on design for design's sake, because they love the brand. So it's not a reflection of tech not working. Good example, no disrespect to any listeners that work for Stone Island, but if you saw the redesign on desktop as well as mobile, like on the homepage, it just begs the question on did they really do due diligence on UX?

Because it's a very heavy load, full bleed looks beautiful, but to navigate and find your way, we can debate how relevant homepages still are with Google. However, it is still very challenging. So that's where I mean that users are still willing to put up with quite a bit of friction that I would argue is [00:11:00] unnecessarily put it in front of them.

To transact.

Jeff: I think you nailed on one of my like big pet peeves, right? Is I love graphic design and web design. I want things to be beautiful. I would, all things equal, I'd rather go to a site that is pretty. But you do get these sites that just are gorgeous to look at until you go to use them.

And then, the facade is just wiped away. And it's this just horrible morass of, I'm not saying Stone Island is that, by the way, but it just becomes this very hard to use. Like, where do I go? How do I even buy something? I want to give you money, make it easy for me to do this and you're not. Where do you think that comes from?

Like what, what's driving that, do you think?

Scott: honestly think it goes back to looking at it through the lens of two key pillars. One is CX, which you've heard me mention already. So again, maniacal focus around digital, physical and human interactions that has to ladder up to a [00:12:00] true content strategy, which I think a lot of brands do not have. And so if you define that content strategy to your point, Where is the right place to interact with that appropriate, beautiful content?

On the flip side, I loved what Zara launched recently where they put a some content editorial components, just talking about them within their mobile app. So perfect place. Obviously, we all know about TikTok. YouTube, I think has really great platform for both short and long form content. And back to website design, there is a place for that beautiful, but you have to have that content strategy first and foremost, and then determine how does that manifest across digital, physical, and human.

And the reason I keep going back to physical is a lot of the brands I've worked with have a physical presence, and in many cases started with stores first. And. I still believe that a store is [00:13:00] really the temple of the brand. It's where you can go interact with the product. A lot of stores now have beautiful design.

Working at John Barbados, he used to have one of a kind artwork from bands. That were in the store, drum set, guitar and then beautiful product and sales associate to romance and talk about it. So I think that's where you can bring those together. But going back to your question, you have to have a really concrete content strategy and approach to CX to execute that across any of those formats.

Jeff: And I think you started to touch on, and you can't discount the ease of going between the store and online and the store and online. Like I, I have a Zara jacket that I still wear. It's 15 years old at this point, black leather jacket. And I don't think it's often thought of as something that's going to last that long.

It's great. And I love it, but I keep going back because I had a great experience in the store 15 years ago, but online now, it's easy. I can get what I need because I know my sizes, but [00:14:00] also they make the experience very easy. And I love that kind of combination versus I think, to your point about content, right?

Nike has been in the news the other way lately. They leaned into performance marketing. And leaned out of the brand that, they had built for decades that made them so successful and it came back to bite them. You have a sense on where we are in the world right now for that kind of strategy versus brand first?

Like, do you think it's going to come back to, do you think people are going to learn the lesson off that or.

Scott: Yeah, I think so. And I think you have to because first and foremost, you have to define brand and what that means. And I think that's one of the areas we're working through to spree at the moment. But the way I look at it is you have to be able to answer first, why do we exist? Why do we deserve to exist?

And then where's that white space that we can operate within? And I think that's part of the challenge when you [00:15:00] kicked off our conversation today around e commerce, if you look in the sweet spot, probably about 10 years ago, maybe even going back eight years or so, but pre pandemic, any brand could really spin up a Shopify site and cost of media was cheap, run a bunch of advertising through Facebook.

You really didn't have to think through that. It's like, Oh, I have a cool brand. I'll do some really cool design work and push it out there. But the reality is that's really tough to continue if you're not fundamentally answering and have that north star to say, okay, why do we deserve to exist as a brand?

What do we stand for and what is that one area we're going after? And I think without that and especially today with so many choices given to consumers And with the cost of media very expensive, it will be hard to be successful if you don't go back to that brand first mentality.

Jeff: It's funny you bring that up because [00:16:00] or positioned that way because I don't think it's just e commerce. We sell software. We operate in the digital experience analytics space. So about as far from fashion and e commerce as you can possibly get. Aside from we work with a lot of, e commerce companies we're helping People understand, what's going on in your e commerce store.

Where are the biggest friction points? What, how do you deliver a great experience to those users? How do you make your brand easy to access when you're online? But even we're seeing, when we're talking to prospects that come in, the number one thing driving it is not performance marketing.

It's not, direct response. It is people who have interacted with. With us before it's people have heard of us from a friend, maybe or, have been able to access it from some other kind of broader sense. And then they hone in. So it's really interesting seeing that happen, not just across, fashion, like you said, and e commerce, but I think across the whole world.

Media is getting more expensive. My big soapbox for the past couple of years has been attribution is just utter [00:17:00] BS. And I think in e commerce there's some ability to track last touch in e commerce, same with B2B attribution and the lie we were all sold.

You and I were around at a similar time back in, the kind of beginning of the web when the big promise was track everything. No, every touch point, you can have full attribution and it's crap. Like it's, you can't do it. It's so much of it is going to happen offline. I think dark funnel is a cool way of talking about it now.

But I love that people are getting back to that and finally recognizing that again.

Scott: No, I agree completely because my challenge with attributions, I would always ask my team and challenge them. Okay, great. Now that we know that, what are we doing with it? And that's where I think attribution models started to fall apart because there's one thing to say, Oh it's great. We can attribute.

Yeah, this assisted sale to paid search like, okay, are we going to do anything different that will give us concrete causality? If we make a change, it's going to directly impact whatever downstream KPI we have, [00:18:00] and I think that's the challenge. I do want to go back, because I think you bring up a good point just around sales and partners, because I get pitched pretty much nonstop, and I do think you're spot on that the branding and that approach holds because you have to go back and have a really clear Differentiated story.

I got two emails today and of course, centered around AI, but

Jeff: Oh, everywhere, right?

Scott: yeah, but they lead with, Hey, do you have 15 minutes of your time? I love what you're doing at Esprit and we're an AI company that does this and this, and we work with these five partners. And, but again, just no differentiation of what they do, no introduction.

Or willingness to have a conversation first or recognition that your my time's valuable Or even doing a little bit of due diligence on where spree is at the moment Before leading in with that. So I think that's why [00:19:00] they have to be really clear to your point Is how do you fit in as a solution or potential partner before you even hit that sales pitch right away?

Jeff: What's the, why do you exist? What is your justification for even being able to send this email? Which

Scott: And how are you different

Jeff: Exactly. What, why should I listen to you? If you can't articulate that first. Yeah.

Scott: without saying we have a unique AI solution? Because that's not really that different. So

Jeff: you're unique. Just like everyone else. No, that's I, people, people on my team here laugh because I don't answer my phone. I tell them I don't really answer email because I get, 50 phone calls a day. I get, 500 emails and it's exactly that. Now the word of the day is AI.

But that actually gives us to a good point, right? So you're at a spree now. And How are you looking at building that brand story there? Like, what does that look like for a spree? Cause it's a company that, that had a lot of success, it was down a little bit.

And how, how are you looking to position that for, maybe don't call it a comeback, but 

Scott: No, I think it's combination. Part of it [00:20:00] is you have to test and learn. So big believer in that methodology and that approach. So one of the things is we do know that we have a lot of people that remember spree whenever I mention it, they're like, Oh yeah, I used to shop there as a kid or remember it for my mom.

So there is this little bit of a halo where people remember us, but they haven't experienced us or shopped us. So that leads us down a different path on what we started to do about a year and a half, two years ago was probably go a bit too big in the U. S. So rolling out a couple pop ups that we could test with across New York, LA, Chicago, Miami.

But all of a sudden, once you have that many pop ups, You have to step back and wait a second. That means we need a national campaign to support that. And that's expensive to drive awareness nationally, because each of those markets are uniquely different. And you have to drill down on those markets.

Product assortment can be different. Then we were exploring at the same [00:21:00] time, parallel paths going into Nordstrom and Urban and probably 200 or so specialty retailers, because I do think wholesale. Has to play a key role in modern e com or brands going forward and then obviously our own experience so that's a lot to relaunch right away And I think we were too ambitious in relying on the fact that we had a little bit of heritage I think we, we got too far ahead of ourselves and saying, Oh, we have a bit of a head start.

So we've dialed that back, taken all the data points and learnings from those pop ups, a little bit of our e comm numbers. And now we're doing a bit of a reset to say, maybe there's a scaled back version. Do we pivot into a license model? What is the right way for Spree to continue to live on as a brand?

Jeff: interesting. Yeah. When you are a manufacturer and you sell direct and you sell in person, it's building your brand is probably more important than ever because you got [00:22:00] to justify why someone going to pick you, like you said, at a Nordstrom where there's hundreds of options, why are they going to go to your pop up and why are they going to come to your website to buy direct?

And those are probably all Slightly different, reasons you have to catalyze with people. Do you look at it that way? Like, do you break it down by that channel? Or is it more just about build the brand and get people to understand, what it is Spree stands for or is, or where it fits in their life.

And start there.

Scott: Yeah, I think it goes back to those three core components I mentioned, and some of this was real time learnings that we got on the fly. But again, why do we exist? We feel like we're a heritage brand. People know us for that splash of color, that pop. It's like, okay, what does that mean today? And why do we deserve?

Why do you and I deserve to have the screen back? And I think that's the part we're trying to fit into the puzzle. with kind of the white space is to say, okay, where do we [00:23:00] sit? Do we sit adjacent to a Madewell, a J. Crew with a little bit of a modern kind of tone to it? Are we more a Zara H& M? So I think some of those learnings we have to see where the receptiveness is and where do we have an opportunity.

And then how do we position the brand without giving up what our heritage and DNA is? So I would say longer way, it's a work in progress. But you have to take those touch points, all those interactions from conversations with store associates to everything that's measurable. Some of the friction points online, we had a bigger business in Europe, completely different customer base that we had learnings on.

So how do we pull all those together? And reframe that and say, what is the right iteration going forward for modern version of the spree? And it may mean we just decide to do a certain category or classification and really start out small. And I think that's where [00:24:00] you see with a lot of brands that are out there today back to what I think you were touching on with channel, how do we think about it, is why I was saying direct to consumer needs to be redefined.

Because I do think it's a little bit of a misnomer. Does it mean you're eliminating the middle person and there's no longer this specialty retail, but you're still going to consumer? And do you really want to eliminate that from your conversation or channel approach? Given all the headwinds that you're faced with and building a brand and cost and media dollars, I think it's a vital part.

So just direct to consumer even if there is an intermediary. Really mean you're not going directly to your consumers if that makes sense.

Jeff: So how do you think about gathering those touch points? Like, how are you looking at. Talking to store associates is probably pretty easy, but the rest of it, do you go direct to, to misuse the word you were just saying, right? Do you go direct to consumer to ask them? Do look at how people [00:25:00] are operating on your website?

Is there, are there other channels to be listening to how people are viewing and interacting and thinking about esprit,

Scott: Yeah. Yeah, no I think you're exactly right. And because at the end of the day, while I believe retail and having been in it for a while grew up as a, son of a retailer is still really complicated. For the one reason is it's all about inventory optimization, making sure you have the right product, right time, right market which is really tough.

So to bring that back a layer and look at what are the touch points that can give us insight on trend on product sell through. Any of those components. So for physical retail, we do look beyond just your traffic counter. There's good partners. We don't work with them yet, but crave retail is doing really interesting components to identify friction of not just measuring you walk into store, but you drive, try on this sweater in a [00:26:00] fitting room.

And does that give you a higher intent to purchase and walk out with product? So looking at those pieces are why do you not bring something into the fitting room? We have all that data you can track in addition to going back to surveys pulling our sales associates to say, what are they saying with product?

Is there a fit issue? Customers will tell you right away. So it's both qualitative and quantitative data. You now have access to in your location. Then you can combine that with data you're getting on site. So behavioral data through add to cart rates through browse through other patterns all the way back upstream to engagement within videos or content.

That's out there through tiktok instagram and other channels.

Jeff: Yeah there's a lot there. I want to hopefully zoom back up a little bit and go back a ways in the conversation because the other [00:27:00] piece, we talked a lot about e com here. The other piece though, is thinking about e com like a product. And I'll be honest, I think actually most things.

In at least in business would probably benefit from a little bit more thinking about them like a product. Like we always say here when we're doing marketing planning and how we run the organization within LogRocket as marketing, we think about it like a product we do planning. We do capacity planning.

We prioritize, we try and avoid shiny object syndrome and too much work in progress, like the plague. But back to, you have a really cool background in that. You've been in product since, your first capital P product job was in the early two thousands. That's a time we don't often get to talk about it.

I think, and please take this more in, in the way of like, it was, where the societal discussion was around product, but like, Tom from office space, the movie office space came out in 1999. And right, Tom, the guy who came up with the jump to conclusions, Matt, I'm a people person.

I, I take the specs to the engineers. [00:28:00] I have people skills like that was. I think the closest thing most of the populace had to understanding what a product manager was at the time. And fast forward to now, people, everyone wants to be in product. Everything's product led or, product thinking or, product this product that, and, people are coming out of Ivy league schools, trying to go to Fang companies to be PMs from an operational standpoint, how has that change looked from the inside?

Like, how do you compare what you were doing? 20 years ago in e com and product to now,

Scott: Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a good

Jeff: that's a big question.

Scott: Yeah, I think some things really haven't changed and you touched on it just then Is there's always been a finite amount of resources. So technology In my mind has always been oversubscribed because there's Way too much demand from whether it's C level executives, whether it's business partners all the way [00:29:00] down that need our resources.

So I think the one common thread is how do you look to prioritize and what levers do you prioritize against? And for me, that's always been business outcome, level of effort and potential complexity. So that piece has always been, I think, a throughput within common product management way back in the day.

We were asking those questions. Okay, what's the business case? Great. How do we t shirt size it? What's the level of effort? And then how complex is it? Maybe it fits into something else we have on our road map. Is it a high priority? So just having those conversations now what has changed that you kicked off the conversation with there's a lot more tools That I think make product management Easier and what I mean by that it's easier for us to be more transparent With our partners and collaborate much easier [00:30:00] than in the past.

Because before you would use some antiquated software to build requirements, usually done in a vacuum. If you had a team somewhere else, not easy to use any collaboration tools, jump on a zoom or teams meeting, whatever the case is. So I think a lot of those roadblocks that were there have made it much, much more efficient.

And the time to market can be much faster than it was in the past.

Jeff: One funny thing that just occurred to me while you were talking is also, I remember, not that long ago that days like black Friday, you would get major outages at. E commerce platforms, when people were all jumping on and it was a real thing. People, there were teams dedicated to just how do we keep our site up during this once a year onslaught.

And it seems like that has just drifted out of public perception. That doesn't really happen anymore. There used to be lists of the best and worst performers on Black Friday. And [00:31:00] now it's just assumed that, with the hyperscalers and AWS, it's just going to work.

Has that changed how you think about e commerce?

Like from a product standpoint.

Scott: Not really, because it has been subtle over the time. Like I was having this conversation with someone last week about Akamai. that used to be like a big part of our conversation. I was like, Oh, I can't remember the last time Akamai was part of my tech solution. Or part of the conversation because as you alluded to AWS just makes it easier and takes care of that or cloud flare.

Yes, it's still there but not as much as it used to be. We used to have to worry about, oh, we need Akamai to do X, Y and Z. So I think it's been a gradual enough change over time. But while that has decreased some of the complexity, you have now a rise. Of other complexions within the ecosystem. And I think Shopify is a blessing and a curse because in one respect, they've made it insanely [00:32:00] easy to stand up a site.

But they have a number of plugins and connectors. You can get any partner for loyalty, SMS, email analytics. All of a sudden you have 10 connectors running in your site. And now that'll be a drag on site performance. Whereas in the past it was around hosting and if the site will fail. So I would say there's newer complexities that we have to think about, but you're exactly right.

I do think most of the time the days of worrying about having a massive team on staff, having servers hosted in co locations that you have to have a team ready on standby are pretty much removed or that's passed on to hosting partners like AWS

Jeff: I

Scott: or Azure. Yeah.

Jeff: yeah, GCP and I remember though, having a, the big dark room, the knock where people would be and, they gear up where they'd be like, all right, we're here for, 72 hours straight [00:33:00] now. And it was a marathon, but I think you nailed it.

It seems like. Performance is still a problem. It's just, we've traded a big binary problem. You're either on your up or you're off to a much more subtle problem, but still huge, financial outcomes based on that, right? You, like you said, now you can have 10 plugins. You need to load quickly.

People are aware of not just performance. And did you load slow to the image? Not low. Did that click not work, but even just the friction points of how do I navigate? How do I operate? Does this flow the way I expect? All those little choices are hard to find. Like it's much harder to find those things.

It is defined. My site failed, but the economic outcome is possibly larger just because the world of e commerce is so much bigger now.

Scott: Exactly. And now think about with a mobile device. I can't

Jeff: Yeah.

Scott: how many times.

Is that I will get an executive that will reach out to me at all [00:34:00] hours like, Hey, Scott our site must be down. I can't find it on, slow on mobile. I'm getting a page load issue and trying to troubleshoot that on one hand could be a real issue But it could be network connectivity.

It could be Wi Fi There's just a number of issues especially in major cities like we're in Boston in New York when I walk out sometimes 5g just doesn't work and to try to troubleshoot that side of it to really make sure it's not an issue Becomes more complex. So I think that's where in one respect, a hundred percent, I think in terms of efficiency, not having, your big massive data center and having to have on premise solutions, engineers on premise to be able to troubleshoot has shifted away.

But you still have what I would call a lot of issues that keep me up at night around e com or data. Now you throw in security that we didn't have before. So there's newer shifts [00:35:00] that I think cause some of those concerns. So it's not fully eliminated, it's just different.

Jeff: And then you throw in, the rise of front end architectures and the fact that now no longer is a lot of this application logic running on your servers, it's running on my web my mobile phone or my computer. And good luck finding out, what went on from the traditional means that you used to use.

I do want to take a second and just pivot a little bit because there's one other thing I want to make sure we cover. And this was, I was looking at your LinkedIn. And I noticed you have just several advisory roles across a lot of different things, right? Like if I'm gonna going to summarize a little bit, so let me know if I get this inaccurate, you're working with an AI decision intelligence tool.

You have, you are working with a company that provides advisory services in capital returns management. That one makes dead on sense by the way. And then, AI based discovery of outfits and style for fashion brands also makes sense. How do you find time to operate, in these [00:36:00] advisory capacities on top of what I assume is a demanding role helping Esprit, rise back up here?

It

Scott: So as much as I would like to think, I woke up and just constantly have this high demand of people seeking what perceived knowledge I may have. But a lot of them have been born out of, honestly, back in 2008, 2010. I think you had this really interesting dynamic in New York where you had a lot of the tech was still being created out of the Bay Area.

Maybe a little bit in Pacific Northwest, and then it was implemented in New York. So this was before we had, Silicon Alley or whatever terminology they coined for New York, Boston. And now you have, obviously, multiple tech hubs. So I think at that time, because of my technology background, and as you alluded to that product background, A lot of these up and coming, [00:37:00] whether it's fashion tech or just retailers as a whole, we're looking to get my point of view.

A lot of them are just looking at how do I sell into a brand like a spree or Barbados or intermix and just help them shape their brand. Their products. So I would say it is something I feel passionate about because I do believe startups and early stage companies, you can get the best of both worlds, which is why I do invest that time because one, I can give them feedback, but at the same time, I rely on them to be at the forefront of technology.

I'm having or potentially looking at Down the line. So that's where I use it as a kind of an incubation and early trade off, if you will.

Jeff: makes sense. Like you said, it's all, this is changing so quickly and the problems that we faced 10 years ago are almost in some ways directly oppositional sometimes to the ones we're facing today. I guess it makes sense. [00:38:00] Like, stay up on what's going on and then the best way to do it is to be part of it.

So I love that. Cool. Scott, I've loved having you on it's been a fantastic time. I feel like I learned a lot about. The evolution of e commerce as well as just some cool pieces to hear you put a different way than I've been thinking about some of this. But yeah I don't want to take up too much of time.

I don't want to steal your whole day. I could go on and on with you for probably a couple more hours, but I want to let you go. But before we do, is there a place, if people want to follow up with you or ask questions or pick your brain, or maybe, a couple other advisees, maybe what's the best place to find you?

Is it LinkedIn? Is there somewhere else?

Scott: Yeah. LinkedIn is by far the best place. So I try to keep that pretty up to date. But that's the best source at least is a good starting point and then we can go from there. Yeah.

Jeff: Nice. And then any drops of knowledge for people upcoming into e comm, maybe looking to kick it off, either moving into e comm or product. , what can people do to get started there? What's a good spot? 

Scott: I'm still a passionate believer [00:39:00] in starting agency side. There's definitely a lot of shifts going through with agency, but agency today means a lot of different things. There's some really cool up and coming design agency partners that are out there. I think it's one of the best learnings I had in my career because you're surrounded by talented, innovative people.

They're always trying to push the boundaries. And you typically get exposure to multiple brands and multiple e commerce solutions. So you can start to navigate and see what resonates also big believer in the software and tech side for that same reason is you get exposure to up and coming technology and partnering with brands and crafting that story.

And I do think there is still a demand for brands to have that internal knowledge once you've refined and professionalized it a bit on an agency or software side. So that to me is probably the advice I give to team members. If they have an opportunity to do [00:40:00] that they should definitely give it a good run.

Jeff: Awesome. Scott, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure, man. I had a blast. I hope you did,

Scott: Likewise. Thanks. Of course.