I have 13 years of experience in Operations, Purchasing, E-Commerce, start-ups, Sales, Call Center Management, CRM, Purchasing, Fulfillment, Warehousing, Multi Channel (EBay, Amazon), and Project Management.
In 1997, I was the third person hired at a private startup in Portland, Or. This was before turn-key web carts. No standards for web operations or "best practices" existed. We developed sales, operational, and security standards that I still teach companies today. Within 5 years sales were over $7mil/yr, employing 22 people. We were profitable every year. The CEO won the 2002 Oregon Young Entrepreneur of the Year.
In 2003, I headed up an extreme sports company in Salem, Or. I committed to the owner that I would be able to launch his online company in 90 days. This began with laying out the concept, setting up the site/cart, setting up a compatible order/inventory management system (ERP), but it also included setting up the physical warehouse, the VOIP ACD phone system, setting up the call center, negotiating with suppliers, setting up a showroom, negotiating with offsite designers and programmers, etc. We were able to launch the company in the time frame promised on a budget of only $12,000. In 2004, our first full year, we had sales of $2.5mil and were profitable.
In 2005, I was hired by a company in Los Angeles, Ca as Director of Operations. The company was very disorganized. Sales and Customer Service were frustrated with the fulfillment side of the company. Shipments were leaving 2-7 days after orders were placed. Tracking numbers were not being sent to customers consistently.
A flow was set up in the warehouse that included a receiving area, a packing/scanning table, and palletized outbound area. We did not add any new employees but were able to catch up on shipping, then begin shipping all orders (printed by 2pm Pacific) on the same day that they were ordered. I worked with the CEO to improve purchasing while also meeting with Sales and Customer Service to teach and learn how to solve more problems.
In 2006, the company decided to move fulfillment to Atlanta. In 3 weeks I was able setup a cost effective way to receive, store, and ship without the use or expense of pallet racking. This included adding physical bin locations and updating the packing slips to include bin locations. The company had been using the software for about 2 years without knowing about the bin location feature.
Within a month of getting back from Atlanta, I was informed that the Director of Sales would be leaving the company and I would be the replacement. Several Directors and employees informed me that this was "the toughest job in the company". This department lacked a general understanding of the company's vision or goals, so we started with weekly team meetings to establish standards, and then shifted to making improvements. The Sales Dept was separated from Customer Service, but both remained under the same umbrella. This allowed me to assign clear responsibilities to both groups but kept them operating as one unit. The Sales team was molded into an accountable, respectful, and productive group. Daily Sales and CS metrics were clear and concise showing sales broken down by brand, channel, and by employee. These were emailed to Sales, Customer Service, the CEO and COO, and any other employee that wanted to see them. They were also posted for the entire company to see by the next morning. Conversion and sales went up, and abandoned calls went down. This took about 10 months (60+ hours/week) to complete.
By mid 2007, the websites and Sales team were putting too much volume through the fulfillment Dept in Atlanta, creating a serious bottleneck. The problem needed to be dealt with during the summer due to the expected sales of 2mil in December 2007.
I volunteered to move to Atlanta in August and immediately started working 6-7 days a week (60+ hrs) to solve the problems. Some suppliers had threatened to stop shipping new orders due to non-payment. There were 95+ skids that had not been received. Accounting in LA would not pay because they were not aware that the product had arrived since it was not received. There were 11 skids of returned goods in Atlanta that were causing Customer Service issues in LA. Orders were being shipped up to 5 days late, again. Customer Service was getting calls for about 30 wrong shipments a week. This caused quite a bit of "finger-pointing" and tension between both groups.
Within 3 months I was able to change the philosophy of the dept and the attitude of the crew. Employees were challenged to handle more responsibility. We caught up on receiving and returns while establishing procedures to efficiently handle receiving, shipping, and inventory control. All orders from the 14 sites, Amazon, and EBay were shipped out by the end of each day. Good communication was kept with LA by using real-time spreadsheets (metrics) and instant messengers so the employees on the packing/scanning line in Atlanta could inform Customer Service in LA of any issues that would stop a package from shipping. Before leaving, I made the necessary corrections to easily handle 3000 shipments per day. The company grew from $5Mil in sales in 2005 to $22Mil in 2007. Both the Sales and Fulfillment Departments were set to be able to handle at least $40Mil. The CEO was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for 2008. The company was ranked #2 on Inc Magazine’s Top 100 Retail companies:
http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/lists/retail-companies.html?o=0&c=200800410
In 2008, I restructured the operations of a naturopathic goods E-Commerce retailer in Seattle, Wa. This included implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to efficiently handle Sales, Customer Service, Purchasing, Shipping, Drop Shipping, etc. The company was then able to manage all sales calls, customer service calls, drop ship orders and warehouse shipments by the end of each business day.
In late 2008, I set up operations for an E-Commerce retailer in Orange County, Ca. A different enterprise resource planning system was put in place at this company due to its compatibility with the technology that the company wanted to use to promote the products over the website. The ERP system also needed to efficiently handle Sales, Customer Service, Purchasing, and shipping for the website, call center and the standalone stores. A problem that came up at this company was that the suppliers in this industry were not able to provide high quality images. In order to maintain the upscale look of the site, I photographed 300+ products with a DSLR, cleaned them up in Photoshop CS3, and delivered professional quality images. The company reached launch level status within 60 days.
In 2009-2010, I returned to Seattle to work with the naturopathic goods e-retailer. Initially it was to work on developing brands, launching multiple sites, finding a robust ERP, creating an affiliate management program, implementing an analytics dashboard, etc. Once I got there, I discovered serious operational issues that needed to be solved in order to keep the business afloat. Packages were being lost and/or not shipped on time, phone calls were not being answered, and employees were showing up hours late when they showed up at all. Also, the company had hundreds of products on their shelves that were not online (available) for sale. Some products were not even in the inventory management system. Inventory counts had not been done in months. There was no accountability and no consistent operational philosophy.
Over the next 10 months (70-80 hrs/wk), I implemented operational procedures for shipping, receiving, and inventory control. Reports and metrics were created to scientifically handle the company’s Purchasing. I found a low-cost, robust, hosted PBX to manage our calls. I created a workflow for adding new items to the site and to Amazon.com. This included teaching one of the employees about lighting, shooting a DSLR, and Photoshop CS3.
Several 20+ page spreadsheets were created since our Stone Edge/Quickbooks data was giving us inconsistent results. I found that Stone Edge (ERP) had a bug in it that was giving us incorrect profitability numbers and informed Stone Edge about it.
I helped create and edit the employee manual and immediately held employees accountable to it. This led to several employees being let go over the next 6 months. The responsibilities of handling the terminations and responses were left to me. Monday morning status meetings were established to keep good communication with employees. Daily metrics were entered into a dashboard to track inbound orders by channel, boxes shipped, incorrect shipments made by our warehouse, and total dollars in inventory.
During this time the owner of the company was out of the country for 3 months, we had a successful yet very stressful Christmas (supplier issues), and moved the entire company 90 miles to another city, on short notice.
Overall, I’ve been successful in the extreme sports, power tool, tankless water heater, vacuum, naturopathic goods, and disaster/survival equipment industries. This includes both new and reconditioned. Please contact me at your convenience. I am looking for an opportunity to consult or join a company committed to being an industry leader.
*******Resume*******
- All components of the organization must function in unison to achieve excellence-
13 years experience in E-Commerce, Sales, Purchasing, Warehousing, and Business Operations
• Expert in starting up and restructuring E-Commerce businesses/departments
• Outstanding success in building teams and relationships that follow the company philosophy and reach company goals
• Creatively and efficiently apply resources to increase revenue and/or reduce cost
• Very well organized and able to communicate in English and Spanish
E-COMMERCE MANAGER
* Profitably improve customer experience through unique site functionality and product selection
* Establish company-wide metrics such as conversion, average order sale, average order profit, etc, to keep all employees focused
* Managing site content to increase conversion while reducing customer issues
* Manage site analytics
* Profitably managing 1000+ products on Amazon.com
* Direct the “Look and Feel” of site including layout and creating high quality images
WAREHOUSING, PURCHASING & INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
* Restructuring operations to handle up to 3000 shipments per day (from 1,100/day).
* Designing and implementing several bin location and warehouse flow plan
* Designing and implementing company and supplier procedures for more effective purchasing, inventory, fulfillment, customer support, returns, and refunds.
* Developing and managing supplier co-ops and building profitable supplier relationships.
* Keeping abreast of emerging products through industry news and events.
* Maintaining acceptable stock levels for various products and equipment.
* Researching and developing products.
GENERAL MANAGER
*Highly motivated manager skilled at overseeing operations, purchasing, partnership building, customer relations, sales, and merchandising.
*Adept at building teams and systems that maximize people, processes, quality and results.
*Recognized for improving tools and resources.
*Excels in fast-paced individual and team environments.
*Excellent communication skills including presenting, writing, motivating and rapport building.
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE
* Initiating, coordinating, and facilitating company-wide meetings to address and solve issues.
* Creating a profitable e-commerce company in 90 days while exceeding expectations and staying in budget.
* Overseeing the team building necessary to reduce credit card fraud.
* Continually researched enterprise software capabilities and utilized various features to maximize profitability and productivity.
SALES & MERCHANDISING MANAGEMENT
* Restructuring dept/call center to reach goal of doubling revenue.
* Overseeing daily and quarterly phone, e-commerce, and showroom based sales.
* Creating and maintaining business relationships in retail and wholesale.
* Determining efficient methods for product fulfillment to domestic and international customers.
* Managing website and weekly marketing email of 70,000 subscribers.
CUSTOMER RELATIONS MANAGEMENT
* Working with customers to interpret their needs and “over deliver” service.
* Managing face-to-face and phone customer service including escalated issues.
* Utilized feedback to create more effective procedures and site improvements.
* Interacting effectively with culturally diverse customer base.
STAFF & HR MANAGEMENT
* Overseeing employees and coaching them to reach their highest potential.
* Creating and managing a performance-based compensation culture.
* Supervising staff and enforcing company policies and procedures.
* Recruiting, interviewing, and training new employees.
* Training employees on enterprise software.
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TECHNICAL SKILLS
* MS Office (Word, Excel, Outlook)
* Adobe Photoshop CS4
* Dydacomp Mail Order Manager
* Seller Central (Amazon.com)
* Site Link
* Mailware
* Global Web Cart
* Order Motion
* Stone Edge
* Channel Max
* Contactual Phone System
* acd phone systems
* UPS and Fed Ex shipping programs
* Google spreadsheets and documents
* ISV and CSV
* SnagIt 8
* Currently studying Dreamweaver, and Fireworks
