In this episode John discusses investing in your physical footprint, the importance of aligning your physical and digital experiences, and how Designer Brands is driving customer loyalty.
Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar.
A podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.
On today’s episode, we talk with John Ludlow, VP of Omni Operations at Designer Brands. Designer Brands is a leading footwear and accessories retailer that operates a portfolio of retail concepts with a shared goal of inspiring self-expression. Prior to joining Designer Brands, John led Under Armour’s North America Omni Channel team. He also worked at Nike, where he was responsible for helping shape the company’s Connect the Marketplace strategy focused on connecting its direct ecosystem with its strategic wholesale partners while also connecting Nike’s digital channels with its physical stores.
In this episode John discusses investing in your physical footprint, the importance of aligning your physical and digital experiences, and how Designer Brands is driving customer loyalty.
Guest Bio:
John leads DSW’s Omni Operations team covering store operations & communications, field asset protection, customer service, and retail experience. Prior to joining DSW, John led Under Armour’s North America Omni Channel team focused on creating frictionless experiences across all consumer touchpoints. Before that, John was at Nike, where he was responsible for helping shape the company’s Connect the Marketplace strategy focused on connecting its direct ecosystem with its strategic wholesale partners while also connecting Nike’s digital channels with its physical stores. Early in his career, John worked at Hitachi Consulting, focusing on digital transformation initiatives. When not working, John enjoys spending time with his wife and newborn, as well as traveling the world to immerse himself in different cultures.
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Guest Quote
“The reason why the store has become such a critical part of these digital native companies is the ability to reach customers that they otherwise would not have been able to reach. When you do invest in those physical footprints, the entire ecosystem raises up so your e-commerce revenue goes up and so forth. So when it comes to Nirvana for us as well, when it comes to expansion or when it comes to our existing stores, I think we have to think about it almost in a similar manner as some of these digital native companies.” - John Ludlow
Time Stamps
**(01:43) - What is really means to be VP of Omni Operations
**(06:25) - The North Star of Designer Brands
**(12:42) - Finding Nirvana
**(19:57) - Post-covid customer expectations
**(27:49) - What are retailers getting right
**(32:56) - Tech John’s excited about
**(37:48) - Sid’s final thoughts
Sponsor:
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Links
Narrator: Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. On today's episode, we talk with John Ludlow, VP of Omni Operations at Designer Brands. Designer Brands is a leading footwear and accessories retailer that operates a portfolio of retail concepts with a shared goal of inspiring self-expression.
Prior to joining Designer Brands, John led Under Armour's North America omnichannel team. He also worked at Nike where he was responsible for helping shape the company's connect the marketplace strategy, focused on connecting its direct ecosystem with its strategic wholesale partners, while also connecting Nike's digital channels with its physical stores.
In this episode, John discusses investing in your physical footprint, the importance of aligning your physical and digital experiences, and how designer brands is driving customer loyalty. But first award from our sponsor. Want to rest easy knowing your brick and mortar locations are offering the best possible guest experience.
Partner with Service Channel for peak facilities performance. Check out service channel.com today to learn more. Now, here's your host. Industry and FM technology, thought leader and Chief Business Development Officer at Service Channel, Sid Shetty, along with our guest, John Ludlow.
Sid: Hello everyone. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for joining us. I am here today with John Ludlow, VP of Omni Operations at Designer Brands. Welcome, John. Thank you for being here. Absolutely.
John: Thanks for so much for
Sid: having me, Syd. You bet. Thank you. So John, can you tell us what it really means to be the VP of Omni operations and what's under your purview in
John: this role?
Yeah, so I wear lots of hats. So I lead our store operations and communications team. Our retail experience, which covers our in-store visual placement, our in-store partnerships, our asset protection team, as well as our customer call center. And most recently I took on store facilities under my umbrella as well.
And when it comes to all of these different responsibilities, I think at the end of the day, my team we're really focusing on serving the customer. And that is the customer, both in who are shopping with us, but also our associate who are serving our customers each and every day.
Sid: Very interesting. So, you know, when you talk about store experience, are you only focused on the consumer experience or are you also looking at the employee experience and what it means to actually deliver a pleasant working environment for them too?
What does it look like?
John: No, absolutely. I think that's a great question. So when we say deliver a seamless experience for our customer, From my team's perspective, our customer is both the consumer who's purchasing from design of brands each and every day, right? But also the frontline associates who are serving them.
So whether that is through new technologies, different processes and so forth, how do we give our associates just a, make their job a little bit easier each and every day to help them serve the customers who are buying bonus?
Sid: Yeah. I wanna dig into that a little bit more as we get into the conversation, but can you start by also.
Sharing about like your journey. Yeah. And what kind of got you into that role of being responsible for omni operations today? For me,
John: I took a pretty untraditional path to where I am today. I actually started my journey in consulting, focusing on digital transformation and helping small to medium sized companies elevate their.
Experiences by leveraging new and innovative technology. From there, I had amazing opportunity to join Nike, which was a fantastic brand, and started off within the digital drop shift space, so helping connect Nike's direct. Ecosystem within third party partners like exporting goods, foot lockers through inventory drop ship, but also other ways to meet the customers where they're at, whether that is through the gaining platforms or whether that is in a digital only marketplaces like Alando.
So from there had the opportunity to take on omnichannel strategy as that was being started up at Nike and help connect Nike digital ecosystem with its physical retail store. And really connecting the customer experience across all touchpoints when they're engaging with Nike as a brand. From there, I had an amazing opportunity to lead all of Mbie channel for Under Armour in a very similar manner, focusing on creating frictionless customer experiences across all touchpoints.
And also doing that by elevating the membership proposition with an Under Armor. And then finally bringing me here where I am today, which is having this amazing opportunity to lead the Omni operations team at dsw.
Sid: I love it. Yeah. Awesome. So designer brands. Is the parent brand. Right? And there's a bunch of brands that maybe consumers recognize today.
Can you share a little bit more about that? Yeah, so
John: within Des Designer Brands, we really have two focus areas. One is to be an amazing retailer. So we own and operate both designer shoe warehouse as well as the shoe company, and we have 650 locations across the United States in Canada. So the first thing is to be an amazing retailer, and the second thing is to be an amazing brand builder.
So we are really focusing on belting down and controlling our own destiny and investing at only and acquiring brands. Such as Vez, Camuto, Jessica Simpson, mix number six, Kelly and Katie, and you probably recently saw in the news that we acquired KE as as Topo into our brand portfolio. So we're very excited about building and elevating this brand, integrating it seamlessly into our retail channel, while also continuing to maintain the strong relationships that we have with our national brand partners.
Sid: I love it. Just so you know, my family is a D S W loyal customer. My, my wife buys a lot of shoes for our kids and, and me and she, that's her go-to for sure. Thank you. It's our customer,
John: so we
Sid: appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. So you shared a little bit about this just now when D s W and Designer Brands thinks of like the North star of the kind of experience and sentiment that you wanna invoke.
In your customers when they think of your brand, what is that? What is that North Star? Yeah. And every day when you come into work as someone who oversees a big part of that experience Yeah. And that, and achieving that North Star, what does that look like? What do you tell your team? I
John: think we're so lucky to have Doug, how, as part of our leadership team now becoming the c e O of designer brand.
And one of the things that he's really instilled within the organization from himself all the way down. Is the customer is, is at the center of everything that we do. So when we think about the North Star, really it's about the customer. Whether that from a brand perspective, giving them the assortment that they're looking for across all occasions, whether that is formal as leisure, comfort and so forth.
But also giving them the convenience, like through our retail channels to shop for those brands. So when you think shoes, we want to be the best in shoes. So when you think shoes, you think designer brands for all occasions across your own experiences, across different moments in your life. And as you continue to grow from, from the Gen Z all the way to the Navy Boomer and on, we wanna be able to serve all of our customers across different occasions and lifestyle.
Sid: What does an ideal customer experience look like? What does it feel like when you as a consumer walk in, you have expectations too, right? So can you talk about how your own expectations influence. How you think about customer experience and what is the gold standard? Yeah. When is it?
John: Maybe before I get into retail, I think something that really I, that kind of took me aback recently was, so my wife and I, we love the show selling Sunset.
Okay. And one of the things that doesn't go noticed, the amount of time, energy, and investments. That these realtors are spending in staging the homes prior to sale. They're spending a lot of time, but if you, if you really think about it, at the end of the day, they're just selling homes. They're not selling their furniture.
Right. We unload the curtains a little bit. That homes are stage are, are selling 80% faster and for 20% at more value, the homes farm. So when it comes to retail, tying it back full circle, I think it's the same thing. At the end of the day, we're selling shoes in our stores, right? But how do we get the customer experience where they come in, they're, they're wowed by the assortment we have.
How clean, how bright, how inviting it is from a facility's perspective. Everything is in a perfect environment for the customer to shop so that when it comes to those metrics, hey, our customers, Coming back to us shopping again. Are we maintaining the royalty with our customers? We're gonna be a retailer that when you come in, it's gonna be a modern feel.
It's everything's gonna be organized, it's gonna be clean. We're gonna give that customer that visual appeal, so they want to shop with us in that moment and continue to shop with us.
Sid: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think people underappreciate the amount of, like you said, staging that it requires to create a certain kind of experience that the customer wants to spend money.
I talk to a lot of retailers and restauranters and and folks that oversee grocery stores as well. And similar to what you just said, there's a huge science behind everything. That is contributing to that experience from a physical standpoint as well. So it's not, it's a physical B built environment that adds to or can take away from that experience.
So talk about lighting, the impact of lighting if you don't have the right shade or the right lumens, right? For the light, the color of the t-shirt. Could seem off right and maybe less appealing if you're walking through a big open space. Do you want your floor to be shiny or do you want it to have a matte finish?
Do you want the lights to reflect on it or not? What kind of experience do you want the customer who is just walking through that space? To have, and all of that ties to experience and all of that ties to how you build the store and how you maintain that. What are your thoughts on that? Well,
John: I 100% agree with you, Sid, and we recently invested in a new retail concept called warehouse tree.
Imagine we have one store in Houston, Texas. We have many stores that are on the roadmap. But really it's to what you just said, give the customers a warm, welcoming feel. It doesn't have to be super elaborate, the store being clean, or whether that's through flooring, being able to story tell in a more meaningful way.
And one of the things that we really saw was from our Wick store is that we, you're investing in the overall environment of the source through lighting flooring. And paint the perception of the store and your product also increases. So when we did our customer insights, when it comes to the same exact product, yeah, with our headway store.
Customer's perception of price and value were significantly better than the exact same product in a store that did not have an elevated experience. So in those stores, customers felt that, ooh, like this is a little bit outside of my price range, or I think I can find better value elsewhere. But they're really tying the product with the environment that they're in.
Yes. But when they came to our Headway location, they were like, wow. The perception of value went through the roof because they're surrounded by a shopping environment that's significantly elevated. Than what they've been used to from you guys tell I
Sid: love that. Yeah. I mean, look, you know, there was all this hoopla for years around, oh, is brick and mortar dead?
It's not dead. That's not that, that, that's crazy. Don't even think that what is happening. Is brick and mortar is evolving, right? And that's why you see businesses that are primarily e-commerce, that are now opening physical locations because there's a certain sentiment that you can't invoke online. And when you think of like your vision of kind of really making brick and mortar leverage kind of the experience or the sentiment that it can invoke, what do you think is that?
The state of Nirvana, if you may, right, where you're saying, yes, this is how I'd like retailers in general, I think about using the physical space to invoke the right behavior and the right sentiment.
John: Yeah. No, I think you're exactly right. Said I, I was, I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal about, it was about Warby Parker and how yeah.
Laurie Parker started off actually as a digital native only company, and now 60% of their revenue comes from stores. How about that and the reason why a store has become such a critical part of these digital native company? It's the ability to reach customers that they otherwise would not have been able to reach.
And when you do invest in those physical footprint, the entire ecosystem raises up. So your e-commerce revenue goes up and so forth. So when it comes to Nirvana for us as well, when it comes to expansion or when it comes to our existing stores, I think we had to think about it almost in a similar manner as some of these digital native companies.
Are we giving our consumers now and in our potential future CU customers? Accessibility to our store? Is it in a convenient location when they go into our store? Does it tell, is there a storytelling in that shopping journey? Does it tie back from a technology perspective within what they saw from a digital perspective?
I think, you know, omnichannel, when it first started was a very linear journey of, yeah, online to online, right. But today, I think omnichannel is really that intersection. Between the customer, digital and digital and physical. So what that really means is that even if a customer is in store, they're expecting that consistency from a storytelling product perspective that they had in other channels that they engage you with, whether that's dfw.com, whether through our social channels.
I think that's Niana for me, is to give customer that convenient access. And tying that experience back to our digital channels when they're shopping with us in our brick and mortar locations.
Sid: I love it. Yeah. You know, when I think of your title, specifically you, it specifically calls Z Omni, which I think is very interesting because I think today, brands don't just interact with your consumers in one way, through one medium, right?
It's not just the physical space, it's not just the, their websites or the digital experiences that they create. Consumers have an expectation that every experience that they have with the brand is consistent and is on point. And this maybe applies more to restaurants and grocers, where now they have things like Instacart and Uber and DoorDash.
These are all channels that are on top of the native channels that a better brand can have had to focus on. But a consumer does not say, oh, I'm gonna give. This brand break because this experience wasn't that great. But the other one is, no, they expect consistency in every channel. Yes. So I find it really interesting that your title actually says Omni because your suggests that you are taking into consideration every possible interaction.
Is that the right way of interpreting it? I think that's
John: exactly right, and I think that's why within my responsibilities we also, I also have the customer contact center. So that we're telling, so when we're serving our customers, that's across in store as well as online. So when a customer has a paying painful experience with us across any channels that our customer contact center are trained to be able to support the experiences in store or with the customer purchase with us from any of our digital channels.
So I think that's exactly right. And to your point, I do think, and even we've done a lot of customer insights work internally and the importance of having consistency across channels is even more important with the Gen Z generation than it has been with prior generations. So, Giving those our younger consumers, the consistency, but also, you know, the customization, the storytelling, the sense of community.
All of those things are, you need a physical presence in the marketplace. And that's why, again, you see all those digital native companies investing in physical footprint is because you're investing in that experience and being at the forefront with your customers. And allowing them to really engage with your brand and what you stand for as a brand.
Sid: Yeah, and I think it's a challenge for small retailers to have that, right? In terms of delivering a consistent experience across all their locations, designer brands. In D S W, you have 500 plus stores right around the country, so it heightens the amount of. Effort, I guess you're to put in to ensure that you have the same consistent experience no matter where you go, because no one is saying again, oh, the DSW in Dallas is great.
Right? But the one in Houston isn't that great. No. When I walk into a DSW with my wife, my wife knows exactly where to go, and she's like, yep, this is what I expect. Yeah. Anything away from that? It's gonna be like a head scratcher and someone's gonna say, eh, is DSW losing focus? Right. So that, that becomes even more important than your role, I presume.
Yeah, no,
John: you're exactly right. When they come to our stores, they wanna see that C of shoes. They wanna see that assortment, that wider rate of sort amount of product. And when they're are store, we know that the majority of our customers, when they're stored, they're browsing on their phones. They're looking at what's on dsw.com.
Right. They're looking at our social handles, see how influencers are wearing the product. So as our job, we know that they're already proactively doing that. So a focus area for us is how do we make those customer journeys a little bit more seamless, right? How do we integrate those experiences into our app ecosystem, generate that flywheel.
Across our retail channel, across our digital channel, across our social channel, empowering those different touchpoints through the DSW app. I think that's an important part of what we want to do. Um, I'll go for it. I love it.
Sid: Hey, I'm your host, Sid Shetty. And I hope you're enjoying this conversation so far to make sure you're up to date and have access to all our episodes.
Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast. Also, if you have thoughts, comments, or questions, be sure to follow Service Channel on LinkedIn so you can be part of our community of like-minded folks as well as have access to a lot of other great content. Feel free to also connect and follow me on LinkedIn.
I'm your host Cichetti. And now back to the show.
So let's pivot a little bit, right? The past three years have been very interesting and you joined the designer brands post Covid, if you want to call it that. But what is your perception of how. Covid impacted retail. I mean, we kind of all saw that, but like coming out of Covid, the restaurant scene has boomed.
Right? Right. It has massively exploded. Retail has been interesting that there's, depending on which retailer you look at, it could be, this is a wide spectrum. What is your experience on what you are seeing and what is the new normal? What are customers expecting today that maybe wasn't the case three years, some.
Today. Right. I will
John: say, first of all, what I think surprised the industry, I think with Covid, I think everyone expected the acceleration of digital right to continue. It was the last, last nail on the coffin for physical retail and people, A lot of people were expecting that. And what has been surprising and that had not been the case at all across different retail segments.
The importance of retail, physical retail revenue as part of a holistic marketplace across different retail segments is as high, not higher than it was pre covid. That's right. That's definitely something that I think the industry has been surprised by the expectation that digital was only continue to grow as a part of the overall retail industry.
I think part of that you're seeing is because it's really operate a pure digital business. Digital advertising cost is high. The return on investment is now the, the elevation of returns continues to increase. So I think that's one big learning coming out of Covid is that. If there's ever a need to justify the physical retail, what we're seeing now shows that, hey, COVID is not going to kill physical retail.
Nothing's gonna kill physical. Right? So I think that's one big learning, I would say coming out of it, I think two, I think another big learning. Is really the need for customer expectation, I think Definitely that's right. Like when you go into before with maybe the QR codes or the app and retail strategy, it was really catered for the young consumers.
But coming out of Covid, whether is my grandparents or whether it is my nieces and nephew, they operate with a QR code order, something from a restaurant. So I think it really moved the entire customer base. To be more digitally savvy in a physical setting. So I think that's another big learning, is that with the continuous need to elevate your technology suite and your digital experiences in a physical setting is another big learning from what our customers want.
And then three is just really about. I would say the most important thing from Covid is that your biggest assets are your associates. We don't talk about it a lot anymore, but you recall less than a year ago, we were talking about the gray resignation. People were leaving, right? And you had fast food restaurants giving thousands of dollars to, to get people to join their workforce.
And there was this competition of wage, $15 an hour, $20 an hour, $22 an hour. So I think that is probably the most important learning come from Covid, is when it comes to investment, you have to invest in your people. And that's right. When it comes to your people, it's not always about money, right? When you look at some of these big companies that are unionizing, It's not because of a lack of wage, it's because the jobs that people are doing is a little bit, it's harder than it needs to be.
So when I'm in a store, when I'm talking with our associate, no one's asking about giving the feedback about, Hey, we need increase our wage, increase our bonus. They're asking us about, Hey, these tech technology that we have in place. It doesn't allow us to do what we need to do to serve our customers better.
So I think that's the most important thing from Covid, is just invest in your associate, because when times are hard, that relationship that they have with you, that's really what makes it great from a retail perspective and from a, any, across any sector is your biggest assets, your people.
Sid: I agree. Invest and take care of your employees and they'll take care of your customers.
Yeah, absolutely. It, it's interesting because there's still a labor shortage in the market depending on which kind of industry or vertical or the kind of business we're talking about. There's a dearth of the skilled workforce. There's a dearth of talent that can help businesses run their day-to-day operations, and so a lot of businesses are leveraging technology and robotics and a lot of interesting innovation to simplify.
The jobs, right. You know, it's in the restaurant space, you've got so many different restaurants trying out new things to make the more physically challenging jobs become slightly more tolerable. For example, pandas coming out with auto walk, they actually already have it. You know, where you make the food using RO a robot, right.
Versus having a person like work the walk. All day, every day. Same thing with White Castle, that they use a robot called Flippy. You got Chipotle using Chippy, all these different things and also puts, this is not to actually take away the resource. Let's just take the person that's already there and maybe move them from back of house to front of house, right?
To be with the consumer. And then you've got also different things front of house. More kiosks are seen now, like if you walk into the, an airport today, my God, like you see kiosks everywhere, kiosks at traditional restaurants, takeouts like you see them in the airports. It's unbelievable. Like you're different retailers are trying different things, different restaurants are trying different things, but it's not to make this less human, it's probably to just reallocate.
The people that you do have to give a better human experience to your consumer. Right. What are your thoughts on that? You're, I think you're
John: exactly right. Technology is a compliment to the human interactions, right? I think people still want to talk to people. That's another, that's something, that's another thing that hasn't changed.
Covid. Despite Covid, people still want to have physical interactions when they're in a store. They want to get help when they need it. So we are investing in technology to compliment that. To your point, we are RAs reimagined story headway. We invested in scanning, go checkout kiosk, and it's to do exactly what you said, it's a compliment.
If customers want to be checked out by one of our associates, they still can't. But we want to be able to invest in that technology. So if you're a customer and you just want to grab and go and be on the run, That we have the key technology capabilities to support that journey. And so we've seen tremendous results from the scan go kiosk perspective, something that we continue to be investing in in all of our go forward warehouse reimagined stores, and also something that we're gonna be looking at for our high volume locations as well, because we wanna drive.
At most retailers, you know, the majority of your payroll spend is at the cash wrap. So you can alleviate some of those long lines, right? People leaving their bags because the line's a little too long, and get people through to your exact point, you can reallocate those associates onto the sales floor.
Whether it is to help a customer buy something online, they're not seeing that size or color in the store, or just answer any general product increase. I think through technology and reallocation and labor, you can holistically elevate in-store shopping experience.
Sid: Yeah. Do you think there are brands today, without naming brands if you don't want to, but are there certain types of retailers that are not gonna make it because they're not doing X, Y, Z?
Because you know, when you look at the environment today, it's changing so fast, right? And there are some retailers today that are filing for bankruptcy or are struggling, and it's probably because they're not adapting, that they're not reading. The signs that consumers expect more, and yeah, that's not necessarily happening across all brands and they're struggling.
When you look at the retail kind of landscape, are you seeing certain brands that are just like, yeah, I don't know what they're doing and why they're not, why they're not doing something to change? Yeah, their business model and how they interact with their consumer when
John: you try to be everything and not something.
I think that is the biggest challenge that I've, that I see for some of the retailers out there in the marketplace. I think interesting retailers that are doing really well is when it's because they have a why. They're serving a particular customer segment with a particular product. They have unique storytelling.
They're able to connect with their customer base. It's more about just the product, but it's more about the unique relationship between the brand or the retailers with the customer. I think those are the retailers that are really gonna elevate in this environment that I would personally em bullish in.
And I'm slightly bearish on the ones where they try to be everything. Or they don't have that unique value proposition and be able to connect on a one-on-one basis with the customer that they're serving.
Sid: Yeah, it makes sense. I think on the department store side, I mean, if you are going to be everything, then at least try to elevate the experience and make something that's unique that makes a customer choose to walk in.
Yes. And browse. There are some brands that do this really well where you walk in looking for one thing and before you know it, like you've got. 95 things in your cart. Right? And it's because like you, you understand what the consumer is looking for, right? And then you take them on this journey to that destination and in that journey, like you make them buy more things for themselves and their families because you just make it an attractive, in a proposition that you need to buy your stuff here.
Right? And here's why I think
John: you're exactly right. Because you have to at least have something to get the customer to go into your store. Yeah. If you don't have something that is gravitating the customers into your store and you don't have something that I think allows you to elevate, In a particular segment to build that storytelling.
I think that is really, I think that's gonna be challenging for a lot of
Sid: retailers. John, let's pivot a little bit, right? Let's talk about E S G. Today. Consumers expect that their brands stand for something that they are responsible and doing, are doing the right thing. So and so does Wall Street, right?
And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on the E S G goals that are being set by CEOs and how is that affecting your day-to-day operations? And what are the strategies that are going to help brands get to those goals and achieve the targets that they're setting for themselves and for the market?
John: Yeah, no, I think that's a great question, Syd.
I definitely believe that the consumers, especially within the Gen Z, um, segment, care a lot about social values and about shopping brands that hide to their own personal beliefs. And I think that's gonna be more and more important. So much choices out in the marketplace. I believe that customers want to, it's not just about price.
It's not as simple as pricing of a product. It's really about being able to connect on one-on-one basis. And one of that is through, you know, your investments in your community, your social values and so forth. And at design of Brand, we're, we're very proud of a recent partnership that we have with Pencil, which is that we're actually investing in African American shoe designers.
Helping them with the design process, manufacturing the shoes, and then at the end, the actual selling of the shoes in our physical sorts. So I think that is something that we really value here when we had these partnerships. From a philanthropy perspective, we really want to make sure that we as tying back to who we are, being best in shoes.
Yeah. So we're really proud of our partnership with So for Souls, Whereas for every shoe you donate, you get v i p points with v w. And these shoes. Then we donate them with our so partners to kids who might not have access to proper footwear, whether that's here in the United States or whether that is Guatemala is a place where a lot of our shoes are going to.
From a philanthropy perspective, I think customers are smart, especially the younger customers. When you do it, it's gotta be authentic in how you're doing it within the philanthropy space. Yeah, I
Sid: think that's right. That's a great point about being authentic. I think brands that do it because they just wanna say that they're doing something are gonna be in serious trouble.
I mean, if you know the ones that greenwash and say, we are doing all these things, but in reality they're not really doing things that matter. Ultimately it comes down to impact. To your point, you can't do everything. Yes. But in your world, like you know, you're a company that sells shoes, right. And if you can make an impact in that world, that's great.
You're a hundred percent right. All right, let's talk about the future, John. So are there any trends and with technology and robotics and AI that excite you personally as you think about how you run your team, but also like how. You know, businesses are going to interact with their consumers in the future.
John: I'm really personally super excited and I'm a bit of a nerd for it, like artificial intelligence. And how that can help with personalization, whether that's through content creation, storytelling, whether it's that product recommendation. I think the ability to leverage technology and go more from self, from one to all, the one, I think it's a really interesting evolution that will continue to see within our space.
So that's one that I'm really excited about.
Sid: Yeah, no, it's interesting, right? When we look at all the different shows that exist that kind of help businesses showcase the innovation that exists, like I was at Euro shop earlier this year, and the innovation is phenomenal. The question is, are consumers ready for it?
You got businesses that have technology that will allow a retailer. To smartly assess what a consumer is interested in while they're in the store and then present to them a certain kind of digital experience. Like it could be, Hey, I just picked up this bottle of wine, right? And there's a TV in front of me and we know what bottle of wine you picked up.
So let me tell you why you should like this. Bottle of wine. Yeah, food. It'll go with where it's. From, so it's kind of breaking the barrier between the physical and digital experience and kind of creating this immersion where the consumer can walk away and make a decision based on information and easy access
John: to it.
Right. I think that one day that you said that, oh, I hit eye, is, is the technology can't be so far ahead of the customer experience, right? Like the. You are. One of the things to grab and go for Amazon, that's an amazing technology where you don't have to pay for anything. But I think what the marketplace has seen is that it was maybe a little bit too ahead of time and it was really hard to get customer adoption.
So I think to your point, it is more about. There's gonna be so much new, innovative technology that's coming, that's gonna be coming into the marketplace. I know, but it's just how do you get the customer to leverage those is I think that, and it is gonna be, and I think it's gonna be different for every customer.
That's why we want, we're investing in different checkout methodologies, whether that is Scan and Go, whether that's our traditional. Check out whether that in the future be more mobile on the sales floor, check out customers directly on the sales floor, is because I think the adoption curve of a lot of these new technologies is gonna vary by the customer.
And I think companies are gonna get in trouble if they say, this is. It and every customer needs to adopt to this particular technology. I think that's really gonna be challenging. So it's really making sure that you're doing this iteratively and providing solutions for different customers that they're shopping with.
I agree.
Sid: Are there any, um, trends that you see today that you're like, yeah, that's not gonna fly. That's not gonna work? Because a lot of retailers are trying a lot of different things, right? Some will stick, some will not. But when you look at the landscape as consumer also, right. Is there anything that you're like Yeah, that, I don't know if that's gonna stick?
John: Well, that's a great question. I think the one problem that every retailer has to solve for is returns. Yeah. So if there are any technologies and innovation that increases the returns, because retailers are now like, especially in today's 2023, focused so much on profitability. I. And mitigating returns is one of the top ways you can drive more dollars to your bottom line.
Yeah. So any of those technologies that are like tryon services, I'm not a particular fan of it because it's really, really hard to make it profitable.
Sid: Totally. Yeah. All right. Let's end with one final question, a fun question. Please all be fun. Yeah, for sure. So what's been your favorite go-to pair of shoes?
Ooh, I've
John: had multiple weddings this year, so I always say I love the Vito Dress shoes. We have a Boston Oxford. Right. And I, it's been amazing. It's so comfortable. And you know, like when you go to a wedding, and these are long events, right? Sand from chatting, from talking from sitting, from dancing. So I think it's just so comfortable.
I would have to go with our Miss Camuto jet
Sid: shoes. Love it. All right. I'm gonna have to get me a pair. It sounds perfect. Alright, with that John, I just wanna say a huge thank you. Thank you for being the show. I, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I really appreciate you being here. For folks in our audience, can you tell them where they can find
John: you?
Yeah, absolutely. I'm more active on LinkedIn, so if you want to send me a note, happy to connect with you
Sid: on LinkedIn. Sounds perfect. With that, again, John, thank you so much for being here.
That was John Ludlow, VP of Omni Operations at D S W. If there's one thing you can take away from today's conversation, it's that in today's world, customers expect a great and consistent experience across all interactions they have with the brand. Irrespective of the channel or medium, brands are gonna have to ensure that all their operations are aligned to ensure a seamless and elevated experience.
John's role at DSW is to do exactly that, keeping the customer and employee experience in mind in everything they do. With that, I'm your host Sid Shetty, and I'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar Service
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