Bob Land, VP of Consumer Experience for Dorel Juvenile, on Digital Transformation - Episode 156

INTERVIEW WITH BOB LAND

 

DESCRIPTION

We are joined today by Bob Land, the Vice President of Consumer Experience for Dorel Juvenile. He has strategic P&L responsibility for Ecommerce Sales (Amazon, Retailer.com, Marketplaces + Direct), Omnichannel Brand Experiences, and their award-winning Consumer Care teams. We are talking a bit about his career, how he started working in eCommerce, Covid-19 and its consequences and sharing some useful advice on operating multiple channels, building relationships with consumers, and giving predictions about eCommerce.

Tune in to learn more!

Bob’s strategies, resources, and influence extend across Dorel Industries, a $2.6B global conglomerate of consumer brands such as Cannondale, Schwinn, Safety1st, Maxi-Cosi, and 20+ others, manufacturing and operating in 25 countries worldwide. He has held Vice President positions leading eCommerce, digital, retail, D2C, call center, omnichannel, digital advertising, digital marketing, and corporate strategy at national retailers (CVS Health, Lids Sports Group) and internet start-ups across his 25+ year career.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Bob’s first website project was Polaroid.com in 1995 and with eCommerce it was launching Lids.com for Lids Sports Group in 1999.

  • The brand/retailer co-dependent relationships are stressed more than ever, we’re all in survival mode as we look at COVID, Tariffs, store closings, data breaches, rising resin costs (plastic), Amazon trucks not picking up inventory in LA, etc.  

  • Today, many brands feel embattled, yet emboldened to shift spend to more controllable and measurable tactics like D2C, not simply for sale but for data and long-term relationships with consumers.

  • One of the few operating rules is the 70/20/10 budget “gamble” concept where:

    • 70% (of the programs/operating spend/even campaigns in the budget) are high confidence ROI/ROAS bets.  Those that have been tested and optimized essentially.  

    • 20% are programs in the budget that look promising but are still being tested/optimized, and 

    • the last 10% are big bets – high risk/high reward.

  • In an omnichannel world, it’s hard to track the shopper lifecycle and attribute budget & sales activity to specific channels - at Dorel Juvenile, we try to spend less time thinking about massively complex attribution models and more time building accretive value for the consumers - the solution is breaking down the problem into small pieces and executing well.

  • A dollar spent servicing existing consumers gives much more value than a dollar spent on advertising for new ones.

  • Dorel Juvenile also launched a ground-breaking new product during COVID - the Coral XP, a truly new infant car seat.

  • Bob’s predictions about eCommerce: the “next to last mile” delivery is the next big thing and will be preferred by many more consumers than it is today.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

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