And Then There Was None...
I remember when eCommerce was the new kid on the block in the Retail Industry. I was working in the Macy’s Buying office at the time. People’s opinions of buying things online varied from not getting the point of it to fascination with it. I fell in to the fascination camp. There were a lot of tech people in that camp, not a lot of Retail people. Most Retail people with big Brick & Mortar careers in front of them were not about to divert from their path to join an eCommerce team. So those of us that were fascinated by it, found a bounty of jobs to choose from. There were more jobs than talent willing to try something completely new.
I landed at saksfifthavenue.com – before the site was even live (#ecomelder). It was such an incredible experience to not only be part of something revolutionary but to be hands on creating it. I wore a number of hats as their Beauty Buyer. I was an eCommerce Evangelist convincing the Vendor community to let me sell their products online – the Luxury Beauty Vendor community….hard sell in 2000, to say the least. Once I succeeded and the orders were being placed, I got my hands dirty in the CMS and helped my non-makeup-wearing Site Merchandiser (read: nice dude) set up and populate our beautiful nav point. My team and I consumed gobs of m&ms and caffeine across many late nights to make the launch date. We were all learning as we went along because there was only one person in the organization with any prior eCommerce experience – our CTO who came from Barnes & Noble. Fortunately, we all knew Retail so, we could apply selling offline to selling online. This was the secret to our success.
As early eCommerce businesses started to take off, others noticed and started launching eCommerce websites of their own. Vendors even began to join the party and some started selling direct to consumer for the first time, with their own websites (the ripple that caused is a whole other story). Then around the same time there was the dot com bubble burst. It took out almost all of the Pureplays but, the ones with a Brick & Mortar parent continued. So, for a minute there was some eCommerce talent with experience ready to be snatched up. UNICORNS! They were quickly absorbed into teams here and there. The number of eCommerce website launches kept growing – especially with Vendors going direct. Talent was once again scarce.
All our teams were small, and our scope of responsibilities was broad. We were being groomed into eCommerce Generalists by circumstance. We had to know how to do everything or we had to secure budgets to outsource it because headcount was not being granted at the rate the business was growing. eCommerce was seen as a profit center for many who were not used to having a Retail division so, the budget and headcount support was slim. Over the years we evolved to have a knowledge base that was broad AND deep. As long as the headcount support remained low, the talent pool was competitive but adequate to feed the open jobs.
As companies stepped out and ‘focused on eCommerce’ the demand on talent increased but, now the jobs were narrower. So, we evolved to Leaders with broad and deep expertise overseeing multiple departments focused on their own specific aspect of the business. Imagine what that Leadership succession planning looks like….there isn’t any. Pre-COVID this is where things were settled at. High demand for eCommerce talent turning up as a company over here announced a ‘focus on eCommerce’ and then over there as another one did.
At the writing of this blog entry, we are not Post-COVID. Some are speculating we are past the first wave and on to the second while others are saying we never got out of the first wave and it’s just a continuation. Either way, this was not the short 3 month hiatus from life as we knew it that many were hoping for. New cases have reached an all-time high this past week in the US. There is no magic that makes this trend suddenly disappear. A Vaccine doesn’t exist, yet. Even if the government doesn’t intervene and close physical doors again, people will do what is safest for them and the shift from Brick & Mortar to eCommerce will continue. According to a Mastercard study eCommerce was 11% of total Retail Apr-May 2019 and doubled to 22% in April-May 2020.
Companies who’ve felt the impact of stores that can’t open with websites that are, are making decisions about the future. Zara’s parent company announced closing 1,200 doors and gargantuan investments in eCommerce. L’Oréal remarked that they are preparing for a day when 50% of their business is done online. The occasional ‘focus on eCommerce’ need for talent bubbling up here and there is going to become an insatiable thirst. The need for talent to support this seismic shift from Brick & Mortar to eCommerce is going to eclipse anything we have seen to date. May the odds be ever in your favor, my friends!
Stay well!
image by hrohmann