Justin Burrows: Joining me today on Commerce Chats, we have a very special guest Karthiks Mayo, an IT executive. Now, you've spent more than a decade in e-commerce. Is that right

Karthika Mayo, IT Executive: Almost two decades. Wow. Don't want to age myself, but. Yeah It's been about 20 years.

JB: Can you talk a little bit about kind of how you progressed into e-commerce because you've had a few different roles? I've been following you for a while.

KM: Yeah, I sort of fell into e-commerce by accident. So it didn't have anything to do with what I studied in college. I actually studied to be a broadcast journalist, so I had aspirations of being a television reporter here in my hometown of Los Angeles. And I realized I didn't want to do that.

So I needed to figure out what I wanted to do. And so I got a temp job for the city of Pomona. Originally, it was to enter traffic citations in the system. It was a very basic level data entry job. I would get stacks of these traffic citations super boring. And my boss was like, you know what? You're a northwestern grad, you're smart. Like, I'm going to give you this website project to work on. So the city of Pomona, where I worked, they were looking to launch a brand new website. They were investing a lot of money in this website. And so it became my job to work with the different city departments, get their requirements mostly around content to have this site developed. And we worked with a third party agency who developed the site for us, and that was sort of my foray into, into at least web, not necessarily e-commerce, because we weren't doing commerce at the time. But from there I got more into web technologies. Um, my next job after that was with a travel company. So I worked for the Travel Corporation for eight years, and we sold, uh, escorted motorcoach tours around the world. And with that company, we were launching a direct to consumer business, because prior to that, all business had been done through travel agencies and I was a project manager on that. So again, I was involved with working with our business users, with a web development company who was building the site, got to learn a lot about content management systems, shopping carts, even though it was travel. Yeah, and I absolutely loved it.

I got to learn all kinds of different technologies besides e-commerce, including the very, very intricate task of booking things like flights like that is very, very complex.

Debuting a Brand to Direct to Consumer

JB: I think that's really interesting because that move to direct to consumer, like that's still something that people are challenged with today. And I think that's really cool that you had because you're making a new channel, right? A new channel, a new revenue stream for the company.

KM: I mean, the web was coming up as a channel for a lot of brands, and so I think it was an intimidating space at the time and but also very interesting and new. So it was exciting for me to be, at the the forefront of that.

JB: Yeah. And I think that's something that the lessons you had learned then are still applicable today, you know, of being able to when you're not selling directly to consumer. We see it now, a lot of companies like we're getting more and more granular in terms of how brands can present themselves, that you can just go directly like, what is it I have? Like, uh, over here, like Liquid Death. They've got a they've got a website, you know, uh, and they do, you know, they understand that that's part of it, you know. But who would have thought, that people would be selling water and water related paraphernalia, you know, directly to consumers.

KM: So I think that's that's and they have the personality behind the brand is what really speaks to its water. I mean, everybody drinks water. Water is very accessible. But Liquid Death is cool. And so yeah, that's yeah, they've made it cool to to drink water.

JB: It's actually like the, it's a law in New England to have you have to have a seltzer around you all the time. In fact I think I have three. Right. Because you can't see my desk so I got my Spindrift. This is my emotional support seltzer here. And then I also have a Polar Seltzer that's also there just as a backup in case my first seltzer doesn't work out. So you move in then to e-commerce and some. Not to say that Contiki Tours wasn't, uh, you know, uh, interesting, but you got some.

KM: I took some time off. I had two kids, so I stayed home with them for about two and a half years still kept my toe in the water at Travel Corporation, working part time. But When I was ready to move on I got an opportunity at Big Five Sporting Goods. Uh, Big Five Sporting Goods is very pervasive on the West Coast. There's at the time there were about 500 locations. There are probably more now. And they hadn't done e-commerce yet. So at that time they were looking for somebody to help them launch e-commerce. So very similar situation, um, as what I experienced at Trav Corp except this time we are fulfilling physical products. And so if you're not familiar with big five, they're SKU assortment was over 100,000 SKUs. So they sold everything from snuggies to bobbleheads to firearms like not online, but, um, big five has a very wide assortment. And at the time we chose Oracle ATG, uh, as the e-commerce platform. And that's where I really learned, uh, the direct to consumer fulfillment side of things. So taking that order on the website, transforming that into an order for a warehouse management system, getting that order fulfilled by the warehouse, sending the communication back out to the customer. And, um, yeah, I was there for about two and a half years at Big Five, but that was a major, major project, um, that I worked on.

JB: It's rare for brands, especially those that have brick and mortar things, to to be able to introduce them to a market, and to do that more than once, I think. And then you get into the fulfillment element, we can get more into that, like later. But then you pivoted, you went into some, uh, some fancy some fancy places, uh, since then, and you've been kind of

KM: Yeah, we can say that I spent some time in Pakistan, and I was at Elf Beauty for more than six years, also doing, you know, direct fulfillment, very involved on the e-commerce side, but, uh, really kind of honing my skills on more of the back office and back end side of the house. And I would say that's sort of where I found my niche, because that part of the customer journey or that transaction process is so critical, so important. And it was very important to me that that be as solid of an experience as it is on the website, when we, the customer chooses their their item that they want to buy and they give us their money. So, um, I know, yes, but wait a second, wait.

Front End Makes Promises, Back End Keeps Them - Fulfillment and Brand Trust

JB:No, the e-commerce is just a front end. There's just a front end. This back end …That's that's something else that happens. It's all front end. What are you. What are you talking about?

KM: Yeah, just this magical, nebulous thing that happens behind a website.

JB: But I get stuck in that. I get stuck in that. And I think a lot of people in, you know, the in, in ecommerce get stuck in the front end, uh, thing when you talk about UX, we're talking about a website. But you were suggesting that UX is not just how the page interacts with you. That's one part of it. Explain what happens. I thought it was just elves or hamsters

KM: I think a great example of why the back end is so important is what I'm doing today. Which is that Venus a flower. So Venus et Fleur talk about fancy. They we sell very high end, uh, arrangements, flower arrangements. So everything is made to order. So when a customer visits the Venus et Fleur website, we have multiple arrangements to choose from. Different floral compositions, different vessels. So vases, hat boxes, um, you know, ranging from $200 all the way to 2000 plus dollars on the website. So once that customer places that order, which is typically a gift. So usually they're buying the arrangement for a loved one, a family member, you know, what have you that experience of ensuring that the item that they purchase is exactly what they wanted and in the most pristine condition possible, that all falls on operations and the back end of the process.

JB: You talk about it being a gift. And just how important that is in terms of like, there's my experience as a person buying it but you are really putting a lot of your personal stake in with the company, because you're trusting them to not send something that's lackluster,

KM: Absolutely. It's thought love, care, white glove, all of the things that make it very special for the recipient. We allow the customer to, uh, write a message and a card so they can give us their message. We'll print it on a card. Everything comes beautifully packaged. This is an e-commerce business, so it's not arriving on your doorstep in a vase. It's coming in a box. So if you think about the box, the boxes have to be, uh, able to handle super fragile items. So there is a methodical way that these items are packed to ensure that there isn't any damage to the flowers. And when you open it, the smell is incredible. And when you take it out of the box, it looks just as beautiful as it did on the website.

So how do we get to that? Like, the designer has to know how to build that arrangement, and that all comes in the back end. So we do, you know, some manufacturing, um, of the arrangements. So it is a process where we have floral artisans putting together the arrangements. No two arrangements look exactly the same. There's always going to be variation, especially when you're working with things like flowers. But the quality has to be there. And so, um, otherwise we wouldn't be able to sell, you know, the flowers at the, at the price point that we do. And so, um, we take very seriously that process of making sure everything is quality controlled, everything is checked. So also in the back end there's multiple, you know, tasks and processes that have to take place to ensure that that order, um, is in perfect condition.

JB: So how do you how do you put that all inside of your mind there? Like, how do you document? Do you just know? I mean, are you walking around the facility?

KM: You know, I, I'm not in the facility. So that's that's what makes it even more, um, I would say challenging because there's people that you don't see, you know, on a daily basis face to face. And they have to understand what are all the different cogs in the wheel of making this arrangement. And so we've taken a lot of steps in our system to ensure that we use bills of materials for all of our arrangements that everything is documented, that the specs are exact, so that there isn't any question about how what's expected, uh, in the, in the arrangement. So everything has a, a spec, everything is detailed in our system for the designer to follow. Um, of course they're trained and, and so forth, but, you know, they may be working on multiple arrangements in a day. And so everything has to be very well documented for them when you approach this process, uh, of of the back of the House of technology how do you even structure that? I mean, when you came into, you know, your role in other roles when you, you found this niche, like what was it a that attracted you to it and what how do you decompose it, uh, from, you know, fulfilling your part of the brand promise

Tedium as the Enemy of Execution

I think first and foremost, there's a user experience side of that also. So if you have a lot of manual or tedious processes or difficult processes, that makes your execution a lot harder. So we want to ensure that things are easy for the users, that the system is set up in a way that they don't really have to think. It just kind of gives them the blueprint of what they need to do. And so I would say, like even though my background wasn't necessarily in technology, there is a communication aspect that is very important. So you have to be able to break down things that are fairly complicated in an easy to digest and understand manner. And so I think that's I think that's where I really found my niche, is that you could easily chalk this up to, oh, it's very complicated. You're talking about APIs and web services, and this goes here and there in a database. And it's not really that. It's what is the instruction for the person that needs to do the job. So to me that's, you know, putting it in its simplest form, even if you have a lot of complex, uh, back end technology driving the process.

The impact of UX in Customer-facing and Non-Customer Facing Experiences

JB: Yeah, I think that's that's a great insight, uh, to and I think that and we saw this in, you know composable in the front end or headless if we want to talk about it. And I suppose to a degree, composable could have applications in the back end as well, uh, where, you know, it's like API first. And, you know, these messages we get so hung up on the, the, uh, the technology that we forget to think about. Well, what is most basically what we're trying to do. And to your point, you can't do a job well if or you won't do a job as well. It's my belief if you're making people do things that are unnecessary, that aren't really geared towards doing the job in an excellent way. And it seems simple, right? It's simple to talk about. And that's that's where you should start. Is that that simple part. But so often people, you know, jump over that. So and I think that I keep on thinking of like wanting to remove drudgery from a process, whether it's on the, you know, for me, I'm always thinking in the front end from a merchandiser perspective, presenting something that's performant and beautiful, but it's not one person downloading an Excel spreadsheet and, you know, massaging it and then re-uploading it somewhere else, you know, and then going through and pressing buttons like George Jetson But I think that that's humanizing. I think that when people can I mean, it must be really satisfying to be able to sit down and make something beautiful uh, you know, as part of your job, do that and kind of like, okay, here's what I'm going to do and just do it.

What’s So Funny About Happiness and Joy?

KM: Yeah. I mean, bringing happiness and joy to people. That's I actually that's something that's a motto of mine, even just as a professional. So work should be fun. If it's not, then it's just work. And that's, you know, it's just not as fulfilling or satisfying. So what really kind of drives me is being able to, uh, reduce friction for our end users. So making things much easier than they were before. And we can constantly improve. That's the other thing, too. You're never done right. There's always a better way to to do things. And so I would say that drives me. I'm somebody who who used to time myself.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess maybe it was my journalism training, but I was always restricted to, like, a specific number of words. Or when I was doing TV, like, I was restricted to a certain number of minutes for a story or a package. And so I, I've always been very, very time driven and so if something is taking a very long time and I know that it can be condensed and it can be a much shorter process, I'm going to do everything I can to make it shorter. Yeah, yeah. So I can beat I can beat myself and I can have other people beat myself. Meaning like my

last, my previous time, I wish I could. I wish I did that with other things, like more athletic things. But it's mostly it's mostly

JB: Yeah, it's mostly with I'm like, I'm on fa treadmill right now. This is a running desk. That's what I'm that's what I'm doing. I got a peloton. Yeah. No. Yeah. No I totally I feel that yeah. The operations bug if you want to call it that where like the fastest way rom point A to point B, uh, you know that really is compelling because then if you do it that one way, you can, you know, then it's repeatable. And if it's repeatable, you can improve on it and you're capturing all that.

KM: So yeah. And a lot of, you know, the improvements can come from new technology and innovation. And so being able to apply that to gain those efficiencies is also very rewarding. Uh, as a tech leader and especially somebody that works on the backend.

JB: Uh, is there anything you're excited about, like in terms of like technology or something you're working on or approach. Right

Asking AI versus Running Reports, Learning to Rely on Tech in New Ways

KM: I'm excited about AI, so I know AI is a big buzzword right now, but I've been able to apply, uh, whether it's ChatGPT or whether it's copilot to things to make my life easier. So instead of, for example, reviewing, um, code or even reviewing a macro and a spreadsheet, I can ask for help from, from AI. And so, um, I think that's amazing. I think that, you know, talking going back to like, wanting to have more efficient processes or at least taking less time on things that might be considered like busywork. AI is a real game changer for that. So, um, that excites me. A by platform that I've been working on with Venus has a built in chat, uh, chat, GPT type tool where you can just ask, like, I want to know how many of a certain SKU I sold in the last 12 months instead of running a report, this AI agent can just grab that data for me and that that is very I mean, it's it's really fast and it's accurate

JB: Yeah. I had on the, on the front end, I mean, yes, I have made eyes of like an angry duck doing QA, you know, easy. You know, Plato, a statue of Plato typing on a computer. Yes. And that's fine. That's great. It makes some engaging content. But where it really blew my mind was catalog management, which is data management. But when you talk about like, well, how should I structure this, what would be a good way for you to do this? Or, you know, what are some things I should think about and boom, it's there. Or can you. Yeah, a data set, you know, from this and this is all stuff that would take weeks, you know, weeks. And now I can try different things. Does this look good or does that, you know, look good. And I think that really it takes it is a little mind bending though. I have to I want to put it in Excel and I want to do the little pivot things and all the stuff that I, you know, have been trained to do, but then it's like, no, just here, like give me a table and make that change.

KM: Yeah, that's a great. Well, I think that's why there's also an element of fear there too, because these are things that maybe took a very long time to learn, you know, in Excel or whatever other programs you might be using. Yeah. But now can be done like that. Yeah.

AI Enabling Experimentation in Complex Data Systems

JB: Yeah, we're, we're finding things where like you, that's part of the problem with drudgery is that if your job is defined by drudgery, it's vulnerable, you know, but it's if you're in there and you're, you know, you're able to to eliminate that, you have something that's kind of like, you know, inherently human, that is, you know, not to say that, I mean, Lord knows I still have drudging tasks that I have to do

And, you know, I've had jobs in the past 100% drudgery, I guarantee you. But, uh, it does kind of open up the market for trying new things. Uh, and, you know, experimenting on between, you know, complex systems. And I think that that's going to be part of it.

Yeah

JB: I think it's really important when you're talking about, like, gifts, uh, for example, because, you know

I think of UX, like, from somebody who has a bias towards the front end. I think of UX as how the site looks, how quickly I can check out, you know, maybe even like an order confirmation. But, you know, if you're buying that for as a gift for another person, you're kind of putting a lot of trust in them to, you know, what that experience is going to be to deliver uh, on that, on the promise.

Customers are on Both Sides of the Transaction

KM: Right the process doesn't stop when the customer clicks checkout and they've provided their payment information so that customer is still there on the other side of the transaction. So whether it is a recipient of a gift or it's something that you bought yourself, it didn't just end at checkout. So we have to be committed to ensuring that that customer journey is special and great, as it was on the front end when they were viewing the beautiful products that you might have to sell all the way up until they receive that product at their doorstep. So that is that is a contract that as brands, we make with the customer and we have to make good on that because it really will impact your reputation as a brand. So, um, I think that that's that second phase, the back end, magical, you know, processes that happen. Yeah. That everybody's like, ooh, what is that?

It just happens.

KM: It is just as important as the the front end experience. So yeah. And oftentimes that kind of gets you know, back Burnered. Oh we'll get to that later. Oh it's not important right now because and I, I completely get that because the website is the face of the brand. And so that, that is the, uh, the presentation that you want the customer to have and have a great experience with. But again, I would say, you know, if payment doesn't go through or, you know, we didn't send the right item or it wasn't packaged perfectly, I mean, these are all things that impact your brand and impact reputation. And so, um, that's why I'm always very adamant that it's just as important the back end processes.

Why the Front End and Back End don’t Talk More?

JB: That's that that's absolutely that that makes perfect sense. Um, and I could wrap it there. I just have one more one more question. Uh, so do you do you get to talk

I mean, do you guys have a or rather, just generally, more generally speaking do you guys have good relationship with what would be and maybe I am thinking in a manner that is an artifact of a previous age Uh, do you have conversations between the front end and the back end? I mean, I as much as there is actually a distinction there because it is one flow. How do you communicate with the front end

KM: Yeah, I think that what tends to happen is that the front end has a vision of how something should work or how something should operate, and then we have to make it happen. So it doesn't matter what job or what brand I've been in, that's usually the case. And that's okay. Like I think that's fine as long as there's attention to that detail and it doesn't get left out. It's like the worst thing that can happen is that you didn't have a conversation at all, and then your transactions come in and it blows up because the data wasn't formatted correctly, or we got something that we weren't expecting. So it's important to have that conversation, but understand that it's, uh, you have to partner with your, you know, front end merchandising team, what have you, because that is part it's it really frames the experience for the customer. Whereas in the back end, um, there isn't anything that the customer touches in the back end. So these are all sort of seamless processes, but it can still, uh, color their perception of the brand if it's. Yeah, if it's not done correctly. So I think, you know, to summarize, I would say it's good to partner with your front end team, but I would definitely say I wouldn't want requirements based on my needs. So or the needs of the back end like usually there are ways to make things work.

JB: Well that's great. Karthika Mayo IT Executive with more than ten years experience in e-commerce in the front, in the back end, direct to consumer, all the things. Thank you for joining me for commerce chats. This has been a really, really wonderful conversation.

KM: Thank you Justin, thank you for having me