Name: Meet The Woman Modernizing Crate And Barrel
Uploaded: 2019-09-16
Duration: 16 min 28 s
Description: Meet the woman who is modernizing a 56-year-old furniture chain by redesigning stores with surprise offerings and investing heavily in digital platforms and partnerships to transform the customer experience.

I was telling Neela backstage to look at Nina's shoes. So Neela, welcome to your first most our fortune most powerful women's summit. Thank you. Good night. Good to be here. It's wonderful to have you and I was we were standing backstage so we couldn't see how many hands went up. So how many of you actually shut up at I should say actually, but you shop at Crate and Barrel? Excellent. Good most of the room excellent. It's one of my one of my go to stores although I live in 900 square feet in New York City so I can't buy a lot at your stores. So Nila, give us, Nila has a very interesting background. I sort of think of Crate and Barrel now as a sort of all- American or North American brand. And but your, background is so international. Just give us a very quick run through, of the various places you've lived and worked? Sure, so I'm British Indian I grew up in the UK in North Manchester and my parents are Indian and I studied in the UK Then I went to it briefly in New York in advertising. My first job actually was as a political speech writer, which didn't last long. And then I moved back to Europe to study for my MBA and France and Singapore. And then I joined Tesco, which is for those of you who know it, a very large UK retailer. And I spent 12 years with them and worked in various different markets as is often the case with these large multinational companies. Worked, spent three and a half years in Malaysia, worked in South Korea for a little while I then came back to the Uk with a husband and two children from Malaysia and then finally Tosca and went to work for a privately held German company. Very large and family owned. And I didn't really know that those kind of companies existed at that time. So I'd always worked in a public company. And I met the founder billionaire Michael auto and was so impressed with his like, purpose lead lead of a private company that I was enticed to go and run. Sit on his board, not realizing that I was the first woman, the first non German and about 20 years younger than everyone else on that board. So, shame on me [ LAUGH ] to my due diligence, but part of their companies that they own is, Crate and Barrel. So I was the chairwoman of Crate and Barrel for a couple of years. And then, two years ago, I decided to come and be the CEO and get back into an operational role and move to Chicago. So and you replaced the CEO, who was maybe didn't have quite the right vision, And when you took over for him when you succeeded, what was what was your charge? What was your mission? What did you want to do? Well, one thing about Crate & Barrel is that it's a much loved brand and whenever you say to people you work for Crate & Barrel they go, I love Crate & Barrel you'll say well when did you last shop there and then you're like well, you know, and there's a lot of humming and honouring and and so somewhere along the way, the relevant And the sense of urgency in the sense of discovery that comes with being a relevant brand in people's mind as opposed to something that I love, but I'm not actively engaged with. So, my whole mission, if you like, has been about brand relevance. We don't need to be loved, I think we actually are quite loved and that's a great place to be as a brand, because for many companies that's their priority. Ours is about relevance and about reimagining our amazing stores to do something different. So for example, today 45 % of our sales are online. And the reality is that we have to rethink and reimagine what are stores are there to do. And so a lot of my energy has gone into reimagining the stores, thinking about the next generation of service and how do our associates connect. And I could go on and on, but I guess you only have- So, we were just talking to Indra Nooyi, who you'll hear from later who was telling us that whe she went in to become CEO of PepsiCo in 2006, she She did this report. She said it was the first very important thing she did this report on Megatrends now correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the mega trends in your industry is that young people do not want to own a home, do not want to own a car and do not really want to own furniture. Is this correct? I wouldn't say it was a mega trend I'd say there is a very specific set of customers in urban locations that don't want the hassle factor, and in those situations we have to think about how do we engage with furniture rental models and we are doing at the moment we have an interesting partnership With a startup called furnish where you can rent Crate and Barrel furniture in certain cities around the world. And that's a great around the country sorry. And that's a great way for those audiences to engage With our brand, I think what brands like us have to recognize is we don't get to control the experience the way we want. Did you know In the past it was relatively straightforward you came to my store, I gave You great service and great product and you are my loyal customer and that was kind of the relationship. Now there are so many different ways that you interact with my brand. And I have to be there for you in the way that you want to be there. So whether you have a need to rent because you just can't commit to that. Sectional [ UNKNOWN ] that I would love you to buy, Patty. I have to have something for you. But I also have to be there for you if you just wanna come and have a meal in a new restaurant or you want to You know engage with me on social media or on Instagram. So when you took over as CEO the the sort of way of the Crate and Barrel way of marketing was these. It was not Instagram was it? Catalogues. It was a catalog That we got in the mail. That I throw in my apartment building in the shoot. Still get that big thing from restoration hardware every [ LAUGH ] Okay, throw that one away. But anyway, you did a big Sort of transformation there. Talk about how you're using technology, whether it's Instagram or AI or AR to transform the experience. I mean, the great thing about this is, we have 26 million visitors to our store every year. We have, I think over 100 million interactions online every year. So I have so many more opportunities to talk to my customers about what we stand for a product etc. But of course, what we have to think about is where are we going to spend our very expensive marketing dollars what how we can transform those into digital marketing and build capabilities in there. But also, you know, pull away from more traditional media like TV or Catalogs and invest in Instagram or some of those other channels or search marketing. And I the one is the CEO and very engaged in that that transition because I think it's critical to how are customers. [ UNKNOWN ] So, I visited stores today in Toronto, as I should, but I am just as engaged and looking at how we look today on Instagram and what stories we posted. Sure, who has a question? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Or a comment? Yes, right here, on my three So I wanted to- Wait for the mic. And there it is. It's a simple question. You're from the UK. I struggle to shop for home goods in the UK. Why are you not in the UK or in your So the founder of Crate and Barrel back in 2000 sold to a German parent company, which is the Otto Group that I work for today, and at the time was very convinced that we still had so much opportunity in the US market that we were not going to pursue international expansion, that it would be I kinda of expensive destraction I would say I necessarily agree with that point of view but the reality here is now that market is much more competitive that it was today and your strategy that would have to be multi channel you would have to go in my view online first just to be clear 45 % of our sales today are online so. For us there is no bricks and mortar strategy without online. And we just see that as a very crowded market. The UK is super competitive and when rents come down, we will reconsider. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Yes right here in the middle. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hello, my name is Ananya. Please identify yourself. Yes. Ananya Chatta. I was wondering what's been your happiest moment? Wow. Just in life, generally? Or at Crate and Barrel? Both. Well I mean, it's kind of a boring answer but the birth of my two children whereas not at the very moment I was not happy but [ LAUGH ] I was in kind of a lot of pain But you know, the day subsequently, obviously, was one of my happiest moments. But I mean, it's actually a very interesting question. So I talked to my team all the time. I love this quote from Roald Dahl about Remember to watch the world around you with glittering eyes. And I told my team often about where are your glittering eyes have you looked The potential of the situation, can you see beyond the obstacles that are right in front of you. And it's something I find a lot of my, I run a mainly female lead company and I find especially my some of my team resoundingly practical they're always so practical about pointing out to me all the All the points of potential failure. And I'm like, I get it. Sometime you do have to have your glittering eyes. And so, one of my best moments for example was when we celebrated She Makes Us Great. We celebrated all the women right through from our studio where we have wood workers through to our. Vendors and artist, all the way through our company. Globally to celebrate the contribution that women have made to making Crate and Barrel. And it's a great site, look it up, it's right on the Crate and Barrel corporate website. Yes, Irene? Hi Irene Britt one of my homes actually is mostly Crate and Barrel so there and it was relatively reason so there we go. Okay My question for you is as you continue to build your brand How do you keep that engagement up when you have your up against the great aggregators of the world like Amazon So, I mean, I get it for the big furnish a room thing, but when you're looking for Little those little add ons? Can you really really connect on the Crate and Barrel brand anymore when people will just go to a big search aggregator? Sure. And it's something we talk about all the time, which is that the world is increasingly gravitating to platforms, and they have a massive advantage around traffic. But my very strong position on that maybe comes back to the glittering eyes. Is that. There is no way you can out Amazon, Amazon or any platform. So what you have to do as a brand is be able to tell your story and choose to compete in product categories Where you can develop something unique. So my placemats are made in a Carola village with a unique technique, a weaving technique that has been preserved for 20 years. You can get a cheaper placemat in the market and you will be able to find one on our friends at Amazon or Walmart or any place. Platform, but I have to be able to tell you the story of why you should come and buy mine for 699. So you pay a $ 2 premium for that. And you're doing some a good some good in the world and we're also helping to preserve something that I think is important. So I think it's around, what is it, around 95 % of Crate & Barrel's merchandise is unique to Crate & Barrel. Quite right. Are you saying that you will never ever sell on Amazon? [ LAUGH ] I don't see, hard to be as definitive as that, but as much as I can see it, I can't see a reason why we would right now. Preserving the story, very interesting, yes? Hi, I'm Carol Deacon, I work in automotive retail. Which is like home goods, quite a traditional retail model. As you think about how you moved investment into more, I would say, experiential or social media- based influencers are where you test out new things, how do you balance the investment in these new areas while keeping kinda the bread and butter going in where you've had strong returns up till now? Yeah, very good question, and always the tension when you're trying to manage legacy teams, legacy budgets, legacy skill sets even really. Because if I think about, I have a huge photo studio in downtown Chicago, with lots of people who are Brilliantly trained taking beautiful catalog shots. They may not be the same shots that I now need for social media where someone can take it on their iPhone. And so, you're always having to say, Okay, I see where the world is going. I need to get there so you should never lose sight of that you have to hold on to that. And then you have to decide, what are the steps in which I'm going to get there? And I think what we've tried to do is, you can't go so test and learn into it. You have to keep iterating, but there are points where you have to leap. You have to say, you know what? I won't be able to measure the return on store events as well as I can measure The next incremental catalog in the mail, but there are occasions where you have to take some of those leaps. And then measure the hell out of it afterwards, and say, is it working, is it not working? Don't pivot too quickly. But keep going back and asking yourself that question. Because without that, you really will only ever move forward incrementally. You have restaurants and how many stores now? Only one. I just opened one two months ago. And it's called? The Table at Crate. Table at Crate. The Table at Crate. And what are your expansion plans there? Yeah. I have no idea about running a restaurant and I have discovered that it's really hard. [ LAUGH ] But even running retail stores I had this idea it was gonna be this beautiful brand vision and it is. But then I learnt that you have to have a certain number of tables and a certain number of sittings and a certain number of out call sales and Now, I know that. And the great thing was, it was a win right out the gate. So it's profitable in its second month, and so I wasn't really expecting that. I thought it was going to be more of a test- and- learn scenario. So now that we have a success, we'll probably roll it out to the top 10 or 15 stores where we have the space. Fantastic, a new dining choice. Neela Montgomery, thank you very much. It's wonderful to learn a little bit more about Crate and Barrel and good luck. Thank you.

Meet The Woman Modernizing Crate And Barrel

Leadership

Meet the woman who is modernizing a 56-year-old furniture chain by redesigning stores with surprise offerings and investing heavily in digital platforms and partnerships to transform the customer experience.