The online buying experience is always evolving, so it’s table stakes for companies to be on their toes and ready to adjust when the market tells them to. Especially when the company we are chatting about today was founded in 1948! But being prepared to adjust and actually making it happen are two different things.
At DICK’S Sporting Goods, its customers, who are referred to as “athletes” are truly running the show, and Scott Casciato, who serves as the VP of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK’S, is the man who takes their needs and delivers a seamless experience to them via DICK’S ecommerce platform and throughout their 700 retail locations. And with their ecommerce sales increasing by 100% in 2020, Scott and his team have had to rethink many things like: how to scale up operations during peak seasons, why testing every iteration on the website is key, how to perfect the buy online pick up in-store experience, and determine how to take their athlete’s feedback and transform it into a funnel for change. This episode brought back a lot of nostalgia for me, thinking about the days of wandering the aisles of Dick’s in my high school days looking for a new lacrosse stick or soccer shoes. So it was fun to hear about how much has changed, and what investments the company has been making lately in creating the best customer experience possible for its athletes. Also, tune in to the end to hear Scott discuss the importance of great vendor relationships, how to future proof logistics, and the new in-store experiences that Dick’s is betting big on. Enjoy!
Main Takeaways:
- The House Don’t Fall When the Bones are Good: Having a strong foundation is the most impactful thing a company can do to prepare for surges in traffic that might come during peak seasons or after highly-successful campaigns. You have to do the work, go through the load tests and constantly be improving the technology stack because there are no shortcuts when you are creating a scalable platform that can withstand anything you throw at it. With last year being a perfect case study to reflect on, dive into the data and pivot if needed so you’re ready for the surge!
- Bet On It … Then Test It: Building out an online experience that works requires constant testing. You can plan for outcomes and bet on how you think people will react, but until you test it, you can’t ever be certain. As Scott mentioned, following the path the data reveals can be surprising and sometimes opposite of what your intuition is telling you.
- Experiences For The Future: The shopping experience is going to continue to change, and the strongest companies are planning for the future by paying attention to trends and then creating experiences — both in-person and online — that will drive engagement with consumers and build trust and confidence in the company’s authority in the space. By investing early into an experience or a specific market, you set yourself up as the expert in that specialized vertical and become the retailer of choice for consumers.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“The foundation that we built really allowed us to scale this year really quickly. We’ve been through all the load tests dynamics that you go through at holiday, we’ve built the technology stack that can support the traffic that we knew that we were going to get. We’ve been through the trials and tribulations of how to test, what to test, where to find the failure modes, and we’ve got really talented people that work on that stuff every day. We’ve built controls internally to manage where things might not be working appropriately and to be able to balance that. And as you think about what happened last year, specifically with curbside, it is the example of, it took us four years to become an overnight success.”
“When you look at the business on a day-to-day basis, all retailers, especially those that are public, are driving towards hard goals. We take a much longer-term view of things generally across the business, which is really refreshing and great. And it allows us to really make good decisions. When you think about what we’re measuring, how we’re investing… we’re making investments that are in the long-term interest of this brand and our customers. I think we’re a really large small business in that regard. And I think we’ve been able to energize our teammates to deliver that experience on the front line, but also make the investments on the back end of the house that allow us to do that.”
“We’ve gotten really good at testing and specifically on the site with how we’re thinking about the experience online… We’ve really developed a muscle around building an experience and testing it and iterating on it to figure out what’s really resonating with the athlete most. So everything from shopping experiences on our site all the way down through the conversion funnel to fulfillment, right? And speed and how we’re communicating with our athletes. So I think we’ve learned so much, and I’m constantly reminded when we get these, we all kind of make bets when we launch these tests like what do think’s going to happen? And I think I’m wrong so often, it’s so important to test.”
“Some of the tests that I think that we’ve run have been less intuitive. How products are set up on the site and how people search and find products, you would think that sometimes when you put the best or most visible sort of notable product of the top search results, that’s going to create a better conversion and sometimes it just doesn’t, right? So it’s really people come in with a lot of intent around how they’re shopping and sometimes what you think is going to happen just doesn’t because I think there’s so many different ways that people shop.”
“I historically thought that during, for example, Black Friday weekend speed was really important, right? I need it, I want to get it fast. And it turns out that weekend in particular speed is not the most important, getting what you want is the most important, right? So getting the deal is the most important. I think it makes sense because most people are thinking, I’ve got three or four weeks that this thing can get to me. I’m not super concerned to get it next week, just to make sure that I get it. So that’s one that we adjust in terms of making sure that we’re really being honest with how we’re going to fulfill.”
[On managing the fulfillment process] “Having all of these different nodes that are moving product out each and every day really helps mitigate the risk. And so it also helps us at peak time, it helps us staff up and get stuff out. And we’ve built a really sophisticated way to manage the way that orders are routing. So we’re able to identify where we might have congestion points, for example, and try to proactively avoid those as we see those things happening, right? So we can move orders to one node or another, or block a node if we’ve got a weather issue or something, or we’ve got, in the fall when you have hurricanes in Florida or in the Southeast, we’re able to really change the way that our orders route to get product out of different places that aren’t having those issues.”
Mentions:
Bio:
Scott Casciato is the VP, Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK’S Sporting Goods. Prior to joining DICKS, Scott served as the Vice President, Service at ModCloth, where he helped build and scale one of the fastest-growing ecommerce companies in the country.
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Transcript:
Stephanie:
Hey everyone and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce, this is your host, Stephanie Postles, ceo@mission.org. Today on the show we have Scott Casciato, vice president of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK’S Sporting Goods. Scott, welcome.
Scott:
Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
Stephanie:
I’m really excited to have you. So I have this deep love of DICK’S Sporting Goods because there was a location in my hometown, eastern shore of Maryland, which I feel no one even knows where that is on a map. But back in high school, I would go almost every week and just kind of peruse through the aisles and look for new lacrosse sticks and shoes. And I didn’t really have much money, but I remember just loving the experience and being there probably for three hours with friends, just kind of hanging out. So I was so excited when I saw you guys on the lineup where I was, “Yes, something I know well.”
Scott:
Was that your sport growing up, lacrosse?
Stephanie:
Lacrosse and soccer.
Scott:
Nice, nice. That’s great.
Stephanie:
Deep love there. So I’d love to hear a bit about how you got into this industry, because you had a funny quote where you said, “I don’t know how I really ended up here,” and I’d love to start there, how did you become the vice-president of Omni Channel Fulfillment & Athlete Service at DICK’S Sporting Goods?
Scott:
It goes back… I spent the early part of my career in software, supply chain software, and kind of even on the sales side, then moved into the operational side and then got into management consulting and did a tour duty in the management consulting ranks. And I got introduced to the founder and co-founder of a company called ModCloth that I was with previously. And they were looking for somebody to run fulfillment and customer service. And I just said, I don’t know anything about, I mean, I know supply chain, but I don’t really know anything about direct consumer fulfillment at the time. And the founder of that business was, “Yeah, I know, but you’re smart enough to figure it out.” Right?
Scott:
So and I have a bent for really high growth, high speed businesses, and it just kind of the way I grew up in my career and that was a really great opportunity. So I did that and I spent five years there scaling that business really significantly, hyper growth phase and it was awesome. I learned a ton about fulfillment and service. And then about five years in, I had this great opportunity to come to DICK’S. And the thing that was really interesting to me is, the question was how can we build a great service organization for DICK’S Sporting Goods? I’m like, “Wow, if I could do it at a much smaller company, what would it be like to come to such a great brand and try to do it here?” And and we did, right?
Scott:
And so we spent a lot of time building that for the first four years of my time at DICK’S and then had an opportunity to take fulfillment on. So it’s interesting that I have some of the aspects of that, that previous role that I had only, a scale that is much larger and just been very, very fortunate to be with such a great business. And it’s been awesome to work with the team at DICK’S.
Stephanie:
Okay. So you are leaving ModCloth, I mean, that’s like strictly ecommerce and then you’re coming to this, I would say very omni-channel company. I mean, you have over 700 locations across the US, quickly moving to digital, at least over the past couple of years. Tell me a bit about what that transition was like?
Scott:
I mean, and at the same time we were really building… We were just starting our transformation to building our own technology. So it was a massive… It was basically rebuilding what we had already had from an ecommerce business perspective. And I think fundamentally a lot of the things that I came in and the tools that I had were relevant, right? How you scale a business. I mean, that stuff is somewhat the same. I think one of the biggest changes was or a few of them were one, just having more teammates that knew a lot of stuff that could really help and drive the initiatives and the progress forward, whereas in a much smaller company, right? It’s you’re wearing so many different hats and you’re doing so many different things here.
Scott:
It was a shock to me to say, oh, there’s somebody that can help with reporting or data analytics and help us with these answers. So that was awesome. And then I just think we were all learning, right? So we were learning what we needed. We were learning what we wanted to be in customer service, we were learning what we wanted to have in terms of digital capabilities. We were learning how to run that business as we were deploying new technology, right? So how do you do pricing online appropriately? I remember a lot of conversation. How do you display things? What’s the right… How do you check? What’s the right checkout flow? And then we had, as all businesses do, you have to make a lot of trade-offs because it may not be the most elegant thing right at the beginning, but we just got to get it up and running, right?
Scott:
And so having those conversations can be tough, right? Everybody, and especially our business, we just have this DNA where we just relentlessly improve, right? And so it’s tough to launch something and know that it’s not the perfect solution, right, and then making sure that you go back and you iterate and you keep going, right? We just did that for a long time. But it was a lot of fun and it’s really tiring, but it was a lot of fun.
Stephanie:
So that’s amazing. What was one of the maybe projects or things that you felt most strongly about that you got maybe the most pushback on that people are like, nope, that’s not a good idea?
Scott:
I would say, well, we had a lot of conversation about how we were going to set up, for example, in my world, we were going to set up customer service. And we continue to evolve that. I think it wasn’t that people were saying it’s not how we want to do it, I think it was really more what I was saying about, we want to own more of that customer service experience, right? So we had always been outsourced. And as we moved, as we did the transition, and our previous outsourcer did a great job. And as we move to the next wave of that evolution, we decided we really need to keep an outsourced view in some form or fashion of customer service, but we really wanted to try to start to build our own, right, because we were, “Wonder what we could do on our own?”
Scott:
So this conversation about, [inaudible] how do you scale for the hockey stick effect that we have at holiday, right, while maintaining the great experience that we have? And we want to in source, but then we want to scale a holiday. We just had a lot of spirited debate about that. So that was part of that conversation.
Stephanie:
Very cool. And so are you guys kind of now balanced approach when it comes to customer service, depending on what’s incoming and how to route it?
Scott:
Exactly. Right. So we have a team of internal service people that take various types of contacts, and then we have a few outsourced partners that we work extremely closely with. And we balanced the volume across there. And then at holiday time, we scale up across all. And so it’s turned out to be… And we’re measuring that experience relentlessly. So it’s been a great symbiotic relationship, I think, across all three of those.
Stephanie:
Well, now that you’ve touched on holiday, I do kind of want to go into peak season and maybe talking about, I mean, you mentioned that you went through this big technology evolution and implementing new things to try and get to where you are now, what did that look like, especially when it comes to preparing for big surges? I mean, I saw your ecommerce I think went up 100% in 2020 or something, so you guys have had massive growth. What did it look like behind the scenes to prepare for that plus peak demand?
Scott:
I think it’s been this… We’re very happy that we started when we did, right? when you think about what happened over the past 12 months and what has happened in the ecommerce world and the growth that everybody has seen, we’re fortunate that we started four years ago down this path. Because the foundation that we built really allowed us to scale this year really quickly. We’ve been through all the load tests dynamics that you go through at holiday, we’ve built the technology stack that can support the traffic that we knew that we were going to get. We’ve been through the trials and tribulations of how to test, what to test, where to find the failure modes, and we’ve got really talented people that work on that stuff every day. We’ve built controls internally to manage where things might not be working appropriately and to be able to balance that.
Scott:
And as you think about what happened last year, specifically with curbside, it is the example of, it took us four years to become an overnight success type of situation where [inaudible].
Stephanie:
[inaudible].Scott:
Right.
Stephanie:
[inaudible]. Who knew?Scott:
Totally. So I think it was scaling for holiday. We scale every year for holiday. I think last year was one that we didn’t quite know, nobody knew what was really going to happen. But I think we over-prepared, and we executed an extremely successful holiday because we just had every… It was so great to see everybody so engaged in solving that challenge and really thinking through every aspect of what might happen in holiday from fulfillment through the web traffic through customer service. And we really came together as a team and figured out all the ways that things could go right and wrong and covered it all. And we had a great holiday season because of it.
Stephanie:
That’s great. So what areas do you think businesses are maybe under-prepared? Is it in the fulfillment piece? Is it in customer service? What are some of the top pillars that you guys covered down on that maybe some people might not be fully prepared for?
Scott:
I think that we do a great job in measuring and really paying attention to the athlete experience across all measures, right? I think we’ve pivoted from, I think historically in most businesses have been in a place where you manage internally, right? You’re managing things like conversion or traffic or speed to athlete and things like that, and to be the customer, traditional service levels and customer service. I think those are all important, but I think if you take the outside in view, right, and you’re looking at things like how are we measuring the experience, what’s happening to that customer when they’re out there and they’re buying from us? But are they buying from us again, right, as an articulation of their commitment to the brand?
Scott:
And then how do we influence that purchase behavior? And how do you think expansively about that in terms of not only the shopping experience online that they have, but the post-purchase, the delivery experience, the customer service experience, how are you really measuring that data and getting good information and causal information to figure out how you can drive really great lifetime value? And I think we do that and we’re really starting to do that really well across our business. And we’ve gotten so much support for that outside in view, across our leadership team as well that it’s become a real engine of thinking across our teams.
Stephanie:
I mean, it seems like that holistic view is really hard for a lot of companies to get to though. I mean, I hear about a lot of companies trying to consolidate their tech stack, marketing stack, put it all in one area that things actually are connected and you can have attribution and you can see the LTV. How do you guys think about having that view that allows you to make decisions?
Scott:
I mean, I think that it’s philosophical at some level and don’t get me wrong, it’s hard because I think when you look at the business on a day-to-day basis, all retailers, right, especially those that are public are driving towards hard goals. We take a much longer term view of things generally across the business, which is really refreshing and great. And so it allows us to really make good decisions. When you think about what we’re measuring, how we’re investing, we’re not investing, I mean, obviously we care about the quarter and we care about the year, right? Don’t get me wrong, but I think we’re making investments that are in the long-term interest of this brand and our customers. I think, we’re a really large small business in that regard. And I think we’ve been able to energize our teammates to deliver that experience on the front line, but also make the investments on the back end of the house that allow us to do that.
Stephanie:
And I see you guys have been making some big tech investments. I saw, I think Commerce Hub, you did a multi-year deal with them. And I saw something about the vendor partner program that you have. We can kind of plug and play into a bunch of vendors and have an endless aisle. And I was, wow, that could be game changing to be able to pivot quickly and offer, get to the consumer, right, wherever they are, whatever they need, especially in times right now where it’s very uncertain. So it seems tech is a big piece of that, towards that investment philosophy right now.
Scott:
It is.
Stephanie:
How are you figuring out what you need and how to put the proper pieces in place?
Scott:
I think we have over 500 vendors in our drop-ship program. And connecting to it has them, and understanding what the inventory is, and getting them to send us the right inventory, and then order information back and forth in real time is incredibly important, which is why we made the investment in Commerce Hub, it has been a great partner for us for a few years now. And it’s easy to use. So I think that’s that was great for that aspect of our business. I think our vendor relationships are super strong and we’re fortunate that we have them because it allows us to be really creative in the way that we go to market.
Scott:
And I think we’re also continuing to build great brands internally, right? And so if you think about, we just recently launched our first brand and it’s been a great success so far. It’s great stuff. We had got our [inaudible], if you haven’t tried it, you should.
Stephanie:
I haven’t. [inaudible].
Scott:
That’s awesome. It’s a partnership that we did with Carrie Underwood about six years ago, and it’s quickly become our number two selling women’s line.
Stephanie:
Wow. That’s awesome.
Scott:
And then we launched our DSG brand a few years ago, or a year and a half ago, which is really a value-driven brand and with very high quality, right? So when you think about the continuum of our brands, we have very specific and different strategies and they’re complex depending on what we’re trying to achieve within a given brand or category within that brand. But I think we’re fortunate that we’ve built such great lasting relationships, because again, I think it gets back to, we take a longer term view of things and we really, I think we treat our vendors as partners.
Stephanie:
Yep. So key, especially in this industry where so much is happening, so much is changing quick and people can get burned really quickly too.
Scott:
Right, right, right.
Stephanie:
It also seems being able to plug into a vendor system like that is important, especially around… It seems a lot of companies are doing private label type of things and launching their own brands. I mean, it’s not fully reliant now on the big brands and being able to have that flexibility to pull people into your ecosystem that maybe could have never sold at a DICK’S Sporting Goods before, that seems amazing and really allows access in a way that wasn’t here maybe five years ago.
Scott:
It really does. We’re always looking for those bets to make with new and upcoming brands. And our vendor director job channel is a great way to sort of test some of these things. So that’s definitely, you hit the nail on the head for us. It’s a strategy that we actively have and it’s nice because my team who manages that part of our business we’ll work with our merchants to say, “What could our strategy be with the supplier or partner X?” Right? Some of these folks are small businesses that can’t handle our volumes. So if we buy a little bit more, we can test some of them or we can test it in the vendor direct channel. So it’s been a real tool for us.
Stephanie:
Testing’s interesting too. I could see kind of doing AB test quickly and see if people like this product and if they like this one more, okay, here’s what we’re going to go. Maybe we’ll circle back with you next year in a much less risky way to bring people in.
Scott:
We’ve gotten really good at testing and specifically on the site with how we’re thinking about the experience online. And we test almost everything these days, right? I mean, there’s some stuff that I think is just go do things, some go do things that we do. But I think generally speaking, we’ve really developed a muscle around building an experience and testing it and iterating on it to figure out what’s really resonating with the athlete most. So everything from shopping experiences on our site all the way down through the conversion funnel to fulfillment, right? And speed and how we’re communicating with our athletes.
Scott:
So I think we’ve learned so much, and I’m like constantly reminded when we get these, we all kind of make bets, right, when we launched these tests like what do think’s going to happen? And I think I’m wrong so often, it’s so important to test.
Stephanie:
Yep.
Scott:
Good. Because what you think the consumer is going to do they just don’t. And even when you think about surveys, I think there’s this everybody lies concept, right? And it’s true…
Stephanie:
And depends on what state they’re in or where they’re at in the day.
Scott:
Right, right. So I think it’s just so invaluable to us.
Stephanie:
And we do surveys on the show sometimes just to see who do you want on, and how am I doing? And it’s, well, it’s depends on probably where that person is, if they’re happy, if they’re sad, it could be different depending on the place that they’re in.
Scott:
For sure.
Stephanie:
So what’s an example of a test that you ran where you were so sure, you’re like this one’s going to win, everyone was kind of on board with one scenario winning and then the results come back and everyone’s wrong?
Scott:
That’s a good question. We just ran one recently that I did win on, which is the one that was top of mind for me coming into this. Let me talk about that one for a second. So the one we launched on same-day, we’re trying to figure out what are our athletes appetite is for same-day services. And we did definitely get a lot of engagement on the test. I kind of thought it was going to be more than it was, but it was still interesting, right? So I think that’s something that we’re going to continue to have conversation on.
Stephanie:
They wanted it, the majority of the [inaudible]?
Scott:
I think they did. It wasn’t as much as I would’ve thought, really.
Stephanie:
Because that’s an interesting one that some people on the show said, people just want to know when it’s getting there, they’re okay if it’s not same day, versus if it’s more of a commodity product, you better get it to them the same day. And to kind of seems it depends what it is and how much delayed gratification someone can have on it, it depends, it seems.
Scott:
Yeah. Some of the tests that I think that we’ve run that have been less intuitive, I just think how products are set up on the site and how people search, right, and find products like you would think that sometimes when you put the best or most visible sort of notable product of the top search results, that’s going to create a better conversion and sometimes it just doesn’t, right? So it’s really people come in I think with a lot of intent around how they’re shopping and sometimes what you think is going to happen just doesn’t because I think there’s so many different ways that people shop.
Stephanie:
Yep. How do you think about shifting the website either, from what you learned from last year or when you’re approaching peak season, are there certain key elements that you adjust knowing that maybe the consumer’s are in a very different mindset than they were at any other time in history probably?
Scott:
Yeah. I think I can speak more to the way that we think about fulfillment in this regard. I always, I historically had thought, that’s another example of what I thought was going to happen. I historically thought that during, for example, Black Friday weekend speed was really important, right? I need it, I want to get it fast. And it turns out that weekend in particular speed is not the most important, getting what you want is the most important, right? So getting the deal is the most important. I think it makes sense because most people are thinking, I’ve got three or four weeks that this thing can get to me. I’m not super concerned to get it next week, just to make sure that I get it, right?
Scott:
So that’s one that we adjust in terms of making sure that we’re really being honest with how we’re going to fulfill. Thankfully we’ve got an extraordinarily resilient fulfillment network and we do really well in speed and but historically had been surprised as we’ve really measured that one over Black Friday weekend. It’s really about getting the deal, not the speed.
Stephanie:
Versus Christmas when everyone’s probably last minute shopping, it’s probably opposite.
Scott:
Very different.
Stephanie:
Okay.
Scott:
Very different. And as you get into December and you get through towards the ground cutoffs and you get, depending on what’s happening, the speed becomes a real issue. Last year was was nuts. I mean, FedEx was running commercials, right? They talked about the speed or buy early. And we definitely saw a little bit of a shift in terms of how people were thinking about buying.
Stephanie:
So how are you building up that resilience fulfillment network that you mentioned to be able to basically say I can offer anyone the endless aisle, we have unlimited of these, in one moment and then be, okay, now next month got to go, got to be there in three days or less type of scenario?
Scott:
I think you mentioned it when we kicked off the show, it was we’ve got over 700 fulfillment locations when you think about our store network, which is a blessing for us because it allows us to really, not only be closer to our athlete and get things there faster, but also allows for a lot of flexibility when… It’s just load balancing, right? When you think about a business that has a couple of three, in my past one fulfillment center, when that thing gets backed up, or you have a labor problem or you have whatever the case, would be trucks that don’t show up on the receiving dock or the outgoing dock, you’re kind of backed up, right?.
Scott:
And so while that definitely happens across everybody’s network, including ours, having all of these different nodes that are moving product out each and every really helps mitigate the risk. And so it also helps us, at peak time, it helps us staff up and get stuff out. And we have we’ve built a really sophisticated way to manage the way that orders are routing. So we’re able to identify where we might have congestion points, for example, and try to proactively avoid those as we see those things happening, right? So we can move orders to one node or another, or block a node if we’ve got a weather issue or something, or we’ve got, in the fall when you have hurricanes in Florida, right, or in the Southeast, we’re able to really change the way that our orders route to get product out of different places that aren’t having those issues.
Stephanie:
And is that kind of done in the background where it’s looking at all these different inputs and then kind of making decisions that you can come in and adjust if you need to, but it’s already routing it for you in the background?
Scott:
Yeah. So part of it’s automated part of it’s people, right? And it’s still a lot of people, right, washing the switches each day. But we’ve got a great team of people that are communicating, we’re communicating out of our stores to my team and fulfillment. We’re communicating from my team into stores and we’re using the technology that we’ve built to really manage the capacity and the inventory across the entire network.
Stephanie:
It seems that is so important too you when you essentially have two business units when it comes to fulfillment, you’ve got your store locations with one set of data, inventory is probably very hard to track because it’s always getting grabbed, it’s always getting shipped out, and then you have just maybe a fulfilment center that’s a whole different beast probably. How do you get to that consolidate view? Is that part of the backend tech that’s kind of looking at it at a higher level, treating it all as one?
Scott:
It is and it’s definitely complex for the reasons that you noted. And it creates, sometimes it can compromise how close we can get to the athlete if we think we’ve got a unit in Austin, Texas and we actually don’t. The fortunate part is instead of canceling that order on you or that unit on you, it’s going to go to maybe it’ll go to a Dallas store, right? And we can still stay pretty close to you and get it to you. And we’re also trying to look at things like, how do we keep packages together? Of course, anybody that’s listening to this that manages freight will say, yep, really important from a cost perspective. And frankly, even from, as I mentioned earlier, that athlete experience, people want to get one box, right? I don’t want to order three or four different things and get three or four different boxes. And sometimes that’s unavoidable, but we’re trying everything we can to not let that happen.
Stephanie:
Oh, blessing.
Scott:
Totally, right?
Stephanie:
I get, one company I’m not going to mention their name, they will send a can of soup, anything a bone broth. I mean, it’s in these little bags and they just come one at a time. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I just would have rather just gone to the store and picked it up myself than getting random of one item at a time.”
Scott:
It’s so wonderful when the customer experience need and the business need align, right? So when you think about, nobody wants to ship more packages to you, right? We want to get it to you, we want to get to you fast and we want to get it to you in one package. And that’s also a great experience for you. It’s the same thing we talk about with customer service, which is a traditional metric that people manage as average handle time, right? How long are [inaudible]? And I’m so careful, we collectively are so careful with this metric because it can be so disastrous to the teammate that’s on the other end of the phone if they think they’re being managed to a handle time, right? I don’t want to just get you off the phone, however, and you need to use it for all kinds of different scheduling and making sure you have enough people on the team.
Scott:
But what’s really aligned is generally people want to get to an answer pretty quickly also, right? I want to have an efficient, valuable use of my time. I want to get to an answer and then I want to move on with my day. So that’s another example of where if we can do it right and align those desires, we’re going to create an awesome experience.
Stephanie:
The unintended consequences, pizzas is such a tricky thing with thinking about designing roles and KPIs. I mean, I’m doing it right now. I’m thinking about sales and building a sales team and being like, oh wait, this might incentivize bad behavior.
Scott:
You got to really think about it, right?
Stephanie:
You just think really strategically about it.
Scott:
The outcome or the impact is very different than the intent in some cases.
Stephanie:
Yep. Are there any external inputs right now that you think companies aren’t preparing for? I’m thinking about the algorithms that are kind of running everything behind the scenes when it comes to your fulfillment and things like that. Is there anything that you guys are watching now that maybe you weren’t watching a couple of years ago and letting it help influence how things are routed or how things are kind of being redirected, anything like that?
Scott:
I mean, I think we’re constantly trying to get to be more precise, and we’re very fortunate that if everything goes right, we can get you an order really, really quickly. So we’re really trying to pay attention to, where are things not going perfectly and we’ve called this thing the perfect order, what’s our perfect order, right? And how do we get more of those? So we’re spending a lot of time thinking about how we can perfect our fulfillment network. And I mean, it is, as you can imagine, just an infinite number of variables that dictate how this thing goes. But we’re working a lot on that. I do not think that…
Stephanie:
[inaudible] like local stuff, because that’s something that kind of came to mind. You’re paying attention to weather and higher level things are you down in the weeds of, okay, well there’s a festival this week here so that means… Is it that [inaudible].Scott:
It can be. I mean, for example, when we’re doing a hot market event, so Super Bowl, NCAA Tournament, they’re national events, but their inventories largely local, right? So we’re really paying attention to what the traffic is doing and the inventory is doing it at those local levels for sure.
Stephanie:
I’d love to talk about events a bit because I know that’s a focus is the athlete experience online and in person as well. And I saw that you guys are opening more retail locations. You’re opening, I think I saw a golf center, I soccer center, I mean, these full on experiences. And I’d love to hear how you guys are thinking about that.
Scott:
I’m glad you mentioned that we’re really proud. We just opened recently the House of Sport up in Victor, New York, which is an expression of what we think the future can be for DICK’S Sporting Goods. And it’s really an experiential retail location. So you can go in there, obviously we’ve got golf simulators and we’ve got fitting in there. We’ve got rock walls to climb. We’ve got an outdoor fitness field where we’re doing things and we’re engaging the community in different ways. So we’re running clinics and figuring out how we can get local teams into their… Engaging in the community in this way has been a part of our brand since 1948, right? So I think, if you read the story of DICK’S and how we were involved in the Binghamton New York community, when the business was founded, it’ll give you a sense for why this is important to us.
Scott:
And we just believe that, we say it all the time, we believe that sports makes people better. So how do we think about engaging in the community where we’re at? We’ve done this forever in community marketing, and you see how we donate equipment to local teams and so forth. This is kind of another evolution of that, where we think we can make a big impact, we can change the way that people think about retail. And I think it’ll quickly get to how do we merge the online and the brick and mortar or traditional retail experience? So I think that’s a place that is really exciting to us right now.
Stephanie:
I was just thinking about, how do you create, you have a view where you know this person came in to this event and they were using the golf simulator, and they really liked this club. And then they either bought in store or maybe four weeks later they ended up online and bought the one that they were using? Do you feel you’re moving in a direction where you’re going to have that viewpoint? And it’s not a hard time to get there.
Scott:
Yeah, I think we’re getting there. I think we’re really focused on data and analytics, right? And so I think our ability to stitch together these experiences, we’re building that muscle. I don’t think that we’re totally there yet, but we’ve got really smart people that are thinking about this. And I think we’re moving in that direction because that’s the key. We’re not really worried about what channel you buy in, right? I think it’s more about, are we the retailer of choice for you, right? And however that experience, the experience that we can build for that, it’s important to measure it because then I think it unlocks the investment in the targeted areas that are going to drive more of that for our athletes. So I think that’s where we’re really focused.
Stephanie:
Have you thought about creating essentially kind of a guide shop, but you have the soccer experience or something, and then just a small shop where maybe you can look at a few other things, but then essentially you’re going back online to order whatever you played with and got to experiment with, or are you doing full on retail location as always, and then often this area we’re doing our experience center?
Scott:
We haven’t done really pop up experiences, guide shop experiences like that. We’re moving more towards, how do we create a more scaled experiential experience in store and then how do we measure that in terms of who might go online to buy.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I love that. I’m excited to see… I need to visit one of those stores, especially the soccer one. I mean, I don’t know what it’s going to be happening there, but I want to be there.
Stephanie:
I want to hear, which I feel you’ll have a great answer for is what are you all most excited about right now over the next one to two years? What are you most passionate about?
Scott:
We’re excited about a lot of things. And as usual, we have a very full plate. So I think things that we’ve already deployed that we’ll continue to refine, things like our curbside program or a buy and pickup in store program for online, we’re really excited about that. That’s got a long runway of improvement, enhancement, and creativity that’s going to be placed into that program. We are really excited about this merger of… I’m really excited about the merger of stores and online specifically around becoming a trusted advisor to our athletes. So if you think about the breadth of the teammates that we have, and when you walk into our stores or you talk to our people online, everybody’s got a passion, right? Your passion is lacrosse and soccer.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Scott:
How do we think about unlocking that potential, right, in terms of then being able to help our customer, whether that customer is buying first player pair of soccer cleats for their son, to getting ready to play club soccer, to getting ready to go off and play soccer at a D1 level or beyond, right? So how do we look at that continuum of expertise and really become that trusted advisor, both online and in our stores? And I think that is incredibly exciting venture. And we do it well today. I think there’s an opportunity to do it even better. So we’re really excited about that. We’re really excited about the assortment, right, that we’re going to continue to launch online. I think it’s going to be differentiated. I think it’s going to keep our position in the market really strong.
Scott:
So I think the product that we put in there, the expertise that we put in there is going to be differentiated in the market, right? And that I think is probably more incremental and more incremental expression to the core business. And then we’re going to continue to press. Game Changer has been a great business for us for years. And that team is great. And they continue to build a technology that service the baseball market. But we’re always looking for different ways that we can expand or innovate across the industry.
Stephanie:
I love that, you know what? We need like, what do you do after college? I always think about that and I’m like, I loved playing sports. But then you start working, and then you have kids, and then you’re, I still want to play, but how do I get back into it? And something is missing there, Scott. [inaudible].
Scott:
No, but I love… So that’s who we want. That’s another sort of persona that we really want to love to serve in our stores. Because I’m one of them.
Stephanie:
I’m your person.
Scott:
Right.
Stephanie:
We’re the people.
Scott:
We’re the people. And I think what we want to be able to do, I love talking about this. I think in our stores and online, our ability to listen and inspire, right, how do we help you meet that goal, right? “Hey, I’m doing a couch to 5k first time. I’m starting to get active.” Or, for me, the 5’8 guy that always had a dream of the NBA that never came to fruition because my vertical is about that high. I still play. I want to make sure that I can get all the gear that I need to be competitive, right, or to achieve my personal best.
Scott:
So I love the fact that we can really positively impact people’s lives in that way. And I think we want to make… I would love to make sure personally that anybody that walks into our store and knows that we’re not just a sporting goods retailer, right? I think we want to make sure that we’re helping, we want to facilitate you achieving your dreams. And then we talk a lot about that internally. So if we can translate or transmit that feeling to our athletes, I think that’s really powerful.
Stephanie:
And also makes me think about creating custom leagues too, where it’s, this is a different kind of league. It’s not the traditional school. It’s not even people creating their own volleyball leagues. It’s we are a part of this. We’re making sure that this can happen for people who struggle to even find those networks. I mean, I know back when I was in DC, I looked for where’s some other women who play lacrosse? I don’t really want to play with guys who are going to be checking me and I count find it, super hard to find. I mean, it’s easy to find some sports in a community setting, but it’s very hard to find people in certain other sports settings.
Scott:
You’re right. There’s a social, I don’t want to, careful to say social network, but there is this idea of how do I plug into people that are me within a certain geographical area, right? That would be interesting. That’s really interesting. Thanks for that one. Let me…
Stephanie:
Take it back to leadership. We just need a parenting kit. It’s, here’s everything you need so that we can go play our sports and then your kids are entertained. They get many lacrosse sticks. You go there and then I’ll go off on my own so I can actually play, give me the kid.
Scott:
I love that idea.
Stephanie:
I want to think like such parents. Anyone who’s not a parent is probably, “What are y’all talking about right now?”
Scott:
What are you talking about? Yep.
Stephanie:
Yep. All right. So let’s shift over to the lightning round. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?
Scott:
I think so.
Stephanie:
Okay. So I’m sad, I haven’t asked this yet and don’t know this, but what is your favorite sport?
Scott:
Basketball.
Stephanie:
Oh, nice.
Stephanie:
And who’s your favorite sports team?
Scott:
It’s always been the Chicago Bulls since back in the day, which is probably blasted me because I live in Pittsburgh. So to not say football and the Pittsburgh Steelers is a problem.
Stephanie:
You’d probably get egged.
Scott:
Probably. But they’re close second.
Stephanie:
That’s good. What is the nicest thing anyone’s done for you?
Scott:
Oh, wow. I’m going to struggle. I’m going to go to my kids. I think my kids being, this is going to sound so cheesy, but it’s so serious. The way that my kids treat other people with respect and kindness, I think is the thing that comes to mind for me first. And I know that’s probably not the answer that you would normally get.
Stephanie:
Nope, I like it.
Scott:
To me that’s pretty important. So I’m really proud of them. And I think that’s probably the best thing that somebody could do for me.
Stephanie:
I love that. There’s so much you can learn from kids. I think about that all the time. So I’m the person who is here for those cheesy kind of kid answers. You’re in the right space. What’s one thing you don’t know that you wish you understood better?
Scott:
American history comes to mind?
Stephanie:
That’s a good one.
Scott:
I don’t think that’s on topic, but that’s the first one that comes to mind.
Stephanie:
When you want to feel more joy, what do you do?
Scott:
It’s going to sound crazy. I tell people, thank you.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Scott:
Right. So I just believe that there’s a lot… I get a lot of energy from being grateful, right? And so that’s what I do. If I’m really feeling a little down or if I’m really stressed or some of the times the way that I work out and I get the endorphins mode going, that’s one way to do it, and the other way is to be grateful for things. So I feel that’s the way I get a lot of energy.
Stephanie:
I love that. All right. And then the last one, I mean, it seems you guys are very much ahead on a lot of things within the ecosystem. What do you do to stay on top of the trends? Are you watching other companies? Are you reading things, what are you doing to stay on top?
Scott:
I think it’s a combination of experiencing and reading. I don’t read nearly enough, it’s hard, right? There’s so much the content that comes out and not enough time. So I’m trying to just experience things out in the wild right? I’m talking to a lot of people, whether it’s parents at a game or if it’s just my own experiences online, and I’m trying to translate that to what’s happening and why companies would do things a certain way. And then my team is doing the same thing. So I think we’re trying to stay close. We’re trying to stay close that way and certainly reading and engaging in conversations like this also kind of help.
Stephanie:
Good. That’s awesome. Well, cool. Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining us. It was really fun to hear all about what you guys are up to. Where can people find more about DICK’S Sporting Goods and find you?
Scott:
I think www.dickssportinggoods.com. For the story of Public Lands and Golf Galaxy, and you can find me at LinkedIn, on LinkedIn.
Stephanie:
Amazing. Thank you so much.
Scott:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a great time.
