Selected employment experience / 2005–2013
Wayfair &
AllModern.
Building a brand. Building the business behind it.Many hats. Hands-on ownership. An intensive crash course in everything ecommerce.
BRAND BUILDING · COMMERCE · OPERATIONS
Among Wayfair’s first 50 employees · Founding team and early marketing lead, AllModern
Category management · International expansion · Operations product innovation
The work at a glance
Founding-team member of AllModern, with ownership across premium-brand partnerships and category economics. Later led global catalog teams and delivery programs connecting commercial growth with reliable operations.
Explore the work ↓The opportunity
I joined the business that became Wayfair in 2005, among its first 50 employees. Online furniture retail was still taking shape. We were building supplier relationships, bringing products online, earning customer trust and developing the operations to deliver on the promise.
AllModern brought a distinct opportunity: combine premium modern-design brands with CSN Stores’ growing ecommerce and dropship capabilities to create a new destination for design-conscious customers.
My role
Over nearly eight years, my responsibilities expanded from product marketing and AllModern’s founding team into marketing operations, international expansion, category P&L ownership and operations product innovation.
It was a scrappy environment where responsibility regularly extended beyond a job description. I wore many hats, moved between commercial and operational problems, and learned by doing. Testing ideas, failing fast when something did not work, and iterating became part of how I approached the business.
Launching AllModern and establishing its design credibility
As a founding-team member and early marketing lead, I developed the relationships, assortment and positioning behind a new modern-design business. I worked to bring brands including Herman Miller, Knoll, Kartell and Steelcase onto the platform, connecting their design credibility with a new way for customers to discover and buy their products.
This required persistence, an understanding of each brand’s positioning and a compelling case for how an emerging online retailer could represent its products.
Building relationships before the business was established
I represented the emerging business at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at New York’s Javits Center, engaging established design brands while our own concept was still being built. I had to make the opportunity tangible, earn confidence and turn conversations into the practical work of supplier onboarding and online merchandising.
Wearing the hats the business needed
My work crossed supplier relationships, product marketing, assortment, merchandising, pricing, product data and operations. As my scope grew to include category P&L ownership, I connected customer demand and supplier capabilities with the economics and execution of the business.
That breadth was an intensive crash course in everything ecommerce. I learned how decisions in one area affected the next, and how to stay close enough to the work to identify what needed to change.
Working scrappily, testing and iterating
In an early-stage business, many answers had to be developed through action. My approach was to get close to the problem, try a practical solution, learn from the response and improve it. When something did not work, the job was to recognize it quickly and adapt.
That experience built a working style I still use: take ownership, make progress with the resources available, and keep refining the approach as the evidence changes.
Supporting international expansion and catalog scale
I supported expansion into the UK and Germany and led offshore operational and product-data teams supporting a catalog spanning millions of SKUs. The work connected geographic growth with the less visible requirements behind it: organized product information, coordinated teams and repeatable operating processes.
Turning delivery into a stronger customer proposition
As Senior Manager of Operations Product Innovation, I led programs supporting guaranteed two-day delivery across more than 13,000 SKUs, with 99.5% on-time delivery. I partnered with engineering, UX and product teams to improve customer-facing experiences and internal operational systems, connecting the promise made on the website with the business’s ability to fulfill it.
What this brings to your business
Comfortable with ambiguity.
Ready to get to work.
My Wayfair and AllModern experience spans launching something new and building the discipline required to scale it. I built supplier relationships, developed assortments, owned category economics, led distributed teams and translated commercial priorities into operational and technology improvements.
I bring that same range to founders today: the ability to wear the hat the business needs, work with imperfect information, test an approach and keep improving it. I can move between strategy and the details because I learned the business by doing both.
Let’s talk about your business →Personal account of work performed as a Wayfair / AllModern employee. This was not a Hogan Consulting engagement and does not imply company endorsement.