Personalization

Saks Fifth Ave | Sr Product Manager

I led product development for two focus areas. One is the customer-facing path to purchase on the web and mobile web to grow eCommerce revenue and capabilties for Saks Fifth Ave & Saks Off Fifth, including search & relevance, recommendations, filter/sorting, and checkout. Second is personalized shopping services on iMessage and iOS app. The vision was to deliver one-of-a-kind digital shopping experiences, featuring an expertly curated assortment of fashion and highly personalized customer service.

Overview

Saks Fifth Avenue is a subsidiary of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), a Canadian retail conglomerate. Saks Fifth Ave is a luxury department store chain known for its high-end fashion, accessories, and beauty products. It offers a curated selection of upscale brands and designer goods to affluent shoppers.

Problem

Shopping behavior has evolved into showrooming and webrooming rapidly where online purchases are growing while in-store transactions are declining. Retail store associates are contending with an shrinking pie and idleness increasingly. Physical storefronts are no longer the first touchpoint where shoppers start their buying journey. How about we redefine store spaces as experiential spaces where in-person appointments, wardrobe consulting, and curated try-on’s happen?

Goal

Leverage styling expertise of in-house brand managers to radically personalize and humanize shopping experiences and scale personalization digitally

Methodology

Features

Customers can:

• make requests & matched with a Saks personal stylist nearby
• schedule in-store or virtual appointments
• get personal recommendations
• purchase from exclusive designers and brands

Link to details

Outcome

Spearheaded ecommerce checkout and personalization shopping service for Saks Fifth Ave & Saks Off Fifth, reaching 20M users.

1. Improved conversion rate by 6% and $7M+ revenue.

2. Led vision, strategy, and software development for personal shopper service,
grew revenue to $1.35M.

3. Shipped recommender system to monetize traffic and merchandise mix models
 to improve relevance and purchase intent.

4. Drafting and editing iterations of user testing, wireframes, and architecture
for final customer-facing MVP. Guided marketing content, sales enablement and
press release (PR). Go-to-market (GTM) strategy and product launch in 8 cities.

5. Establish regular stakeholder, line of business (LOB), and operations updates
to the Executive Team in Ireland and USA.

6. Partnered with SVP of Product to shape culture: hired and coached PMs to
cross-pollinate learnings and best practices.