Episode Details

Main Takeaways:

• In the final episode of this season of Step by Step, Brian and Phillip are joined by Dan Nephew, the Director of System Operations at Lovepop.
• Lovepop offers robust customization options for its products and needs a rich tech stack to manage the fulfillment of such unique orders.
• How can you best use data to inform your business decisions and what technology can aid in your decision making?
• There is no single, silver-bullet application that will handle all your tech requirements, so invest in applications that are flexible and can grow along with your business.

What is Lovepop?: A Quick Introduction:

• Lovepop started about five years ago with a mission of creating one billion magical moments.
• These magical moments are achieved through a laser-cut version of kirigami, an art form that was discovered by Artpop founders Wombi Rose and John Wise on a Harvard Business School trip to Vietnam.
• Every month, Lovepop comes out with new designs and new products.
• Dan started at Lovepop as a consultant, and he fell in love with the company and joined full time about a year ago.
• Before Lovepop, Dan was an industrial engineer for big companies, and his expertise was helping a business scale without scaling the size of the business.

The Current Lovepop Sales Strategy: A Glimpse Behind the Curtain:

• Lovepop started with a small retail venture, quickly turned to online sales, and now online is by far the most significant segment of what Lovepop sells.
• There are very few players in the industry that can do what Lovepop can do when it comes to personalized creations that are designed online.
• There is a growing retail footprint that started in the North East, and Lovepop even has a licensing deal with Disney.
• Lovepop is now starting to figure out how to spread magical moments amongst other providers through strategic partnerships that will carry their same message.

Creating Magical Moments: The Lovepop Tech Stack:

• On the frontend, Lovepop uses Shopify as its eCommerce platform, but it does not provide all of the customizations that Lovepop needs.
• Once the customer places the order, the data is sent to Brightpearl, Lovepop's inventory and order management system.
• Lovepop has several different fulfillment options depending on the order, and Lovepop can turn an order around in less than a day.
• All of the product that is sourced by Lovepop is sourced from an owned subsidiary in Vietnam.
• Lovepop's design team is located in the United States, and they use a mix of non-software and software solutions from Adobe.

A Modern Balancing Act: Combining Art and Engineering:

• There is not a single silver bullet piece of software that solves all of a business's operational and logistics needs, so a wide array of solutions are required to be successful in today's eCommerce climate.
• Lovepop has several analytics tools (some they built themselves) that they use for forecasting, EDI (electronic data interchange) solutions that bridge disparate systems, and several financial systems, to name a few.
• For their homegrown systems, Lovepop has designed forecasting and planning systems, routing logic, order placement, and various scheduling automations.
• What systems can you brand design in-house that would fit your business than out of the box solutions?

Addressing Variation: Tackling Seasonality:

• Due to the seasonal nature of Lovepop's busy periods, systems put in