#313 - Designing Renowned Experiences: From Startups to Style Icons with Allegra Poschmann

So I got my start sort of traditionally working in large agencies on branding projects, and I sort of very quickly found out that I'm a little bit more of a swiss army knife in nature. I found I was quite bored in terms of just touching one sort of very small piece of a project. And so it was like 2012, 2013, and I sort of got what I would now call a bit more of an entrepreneurial itch to go and work in startups. I would probably not have had that vocabulary back then. So I started working in venture backed startups, doing everything from figuring out how to do social media to opening up pop up stores to launching what we would now call direct to consumer websites, writing emails and sort of doing all of those things. And while that obviously sort of left me a little fatigued, I really felt quite energized by that experience of sort of touching, sort of a complete point of view on a brand or a project. So I did that for a number of years. Some venture backed startups or some sort of bootstrap startups.

But I would say the job that sort of know rapidly changed the trajectory of my career was working at a very small studio in Montreal called Dynamo that really punched above its weight class, and they were really in the right place at the right time, really focused on e commerce and retail experiences. And it was there that I had the chance to work on Glossier and reformation and the honest company and a number of others. And eventually Glossier acquired that company a few days before I had my son. So it was a real turning pointer or transition for me in my life. Did I want to go and sort of continue what I had been doing for the past four years, doing it in house at Glossier? Or was I ready to sort of take a bet on myself and maybe start consulting or freelancing? Which is what I ultimately ended up doing for a few years until 2020 hit when demand for these types of services really skyrocketed. And I had been working with a developer pretty frequently at the time, something I'll get into a little bit more later. And I basically was like, we have to turn this into a company. Like, we need headcount, we need personnel if we are going to sort of continue to do this as demand is surging.

And so that's ultimately what we did. It's a little over three years later. We're just under 20 employees now. And that's a little bit of my origin story.

I love that. And we're really excited for this episode because I think there's so much to go into when it comes to design, to working with brands, to creating really great products from both the UI and UX perspective that people love. I think the one thing that you alluded to is that design touches so many different parts of a product experience. So actually having the knowledge of how different systems interact is really important. I know myself, I've worked with many designers, and they can make things look pretty, but if they don't have a true understanding of how the whole system works and why it works together, then the design choices that they make maybe aren't. Maybe they look good, but they're not functional. So I'd love if you talk to us a little bit about kind of what's your process in terms of when you're designing, when you're working with clients, how do you bring that level of thinking to a project? Where do you start?

Right. Yeah, that's such a great question. I'll sort of give you a long winded answer, as is my own personal brand tends to be a little bit more verbose. But I think one thing I realized sort of prior to founding pact was a lot of times when I was still consulting or freelancing, I'd sort of get dropped into projects seal team six style. Hey, enhance our sort of like happy path or our core customer journey. So I would do that, right. Sometimes that would include a whole redesign. Sometimes it might just be some conversion rate optimization.

But what I would consistently find is that no matter how well I documented something, that work would inevitably be passed off to either an internal team or an outsourced team. And all of these things that I had really sweat the details over that seem really quite minor would either be misinterpreted or deprioritized or what have you in order to meet some deadline. And I realized this is just not going to work. I really need to work with developers who care to bring these experiences to life, who you are equally invested in these sort of metrics and measures. So that's really the first thing. And I think that that is sort of the bread and butter of what we do at pact. The co founder that I have at Pact is a developer and really was the first person who sort of opened my eyes to that reality and what a change maker that that can be. So that's the first thing.

The second thing I think is really just listening. I think a lot of designers and agencies come to the table with a lot of preconceived notions around how they think things should be done. I often say that our clients or people that I work with are really the experts on their business. Right. I will spend a lot of time really trying to understand that expertise and I am really the expert on e commerce in the middle, or sort of like where those two sort of circles meet is where that magic happens. But I think it really know a keen sense of patience to really listen to people. Right? Like you can look at reports like Baymart and you can look at heat mapping tools and you can look at all of these things to sort of inform the insights or Google Analytics. But I think really understanding, looking at social media, listening to founders, listening to where they want to take the business, really taking in the full scope of that story rather than just pure data is also a really helpful thing that I do.

Rather than just using a blanket approach of like, this is conversion rate optimization 101 and every website should do that because I have clients that are selling an $80,000 rug and I have clients that are selling a $32 serum. The strategy and approach for those things is obviously going to be radically different with some sort of underlying best practice sort of serving as the foundation for both. But you have to really tailor the strategies for what people are selling, what their category is, I think.

Yeah.

And I love that you mentioned listening to the founders, because the founders might not be able to necessarily interpret their vision into a very specific statement, but you know what you're looking for in their words. And if you're just optimizing for conversion, you can always optimize for conversion, but that's not necessarily going to lead to any innovative breakthrough. Sometimes companies do things in unconventional ways due to the beliefs and vision of the founder, and then it becomes a mainstream thing that now everyone does because it's cool. But it really just came from a unique point of view from the founder, not from what data was saying. So I know you mentioned earlier you're dropped in like a SEAL team six and then you understand, should we redesign or should we just do CRO, can you talk us through your process of how do you decide whether this needs a complete redesign?

Or, hey, this is actually a lot.

Simpler than we're making it out to be?

Yeah, that's such a good question. I would say sometimes we have the agency to be able to put forth that recommendation, and then other times there may be different sort of circumstances or priorities or KPIs at play where we may not be able to do the whole thing, soup to nuts, even if we think that that's what's best. So we really try to tailor what we do and what we recommend to what someone is telling us and what someone is saying that we need. I think a really good example of something that we did about a year ago was we work really closely with this brand. They're called Beekman 18 two, and they needed to basically redo their entire website and get to launch within eleven weeks. I was like, this is really impossible. We were negotiating this contract on Christmas Eve about a year ago, and I was like, I have no idea we're going to get this done. But it ended up being a really successful project.

We increased every metric conversion rate site speed by, I think, up to 40%. So they were really happy and that really carved out the pathway for us to forge a really long term partnership with them, which is what we're working on now. So we really manage a long term roadmap alongside Beekman. We have a clear understanding of where they want to go in the next twelve to 18 months. And we're really supporting key features and initiatives to be able to help them do that, being able to help them expand internationally, as well as helping them sort of like tackle garden variety bug fixes or even shopify additions which came out today, on the day that we're recording, really helping them sort of stay ahead of the curve with all of the new features and enhancements that may be possible within their platform. So that's a really good example of something where it started as sort of a major sort of redesign and rebuild with a lot of these best practices and conversion rate optimizations, sort of part and parcel of that. But ultimately, sort of because the metrics showed that the work that we did sort of was laying a really solid path for the long term strategic direction of their business. It really made sense.

And so now we really act as sort of in partnership with them, as their technology team. We work very much in the same way with our other clients like Hill House, home studs and a variety of others. There's several where we do more of a conversion rate optimization. A good example would be a site that we actually just launched last week. It's called Matina. It's a brand of Yerbamate. It is sort of launched in partnership now with Andrew Huberman, who is one of the world's biggest podcasters. As I'm sure you know that they came with a really good point of view on brand and storytelling.

They really needed help trying to figure out how do they position bundles, how are they going to position a few of their products, particularly for the US market versus the canadian market? And how were they going to position this new partnership with Andrew Huberman as something really special and really unique? So that's something that we also just did. So it really just depends where a business is at and what they need, and we sort of tailor our offering and our scopes to be able to support that.

Allegra, I'd love to dive a little bit deeper there because I think having a tangible example to think through is always helpful for the audience who's listening and going through their own design challenges and thinking about how to improve their site. So the example that you just brought up, I think there are a couple interesting things that you would have to think through. Yerba mate, pairing a new and exciting sort of product that might need some product education. Pairing it with a really powerful influencer who himself is obsessed and is like a big Yerba mate fan, as well as dealing with a bundle. So maybe we could unpack each and all of those. How did you kind of take that and take it from where they were and where they wanted to go? And what were some of the design and development initiatives that you took on to be able to improve each one of those different aspects?

Yeah, that's a great question. So the first thing is that they really were not leveraging shopify to its full potential. So one thing I spoke with the founder about for a long while was, if you're going to be launching this partnership with Andrew Huberman, it makes sense that you're going to want to spin up a variety of different landing pages, messaging opportunities and stuff like that. So how can we sort of not just develop a new bundle module, but how can we develop sort of almost like a landing page toolkit, using Shopify's sort of sections everywhere, to be able to help empower you, not just with a refreshed look and feel, but also to spin up a variety of different communications initiatives, marketing initiatives, seasonal promotions, whatever it is that you might do. That was really the first thing that we dug into. The second thing was we really wanted to lean more into that science point of view. Obviously, Yuramate is a drink with a variety of health and wellness benefits that aren't really, I think, commonly understood by the majority of the american or north american market. So really helping to expose those things was a really critical part of our process.

And Nick and the team at Matina are doing a variety of interesting things with regards to sourcing from a single origin. And so we really look to common paradigms that I think we're used to seeing in other food and beverage businesses, particularly coffee. Right. We talk a lot about single origin with regards to coffee. It's less, I think, commonly referred to across the canned beverage space. So it was really about talking about provenance and the farms that they source from and all of those things to really make it a rich story. Especially so that it didn't just appear that we were slapping Huberman's face on it, but more so that Huberman chose to partner with this brand as a result of all of know, sort of groundwork that they had done, not just creating a beautiful product that tastes great and is healthy and is low sugar, but also they can stand behind it and it's ethically sourced and it's sourced in the traditional way and not just like a canned matina beverage. Sorry, a canned yerbamate beverage with like 34 grams of sugar, which you would probably be surprised to know is much of what exists on the north american market today.

Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting, especially in terms of how you pair the. I think it's such a good point in terms of you pair with a big influencer, thought leader in the space, but you can't just slap the name on and expect there's so much other stuff that has to happen at the brand level and the communication level to make that partnership really click. And when it came to the actual partnership initiatives, how did you design that into the process? How do you get to the point where it's not like, oh, I'm buying Andrew Huberman's drink, but at the same time it's not like, oh, who's this random scientist in the like, so how did you find that right balance where maybe the people who know who Huberman is are going to be, okay, great, this is awesome. I want to purchase it, but the people who don't are going to be like, oh, wow, this is definitely, there's trust here, there's legitimacy here, and it's something that I want to double click on.

Yeah. One of the things that I find really fascinating about the sort of hype around Huberman that I think is absolutely well deserved is just how exciting and accessible that he has made science to the general public. And this is a trend that I've been really passionate about in my experience, working with a variety of beauty brands as well. This is a bit of a departure, but I promise I'll get back to topic. We are in an era where I think consumers want more information. They care about what goes into their bodies and they care about what goes on their skin. And so one thing that I've been seeing really across the board in terms of working with beauty brands and skincare brands is consumers are almost like little chemists. They want to know about the active ingredients and they really want to drill down into these things and they really take a great pride in being able to mix and match and tailor a routine to their specific needs and skincare type, morning versus night, and all of those different things.

And so really providing space for someone to drill down into that and really celebrate that. Right. What would commonly, or I think in the past be just slapped on as like an ingredient sort of disclosure, I think now really can be a part of search engine optimization, can obviously be a huge tool in terms of brand storytelling, but most importantly, I think is a real tool for legitimacy. So I think if we take all of that and sort of translate it to the Yerbamate and Andrew Huberman example, it's really the same thing, right? So we know that yerbamate sort of increases the production of GLP one, which I think is the same active ingredient as we see in products or medicines like Ozempic. Right? So if you're listening to Huberman, you know that and you aren't scared by the words GlP one, you won't need to google what that is. You're really sort of enticed by that. And the same is true for a variety of other compounds and terms, right? So we also know that yerbamate has more caffeine than the average cup of coffee, but is unlikely to cause jitters and all of those things. So how can we sort of promote that storytelling so that it's not just saying, hey, this is Andrew Huberman approved, but why is it Andrew Huberman approved? What are the sort of active ingredients? What are the properties or sort of the components about this drink or this plan that would make it such that it's something that someone like Andrew Huberman would use, and if you are listening to his podcast, why is it something that you would trust or you would.

Want to put in your body? And then last question on this sort of topic, and I think it's great that you brought up beauty as well. I think there's so many brands that are excited to dig into the emerging science, emerging different ideas, but a lot of these terms and a lot of these concepts may be really complex to the standard consumer. How do you, as someone who's kind of in the branding seat, how do you manage that relationship between overwhelming a shopper or buyer with information and data to the point where the consumer doesn't even know, oh, let me just buy that. And at the same time providing enough trust to get them to want to take that leap and say, oh, this is something that's trustworthy that I should buy, that I'm going to buy, because if I want, I can go all the way down the rabbit hole and all the information is there.

Yeah, I think trying to, especially if.

There is no influencer attached to it.

I think too, yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think for different brands, different things are going to make sense. Right. So I think particularly for the Huberman example, we know that this is a consumer that probably has a high level of intent and desire to go down that rabbit hole. We certainly don't want to overwhelm them, but we want to provide pathways for them to discover and learn more as much as possible. So that's one component for other brands. Right? So Beekman, coming back to that skincare, know all of their products are formulated with goat milk. It was founded, know two men that know a goat farm in upstate New York, and they were like, let's create some products, right? And now they have a really sizable and successful business based on that.

And so their brand is all about how do you sort of express the power of goat milk and the benefits that people would commonly associate with eating or drinking, I guess, goat milk into something that is appropriate for skincare. So we know that goat milk is rich in probiotics and stuff like that. And so that's not as clear as a leap for most customers. Right. It's a little bit more of an education. And so instead of going into multiple paragraphs about the probiotic nature, it's probably good enough to say, hey, these are sort of the core attributes of goat milk. Another example, which I'll pivot to is more of a fashion context. One of our clients, Hill House, they came up with this dress called the nap dress, which I can talk a little bit more about because it's, I think, one of the best branding stories I have.

But they came up with this dress, and what makes this dress unIque, in addition to sort of its fabrication, how it looks is it has smocking. So why is smocking interesting? If you are a person or a woman that wears dresses? Well, smocking is going to fit a variety of different bus sizes. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, it's going to be easy to sort of take on take off, but it's also going to fit you through a variety of sort of seasons of your life. And that's a really interesting core attribute. So from that perspective, we don't need to get into how they're actually creating the smocking or anything like that. That doesn't really matter. What we really care about is the benefit, right. Or the delivery, or why someone would care about that benefit.

What does the value add to their life? So I think that that's another tool in the arsenal, right? Really thinking about who that customer is and what is it that they care about. Right. So for the Matina example and the Huberman example, they, of course, care about the benefit, but they are willing, and they probably want to invest the time not just in what the benefit is, but why is it beneficial? Right? And what is the sort of scientific, research backed reasoning for this? Whereas for someone on the other end of the spectrum, if I'm trying to buy a dress, I don't necessarily need to know everything about how that dress is made. And it's not necessarily the Everlane approach where I need to know everything about the factory, but I do want to know that this is a dress that's versatile enough to sort of fit me in these variety of different seasons of life. I can wear it to sort of drop off my kid at school, I can dress it up for a night out on the town, and I can wear it out and about when I'm running my errands. And that's really sort of like the core ethos of the Snapdraft. So to sort of make a long story short, I think it's really just about once again, listening to those founders and really understanding who those customers are and really tailoring your approach accordingly.

I love that example because it reminds me of this thing like category creation. Sometimes there isn't like, for example, yevamate. There kind of is a history, a timeline, et cetera. But some products don't fit very well into existing stories and into existing categories, and even the founder sometimes, or the head of marketing, or whoever might be confused into who even their customer is. And I'm curious if you've ever come across this where you're like, I think, who you're saying your customer isn't your customer, or you're making it too broad, or you're getting too specific. So how do you go about that? About getting aligned with the client you're working with, in terms of who is their audience and who is their icp? How do you define that with them?

Yeah, that's such a great question. I have to say that I don't know that I've encountered that too often in my career. I've been incredibly privileged to work with people who had a really interesting vision. Sometimes that vision takes them in a radically different direction than they thought. But I have often found there is a sense of curiosity with most of the founders that I work with in that they have a really strong sense of what their brand is. But if they see that their brand is sort of going in a different direction than maybe even they anticipated, they're really eager and interested to sort of pull that thread. And if you'll allow me to digress a little bit, on this Hill house home example, they started as a bedding and bath company. They had a decent lifestyle business doing that.

They had a storefront in New York. The founder, Nell diamond, was really passionate about creating products to empower people, to create a home that they loved. And so in late 2019, she thought a really good complement to this product offering would be this nap dress. This dress that I was just talking about. It launched, it sold, it went well. Nothing really to write home about. When they got their next batch or their next shipment in March or April of 2020, they sold millions of dollars within a matter of moments. And that really took them by surprise.

Right. Like, they were totally not expecting this dress to do as well as it did. They had no sort of prior indication from any of their products that this was going to happen. So why did it happen? Well, it all comes down to right place, right time, right? It's Covid. People want something that looks polished enough on a Zoom call, right, but is comfortable enough that they're not feeling restricted or like they're wearing jeans. And it also sort of, I think, really touched on a moment where I think a lot of women in particular were feeling like I'm sitting at home, I'm in sweats. I want to feel sort of like a little bit more dressed up, even though I have no place to go. This product launch radically sort of changed the trajectory of their business.

Right. They have grown 400 plus percent in the past four years that I've been working with them. Now, fashion and apparel is a really core part of their business. And so we, over the past four years, have really been working to tease out, well, why does somebody like a nap dress? What are the properties that make that unique? And how do we sort of continue to expand a category offering around that and then beyond that, just to sort of continue to tease on that thread? We also noticed that when they would launch a new product or a new sort of colorway or variant of this particular nap dress, they would all the time sell out within minutes. It was sort of like, what supreme is for men and people that are into sort of like street style. This nap dress is for a particular type of woman and girl. And so we were like, well, how do we sort of touch on this? How do we build community around this, beyond just like, what's on Instagram or whatever? And so we basically built this thing called the nap room. And so in the 30 minutes to an hour before they launch a new product, Nell, the founder, actually livestreams the new collection.

We have a chat that we have sort of custom built for them. So they own all of the first party data. They use that as sort of a communication tool to figure out what products do we want to launch, what sizes are people interested in buying. So they own all of that. We have playlists going, we have toast notifications. So if people in New York want to order a bagel while they're waiting for their nap dress to drop, they can. And it's this really beautiful customer experience that is all borne by the fact that they accidentally created this dress, even though they were a bath and bedding company previously. So I think that that's a really good example of product market fit.

Absolutely right place, right time. Absolutely. But I think it takes a really impressive and incredible type of business, not just to strike gold once, but to continue to sustain that success in this sort of interceding three or four years since that initial launch, and really continue to cultivate ways that they can work and listen to their customer, to continue to bring products to market that they care about.

So that example that you just gave Allegra, it sounds really cool. It sounds like a live stream, webinar, sort of community driven thing for a product drop. It sounds really unique. At what stage? How does a brand know that it's time to go that customer, how do you work with them to decide what the initiatives are. When you're really thinking out of the box and creating these unique, essentially, really custom customer experiences that you really can't just pull out of the box, know, spin up with a simple Shopify app. These are like custom solutions that are very innovative. So at what stage does the brand need to be at and how do you land on what the initiative is and then how do you execute on that?

Yeah, that's such a great question. I mean, once again, it's really brand dependent and company dependent. I don't even just mean from like, oh, capital that the company wants to spend perspective. I mean, I really do not believe if you build it, they will come. Right. That would be a really poor experience if we built all of that and like three people were in this nap room chat. Right. It only works and it only has sort of virality because thousands of people are in there.

So I would not recommend even to any of my other clients that this is something that we should work to replicate by proxy. Another good example of something totally different is studs. So studs is a piercing studio. They started in New York City. When we started working with them, they had one location. Now they have over 30 across the United States. And so as they started expanding to these different sort of piercing studios and locations and really building this flywheel so that when someone gets pierced, how can we retarget them for them to come back to the site and merchandise their ear, what they call an know how, do we create more of a personalized experience for that? Well, one way to do that is if I'm searching or going on the site from Boston, I'm going to merchandise the most popular products in Boston. If I'm looking at it and I'm in Austin, Texas, I might merchandise like the hey y'all earring and really make that whole sort of like, homepage experience really specific to booking locations in Austin or booking locations in Texas.

Same is true for being on the west coast, so on and so forth. So personalization, right, is a strategy that really, really works for studs because they have piercing studios across the United States. That strategy isn't going to work necessarily for someone if they only have one pop up shop in one location by proxy, that know the live selling strategy isn't necessarily going to work as well for studs. It's an earring, that customer connection, that magic is really happening in person right when I'm getting pierced. So it's a bit of a different strategy. But how, when someone is passively thinking about getting pierced, do we sort of transition a passive thought into like, oh, my gosh, I absolutely want this right now. Part of that is mean studs does an exceptional job of taking great photographs, know, building out content and all of this to sort of explain why piercing with needles versus piercing guns like you would get at know, is the better path forward. So they've done a tremendous amount of work there.

And then we sort of come in and say, well, how can we help you personalize this experience? So as you continue to expand, the flywheel continues to grow, so on and so forth? So, once again, I think my answer is sort of the same. It's really sort of client and brand specific, but there is sort of unique things and really memorable, sticky customer experiences that I think are possible no matter what it is you're selling. Right. We've talked in this conversation around skincare, fashion, piercing, all kinds of things, and I think a variety of different things are possible.

Yeah. So, Allegra, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking to myself, I'm loving this conversation, because design is visual, and yet we're translating it into words here. Everything you do, and I wish people could see the end result of your work as well. So I highly encourage everyone to go and see it. But everything you're talking about, it's not just from a visual element. This is experiences. This is bringing people together as cultures, communities, et cetera. Can you tell us about the umbrella of everything you cover? How does this fit within the design? Is this part of the scope that you do, and is it an ongoing thing after you've released the design and the visual experience, how do you tie that into these other sort of offline experiences, like in store stuff, et cetera?

Yeah, I mean, part of the reason that we're named Pact is because we really believe, not in running an agency that is like a pump and dump scheme to extract maximum capital for minimal value. I'm really not interested in just launching a website and then churning it out and moving on to the next one. I really find myself quite excited by what is possible when you really nurture and sustain those relationships and help them grow over time. And I'm really fortunate to have built a team that is really energized by that as well. What I am finding, if I may sort of open up and be a bit more transparent, is it's really hard for me to rein in scope on those projects. Right. And so I think what that means for me is when I speak with a founder or when I'm thinking about a project, it's really hard for me to think in terms of a scope. Why is that? Because I almost see the story, like, fully formed.

I'm thinking about what the messaging might be. I'm thinking about what the art direction is or where it could go. I'm thinking about that conversion rate optimization, and I'm thinking about the things we might need to do on the development side. Right. Whether that's fulfillment, whether that's helping them go international, whether that's like coding a beautiful site experience that has animations, transitions, micro interactions, what have you. And so what I think I'm realizing is, as tact grows, I really have loved working with a number of startups, and I think that that will always be sort of our bread and butter. But is it possible that we're potentially more uniquely suited to mid and upper market retail? Not necessarily because that's what I want to do, but because it is impossible for me to say, oh, I only want to touch the visual design, because for me it doesn't begin and end with that. And I do my best work when I'm considering the whole thing.

Right. What is the story you're trying to tell? What are the 40 different landing pages that you're going to execute? How are customers going to interact with this? What is sort of like the long term trajectory of your brand? So I want to be clear. It's not to say that I don't want to ever work with someone that needs something really specific, but as a founder, I myself am evaluating what are the things that are most enriching and energizing for me, and what are sort of the best fit solutions that my team and I sort of provide to clients. It tends to be sort of this more comprehensive overview rather than just know, hey, let's spin up a landing page. I think Nick Sharma hooks does an amazing job at that. Right. So it's not to say that there's not great businesses to be forged there. There absolutely is.

I just don't know if that's necessarily the business that I'm right suited for. And so I think I'm trying to evaluate that to be totally open and.

Transparent with both of you. Yeah. And I mean, I think one trend that we've seen as direct to consumer and ecommerce has grown is we've seen this move towards not only omnichannel, but also you're seeing a crossover between what typically a tech enabled or tech business would do and what a physical products business would do. And you see these physical products businesses that are starting to build in really complex customer journeys and tech based experiences and vice versa. I mean, Ramon and I were joking. We have a SaaS company and we're, yo, should we start selling some hoodies and some swag? Because why not, right? So you see this blending of all this stuff happening. I guess my question for you would be on the execution side, right? When it comes to working with your team and standing it up, what does the onboarding process look like? How do you onboard a project and how do you get your whole team? Do you have developers that work with you? Do you have designers? How do you actually, yourself phase into the project? How does the whole process kind of kick off and what does it look like?

Yeah, so I think another thing that sort of sets us apart is that I think a lot of agencies are like, we do design and we do development, and then project management is sort of like this hidden thing that nobody really wants to pay for or talk about or whatever. I don't want to do that. I really try hard not to hire project managers. We call them producers at Pact. But what I'm really looking for is almost like a product owner or a product manager, more similar to what you would find in a tech company. So why is that? Because I want these people that are managing the project to almost function as entrepreneurs for our clients to actually be motivated and have the gears turning around, like, oh, hey, they have this idea, but what about if we took that a step further and did this? And so I'm really lucky to be surrounded by producers that sort of share that vision and that goal, which is really exciting. And I think that's a really critical part of our onboarding process. Right.

They are really taking as much stock in that kickoff process in sort of the almost like design sprint kickoff meeting about what are your KPIs? What are your long term goals? What are the stories that you're currently telling to customers? What are the untold stories that you think might connect you to new customers? And they are sort of working in partnership with me, with the design team, and then eventually the development team to make sure that is sort of like the central through line, through everything that we do. And then in the case of a couple of examples that I've given, like Beekman and Hill House, when that eventually maybe transitions to a long term partnership, all of that knowledge is sort of like carried through into everything that we do, beyond just launching a new site into that twelve to 18 to 24 month roadmap Allegro.

My last question was going to be. And I don't want this to be too simplistic because I know each project that you kick off is individual to the story and the why and why someone needs to do it. But that example that you gave of the kind of live streaming selling thing, that's super cool. What other sort of widgets or projects or cool things that you've just seen work in commerce? What are some of the things, whether you've built or things that you've seen or things that you want to build? What are just some innovative ideas that get you excited to blend this idea of tech and commerce as we look later into 2024 and beyond?

Yeah, I mean, one thing that I'm really keen to explore more, obviously, the word on everybody's mind is AI, right? I'm really curious to see how can we enable AI beyond something like Chat GPT and into personalization that really helps to connect people with the products that they desire in a more seamless way. I think if you're like a ten Sku catalog, that's probably irrelevant. But certainly if I am a person that is exploring a 10,000 Sku catalog, you can really see, particularly, I could imagine in the home furnishings example, if I am trying to furnish my room and I know that the color scheme that I want is blue and beige, how can I use sort of AI to really enable surfacing products that fit that description, maybe within a given aesthetic that I've provided? I think that's something that I'm really interested to see where it goes and also see what we might be able to cultivate within know, beyond that, I think I really love working with brands where product and the product sort of core attribute is what makes it sing. So I spoke a lot about Mattina. I've spoken about Hill House and sort of their hero product, the Napdress. I will sort of hearken this example back to Glossier, which I think know they've had their highs and lows as a brand, and they're sort of rebounding now to a lot of success now that they've launched in Sephora. I found that was quite interesting because there was a lot of press around, like, is this the death knell of d to c? And they're doing great. But I think one thing I always sort of come back to in my mind is Emily Weiss, the founder of that brand.

She has just been phenomenal and such a visionary from day one, because when she launched that brand in 2014 or 2015, I can't remember now, she knew that those products needed to have a formulation that was sheer. Why did she do that? Right. It was because she knew people couldn't at that time go to a beauty counter and sample it like they might at a department store or at a beauty store. And so she knew to be able to sell things online. The products, the photography, the descriptions, everything sort of needed to ladder back to that ultimate philosophy that I think ultimately gave way to that skin first, makeup second sort of brand message that they have and that they're known for. Now it's really like your skin, but better. And so along that line, it's really about in the sort of past, almost ten years, now that the glossier has been around, they've never deviated from that, right? They've launched new products. They have always sort of been about, we want to be you or help empower you to be you, just with the things and the products that will make you feel good and are sort of additive to your life.

I sort of am really excited by brands and by founders that have that sort of vision. I think up and coming similar in the beauty space. Jones Road is sort of like the next trailblazer in this way, right? It is a different type of product formulation for a different age and demographic, but I think they crush it, right? Like, they are monitoring every metric. They are really lean, they know what they're doing and they are just a machine. But ultimately they're drilling down into the needs. For Bobbi Brown. She really made these products for herself and found that, hey, there's millions of other women like me, they're sort of expanding that. So I think this idea of, like, you have to sort of lead with your product.

If it's a product you love and you're really excited about and there's enough sort of a story there. I really do think successful brands are.

Really built on that. I love that. And kind of, as we wrap up here, Allegra, where can our listeners, where can we connect with you? Where can we learn more about pact and the cool projects that you've worked on? Why don't you just shout out your socials and where we can connect?

So website is workwithpact.com. Despite the fact that I am very online with all of my clients, I am sort of terminally offline in my personal life. So I'm not super active on Twitter. I am a casual lurker. And then just my name on LinkedIn, Allegra Poshman. And you can slide into my emails or my dms. Allegra@workwithpac.com I will be so thrilled to talk with you, but yeah, I am more of a casual lurker online than a great promoter of myself, unfortunately.

No worries. This was super fun. We had a great time. Thanks for coming on, Allegra.

Thank you both.

Thank you.