SAN DIEGO – As the newest member of the Prosper Advisory Council, Marc Hess brings a wealth of brand development experience. Hess currently serves as director of Marketplaces at Salt & Stone, and he knows the pressure of Black Friday and the holiday shopping season.
“The holiday season is excitement, optimism, fear, and sometimes a lot of stress,” says the San Diego-based Hess. “There may also be some sleepless nights fixing various issues that come up at the last minute when dealing with Amazon.”
Now that the holiday season has officially started, is there still time to switch strategy, or is the course set in stone? Hess is adamant that sellers set the strategy and they too can make changes on the fly.
“You can always change a strategy—such as adding a coupon or a new promo,” he says. “There might be consequences. For example, if you pull your best product for a lightning deal, there might be revenue losses. One thing that’s difficult to change at this point would be related to inventory.
“Ideally at this point you have all your inventory at Amazon or whatever marketplace, even if you’re fulfilling for yourself on the D2C [direct to consumer] side,” Hess continues. “But from a discount perspective, that that can change any time. With a lot of the brands I’ve worked on, we’ve made some last-minute changes based on feedback we’ve received.”
With Black Friday finally here, Hess is keeping an eye on day-to-day performance, key performance indicators (KPIs), and specific business metrics. “We need to watch Black Friday metrics and see how the day ends,” he adds. “It’s not out of the question that we can take some of what we learn and make changes for Cyber Monday.”