Antoine Grant has a lot of business expertise, but only recently became a business owner. Since starting with Bain & Company 16 years ago, he’s worked in real estate, education, publishing, and most recently, as a director at Wayfair, where he led the plumbing and hardware division to double-digit growth at the peak of the pandemic.
In May, he purchased and have become CDO of online retailer Homethreads.
Unlike Wayfair, where you’ll find almost the whole lot for home decor, Homethreads offers a “curated portfolio of interior-design quality home furnishings on the fairest prices possible.” This requires having the data that offers them a deep knowledge of their customers. That data is what made Homethreads so attractive to Grant.
We talked with him about Homethreads’ data-first approach and what he hopes it would let him accomplish. (Interview edited for length and clarity.)
Q: What sets Homethreads aside from its competitors?
A: Homethreads is a total home decorating solution. We’re a retailer of home decorating products, home improvement products and residential decor, but we’re built on top of our own proprietary technology. Unlike most retailers, who use Shopify, we’ve got our own platform, which provides us a lot of freedom and adaptability to leverage data and do some interesting things for the user experience.
Q: How did it come to have its own data tech?
A: The two founders were frustrated internet buyers they usually set out to construct a higher solution. One had 30 years of experience in textile sales and the others had 30 years of experience in marketing and dealing with a number of the top brands in fashion and residential furnishing. They got here together about six years ago and said, ‘Look, let’s construct something from the bottom up in our image.’ And that’s why they began constructing the proprietary technology. It was because they wanted to create a more seamless type of solution in addition to being more control of the data. And that’s the way it was birthed.
Q: There’s nothing more frustrating than going to a site and searching for a certain size of sofa with a certain style of fabric and getting shown the whole lot from lounge chairs to sectionals.
A: That’s right. Typically the thought was at all times the more you show the customer the higher. We don’t try this. If you take a look at the trends with AI, it’s all about ‘I need the pc to seek for the whole lot after which distill it down to what’s relevant to me based on color, based on size, based on style, based on price, based on what’s compatible.’ And those are the things that we’re working on. And in the subsequent, six months you’ll see a radically different user experience that leverages six years of data, we’ve got on our customers. Our customer wants us to learn about them so as to be more of a curator for them.
Q: What have you ever discovered from that data about your customers and about what they need?
A: The big type of realization is that it’s more nuanced than people want to give it credit for. Typically home decor customers have been put into one in every of three groups. You have the parents who’re handy and wish to do the whole lot for themselves. Then you will have the parents who want any person to guide them, but they really want to press the button to purchase. They actually want to possibly install lights, but they don’t want to do demolition or plumbing. And then you will have the parents which might be like, ‘Here’s my bank card, do all of it for me.’
Within those segments, there’s some nuance. There are catalytic events that compel someone to purchase. The big ones are moving and having a kid. There are also things like graduation parties.
What data and technology allow us to do is not only say, ‘OK, if you happen to’re shopping you’re in one in every of the three big buckets and possibly there is an event pushing you,’”’ but to actually understand who you’re at a moment of time, to take a look at previous transactions and see what may be compatible to your space today.
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Q: And knowing that enables you to do what?
A: The key is relevancy, relevancy throughout performance marketing, email marketing and eventually things like product description pages as well. You don’t need to show the identical thing to everyone.
In email, for example, possibly you’re doing a certain promotion for a day like Labor Day or have new products coming out or want to provide information on how to redesign your outdoor space. You, being in Boston, have different needs within the outdoor space than someone like me in LA. I mean, you’re in cold weather, I’m in warm. And if I can start to serve more relevant information on your space in an email, then I even have a higher likelihood of igniting passion, igniting loyalty and hopefully conversion.
Those are the style of things that we’re working on now, which is the relevancy piece, the curation piece. How can we be certain that what we’re serving up to you is what you really would really like to see, whether that is for purchase or for inspiration possibly if you happen to’re still within the research phase.
Q: Jim Stengel who was the CMO at P&G 20 years ago, once said to me, ‘You can never know your customer too well.’ And it seems to me that AI is the important thing to taking that customer knowledge and using it at scale.
A: I believe AI is as transformative as the pc or telephone or email. It is here and the parents that embrace it and determine how to use it in a way that’s not necessarily within the customer’s face, like a gimmick, will come out ahead. Like how are we going to use it in essentially the most proactive and invisible way to solve the frustrations and problems of our customers? But I believe everybody needs to determine how to actually use it to solve problems.
Q: It’s September and you acquire Homethreads in May, so that you’re still new to the corporate, but what’s your vision for it? What’s the low-hanging fruit changes after which what’s the larger plan?
A: It’s a great query. I can’t give away an excessive amount of, but user experience needless to say. We’re starting to roll out changes for improvements within the user experience on the location. It’s getting the location ready to meet people where and why they are literally purchasing for furniture.
The why is the proven fact that you’re not actually buying a sofa, you’re not buying a collection of products, you’re buying for a space, you’re buying for a purpose. And we wish to be the answer for that. Our long-term vision is to get out of the product side, move towards projects, by moving towards the why persons are actually purchasing,
Q: What does that involve?
A: For a lot of individuals your property is what you spend the vast majority of your time in. It used to be the office and stuff like that, but your property has turn into, has turn into your primary social gathering spot. The importance of it has grown substantially because the pandemic hit. Because of that an increasing number of spending is concentrated at home as well too.
And the trends show that more persons are going to start and finish their home purchases online. I believe 40% of individuals inside the subsequent five years imagine the vast majority of their home purchases will start online. It’s far less today. To get to that and be certain that we’re enabling it invisibly, we’ve got to actually get into their, their mind space.
Q: I can inform you one thing that’s going to occur. I’ve been working from home since 2008 and shortly one reason people shall be buying decor is they’ll be becoming bored with their stuff. Like, ‘I’ve been these paintings eternally and something’s got to change.’
A: I believe you’re right. I believe it would be a couple of other things as well. One is such as you say, I’m bored and alter is good. There’s also heavier usage of stuff as well, and because you’re home more, you notice it more as well. This faucet and the leg of this chair, you’re going want to change those things out. The third thing I believe is you’re gonna be getting more sources of inspiration that turn into attainable. You’re in a nice hotel where you’re visiting a college campus, you’re at another person’s home otherwise you see something online. How do you really translate that into your space?
We’re working on technology that may allow you to take elements of that and see what it looks like in your space. The technology will allow you to translate what you’re inspired by into what you possibly can actually do.
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