In this week’s interview, we talk private brands with Jeff Gamsey, VP, Private Brands at Boxed.
June 21, 2018
What is your current role and how does it fit into Boxed?
I’m the VP of Private Brands at Boxed.com, an online warehouse club that allows customers to stock up and save. We deliver to doorsteps across the lower 48 states and don’t charge a membership fee. The nature of my role has and continues to evolve rapidly as the company and team I manage have grown. I joined Boxed more than four years ago as the company’s 10th employee. The company was operating out of a garage a few months before I joined the team as the Director of Business Development and General Counsel, handling all of the company’s legal work for the next two years or so. Literally on my first day with Boxed, the CEO asked me to launch the company’s private label. Over time, as our private brand grew, I handed off my other responsibilities and focused my efforts on building Prince & Spring. Today, we have launched almost 100 ultra high-quality products under our brand across a number of FMCG categories and sales represent almost 20% of the company’s total sales. The company has raised over a hundred million dollars and has more than 300 employees today. Perpetual adaptation is a requirement in such fast-paced environments.
My responsibilities include overseeing the private brand, product development, brand management and the creative process around package design. We work very closely with a number of departments within the company — the private brand team is ultra-cross functional. I like to describe private brand at Boxed as like a mini-CPG company within the walls of a fast-growing tech company. Definitely an exciting place to be!
What is your highest priority project right now?
The highest-priority project right now is the upcoming 3rd annual Prince & Spring Week. Each year since the launch of the brand, we’ve celebrated its birthday with our customers by offering 15% off all Prince & Spring products for the duration of its birthday week. We typically coordinate a variety of marketing and merchandising activities to promote the sale. This year is particularly complex, because we’re trying to coordinate the sale to align with the launch of our 100th product, which gives us a very tight margin for error in preparing all the assets and messaging that will go into the promotion.
What is the need for this project?
To drive acquisition and retention for Boxed, awareness and trial of our private brand items, and to tell the story of the brand in a way that meaningfully connects with our best customers.
Where is the impetus to do this coming from? Internal or external pressure?
Internal.
What were your first steps in this project? What early results have you seen?
We ran our first Prince & Spring Week two years ago, on the first birthday of Prince & Spring (the brand is turning 3 years old in July). The results we saw were incredible: private brand sales increased over 70% that week. Though of course margin percent decreased (because of the brand-wide 15% discount), we actually found that the sale was margin dollar neutral because unit sales were so elevated. Prince & Spring Week proved to be a highly successful, almost cost-free way of driving awareness and trial of the brand and engagement with our broader customer base.
Historically, we’ve seen the promotion not only be a huge driver of sales and a nice customer acquisition play, but it’s also a great way to introduce current Boxed customers to our brand for the first time. Once they experience the quality and value of the items in our assortment, we’ve seen these customers become increasingly brand and platform loyal.
What obstacles have you encountered? How are you overcoming them?
The first year we ran the promotion, we saw a huge spike in sales at the start of Prince & Spring Week, but sales trailed off quickly over the course of the week. We left a lot of opportunity on the table. To improve on this for the second year we ran the promotion, we built a countdown clock into the email blasts and made sure to message the sale again at the end of the week to drive urgency. This made all the difference – the second Prince & Spring Week maintained strength throughout the course of the week, and the additional volume further lowered the cost of the sale to the point of being totally cost neutral. This year we’re planning a homepage takeover, possibly a sweepstakes and putting more marketing budget behind our efforts. We’re hoping that it’s bigger and better than last year’s promotion in every way.
What is the end goal here?
The overarching goal for us is to build a world-class brand that can thrive in the coming omni-channel world. I fundamentally believe that private brands, when done well, are not just an add-on or “me too” value option anymore, or just a way to drive margin expansion. Private brands can become a “fundamental defining piece” of the entire retail experience. We have always believed that our brand of products can be more than a bunch of stuff sold at lower prices than recognizable national brands — it can be more than just a cheaper alternative to big name brands. We aim to continue to push the boundaries of what a private brand can be. We continue to develop “true brand” products within our assortment that not only fit within the Prince & Spring brand architecture, but also offer things that national brands can’t. Here’s a few examples of what I’m talking about: Prince & Spring Fruitmojis and LYT Electrolyte Water by Prince & Spring.
As we continue implementing and executing on these strategies, over the years, we have seen Prince & Spring grow into a fundamental, defining part of the shopping experience at Boxed — one of the many compelling reasons that customers choose to do their shopping at our site in a very competitive ecosystem.
In this week’s interview, we talk private brands with Jeff Gamsey, VP, Private Brands at Boxed.
June 21, 2018
What is your current role and how does it fit into Boxed?
I’m the VP of Private Brands at Boxed.com, an online warehouse club that allows customers to stock up and save. We deliver to doorsteps across the lower 48 states and don’t charge a membership fee. The nature of my role has and continues to evolve rapidly as the company and team I manage have grown. I joined Boxed more than four years ago as the company’s 10th employee. The company was operating out of a garage a few months before I joined the team as the Director of Business Development and General Counsel, handling all of the company’s legal work for the next two years or so. Literally on my first day with Boxed, the CEO asked me to launch the company’s private label. Over time, as our private brand grew, I handed off my other responsibilities and focused my efforts on building Prince & Spring. Today, we have launched almost 100 ultra high-quality products under our brand across a number of FMCG categories and sales represent almost 20% of the company’s total sales. The company has raised over a hundred million dollars and has more than 300 employees today. Perpetual adaptation is a requirement in such fast-paced environments.
My responsibilities include overseeing the private brand, product development, brand management and the creative process around package design. We work very closely with a number of departments within the company — the private brand team is ultra-cross functional. I like to describe private brand at Boxed as like a mini-CPG company within the walls of a fast-growing tech company. Definitely an exciting place to be!
What is your highest priority project right now?
The highest-priority project right now is the upcoming 3rd annual Prince & Spring Week. Each year since the launch of the brand, we’ve celebrated its birthday with our customers by offering 15% off all Prince & Spring products for the duration of its birthday week. We typically coordinate a variety of marketing and merchandising activities to promote the sale. This year is particularly complex, because we’re trying to coordinate the sale to align with the launch of our 100th product, which gives us a very tight margin for error in preparing all the assets and messaging that will go into the promotion.
What is the need for this project?
To drive acquisition and retention for Boxed, awareness and trial of our private brand items, and to tell the story of the brand in a way that meaningfully connects with our best customers.
Where is the impetus to do this coming from? Internal or external pressure?
Internal.
What were your first steps in this project? What early results have you seen?
We ran our first Prince & Spring Week two years ago, on the first birthday of Prince & Spring (the brand is turning 3 years old in July). The results we saw were incredible: private brand sales increased over 70% that week. Though of course margin percent decreased (because of the brand-wide 15% discount), we actually found that the sale was margin dollar neutral because unit sales were so elevated. Prince & Spring Week proved to be a highly successful, almost cost-free way of driving awareness and trial of the brand and engagement with our broader customer base.
Historically, we’ve seen the promotion not only be a huge driver of sales and a nice customer acquisition play, but it’s also a great way to introduce current Boxed customers to our brand for the first time. Once they experience the quality and value of the items in our assortment, we’ve seen these customers become increasingly brand and platform loyal.
What obstacles have you encountered? How are you overcoming them?
The first year we ran the promotion, we saw a huge spike in sales at the start of Prince & Spring Week, but sales trailed off quickly over the course of the week. We left a lot of opportunity on the table. To improve on this for the second year we ran the promotion, we built a countdown clock into the email blasts and made sure to message the sale again at the end of the week to drive urgency. This made all the difference – the second Prince & Spring Week maintained strength throughout the course of the week, and the additional volume further lowered the cost of the sale to the point of being totally cost neutral. This year we’re planning a homepage takeover, possibly a sweepstakes and putting more marketing budget behind our efforts. We’re hoping that it’s bigger and better than last year’s promotion in every way.
What is the end goal here?
The overarching goal for us is to build a world-class brand that can thrive in the coming omni-channel world. I fundamentally believe that private brands, when done well, are not just an add-on or “me too” value option anymore, or just a way to drive margin expansion. Private brands can become a “fundamental defining piece” of the entire retail experience. We have always believed that our brand of products can be more than a bunch of stuff sold at lower prices than recognizable national brands — it can be more than just a cheaper alternative to big name brands. We aim to continue to push the boundaries of what a private brand can be. We continue to develop “true brand” products within our assortment that not only fit within the Prince & Spring brand architecture, but also offer things that national brands can’t. Here’s a few examples of what I’m talking about: Prince & Spring Fruitmojis and LYT Electrolyte Water by Prince & Spring.
As we continue implementing and executing on these strategies, over the years, we have seen Prince & Spring grow into a fundamental, defining part of the shopping experience at Boxed — one of the many compelling reasons that customers choose to do their shopping at our site in a very competitive ecosystem.