Retail Relates
'Retail Relates' is not just a podcast; it's a journey into the heart of retail and commerce. Our episodes traverse the path from traditional marketplaces to digital platforms, highlighting the successes, trials, and invaluable lessons learned along the way. We're conversing with those shaping the industry—from the front lines to behind the scenes, the creative minds to the global strategists - offering a diverse 360-degree perspective. We're revealing the relationships and personal narratives that make retail engaging and accessible. 'Retail Relates' is an invitation to explore the world's interconnectedness through the lens of retail, encouraging listeners to discover the personal journeys and stories of those who drive innovation and unite us across cultures and continents.
Retail Relates
Fostering Innovation in a Modern Retail Organization: A Conversation with Andy Laudato
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Curious about what it takes to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of retail and technology? Andrew Laudato, COO of Vitamin Shoppe, joins us to uncover the secrets behind his transformative career journey, from pivotal college decisions to navigating dynamic roles at major retailers like Bath & Body Works and Pier 1 Imports. Tune in to hear how Andrew's passion for people-oriented work and his strategic moves across industries have shaped his approach to leadership, innovation, and community building in the ever-evolving retail landscape.
We've got an insightful exploration of building robust IT infrastructures that keep retail businesses agile and competitive. Discover how transitioning from monolithic structures to composable architecture is akin to piecing together a versatile Lego set, enabling retailers to scale and adapt quickly to new technologies. Andrew shares the vital strategies of data visualization and enterprise design that are crucial for maintaining stability and security while fostering innovation. You'll learn why avoiding hardcoding is essential for flexibility and how a strategic enterprise architect plays a pivotal role in retail evolution.
Ever wondered how AI can revolutionize customer service and operations? Listen as Andrew sheds light on the innovative use of AI and technology at Vitamin Shoppe, from real-time translation tools to strategic telehealth partnerships that enhance health and well-being. We delve into the significance of mentorship and curiosity in navigating technological changes, with Andrew reflecting on personal stories and insights from mentors who've influenced his integrity and leadership style. This episode wraps up with thoughts on standing out in a changing world, emphasizing cultural understanding, practical experience, and the power of teaching to enhance one's expertise.
Biography:
Andrew Laudato is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of The Vitamin Shoppe, a leading health and wellness retailer. In this role, he leads operations across e-commerce, information technology, enterprise project management, supply chain, strategic sourcing, quality, and commercialization. Passionate about the fusion of people, process, and technology, Andrew is a recognized leader in digital transformation.
Andrew joined The Vitamin Shoppe in January 2019 as EVP, Chief Technology and Supply Chain Officer. Since then, he has spearheaded the launch of a new technology-driven retail format, introduced personalization initiatives, and improved process efficiency across the supply chain. His efforts earned him a promotion to COO in January 2020.
Before his tenure at The Vitamin Shoppe, Andrew served as Chief Information Officer at Brookdale Senior Living and spent 16 years as CIO at Pier 1 Imports, where he directed technology transformation across all business areas. He began his career at L Brands, a common starting point for many retail veterans.
Andrew is a member of the CNBC Technology Executive Council, the New York City CIO Executive Council, and an executive board member of George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation. He also serves on the board of Lideranca, a small business focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. A past Chair of the National Retail Federation’s CIO Council, Andrew was recognized by the NRF in 2016 for his outstanding contributions to the retail industry.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlaudato/
The vitamin shop has over 4,000 people that work for it. It has over 700 locations in just the United States and is about over a billion dollars in revenue a year. So Andy has a lot on his plate as the COO. And, in case that wasn't enough, he also is the author of a best-selling book, Fostering Innovation how to Build an Amazing IT Team. So stay tuned. We're about to have a fantastic conversation with Andy about his responsibilities and how he got to where he is and what he looks for and what he utilizes to be a top executive. Stay tuned.
Gautham:Well, my retail behavior. I'm excited for you to interact with Andy. Andy and I have known each other for several years now as part of the retail center that I launched at Mason, and I love him for the person he is. I've learned from him on both leadership style as well as from what a retailer needs to do to build other technology infrastructure. So I look forward to this conversation and to see how he positions himself as a retailer who knows technology or as a technologist who works in retail.
Rich:Yeah, I've been looking forward to this one as well. I know Andy from a business perspective at Vitamin Shoppe and I've had the opportunity to be at a couple of conferences with him and listen to him speak, and I love the fact that obviously he's an expert when it comes to tech and operations, but I can tell in a couple of interactions that I've had with him that he genuinely loves retail in general. So I look forward to hopefully getting into that part of the conversation.
Gautham:I was also like in my online interactions with him whenever I said hey, andy, I need some advice. He's always ready to give it like he'll make time, irrespective of where he is what he's doing, so it's an important aspect of him that I appreciate as well and I've tried to build into myself.
Rich:All right. Well, let's go ahead and get started.
Paula:Andrew Lodato currently serves as the chief operating officer at the Vitamin Shop. In this role, he leads operations across e-commerce, information technology, enterprise project management, supply chain planning and allocation, strategic sourcing and scientific and regulatory affairs. Since joining Vitamin Shop, andrew has helped launch a new technology-driven retail format, introduced personalization initiatives and driven process speed and efficiency gains across the supply chain. Mr Lodato was Chief Information Officer at Brookdale Senior Living. Prior to Brookdale, he spent 16 years as Chief Information Officer at Pure One Imports, where he directed technology transformation across all areas of the business. Mr Lodato is a past chair of the National Retail Federation's CIO Council. Andrew, welcome to Retail Relates. We're very excited to have you here. Thank you, itilled to be here.
Gautham:Andy, we all have access to your resume, but can you talk about three pivotal moments in your career? How have you got to where you are? Where do you see yourself going?
Andrew:Sure, I'll start back when I was in college and I went to school for electrical engineering, and the reason I did that was because at the time, you know, someone said, hey, electrical engineers make good money and I was good at math. So I spent a year and a half in college doing a lot of math and learning about circuits until I finally asked kind of a basic question which was hey, what do electrical engineers do all day anyway, and I really didn't like the answer. You know I'm more of a people person and so you know I decided that I need to switch, and then I switched my career to computer information systems so I could be more involved. So obviously kind of silly not to ask that question before I went to school, but shame on me. And once I got the answer I pivoted. I always, when I do talk to students, think about hey, do you really understand what is the career going into?
Andrew:The next big pivotal moment for me I was working at the Limited. That was a big apparel retailer, and they decided to start a new company, which everyone's heard of, bath Body Works, and so I was one of the first employees ever at Bath Body Works. So we were a little startup inside of a large corporation. Because I was involved in every aspect of the business and at a young age, getting to spend time with the CEO and the CFO, I really had a mindset shift. I thought of myself as a technology expert that happened to work in retail. But as I learned more about the business, I flipped and said you know, I really am a a business person, a retailer first, and then my skills, whatever they are, be it supply chain or technology, you know those are secondary to doing the job. So that was a big pivotal moment that for me.
Andrew:Fortunately, I learned at a pretty young age and then, more recently, I was a peer one doing a nice job there. I was a CIO for 16 years. I was in a nice, comfortable group, but I decided to make a change just because I felt like I had nothing more to offer the company and I probably wouldn't grow anymore if I stayed there for the rest of my career. So I actually left retail for a brief moment, went into senior living, moved to a new city and really found an area that I could push myself and grow. I ended up pretty quickly getting back to retail, coming to the vitamin shop, deciding to make that move and it was again a place I was comfortable and happy, but I had that inner ambition to push myself to the new heights.
Rich:I'm going to jump in and just ask what did you miss about retail?
Andrew:I missed the community. You know we've known each other through charity events and the community and I was so entrenched outside of my day job and the whole community so I missed that. But I also missed how rapidly things change, which is funny because people I meet in other industries I think that would drive them crazy. But what's the top priority today? You may come into work tomorrow and that's not the top priority anymore. So there's a lot of things coming at us in different angles. I don't know how many people realize it, but retailers are very innovative because we have to be, because consumers are very demanding. So being in that senior living, it was a lot more slow paced and steady. So the energy, the excitement and the chaos I missed all of that.
Gautham:So you said retailers are innovative, and you've been with the retail for 20 plus years at least, so what's the most innovative, most exciting thing that you worked on in your career?
Andrew:Yeah. So you know, I don't know we're giving our ages up, but I started working before we had the internet, before we had even email, before we had mobile. So retail was pretty much the same from 2000 BC to 1980. I mean, if you go back and people got together in a market and you know, from Trahan's market to the Silk Road, so you think about the Mall of America, it's not much different than what we had in Rome, it's not. It's just, you know, merchants selling their wares and people going to that area, but all this technology just dramatically changed it and it's been such a fun ride.
Andrew:From a project perspective, you know I was part of a big team with a leading role that built PureOnecom and we took that from zero to nearly half a billion dollars in revenue and you know. So that was really probably exciting. But even now I'm working on a really exciting project. We just launched the Vitamin Shop, full Health RX, which is a telehealth program. So we're now healthcare adjacent at the Vitamin Shop. So you know I can go on and on. But there's been little projects, big projects, regardless of what you're delivering, what you're building, any project where a team comes together, you're working really hard and you're doing something cool. Those are all my things I would say are rewarding.
Paula:Yeah, so we were talking about your background rewarding, so what would you say? It's often said that failure is a better teacher, right, and we all talk about our successes. Is there any lesson you learned from failure that you'd like to share with us or our audience as a way of learning?
Andrew:Yeah, I think we talked about that. I wrote a book and my book's just a collection of here's where I screwed up. Here's a lesson I learned and here's how you can avoid it.
Andrew:I think one of my biggest mistakes in my career early on was I thought of the human resources department as my enemy, kind of a group of people you know.
Andrew:And that's when, like in the late 90s, when IT was really expensive and things were changing, it was hard to hire people, salaries, so you know, I thought of HR as the place you went when someone made a mistake or they were doing something wrong or someone you know wasn't performing. But so I always saw the HR people coming and kind of ducked and hid or that. But I learned pretty quickly by watching others that the most important thing we have as leaders is our teams and so human resources. I hate that phrase, they're people, but those are the most important resources. Any company, and especially retail, that has a lot of people. So really learning to embrace my partners in the beginning and help build culture and drive engagement learning ending and help build culture and drive engagement learning. So I've done a 180 on that, from kind of thinking HR was the enemy to saying the most important business partner that you can have as a leader is your human resources partner.
Rich:Yeah, I'll jump in with that, and I don't so much have a question, it's just more applause. I think one of the challenges that we have in any organization but we have it in retail is when you have one group or one silo that will look at the other silo as an enemy or not necessarily as a partner, and hopefully that's one of the things that we can do with technology and better communication is to bridge that. I would say that's a very successful lesson learned for anybody listening and since I have this as my catchphrase, I'm using that as a note and taking it back to my leadership team.
Gautham:So I saw you hold a cup of coffee or whatever you're drinking. Do you want to mention a little bit about your leadership policy and your philosophy as pertaining to that coffee mug right there?
Andrew:Yeah. So speaking of phrases, I've trademarked this phrase called be a diode, and I guess that stems from my electrical engineering training. But a diode is an electronic component. It's actually in our computers and our phones and what it does is it allows electricity to flow freely in one direction, but it completely blocks it in the other direction. The analogy to leadership is as a leader, anytime there's a problem, a complaint, someone angry, it's your job to stop that. So you protect your team from all that noise and you take it. You know you're the leader, you're responsible, no matter what happened and who did what. You're responsible. And on the flip side, all praise, compliments and positive shield right through you to the team. So when things go well, you need to say, hey, the team did it. So the analogy is a diode is let the praise flow freely and let the noise stop at you.
Gautham:I had to ask that when I saw the article, that was a phrase that stood with me Available to purchase on andrewlodatocom. And see, he's a good marketer as well. Andrew is the jack of all trades. So, Andrew, with that said, we're going to shift to the lesson from this podcast, which is basically talking to our audience, which is college students and early career professionals, on your area of expertise. Now. You spent decades building technology infrastructure, so we thought that this would be a topic of expertise, although I know that you've done dabble in almost every aspect of the business function. So I've read your book your book is right there on my bookshelf multiple times and one of the phrases that stood out to me a lot was to build the foundation to pour concrete, as you sometimes have said. Talk about pouring concrete from an IT infrastructure perspective. What are the essentials? How does a retailer build that foundation that is going to stand the test of time, especially given you said that retail is extremely dynamic?
Andrew:Yeah, for sure. I have a lot of passion around this, and the analogy is if you're going to build a big building, what do they do? They dig a big hole and fill it with concrete, right, it becomes a foundation. And you've seen buildings where they didn't do that right and they're either tipping over or they fall over or collapse. So any system infrastructure has to be built on a firm foundation.
Andrew:This is security first and network, and the phrase that we like to use is KTLO. Keep the lights on this is the emails emailing and the payments happening and receipts, and that Because when you're running an IT organization, these are the things that can get you in trouble and they can take your energy and time and resources away from doing the innovation. Having that foundation is key to every single thing, every other thing that you do, and when things are going smoothly, you can make them more affordable. I have a phrase you know get it right and then get it cheap. So you get things running smoothly, you can optimize it, fine tune it and then pivot your team to get to work on growing the business and the innovation. So super important, I think, too often overlooked or not discussed, so I'm glad you brought it up.
Andrew:As far as flexibility, you know, we're really moving away from monoliths in tech to building blocks, so the technical phrase would be an API or a microservice.
Andrew:The simple analogy is a box of Legos.
Andrew:So we're not buying the completed Millennium Falcon, we're buying the pieces, parts, right, and the Legos then can be reassembled.
Andrew:What that means in retail is we may have an API, a programming interface called Get Customer. So instead of every single system having a copy of customer data or having their integration, now you've got that one that goes to your central database you have another one called Update Order. Now you're placing an order in the store, on a phone call, on a website, you click the Update Order right, and now you have that same thing. So once you have all this assembly, imagine you have a whole new idea like oh, I want to watch TV and click on the vitamin and buy it. All that's possible if I have the customer data, the order data, the transactional. I have a new interface, but all that backend stuff will work. So what we build and are continuing to build at the vitamin shop is this collection of these building blocks it's called composable that we can snap together to do traditional things like a website and non-traditional things that we can't even imagine right now.
Paula:That's really funny that you say that, because the other day I was watching Drunk History, which is educational, so I'm not afraid to share that. But they were talking about Ford assembly line that we started out with, so thank you for highlighting that and making it. Just drawing that picture, yeah of course, andy.
Gautham:So if this composability does that give like the opportunities, I guess is that you can scale fast and quickly, you can plug in whatever new technology is available and so forth. But what is the foundation needed to build this composable interface Like how do you standardize data, how do you standardize terminology? So for the do retailers face a challenge with that backend?
Andrew:Even though you're building things in an agile way, you still have to have a strategy and an enterprise design. So you know what is the cloud. The cloud is just a computer in someone else's data set, figuring out where your cloud's going to be, what's your infrastructure, how you're going to pass data. One of the things that sounds simple but you have to get right is naming standards. So when the new person looks and understands, they can understand. You know, I call it get customer.
Andrew:Everyone on this call knows what that means, but you know, if you're a techie, you might call that M518-B3.3, right, and so naming things in plain language, having consistency. If the module's job was to get multiple customers, I would name it get customers Again, simple, but those things really matter. So it's a technical architecture and design as well as standard standardization. Across that, having an enterprise architect on a team is really key because that's a role that spans the entire organization and is responsible for these things. And the last thing I'll say and it's so important in business is to draw the picture. And draw the picture because just being able to see where the data is flowing, a lot of times you'll go oh, this looks like it's redundant or this is not redundant enough or this could be a security gap. So you know, we can talk about these things in the abstract, but drawing the pictures is also really key.
Gautham:So you talk about drawing the pictures, having an enterprise architect In all of the innovative launches that you have engaged in. What are the lessons learned that can be transferable across retailers, across industries? Even that could be something that students and others who are listeners of ours can take away.
Andrew:There's so many lessons learned. Let's start with there's this concept called hard coding. It's really, it's done a lot and it can't be done. But, like in our business, we have three regions. We have the East and the Central and the West. Well, now we just had a reorg and now we have five regions, so all the reports have to change. Some of the reports you put in the new structure and then you come in the next day and they all have that. Some of the reports, the person that built them hardcoded region one, region two, region three. So the business changed and now the report doesn't work. So that's a simple example of hardcoding.
Andrew:So making sure that you have variables and understand and that only happens when people take a long-term view and even understand what can change. So you know the structure is malleable. Even in merchandising it always changes what's in one department, what's in the other. So making that variable. So it's an important lesson and if you're young you may not know and it's a lot easier to build something with hard coding than creating yet another table and a database and integration. Build something with hard coding, then creating yet another table and a database and integration. But you know, doing it right is making it everything with variables. Even things like headings could be variables. So if you're going, you know, change the name of that region, so region one maybe now has a new name instead of it's called the East, it's called the Southeast, so things like that.
Andrew:Having a really good rapport with your business partners, because if we're going to build a bridge, we would have very detailed architecture blueprints before we started and it would be computer simulated and tested. But when you're building technology, software, say a web app, you don't really know what you want. When you start, you have an idea Until you get in it and get your hands on it. Instead of the old days we would make people sign in blood that yep, this is the design, and as soon as they wanted a thing, then you had a change order and it was a big process.
Andrew:So the whole idea of iterative and agile design is let's get something up quickly, a prototype, get it in the hands of the customers, the business partners, the product owners, the user experience people, and see how it's working, because what you designed on paper may not work that well. You may get stuck here or there. So that's the other important thing is have that relationship and have an iterative process In that model. The later in a project a change occurs, the more expensive that change is A change when something's still on paper. I mean, let's go back to construction. If you're putting in electrical outlets in your house and you walk around before they put up the drywall and you don't like where they are, it's easy to move. But if they've already put in the drywall and painted and done the trim work, now you're tearing down the walls to move the switches.
Gautham:So early changes are easier less impactful from a time and a cost. That is good. That is very, very good. So let's I know that you're now leading some retail AI council and so forth. A lot of talk in retail is about AI today, and maybe a couple of years ago it was about the metaverse. Give us your thoughts on emerging technologies and how they integrate with retail, and how can a person who's in the IT world build that foundation?
Andrew:Yeah, so look, it'll be a theme you'll hear from me is start with the basics. You know let's define AI, but I'll start with Gen AI. There are a lot of really simple things it can do to help everybody be more productive, like fixing our grammar and our spelling. You know, instead of having AI write your email, you might write the email and drop it to AI and say find some problems with this. So really there's no excuse anymore for people that don't have well-written, especially resumes with typos and content. There's some really exciting things that we're doing with AI around diversity, around accessibility.
Andrew:There's a gentleman on our team who's deaf. All of our meetings are on Microsoft Teams with transcription and kind of. One of the neatest things was many people didn't even know, or don't even know that he's deaf. You know he reads the words and he talks and he works just fine. And then when we're in person, he can hold up his phone, you know, and it's translating in real time. It's just so neat to see AI being used to help someone. You know work weather data and really using it to forecast.
Andrew:It's all about can I get the right thing in the right place at the right time and our products at the vitamin shop they expire. So it's not like milk. It doesn't expire in a week. You know, if we don't buy enough, we run out. If we buy too much, then we're going to end up having to get rid of that at the expiration date.
Andrew:And then what if analysis? You know we can do things like try a hundred different things with AI and simulate. And one of the holy grails that I'm excited about and just disclaimer, we're not doing this yet but it's the idea of a digital twin. And a digital twin would be to actually emulate all or part of your business in a computer. So back to analogies. Let's think of the game SimCity. You know you build a city and the Sims go to work. So imagine I can build a computer model of my entire supply chain, my distribution centers, my 700 stores, the vendors. Then I can play what-if analysis and say well, what happens if we opened up a second ship? The cost would go up, but the service would improve, you know the sales. Or what if we decide to open up a high-speed fulfillment in the Northeast, where we have a lot of customers for e-com? So now that shipping cost goes down and the speed to customers, so maybe sales go up.
Andrew:So these are all really exciting AI, and so I think the advice is to get involved, whether it's on the AI council or learning or reading. I've had people say, oh no, I'm behind on AI. Nobody's behind. This is so new and evolving so quickly. Nobody's behind, and we're all learning together, so this is really exciting tech. I'll just end it with, though. Whether it's the cloud or the internet or mobile, the AI is not the end goal. The end goal is to deliver better value to your customers, right? So my job is to sell vitamins. Ai is going to be one of the tools, but my job isn't to deploy AI. Just like our construction workers, you're not going to ask them what is this hammer strategy or drill strategy. You're going to ask them about what kind of beautiful house is going to build for you. So AI is no different than any. Well, I guess it's different, but it's still another tool, an exciting tool. It's an evolving tool, but it's just another tool to help us serve our customers.
Gautham:Well, thank you for bringing it back to customer centric. I have one question driven by, and you know Rich and Paul are going to give me trouble at the end and say, oh, there's another question. But you started off talking about healthcare and vitamin shop, launching telehealth. We talked about AI as an emerging space, but retailers are also entering into healthcare and some of them are retracting as well. What is your personal perspective on retail and healthcare intersection and how do you see retailers help improve a society's health?
Andrew:Yeah, well, health is the example of build a foundation for your personal life, right? Without health, what else can you do? And so, of course, it's so important. And then consumers are getting more and more in tune to that fact that you know, we used to talk about longevity, now we're talking about health span, so not just how long you live, but how long you can live healthy and be active. So the vitamin shop's always been all about that. It's our mission for people to live their best lives, and however they define it. And so this was just a natural extension for us.
Andrew:Because eating right, exercise we all know these things but supplementation helps. Certainly. You know, if you don't like to eat fish three times a week, you can take a fish oil. And if you aren't eating all the right mix of vitamins vegetables you know vegetables and you won't be getting all the vitamins you need. And protein is so important, and we know more and more about, as we get older, that we need protein. Or you're trying to build muscle and who isn't trying to build muscle? Right? We all want to be stronger, keep our muscles. So that's part of it. And then some of these pharmaceutical options also just add on to that, and again it's options. We just want to be able to provide options for our customers, so that's what it's about.
Gautham:And I'm assuming it's options enabled by technology and supply chain infrastructure that Vitamin Shop already has, as well as knowing the customer.
Andrew:Yeah, in this case we partnered with a telehealth expert. That's another important thing. Don't try to do everything yourself, whether it's tech or business, you know. Find a partner that is an expert and bring to bear when you're good at, and bring you know what they're good at and build something sooner.
Gautham:So with that, Andy, I'm going to turn it over to the next part of our conversation, which is on mentorship.
Paula:So, Andy, you keep talking about take it to the basics. Take it to the basics, which I love, right? Einstein, I think, has a famous quote that says make it as simple as possible and no simpler. Make it as simple as possible for a fifth grader to understand or a five-year-old to understand. Do you think that that is the most important skills for students and new retailers today?
Andrew:One of the skills I think is so important is curiosity and the drive. You know, if you're a student listening to this and you think you're going to be done when you graduate, you know I got some bad news for you because it's a lifelong commitment to learning and so having that curiosity about learning and growing and keeping your skills up I mean, everything I learned in college is completely obsolete at this point. You know, 30 some years later and so curiosity and an ambition to keep learning, I think is the most important skill.
Rich:I want to ask you the question about mentors and if there's a mentor or mentors that you look back to that had a impact on you. And I don't necessarily want to caveat it, but I feel like I'm speaking with a master technologist and a master retailer, and I love that combination. So I'll ask if there's someone from more of a tech perspective, an IT perspective, and then is there a retailer that you mentored with?
Andrew:Yeah, I actually like to answer this a little different way, if you don't mind. So you know, my best mentor was my father and I have this story. I was a young manager and I had a woman on my team who was not only not performing, she was actively fighting against a project we were doing, but there was a lot of issues. She had been with the company a long, long time. She the project we were doing, but there was a lot of issues. She had been with the company a long, long time. She had personal relationships with senior executives. So I didn't know what to do about this person. So I asked my dad to go to breakfast, told him the whole story and he looked up and he goes oh, I know the exact thing you should do. And I was relieved, right, because I was at my Winston and he said on Monday you should go to work, you should meet with your boss and you should quit. I'm like what are you talking about? Why would I quit? And he goes well, if you don't have the guts to do your job, then you don't deserve to have it. And that probably hurt more than being punched in the chest, right. And it was like no nonsense and, believe me, that breakfast gave me enough courage to go and do what I had to get done and change that. So I think that's probably my best example.
Andrew:When you think about technology mentors, it's just the people that had that curiosity and taught the fundamentals and cared about that. I mean, I can name a few people. There's a guy named Bob Claybrook who became the CIO at Bed Bath Beyond Now he's a consultant. There's a gentleman named Kevin Varela. There's so many people that taught me at the young age you know to do things the right way.
Andrew:Imagine you have a deadline and something's promised by Friday and if you, if you cut the corner, you're going to make your deadline and go home, or if you don't hard code and you do things right, you're going to either work all weekend or you're going to have to tell someone you're going to be late. Those are hard decisions to make and a lot of people have to make these decisions when no one's looking and, truthfully, no one will find out to. Maybe six months later, you know, or three years later, when they change the three regions to five and then your stuff doesn't work because you hardcoded it. So, learning from people that yeah, we get you're going to be late or we get that, but it's most important to do things the right way. Those were important mentorship things for me.
Rich:So I'll follow up to that. You said that a lot of the things you learned in college are kind of obsolete now and you're continually learning, and I agree with you on curiosity. How do you think students today can stand out with everything that is going on?
Andrew:Yeah, I mean, when I look to hire someone, I really would like someone that worked when they were in school. That really is good for me. And also there's so much about culture and whether we're working remotely or in an office, there's a lot to learn. It's not just the textbook stuff, so plus I like that people are putting in the extra effort. It's not just the textbook stuff, so plus I like that people are putting in the extra effort. I'm a big fan of teaching. You know you're both teachers and professors and I have this thing that the best way to get great at something is to teach it. So if I see students that are doing something you know just even asking about helping mentor someone else or teach a skill that's really a big positive for me. If you think you're an expert at something, go try and teach it, because you'll find out real quickly as you guys know how much you know or don't know about any topic.
Gautham:And I have to interject you are a teacher too. You have a course on project management, if I remember correctly right, Exactly that has been taken by people across the globe, so I can't even say that.
Andrew:Yeah, now you know, in my personal life I picked up a little hobby of sailing a couple years ago and now I'm teaching people how to sail. So even that is an example.
Rich:All right. So let's kick off the rapid fire round. I'll ask the first question and then we'll just kind of audible from here. Andy, you've given a lot of talks, I've seen you speak. Do you have your favorite walk-on music?
Andrew:You know I need to have that. This speak. Do you have your favorite walk-on music? You know I need to have that. This is a great idea. I think there's a song it's an old song by the band called Sticks, called You're Fooling Yourself, you know, and part of the job is like get up, you know, get going. So I think that's pretty motivational. So, yeah, I'm going to go with that.
Paula:All right, let me ask the second one. So I talked about drink history, so I have to ask this If you could trade lives with any historical figure, fictional or real, who would it be and what?
Andrew:I'm going to go with Bruce Lee because you know I think it'd be fun to be that fit and then also I wouldn't mind beating people up once in a while. I'd be kind of just the amount of flexibility and fitness and I think that would be nice to have. It's a good one.
Gautham:So what's the most unusual item you've bought or sold?
Andrew:Yeah well, I bought a sailboat that was left for dead. It was just sitting in some old gentleman's yard for 20 years and it looked horrible and someone said oh you know, we didn't even know if it could float, but it was filled with water. So logic had it if it's filled with water it must be able to float. So that was pretty unusual, but it's really worked out and been a lot of joy. You know everyone jokes about boating being expensive, but when you buy a sailboat for $500, it really is helpful. By the way, I got involved with that 500.
Gautham:You can sail it, and now you've become an expert sailor too. I'm not an expert, but I'm getting there, so I have to ask you this Ohio State football yes, all around, I'm a brown in the ask you this Ohio State football.
Andrew:Yes, I'll run Brown and the Cleveland Gardeners Frequently college team here.
Gautham:What do you think is what do you expect them to do this year? How do you expect them?
Andrew:Ohio State will be in the playoffs. There's no doubt about it. I think they're going to compete pretty handily for the national championship. They got three players from Alabama because when Nick Saban retired, a lot of the players wanted out, so they're definitely loaded. But it's going to come down to no different than what we do. Right, is it the right culture, leadership and a little bit of luck, because you got to make sure key players don't get hurt and we don't speak much about luck, but luck plays an important role in well, look, amen.
Andrew:It's just that Football can balance inbounds or out of bounds, and sometimes these games come down to that.
Gautham:Well, Andy, that brings us to the end of our conversation. Thank you so much for making the time Really, really appreciate it.
Paula:Thank you so much to Andy for joining us. What a fantastic conversation. I particularly loved the importance that Andy placed on aligning one's skills with their core identity and focusing on the broader business perspective. With that, let me ask Gotham Rich what do you guys have Well?
Gautham:that was a fun conversation and apparently he's a retailer who knows. Technology is how he's positioned himself, and I love the fact that he talked about building things to create value. Right, there's always a customer centric focus in everything, be it building the foundation credit or be it building AI tools. It's all about having the customer centric approach and creating value for the customer. What did you think about it, rish?
Rich:You know, I was struck by several things. Probably the thing that's sticking out that I've got at the top of my notebook is his comment about HR. When he was talking, I think Paula had asked him about his learnings and specifically in this case, he was using the example of HR and realizing that it wasn't just a if I remember the quote, a department that you go to when things went wrong. If I remember the quote, a department that you go to when things went wrong. He now looks at them as a crucial partner in building the culture and building his team, which I think that's refreshing it was really cool to hear him say that and something that I look forward to sharing with the audience.
Gautham:Yeah, and extending that, he talked about this notion of partnerships throughout right. Even when he talked about building things, he said well, you don't have to build everything, you don't have to be the expert, be an expert at some of the things and then build things together synergistically. So this notion of partnerships and building things for a greater group or collective seems to be central to efforts that he engages in. I am curious how do you see partnerships play out in retail?
Rich:I think they're crucial and I think what happens is it's not easy. I've been in cultures where there are definitely these silos. There are these invisible barriers that prevent you from getting things done and sometimes being almost counterproductive. I've seen other situations and thankfully I feel like I'm in one right now where you have good cross-functional partnerships. In my case, what it allows for is a trust in your partner where you don't feel like you've got to double check everything that's going on. There's a trust level there. I won't go into it, but I could probably develop a couple of case studies where I've been in organizations where that lack of transparency and that siloed culture has brought companies down.
Gautham:Yeah, and think about his roles. It's not just task functional within the company, right Supply chain, technology, infrastructure. These span organizations. It's a tough challenge to kind of get everyone aligned to build these collaborative efforts.
Rich:I enjoyed listening to the practical way in which he discussed the building blocks of tech and I think he said, if I remember it, it was that AI was not the end state, it was just a tool to get you there. And so he definitely has that and I'm halfway through his book right now. He definitely has that more thoughtful, meaningful approach to the way that he builds things, so you could see him almost building a tech stack and a team and collaborative relationships in that same thoughtful way.
Gautham:Yeah, and on that point, though, like his conversation about these composable commerce, building those Lego blocks that you can add and build to scale and allow you the flexibility. I think that's an important takeaway for students, as they are our audience, as they go into retail and figure out how to build new applications, because that's going to pop up ever so often. I want to get your perspective on his conversations. It was on more of the personal side, right, when he talked about curiosity and ambition being critical to survive into then talking about how technology gets outdated so quickly. What's your sense of how important these two elements are in what defines success? We've heard this being said, I think, by almost every speaker up until now. Right, curiosity, you need to have that continuous learning ability.
Rich:I think it's. I mean for me, I would. I would rate it as, if not the top skill, one of the top three skill sets that I'm looking for, because somebody can learn about a technology, or they can learn a particular how to buy a certain category or how to do planning, whatever the aspect is in retail. But if you're not curious, if you're not out in stores and talking to customers, if you're not looking at what's new from a style perspective, if there isn't that something driving you, I'll tell you right now. What makes me nervous is when I hear those in the industry that are avoiding AI and they almost have this shunning. If that's grammatically correct, the professor will have to correct me, but it's this. Well, I'm not going to look at it right now, at least be curious about it enough to play around with it and to see what it's capable of doing. And those are. You know. That scares me.
Gautham:Yeah, I mean like as a professor, I will say that the most important thing is to be able to play around with things and figure it out and not be afraid of making mistakes. Right, and I love when Andy said like when people say, oh it's, has a ship sail, he said like no, we're all learning right. And it's just that attitude and you've got to just jump in at some point and start learning.
Rich:And it's interesting in the 360-degree view or perspective of all the guests that we've had on the show. I don't know that we've had somebody that has been purely focused on building cultures. Everybody has, to a certain extent, andy's someone you'd love to have on the team. I see why you had him as part of the Retail Transformation Center.
Gautham:Yeah, and he's very reliable, very funny and knows his stuff right, like he knows his stuff and all those other things, the intangibles. I found it very interesting when he talked about failures and he brought up the story of his father and the lesson that he learned from his dad on failures and actually just doing your job Right, and I find this as another common theme amongst almost all of our podcast members is then the family and important mentors that come into play to shape them at early stages.
Rich:Yeah, I would agree with that, and different people will embrace failure in different ways. Some will openly accept it and some will sit there and kind of perseverate and learn over it. But everybody, almost to a person, has drawn valuable lessons and not ignored it. The leaders that pretend like they never fail, those are the ones we have to be worried about.
Gautham:And I like the lesson there right and just do your job right.
Rich:That's a very good lesson for anyone at any point of time it is and especially this audience All right. Well, I know that Paula had to drop off, so on Paula's behalf, gautam great to see you, as always. Want to thank Andy Lodato for joining us on Retail Relates another fantastic guest and hopefully everybody learns a lot and until next time, we appreciate you tuning in.
Gautham:Thank you.
