IAM2899 – Retail Executive Helps Businesses Navigate Product Development

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Transcription:

Juli Lassow 00:00
I love when I meet with entrepreneurs, how excited they are about who they're serving, what the change in the world that are they going to make with their product as it reaches a broader audience. And I would suggest when you're reaching out to a retailer that you really understand that retailer structure, their processes, certainly, but more like at a higher level, what their vision is for their business. Because I think similar to the strongest personal relationships, the strongest business relationships are ones that are built on common values. And if you are able to bring a product to life that's helping bring an organization's vision to life from that retailer perspective, you are much better positioned to help successfully launch that product.

Gresham Harkless 01:04
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Julie Lasso of JHL Solutions. Julie, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Juli Lassow 01:16
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Gresh. I am thrilled to be here and speaking with the community.

Gresham Harkless 01:21
Yeah, absolutely. Super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Julie so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Julie is an accomplished retail executive with 20 years of experience in the disciplines of sourcing, merchandising, inventory planning, and analytics. As the founder and principal of JHL Solutions, Julie helps businesses navigate the complex world of global retail sourcing and private label product development by supporting retailers and suppliers in finding, developing products, and better negotiating with each other. Before establishing her business, Julie held several progressive leadership roles at Target Corporation, Julie, are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Juli Lassow 02:01
I am. Thank you for the lovely intro.

Gresham Harkless 02:03
No problem. And, um, what I wanted to do is just kick everything off and hear a little bit more about your story and what led you to start your business.

Juli Lassow 02:10
Well, I'm very excited to tell that story. As you mentioned, just at the end of my bio, I worked for Target and that career lasted 17 years. So I'm a very proud Target alum, um, but I had reached a point like many people do who live in the corporate executive spaces, I thought that I could start serving and supporting a community of constituents in a better way, to be honest. And so when I left Target, it was all with the mindset of how do I really help retailers and suppliers get on the same page? And for me, what that is all about is really with the change in retail that we're seeing right now, I'm finding more and more retailers are very focused on their consumers, which they absolutely should be. Suppliers are focused on production, manufacturing, tariffs, But those groups are spending less time talking to each other. And that means that it takes longer for them to develop products. It's harder for them to find the right partners to grow their businesses. And I think being able to speak that same language is a way to really fast-track those partnerships. And so that's the support that I provide on the retailers and the suppliers.

Gresham Harkless 03:12
Nice. That makes so much sense. And I don't know if this is a result of, it seems like the direct-to-consumer kind of ability that you're able to go directly to consumer. I'm not sure if that makes it such a, I don't wanna say more difficult, but you're spending probably so much time talking more to the consumer that you don't have as much time to kind of develop those relationships and build that out.

Juli Lassow 03:30
That's absolutely an element of it. I think the direct-to-consumer growth from a business perspective is changing the retail landscape and the changing expectations, excuse me, that consumers have of retailers and the products and the brands that they're getting. So that's absolutely a piece of it.

Gresham Harkless 03:45
Yeah, that's what I figured. That, that makes so much sense. And, you know, I appreciate you kind of, um, you know, providing, you know, information about that for one, but also helping out the retailers and, and, and suppliers to be able to have, make sure that they, they're providing the best products. But I think if you're not having as much of those lanes open and that communication happen, then of course it doesn't necessarily help out the consumers as much. So people like you that are able to kind of provide their experience for one, and then two, also be able to help, you know, create better products, I think helps out overall.

Juli Lassow 04:11
Yeah. Well, it, it comes from the benefit of experience of when things have gone very, very well, which I'm happy to share, and that's certainly appropriately. Uh, but also there's been a lot of mistakes along the way that I, I've seen where you can avoid a lot of delays, a lot of costly errors, and it, it's in everyone's interest to, uh, minimize those. So, so I, I find a lot of both personal and professional joy.

Gresham Harkless 04:32
Yeah, I'm sure your clients do as well. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. I know you touched on a little bit. Can you take us through exactly like how you work with clients and some of those pitfalls and things that they might be able to avoid?

Juli Lassow 04:44
Ooh, exact is such a fun Way to think about it, because really it—I show up and I look very different depending on what the challenges are for the business. And I focus on three main areas of partnerships. So that's vetting. So how do you either know the right questions to ask if you are a retailer and looking for a new partner, or on the supplier side, it's more of like a self-vetting. How do I know what a supplier—or excuse me—what a retailer partner is going to look for? So I spend a lot of time in that early stage making sure. that you are, they're retail ready on the supplier side and can answer those questions really effectively. And then on the supplier side, make sure that you are slowing down and thinking about what are the ways that I can effectively onboard a new partner to my process, much like you'd onboard a new employee to your team. And when you, both groups take the time to put themselves in that other perspective, have that, that business empathy at the start of a partnership, those questions can be very, very straightforward and they can help get you aligned very quickly to know that yes, this is the right partner to work with or the business. The second major bucket of work that I focus on are, in some ways it's the project management piece of building product together. I've worked in product categories from watches, rechargeable batteries, bedding, Christmas trees, and there are certain very common steps to how to develop product together effectively regardless of what type of business that you're in. And if as an organization, you haven't taken the time to organize how you want to develop product, or as a supplier, if you've never developed or co-developed product with a supplier before, retailer before, you want to make sure you can understand what those steps are, what's coming up, because some of that work is not just-in-time work. That's work that takes weeks, if not months of preparation to do. So that's the second big bucket of work that I would do with either retailer suppliers. What's that process? And really making sure that that process is fitting appropriately to the retailer or the supplier partners you're working with. And then the last big piece of work I do is all around negotiations or basically deciding how and where product's being awarded. And that process, it's incredibly important because there isn't a lot of extra margin floating around these days. So you want to be really thoughtful when you finally have developed that product that you're negotiating, that you're aligning on the agreements, And in retail speak, there's a lot of different priorities that a retailer and a supplier have. And if you're working with, like, for example, if you're a retailer working with an importer of record for the first time or someone who's importing product versus making product domestically, there's an incredible list of challenges that come along with that that your systems might not be set up to handle. So that's a lot of the work that I do with retailers and suppliers as well. And the same for a supplier. If you're working with a supplier who's never imported product before, Here's all the ways that you need to make sure that you are advocating for yourself and, and having really specific conversations around how much inventory is going to be made, how long will it take to make the inventory and ship it. Those are, I would say, the big 3 buckets of work. And underscoring all that, it's, it's training, it's process mapping, certainly opening lines of communication and, and moving those partnerships forward, uh, at, at those 3 really critical points.

Gresham Harkless 07:50
Yeah, that, that, that makes so much sense. And I, I'm sure like a lot of times when you, and I don't know if you find this when you work with, you know, the, the inventors or entrepreneurs and business owners that create these products or, or see like that opportunity. A lot of times you think about that, but you don't think about that. I don't know if it's the right phrase, but bringing to market strategy, how exactly you're going to execute on that. And there's like so many different aspects that you forget on, forget to think about, or might need to, you know, have expert advice on as far as like how exactly to execute that. Because that's just probably as important as actually developing the product itself.

Juli Lassow 08:22
Absolutely. It's that business empathy piece of knowing who Who is in the room that you need to talk to? And you will have several different sets of influencers. So if it's the buyer, you might— you'll be focused a lot on product, you'll be focused on market share. It's the inventory planning team, it's replenishment strategies, your quality assurance team, your sourcing team. Each of those teams have incredibly different priorities, different metrics that they're focusing on, that they're being measured on, held accountable to. And the better that you can shift and speak that language, again, the more likely you are to successfully launch a program and launch one, uh, maybe not error-free because it's retail and there's always something, uh, but it's gonna go a lot more smoothly.

Gresham Harkless 09:05
Yeah, it's just probably the same as with business. As business, you know, there's no guarantee that everything's gonna go smoothly, it's gonna be super successful. You just try to increase the likelihood of that happening by leaning on experts like yourself so that you can hopefully be more successful or increase that That's my goal. And I, I love it. So, um, you might've already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and this could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Juli Lassow 09:30
I think for me, what sets me apart and makes me unique is the fact that I have been on both sides of the, the challenges. And it, when I was at Target, the role that I played was very focused on these supplier relationships. And I felt like that gave me a really interesting perspective that I could look internally at the cross-functional team and understand what their needs were, whether they were a merchant or planning team. And then on the supplier side, I was also the first line of conversation from the suppliers to say, this is confusing, this is the challenge, this is what makes— this is what's making this partnership very difficult. And so after more than a decade and a half of compiling those challenges, I've, I've got a fairly comprehensive map of where those pain points are and have a lot of personal and professional passion around helping groups get out ahead of what those challenges are. So building out the processes and the approaches that, to help, uh, neutralize the risk and certainly resolve the issues when they present themselves.

Gresham Harkless 10:32
Absolutely. That, that makes so much sense. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Juli Lassow 10:44
Something that makes me more effective and efficient, and as someone from a sourcing background, I love talking about this. So thank you for asking.

Gresham Harkless 10:50
No problem.

Juli Lassow 10:51
Uh, I set both business goals, but then also business development goals every year. And for 2019, as an example, the goal I set for myself was to be able to speak and write with more impact. And I found as I was really digging in and trying to get better at this, uh, with this within this year, something that I wasn't really great at was copy editing. My goal is to do more writing, to get some more publications out, to help other journalists with subject matter expertise inputs. I could get the content out, but it would take me forever to edit. So the hack I would like to share with your community is if you are doing an increased amount of writing to get your ideas out and build your own expertise, there's 2 apps that I have found to be absolutely amazing. So one is called the Hemingway app. And once you've written a reasonable draft of your content, if you cut and paste and load the content in. This will review for sentence complexity and grade level. And depending on the level of audience that you're trying to approach, I think their recommendation is usually like junior high level. Then you can get basically an assessment of how readable is your language. And that's something for me coming out of the corporate world and now in consulting world, we have a lot of doublespeak and acronyms and I'm not always the best at editing those out. So that is a really great filter for me from a content perspective. And then I also use Grammarly. Their free version is pretty great. I do do their premium version just to help get cleaned up basic grammar, certainly spelling, but punctuation and tone is also really fantastic from a flexibility perspective.

Gresham Harkless 12:25
So, uh, now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget, and this is kind of like a word of wisdom or piece of advice, and it could be specifically related to your business, but what's a piece of advice you would give for people are trying to launch their products and create services?

Juli Lassow 12:37
One I would say that's business specific or subject matter specific around connecting with retailers. So if you are looking to build an actual product, a physical product, uh, I love when I meet with entrepreneurs, how excited they are about who they're serving, what, what change in the world are they going to make for their, uh, with their product as it reaches a broader audience. And I would suggest when you're reaching out to a retailer that you really understand that retailer structure, their processes, certainly, but more like at a higher level, what their vision is for their business. Because I think similar to the strongest personal relationships, the strongest business relationships are ones that are built on common values. And if you are able to bring a product to life that's helping bring an organization's vision to life from that retailer perspective, you are much better positioned. To help successfully launch that product.

Gresham Harkless 13:29
Nice. Oh, I love those, those nuggets. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on this show. So Julie, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Juli Lassow 13:41
Um, being a CEO to me means that I get to think about and very purposely decide the businesses I wanna work with and the impact that I get to have in the space that I'm passionate about. And for me, that's all about retail, retailers and consumer goods and making those relationships and those products better.

Gresham Harkless 13:58
Absolutely. I love that. And I, I love, because a lot of times we forget, kind of like I usually say, like an artist, you know, you get to paint the picture of the world that you wanna see. And obviously you being a Target alumni, being able to have so much experience related to all the things that you do, you get to help, you know, so many businesses and organizations and suppliers be able to, to, to see the vision of what they wanted to come to fruition and do it in the best way that they can see possible. So I appreciate that.

Juli Lassow 14:21
Yeah, no problem. It's been a really fantastic journey and excited to share more about it.

Gresham Harkless 14:27
Yeah. Well, I'm super excited for you and I'm super excited, you know, for, for all the awesome things you're providing the people that listen, they get to glean all this information. So, um, what I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, for people that are listening and watching, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Juli Lassow 14:46
Oh yeah. Happy to share. Thank you for the the open invite to do that. So you can reach out to me at jhl-solutions.com, um, or Julie Lasso, J-U-L-I L-A-S-S-O-W. Uh, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn. And then through the site, you're easily able to access some content information there as well. If you are interested in learning a little bit more about how to think about approaching suppliers, or if you're reaching out to actually have product produced for the first time, I've got some really easy information about how to take your first steps in vetting retail supplier partners. And I'm happy to offer that to the community and hope it can be of value to you. Knowing, not knowing exactly when the information is going to be up for this podcast, you can check out the In the News page and it'll have all the stuff, some upcoming events that I'm speaking at. And if I'm in your neighborhood, Greater MSP, or there's a webinar available, I would love to Uh, invite you to join me for that conversation and, uh, understand what and how I could help grow your businesses.

Gresham Harkless 15:49
Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that, Julie, and we will make sure to have those links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you and, and see all the awesome things. But, uh, again, appreciate you so much, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.