Joanna Herrick started in the men’s clothing industry over 12 years ago, primarily in custom clothing. She joined Trunk Club in 2013, heading Operations in men’s custom clothing division. During that time, they have grown to be the 2nd largest custom retailer of men’s clothing in the country, using technology to combine a modern interactive experience with this old world craft.

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Here are the highlights of my conversation with our guest:

• How Joanna picked up tips and tricks through her early experience in the clothing retail industry which gave her knowledge on both front-end and back-end processes in this field and bring this expertise to Trunk Club.
• From being a French horn player, Joanna shares how she got led to this industry through Craigslist and how she continues to hone her craft especially that the company continues to scale positively.
• With Trunk Club’s speedy expansion, the company grew from 3 people to 18 employees pretty quickly and Joanna tells us how Trunk Club was able to scale this fast, the changes they did to keep up with the rapid growth, and how she, herself, had evolved in able to meet demands.
• The priorities within their internal and external Operations team which Joanna needs to drive to ensure logistics in both sides work as they should.
• From websites to word of mouth, Joanna shares how customers find Trunk Club and how engagement is applied in the end-to-end process of their customer’s journey.
• We find out what makes Joanna great at the what she does, including maintaining about 20-30 customers of her own so she can experience firsthand whatever it is that they are building or putting in place.
• In building a digital space, what do you integrate first and build early on? Joanna shares the answer to this is being cognizant on where digital makes sense and where customers need human connection. Use technology and going digital to drive sales but do not take the personal aspect out of it.
• How Trunk Club gets to know their customers from onboarding to post- sign up; how their technology processes gathered data to arrive with the items to pack inside the ‘trunk’ of the customer; and how their app bring custom clothing to another level.
• Their hurdles and areas of improvement, where they are focusing on to make the next big enhancements in the clothing industry; and where they want Trunk Club to be to be ready for the next big growth.
• How mobile has affected their approach the digital infrastructure for their supply chain; how their app helps aggregate problems; and the process which takes place in their company to ensure that changes are made timely so they progress at the right pace.
• Joanna shares future enhancements and trends that she is foreseeing including the concept of visualization, and talks about the danger of going digital but losing the romance of custom and what makes it work.

Rapid Fire Questions:

• Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why?

Execution, for sure. We sit in rooms brainstorming all day but if it doesn’t work well and it doesn’t improve things for our team members, then it doesn’t really matter. No ideas are important because it keeps things fresh and it allows improvement but at the end of the day, it has to work in order to impact your business. Execution is 75%.

• What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far?

Never get super attached to your work, just get attached to what works.

• What is your favorite business book?

The Tipping Point

• What is your favorite digital resource?

Our tech team is my favorite digital resource.

• What is your favorite app and why?

HauteLook

• What is the coolest thing that you are working on right now that you want everyone to know about?

The communications process I talked to you about and making it visual and seamless. It’s the enhanced Trunk Club version of the Domino’s pizza delivery.