While I’d love to give each and every female at Recharge their own well-deserved shout out, this week I’ve narrowed it down to two inspiring women. 

Mansi Parikh, Director of Product Analytics 

As the Director of Product Analytics, Mansi understands empathy is everything to be successful in her role. Before joining Recharge, Mansi took an internship in Bolivia where she was tasked with understanding when and why people default on their loans: 

“Part of that role was to actually go visit the people that were applying for these loans. This experience allowed me to know some of the most remote communities and especially how data affects those communities. This experience helped actually understand the people behind the metrics they were measured on, how they lived, their hopes and dreams. This experience allowed me to develop strong empathy that I carried with me through every project as an analyst.“

Empathy is one of Recharge’s four core values, so naturally, Mansi was a great culture fit when applying at Recharge. Mansi also says she decided to join Recharge mainly because of our Founders, Oisin O’Connor and Mike Flynn: 

“They seemed humble, down to earth, and genuinely cared about their employees and believed in their mission. Every member I met from the team during the interview felt that way about them. I really respect the way they have built this company from the ground up, and grew it to be a successful business with the best remote first culture I have ever experienced in my career.”

Mansi says she draws a lot of her inspiration from “entrepreneurial women like Sarah Blakely, Founder of Spanx, and Angie Hicks, Founder of Angie’s List. Their story of how they came from nothing, took risks and went out of their comfort zone without compromising their beliefs is both humbling and empowering.”

One of the biggest challenges she faces as a woman is being a mom while also trying to juggle a career: 

“I am very excited about the prospects of both. Working at Recharge with such an amazing team and a very understanding boss has given me the hope that I can achieve and enjoy both aspects of my life without compromising the other.”

She says the best piece of advice she has for future women leaders is:

“Don’t be afraid to take up space in the world. Take the time and space to learn about yourself and don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself if your boundaries are crossed. In order to learn more about yourself and who you are, sometimes you have to take up space in the world and that’s okay. It’s okay to plunge into the unknown, it’s okay to take risks and fail because without those experiences, you will never get to realize your true potential.”

Kayla Turpin, Manager of Knowledge & Quality 

As one of our veteran female employees at Recharge, Kayla started as an Account Manager, assisting in some of our largest merchant launches on Recharge. Kayla has worked her way up into managing a team of her own: 

“My team is responsible for managing our technical and support documentation. This includes everything from merchant and developer-facing content to internal resources and training for our Customer Success team.

The role requires me to wear a lot of hats: part-Editor, part-Librarian, part-Project Manager, part-Teacher, and part-Trivia Host (alright, this is just a fun, extracurricular hat).” 

When asked what her favorite thing about working at Recharge is, Kayla says:

“It might sound cliche, but definitely the people! I work alongside people with a strong work ethic and growth mindset who are always willing to collaborate. Also, the flexibility of remote work – I love that Recharge is a remote-forward company that has allowed me to travel all over North America, and meet up with colleagues in fun cities.”

Kayla says one of the achievements she is most proud of is getting her Master’s Degree: 

“I was the first person in my family to graduate university, so to see the culmination of hard work — from myself but also my parents investing in me and my education —- result in my MA was extremely rewarding.” 

She says that three women in her life have been most inspiring to her: 

“Recharge’s own Chathri Ali! When I joined Recharge, she was such an indelible influence on my early growth at Recharge and a force to be reckoned with. She is effortless in her leadership and always tenacious in doing right by the merchant, her team, and the company as a whole. I often ask myself, ‘WWCD?’ 

Jennifer Hollett, the Executive Director at The Walrus. I had the pleasure of working on her 2015 federal election campaign and was inspired by her passion and hard work on what turned out to be a pretty grueling campaign! She has taught me that no matter what role or industry you are in, social and political action can remain threaded in the work that you do. 

This may be cheesy — but my mom. My parents founded their own company from scratch and I grew up watching my mom learn and teach herself how to run a small business (while also raising two mostly-good-but-sometimes-a-handful children).”

She says trying to balance her personal and professional life is always a work in progress: 

“Being able to work remotely has made it easier to achieve that balance. I am able to have this amazing career while living close to family and friends, which affords me the social time and support system I need to be the best version of myself at work.”

Kayla’s advice for future female leaders is: 

“Be mindful of the language you use at work. Women are socialized early on to sound less confident, even when they are actually brimming with confidence. Breaking the linguistic rituals of downplaying and undermining yourself is difficult, but people deserve to hear your thoughts and ideas. 

However, there is no amount of Leaning In that’s a fix-all for the influence of societal structures in the workplace. So the other piece of advice is to never stop asking the questions that highlight the structural change that needs to happen. Support other women in the workplace and bring them along in your success. Promote other conceptions of leadership at work. Be inclusive.” 

The post Inspiring women at Recharge – Part 2 appeared first on Recharge.

In this two-part blog series, we’re compiling our own list of women at Recharge who are inspiring, and who’ve all made positive impacts in the industry.

Lindy Crea, Director of Strategic Alliances 

After college, Lindy found herself traveling the world working in various roles, from Europe to Africa, until starting a family brought her back to her roots in the US. She serendipitously landed a role at Klarna when she ran into a former boss at the London Heathrow Airport, who hired her on to support their go-to-market efforts.  After becoming familiar with the eCommerce space, Lindy joined Recharge last year and has been focused on managing relationships with Channel Partners. 

I asked Lindy which women leaders most inspire her. Here are few which were top of mind for her:

“Christina Stembel, the founder of Farmgirl Flowers – I saw her speak at a Women in Ecommerce event about 18 months ago and was so impressed with the story of how she grew Farmgirl Flowers to a $65M+ business; and she did it completely bootstrapped. Her determination and working hours leave me empathetically exhausted.  I admire how she adhered to her vision, but was also so authentically honest with her customers when she had to change how she sourced her flowers.

My childhood girlfriends who are always a group text away.  They have followed various career paths, are mothers of young families, dedicated daughters, and reliable friends. They provide me with so much support, perspective, and unconditional love.  But most importantly, they provide me with the escape on an annual, family-free girls vacation.  We managed to sneak off to Miami, just before the pandemic last February.

The many women I work with daily at Recharge, who inspire me with their energy, focus, and determination to support their colleagues and Recharge’s partners and merchants.” 

Lindy admits that it’s hard to achieve perfect balance as a woman:

“There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I want or feel like I should accomplish.  A few approaches help me from becoming overwhelmed (though it does happen!) and ensure the most important things are addressed. First, I strive to not multi-task, and instead be in the moment and focus on the task or person at hand.

Second, I find time for my family every day. Most days, this is sitting down to dinner and putting my kids to bed with a book or 2. This only amounts to a couple hours, but provides a lot of harmony for me and them.  Last, I prioritize sleep and downtime. I grapple with guilt for not being productive all hours, but I am embracing slow weekends, lounging in pjs, reading books, listening to podcasts, cooking new recipes, and trekking in the outdoors.” 

Lindy says one of her other biggest challenges as a woman is:

“Feeling intimidated when I am the only woman in the room, which happens more often than it should. Instead of focusing on being the only woman, I try to focus on finding commonalities with other people and foster individual connection.    

In the cases where I have been dismissed or disrespected, particularly in a room full of people, I struggle to assert my right to be heard.  I will continually work on finding my voice in these intimidating situations, but have noted that the world is changing and I have experienced more allies in these situations and am noting a concerted effort by more assertive personalities to make space.”

Here’s how Lindy hopes to make an impact at Recharge throughout the next year:

“Building on the great work of the partner team and continuing to grow a larger and more engaged channel partner ecosystem. The partner team will be growing, so I hope to hire team members who are inspired and fired up to join a great team and join us on an incredible journey.” 

Viviane Ghaderi, Sr. Manager of Software Development

With a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering/NeuroEngineering, Viviane found herself in various roles working on everything from BMW’s, to the Alexa product, to developing spinal cord stimulators and retinal implants before landing her role at Recharge.

Viviane said this about her motivation for joining Recharge:

“We’re at a really exciting stage right now and that’s exactly the phase of a startup I was hoping to join when I started my search: rapid growth on all fronts, great trajectory, and there’s still so much to build and improve.

I’m also really excited about my role and the new product and team we’re building. Lastly, I really like the company’s core values. My favorite one is ‘humility’ – approach every task with humility and open-mindedness by learning with your peers, collaborating effectively, and leaving your ego at the door.”

Viviane says she is able to balance work/life effectively due to Recharge being a remote company.

“Being able to work remotely at Recharge allows me to create my own schedule and I don’t have to spend time commuting or getting ready unless I want to. I can also literally work from anywhere and don’t have to make sacrifices to live in a certain place just because of a job (which I have had to do in the past and I was pretty miserable because of it).” 

In the next year, she hopes to get back into competitive running and would like to PR a half marathon or Olympic distance triathlon.  As far as her professional goals go, she wants to help build a great team and product at Recharge. 

She says one of the biggest challenges she faces in the workplace is having too few women in tech.

“I’ve been in engineering for over 15 years now. I remember so many occasions – whether it was going to a new class or stepping into a meeting room with new people at work – where the first thing I had to do is explain that I am in the right place. I had to prove that I’m an engineer or technical manager whereas my male peers didn’t have to go through the same exercise.” 

One of the biggest life lessons Viviane has learned is staying focused on her trajectory:

“The path to getting where you want to be is not always straightforward. Sometimes you have to take a couple of steps back to move ahead later on.

For example, you might have to take on a role that might not be the best fit, but it can help you get your foot in the door and allows you to prove yourself. Once you realize the trajectory is not there, you can adjust and make changes.”

By the same token, she says her biggest piece of advice for future women leaders is “…to understand that setbacks are part of life and learn how to handle them effectively.”

I think I speak for all of us when I say that we are very lucky to call Lindy and Viviane leaders here at Recharge. We’re excited to see where they will take the team in 2021!   

The post Inspiring women at Recharge – Part 1 appeared first on Recharge.

Spending patterns became unpredictable as consumer behaviors shifted overnight. Customer acquisition costs fluctuated greatly as marketing budgets were paused, cut, accelerated, and everything in between. Is there any sense to be made of the last six months?

ChargeX 2020 on September 2-3 will examine these very issues impacting the ecommerce landscape. We don’t claim to have a crystal ball, but gathering top minds in the subscription space is a great place to start.

Looking back to see forward

As historian Yuval Noah Harari once wrote: “[Crises] fast-forward historical processes.” While Harari referred more to societal, political, and cultural change, there is another important angle — business. As we are seeing now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic turmoil it has created, whole industries can appear, disappear, and pivot overnight when faced with extreme events.

Indeed, few events advance technology, business models, and corporate strategy at the rate of crises.

For instance, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, entrepreneurship often seemed like the only way forward. Millions of people had lost their jobs and few companies were hiring—but there was a surprising spike in innovation. Take Lehman Brothers, the largest corporate casualty of the crash. Overnight, tens of thousands of the bank’s white-collar workers found themselves unemployed. While some moved into other corporate roles, many struck out on their own.

Scores of fintech startups including the challenger bank Revolut and the investment firm MarketFinance all have former Lehman employees at the helm. But not every laid off employee-turned-entrepreneur stuck within their familiar financial sphere. Some looked beyond the world they knew and launched exciting businesses in retail, fashion, and hospitality.

Adam Taylor, who cut his teeth in Lehman’s mergers and acquisitions division, pivoted to pet supplies, launching PetShop. Koen Thijssen, an industrials analyst, launched Bloomon, a flower subscription service. And John Candillier, who headed up the bank’s European equities unit, created the mobile tagging platform Tag My Phone.

Most of these businesses simply couldn’t have existed before the financial collapse, according to Diane Albouy, CTO of smol. Back in the early 2000s, Taylor, Thijssen, and Candillier would have needed significant financial backing to develop their technologies from scratch. But by 2008, there were readymade platforms and products waiting on the shelves.

“Platforms like Recharge and Shopify allowed for anybody to start a business,” explains Albouy, who worked at Goldman Sachs as a technology analyst during the crisis. “If you had an idea, you could just go and try it. Up until then, you had to know that your idea was going to work.”

That newfound freedom, combined with the financial crisis throwing millions of the brightest minds out of work, accelerated business development.

“Society and the future both looked very different,” Albouy says. “That changed people’s perspective, ideas, and willingness to try new things.”

The receptive environment meant entrepreneurs could experiment not just with their products and services but with the underlying business models, too. One of the burgeoning strategies to emerge was direct-to-consumer (D2C) — an ecommerce business model where manufacturers sell directly to consumers without a middleman.

In the years after the crisis, D2C companies flooded the market.

“It’s like any marketplace,” Albouy says. “Supply shot up all of a sudden because people lost their white-collar corporate jobs and started new businesses. From the demand perspective, it’s been super interesting to see demand growing.”

Sustainable clothing brand Reformation launched in 2009. Glasses retailer Warby Parker and modern basics brands Everlane arrived in 2010. Direct-to-consumer posterchild Dollar Shave Club appeared in 2011.

Little did we know that this was just the start of the story. A dozen years later, another crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, was waiting to revolutionize the D2C sector once more.

Worldwide digital transformation

Even as society returned to normality and stability following the financial crash, D2C businesses didn’t disappear. Indeed, since 2008 D2C brands have gone from strength to strength. Consider one small part of the market—subscriptions. As recently as 2011, subscription-based businesses generated $57 million in sales. Today, that figure is between $12 billion and $15 billion.

Yet despite significant growth and adoption, some corners of the economy have remained steadfastly reluctant to even consider it as a business model.

“There was still a big gap between the physical shop and the digital shop,” says Albouy. “Businesses were always dominant in one of them. You buy it from the shop or you’re an online buyer. There wasn’t much interchanging.”

But the recent COVID-19 pandemic has blurred that distinction. Almost all restaurants are now offering online ordering, mom and pop convenience stores have rolled out click and collect orders, and many businesses are working from home as standard. Importantly, these transformations have rarely affected the customer experience.

“The guy who has a shop around the corner who is all about the communication with his customer discovered that having an online presence doesn’t change this,” says Albouy. “He still controls his image and he still controls his brand.”

The pandemic acted as a compulsory experiment in digital transformation, shepherding technology laggards towards a digital future. The world has leapt forward a decade in just a few months, transforming businesses and how we interact with them. As the last few holdouts give in and adopt D2C technology, the rate of change is likely to increase even further.

Press fast-forward

Back in 2008, the Great Recession created an entrepreneurial revolution and set the stage for the D2C economy. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated things once more, making digital interactions the norm and establishing D2C as the default for many organizations.

Reflecting on how far the D2C economy has come in so few years, Albouy is philosophical. Rather than the conclusion to a worldwide process of transformation, she sees the recent changes as the start of a larger journey. And although she can’t see the destination just yet, she’s excited to see what the future holds.

“The D2C space is going to get more and more exciting as technologies open up, not just from an ecommerce and operational perspective, but also from a marketing perspective,” she says. “You can just apply it to pretty much all of the verticals of D2C. “The space has evolved a lot, but there is also so much room for new businesses.”

How much room exactly is there for new businesses? What can existing brands do to successfully pivot and continue scaling? Join us at ChargeX 2020 on September 2-3 as we continue to dissect the ever-changing ecommerce landscape.

The post How crises drove the direct-to-consumer revolution appeared first on Recharge.

Last year, we hosted ChargeX, a two-day event for merchants and partners to gather and share learnings and solutions about all things subscription. We hosted 250 of the world’s top ecommerce experts from different verticals for a conference full of insightful panels and a lot of fun. Don’t believe us? Check out the highlights:

The team from Kopari, a long-standing merchant who has achieved growth at scale on Recharge, shared their experience:

This was one of the best events I’ve ever been to in terms of the connections and relationships I was able to get. The attendees were really specific to the topics which made me eager to connect, because I knew we would have such similar goals.

Lanie DePasquale, Director of Customer Retention at Kopari

Since then, we doubled down and are incredibly excited to announce ChargeX 2020, Recharge’s fourth annual user and developer conference hosted in Santa Monica, CA from September 2-4!

Join us for game-changing product announcements, technical deep-dives, and inspiring keynotes and panel discussions as we continue to grow the Recharge community. The agenda announcing new speakers will be launched in the coming months, but in the meantime here are a few important dates to keep in mind:

• September 2: Welcome reception – open to ALL attendees, starting at 5:30pm
• September 3: All day conference featuring merchant and agency content
• September 4: Limited 1:1 meetings with the Recharge team

To be the first to know about ChargeX updates and announcements, be sure to sign up for our newsletter. If you’re as excited as us and can’t wait for September, early bird tickets are on sale now and will remain discounted until May 31.

Don’t miss the event of the year, we look forward to seeing you and your team in Santa Monica this fall!

The post Save the date – ChargeX 2020 appeared first on Recharge.

Day 2 was focused on merchants from all verticals scaling their businesses using the Recharge platform. Guest speakers from top-earning merchants and seasoned agencies spoke to stores of all sizes ranging from what to look for when spinning up new brands to supercharging your store using SMS.

Cooper Harris, CEO, Klickly
Kaitlin Holliday, Head of E-commerce + Data, Four Sigmatic
Lanie De Pasquale, Director of Customer Retention, Kopari
Taylor Sicard, Co-Founder, WIN Brands Group

Summary from this talk:
• The best tools and tricks for optimizing conversion
• Importance of testing any steps that disrupt the checkout flow
• Additional effort into the offer section of a landing page
• Valid multi-variant testing need a statistical significance
• How churn plays into measuring success

The post ChargeX: The AB(C)s of conversion rates appeared first on Recharge.

Day 1 was focused on preeminent agencies building off the platform. Guest speakers from agencies of all sizes spoke on a variety of topics including scoping new projects and productizing solutions to common requests and alternative methods to build revenue.

Edward Upton, CEO, Littledata

Summary from this talk:
• How agencies can measure which marketing channels bring in the most profitable customers
• Current fragmentation for marketing attribution – customer purchase data and browsing data in seperate silos
• Overview of the many channels that all funnel into calculating a customers LTV from pre-checkout through subscription renewal
• The three levers that impact Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
• Predict which visitors will be high value and experiment with what content you push to them

The post ChargeX: Littledata, big results appeared first on Recharge.