Nate Roy’s Post

What. A. Day. Earlier this morning, Constructor announced that we closed our Series B funding round, nearly tripling our previous valuation to $550 million. We got to celebrate the moment with a banner on the NASDAQ sign in Times Square, and an LED truck takeover across NYC. Oh, and did I mention we launched a new website this morning? This is the dawn of a really exciting era at Constructor. I recently celebrated my one year anniversary with the company, and I couldn’t be more bullish about the path that we’re on. Most importantly, we’ll use these new funds to continue doing great work for our customers, and delivering experiences as exceptional as their brands. More great things to come later this year - I can’t wait to share them with you.

I saw some pretty cool data from one of Forrester's analysts this morning on LinkedIn. According to their May 2024 Consumer Pulse, 28% of US online adults (35% UK) say they're using MORE buy online, pick up in-store fulfillment services than they used to. I personally relate to this a lot, and I'm sure a lot of you do too. I recently picked up a new monitor from a big box store near me rather than Amazon (even though their price was slightly lower) because I could order and pick it up the same day. Maybe it sounds strange, but there are lots of porch pirates in my neighborhood and I don't like having that sort of stuff dropped off on my front steps when I can avoid it. The growing popularity of BOPIS does add some interesting complexity to B2C product discovery, though. To provide the best possible experience for your customers, it means your search bar needs to be conscious of location-specific inventory -- in addition to traditional fulfillment options -- and rank results accordingly. Nothing more annoying than seeing a BOPIS button, clicking into the PDP, then finding out it's not actually available at your local store 😬

Four key questions to ask yourself before starting a digital transformation project: 1) Technology-aside, what are the business problems we’re trying to solve? What are the outcomes we hope to realize? 2) What is the plan for change management? How will we keep employees motivated and engaged when things get difficult, and how will we ensure they receive the right education and support to be successful? 3) How will our plans impact the customer experience? Is there education we need to do to bring the customer along with us? 4) Will Vendor X be the right one for our needs? Have we considered factors like implementation cost, total cost of ownership, time-to-value, cost savings, efficiency gains, other key/unique business metrics? If it's interesting to you, I share 6 more tips on digital transformation mistakes to avoid in the following Forbes article. Link in the comments 😊 And, if I missed anything you think is important, please let me know!

I’m about to fly home from 48 hours in Nashville with the marketing squad. One of the things I love most about this team is how deeply everyone cares about creating programs that genuinely help our prospects and customers, not just marketing for marketing’s sake. It’s not something I ever want to take for granted and makes me really proud to be a small part of it. Nashville is a town with a rich creative history, and I think being here helped us all step out of the normal playbooks and try to approach our individual channels with a fresh perspective. I’m really excited about some of the things we have coming in the second half of this year. Meredith Broderick Noelina Rissman 🌎👩🏽💻 Crystal Cheung Karyn Garcia Edwyn Mitchell, MTA Nicholas Allen Hanna (Daboul) Shaw Yana Suharska 🇺🇦 Matthew Michalke

A lot of people talk about how conversational search and genAI will help out consumers. But one of the things I’m most excited about is how it’s going to make merchandisers’ lives better. One of the hardest things about the job today is trying to figure out what a shopper wanted when they landed on your site, and how hard they had to work to find it. With traditional search, you might only get a few words or a short phrase to figure it out, which isn’t much context. The beauty of conversational search is suddenly the merchant will have so much more information - instead of a couple words, they might have paragraphs or even full conversation transcripts they can reference — much deeper insight into what was going through the customer’s mind while they were shopping. Brendan Witcher goes on to explain how that information can then be used to produce more useful product copy and other CX enhancements. It’s one of my favorite parts of our webinar last week. What do you think?🤔

B2B manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors know the importance of building deep customer relationships better than most. With the increasing number of digital touchpoints in the buyer's journey, one of the greatest considerations for B2B organizations today is ensuring their online experiences match the same level of quality as in-person -- so that they can strengthen relationships rather than dilute them. This was just one of several takeaways I had coming out of B2B Online Chicago last week. I wrote up an extensive recap on the Constructor blog, feel free to check it out in the comments and call me out if I missed anything big 🙂

Brands are constantly working to elevate their in-store experiences to provide differentiated value for their customers. Many consumers are beginning to expect the same level of quality from digital experiences, and we're lucky to be partnering with companies like Monica Vinader Ltd who are raising the bar within the jewelry category. Check out this story in today's The New York Times about all of the great work they are doing, including some of the tests they're running with Constructor. "The brand, whose pieces range from 24 British pounds (about $30) to £1,495 (about $1,870), announced in December that it would begin work with the U.S.-based company Constructor, an A.I.-powered search platform, to create bespoke digital experiences including tailored landing pages for each shopper and personalized search results."

I was talking to an ecommerce leader at B2B Online last week who told me they were 2 years into a PIM implementation. It was the first project they picked to kick off their digital transformation -- but they had missed their deadline twice -- and weren't feeling very confident that they'd hit the next one. I worked in the PIM space for a few years. I consider good product data to be an ecommerce fundamental. It influences so many parts of the buying journey, including quality search results. But often PIM projects can be a little bit like remodeling a house - you make a plan and have a grand vision for what life will be like once it's done, but as soon as you start tearing up walls and floors, you tend to uncover additional problems you weren't expecting, and suddenly find yourself months or years past your original deadline. The end result is almost always worth it, but you never get there according to the original plan. It made me wonder, does it make sense to start a digital transformation with a massive undertaking like fixing bad product data, or should you solve a smaller problem first? It might seem logical to start with the biggest, hairiest project and get it out of the way first. But according to McKinsey, 70% of digital transformations fail, and one of the most common reasons cited is biting off too much, too soon. You stand a better chance of maintaining momentum if you can stack some quick wins and show results that the business can rally around. That's what's so interesting to me about being in the search and product discovery world these days. You genuinely *can* move very quickly (we're talking weeks/months, not years). And it's close to the revenue, so you'll know whether or not it's making an impact, fast. To be clear, eventually, you have to do both. Where would you start?

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