We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful John Andrews. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with John below.

John, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

Retail is going through a turbulent season of change. Shoppers want products and services on demand but have been trained to bear only some of the costs.

As a result, already thin retail margins are non-existent in Ecommerce. How will retail survive and thrive in the future?

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a curious lifelong learner who has spent over 25 years working in the consumer packaged goods industry, including with companies like Hanes Brands, Newell Rubbermaid, PictureVision (Kodak Digital) and Implus. My career has focused on shopper marketing, and I have experience as both an entrepreneur and intrapreneur.

In 2007, I joined Walmart’s retail team and developed one of the original “people as media” platforms, called Walmart Elevenmoms. I then founded Collective Bias, a retail media company that was solely dedicated to shopper marketing. It was acquired by Inmar in 2016. I also co-founded Carusele, which is an agency-based influencer marketing platform. Additionally, I served as CEO of Photofy, which is a content creation platform. Today I serve as a retail co-innovation director for Ricoh, working with leading retailers on digital transformation projects.

In 2017, I co-authored a book with my business partner, Ted Rubin, called “Retail Relevancy.” I currently live in Raleigh, North Carolina with my wife Shannon and daughter Catherine. In my free time, I enjoy trekking, playing golf, writing, and teaching marketing at NC State University.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met Ted Rubin when I was working at Walmart. We were both creating marketing programs with bloggers and one of them, Katja Presnal, introduced us. Ted was the CMO of e.l.f. Cosmetics at the time and we collaborated on a couple of programs together.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My career has shifted between startups and big corporations. This goes back to my first job as a Domino’s Pizza manager. I pizza store is a small business and you manage all aspects. A franchise is a large business, so you get exposed to corporate structure and operational consistency.

This has created an approach to constantly look outside my current business or focus for inspiration or ideas.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://medium.com/@katadhin
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katadhin/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Katadhin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katadhin/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyvKfLoqMOsSalTWRawOEtg

Image Credits
Photography by John Andrews