#19 - TV buying, new channel testing, and 'home-grown' forecasting w/ Sarah Carusona

Hi there! Welcome back to another edition of Don’t VLOOKUP. We’re excited to share Sarah Carusona’s story as (now former) Director of eCommerce at OluKai. Founded in 2006 by Bill Worthington and Matt Till, OluKai is over a decade older than most of the brands we’ve featured. For reference, in 2006, Facebook launched a sparkly new product called the ‘News Feed,’ which would clunkily display lo-res ads here and there to users.

I think that’s what drew us most to Sarah’s perspective — how are the cards you’re dealt any different if your product predates some of the platforms likely most responsible for the brand’s growth today? We’ll dig into that a bit in this episode.

Before Sarah got into eCommerce, she was a professional dancer, training up to eight hours a day - every day - and waiting tables on the side so she could afford rent in a 2-bedroom apartment with three roommates. Reflecting on those earlier days, she credits her dancing career for building a hard work ethos and, most importantly, instilling first-principles thinking in her current day-to-day:

“I think what I’ve taken with me from my dance career to this career is understanding how to break complex systems down into simple steps,” she told us. “A pirouette, you do it once…maybe fall a little bit to the right, and you shift your weight accordingly. You do it over and over and over again, and finally get that perfect mix.”

Sarah is definitely one of the most data-driven operators we’ve come across to-date. Read more and listen below 👇️ 👇️ 👇️