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Experience Highlights
Experience
Experience
Leverage 25 Years of digital innovation
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Experience
Experience
Leverage 25 Years of digital innovation
"E-Commerce and digital storytelling coupled with extensive management expertise"
BUILDING TEAMS THAT EXCEL IN BREAKING THE STATUS QUO
Stuart Spiegel - Principal, Spiegel Partners llc
Stuart Spiegel is an experienced senior executive that has successfully helped develop brands and businesses in both the analog as well as the digital worlds. With over 30 years (20 in digital) of expertise in merchandising, marketing and operations, Mr. Spiegel has blended traditional retailing and brand marketing experience with cutting edge technology and e-commerce expertise. This background affords a very unique perspective on multi-channel strategy development and brand building activities.
Mr. Spiegel was most recently the Chief Digital and Marketing Officer of ghd, the world’s premier hair tools company based in London. The private equity backed company was recently sold for £300M. The business embraced online technology to bolster relationships with the company’s 50,000 salons globally and was also able to connect directly to consumers in fourteen countries worldwide. Prior to ghd, Mr. Spiegel was at Converse (a Nike company) where he was the Vice President of Digital Commerce overseeing all activities on Converse.com. Mr. Spiegel was responsible for a complete re-design of the company’s online presence. The new site uniquely blended cultural content with commerce. The result was in an increase in online revenue as well connecting with millions of fans (40 Million) on social media driving the overall health of the brand itself. Mr. Spiegel was also a member of Nike’s Global Digital Commerce Leadership Team which helped drive the overall digital commerce strategy of Nike and all of its affiliate companies worldwide.
Prior to Converse, Mr. Spiegel was the Senior Vice President of Merchandising and Operations at Delivery Agent, a San Francisco based e-commerce Company. The company provides turn-key e-commerce operations and branded merchandise solutions targeting the entertainment industry. Delivery Agent operated over 50 distinct web sites on behalf of brands such as NBC, HBO, ABC, MTV, CBS and FOX.
Mr. Spiegel was responsible for developing and launching QVC’s online business. The site was the first general department store on the web and was widely acclaimed for superior customer service and a very extensive product assortment. It was also the first site to offer community features, advanced search capabilities as well as utilizing video in product sales. The business was profitable after its third month of operations and generated over $100 million in revenue in its first four years. Mr. Spiegel was named one of the top 25 Innovative Leaders by Direct Response magazine during his tenure at QVC.
Prior to QVC, Mr. Spiegel honed his merchandising skills through a variety of roles for brands such as Macy’s, Ralph Lauren and Liz Claiborne. Mr. Spiegel’s experience ranged from buying and store line responsibilities to line planning and sales. Mr. Spiegel had oversight of all women’s products for Polo/Ralph Lauren specialty stores and for launching the women’s product internationally through licensed businesses in Europe, Asia, Canada and Mexico.
select Experiences
Experience Highlights
GHD
GHD
The World's Largest Manufacturer of Premium Hair Tools
GHD
GHD
The World's Largest Manufacturer of Premium Hair Tools
“I had the privilege of working closely with Stuart for 3 years at ghd. During that time he delivered one of the biggest value creating opportunities the company ever had - he developed ghd’s web strategy in a unique way that I doubt many others could. It wasn’t all just creative stuff either, Stuart’s tenacity brought that creativity to life in the real world proving Stuart is not only a highly creative individual but a seasoned operator as well.”
OVERVIEW
Mr. Spiegel joined the London-based ghd, as its Chief Digital Officer and was responsible for creating a stylist-centric brand platform and commerce environment. The company's EBITDA was almost 50% from digital revenue.
The private equity backed company recently sold for £300M.
One of the key business challenges was to embrace and build a direct to consumer channel while simultaneously not alienating the 50,000 salons in 14 countries and hundreds of thousands of stylists that love the brand and recommend it for sale in their salons.
To mitigate this palpable channel conflict, Mr. Spiegel envisioned a proprietary brand platform that was the first to integrate Adobe's CQ with Hybris' Commerce system. The 20,000 man-hour project was well regarded and Mr. Spiegel was asked to present the vision and results of the project at the Adobe Summit in London on behalf of Hybris.
The cases can be found here:
The result was a place where stylists and salons could upload their creative portfolios and use the ghd site as a calling card of their own - the portfolio became a very SEO friendly place for hair trends and stylists' loved the ability to market their own personal brand in a fresh way. This allowed the stylists and salons to collaborate better with ghd and hence, dampen any lingering channel conflict concerns.
In the process of defining this new vision for engagement, the sites' look and feel evolved as did the focus of the brand itself. Mr. Spiegel was then promoted to Chief Marketing Officer to assure consistency at all the brand's touch points and in all global locations.
CONVERSE
CONVERSE
Driving Commerce with Compelling Content
STORYTELLING+CREATIVITY=CONVERSION
CONVERSE
CONVERSE
Driving Commerce with Compelling Content
STORYTELLING+CREATIVITY=CONVERSION
“One of our basic principles is that we try to celebrate our audience, not ourselves, if you do something authentic for consumers, they will repay you. Stuart took this philosophy and was able to create a digital strategy that truly engaged our consumers by building a relevant, creative zone that spoke with our consumer and not at them - the reality was, that the combination of content with commerce really paid off - site conversion increased and so did engagement with our brand.”
Overview
As VP of Digital at Converse, Mr. Spiegel was responsible to build the direct to consumer business online as well as to create a viable springboard from the company website for the brand itself. This required assuring that content was not only an integral part of the overall story, but that it was engaging as well. It was also mandatory that even as a brand site, the channel had to increase its revenue. To accomplish this, the site was engineered with an unusual blend of movement, color and content.
After the site was launched, a popular site review blog, The Next Web called the site one of the 10 Most Beautiful Sites - They noted that "The Converse website is a perfect combination of interaction, design and stunning photography, and will probably end up keeping you busy far longer than you would expect it to.
Our favourite feature by far on the site is the ability to filter designs by colour, so each page becomes a beautifully colour-coordinated showcase of some pretty cool shoes."
As part of Nike's digital leadership team, Mr. Spiegel contributed an agile mentality towards site development that fostered real engagement with the consumer.
delivery agent
DELIVERY AGENT
Turning Audiences into Customers
redefining entertainment merchandising
delivery agent
DELIVERY AGENT
Turning Audiences into Customers
redefining entertainment merchandising
OVERVIEW
As an initial company team member, Mr. Spiegel was the Senior Vice President of E-Commerce and responsible for developing brand plans and merchandise strategy for the world's top media companies.
Delivery Agent is a full-service, end to end commerce and merchandise company serving the the worlds' largest media companies. Relationships of all the major television companies coupled with top cable operations and sports brands the company has become the go-to brand for turn-key product and entertainment merchandising. Mr. Spiegel was instrumental in solidifying the company's initial top deals as well as creating the merchandising strategy and revenue plans for each show and network.
From Dwight Shrute's bobble-head to the jewelry seen on television's top soap operas the company uniquely is defining how audiences can interact with their favorite leisure time entertainment properties.
SEQUENCE
SEQUENCE
Digital & Branding Agency
SEQUENCE
SEQUENCE
Digital & Branding Agency
OVERVIEW
Mr. Spiegel was a co-founder of Sequence a San Francisco based design agency. Key client relationships included Guthy-Renker, ShopNBC and HSN.
- Guthy Renker project re-branded and developed commerce site for top performing brand, Proactiv.
- ShopNBC project initiated by NBC to explore new programming options for the television shopping network
- HSN - assessed cart optimization, general navigation and fully rebranded the company's website
- Other clients at the time included: Sonos, Second Life
INKTOMI
INKTOMI
First Full-Featured Shopping Engine
to insert products Into an Ad-like network
INKTOMI
INKTOMI
First Full-Featured Shopping Engine
to insert products Into an Ad-like network
Overview
Inktomi purchased two companies (C2B & ImpulseBuy) to jump start its third division after Search and Traffic Server (edge caching) which was the E- Commerce Group. Mr. Spiegel was tapped to be the VP/GM of the division and was charged with integrating the merged operations which had over 150 engineers. The idea was to leverage Mr. Spiegel's E-commerce expertise to build a truly new entry to the marketplace.
The result was delivering the most compelling shopping engine of the day with over 500 merchants on board listing millions of products. The brand-customizable shopping engine become the de facto choice of portals, large credit card companies, media companies as well as insurance company. Some of the companies that licensed the software included; AOL, MSN, Lycos, American Express, CNNfn and The Washington Post to name a few. The product was the first to integrate reviews and to insert offers by merchants throughout its network.
QVC
QVC
First Department Store on the Web
Launched DECEMBER 1995
QVC
QVC
First Department Store on the Web
Launched DECEMBER 1995
Overview
As VP/GM of iQVC as it was know then, Mr. Spiegel was responsible for developing the site design, strategy, commerce applications, merchandise offering as well as assuring a world class customer experience.
iQVC was the first department store on the web and achieved profitable revenue over $100M under Mr. Spiegel's direction. The site was rich with features that paved the way for many e-commerce applications of the future. Some of these early innovations were:
- Established online community by launching the first in store moderated discussion forum
- Feature Dictionary - leveraged QVC's library of product data for searchable product information
- Launched the Square@iQVC - first concept of internet marketplace; announced while delivering keynote address at the premier Jupiter Shopping Summit
- Shop Live TV - direct connection between live on air products and website
- Established first use of conversion metrics - coined the phrase "browse to buy" ratio
- Created first in-store live chat sessions between celebrity on-air guests and consumers
- Established large infrastructure of drop ship suppliers to augment QVC's existing inventory
- Drop-ship supply chain issue became a catalyst for building a "PC on Wheels" to seamlessly integrate distributers to commerce system
- allowing consistency in pack slips for the QVC brand -
- QVC invested in the company that developed the solution which today is a stand alone company called Commerce Hub which is now owned my Liberty Media helping to transact over $8 Billion in annual revenue
- Helped direct initial Comcast internet investment strategies in companies such as @Home and The Knot