Wise words from the founder of Zumiez on commerce, technology, and customers

zumies product

Tony Brown, the founder of Zumiez, spoke at a Salesforce Connections event that I attended over a year ago. He was amazing.

But somehow, I never managed to do a story on his talk.

Rather than let his words just die as I erase the TextEdit document I made notes in, I’m pasting them here:

Tony Brown, president at Zumiez

  • We serve 14-18 year old teens who are going through the individuation process
  • We are the culture-driven retail lifestyle brand serving the youth culture fashion

On digital disruption

  • we don’t have channels, we don’t have stores … we just have customers
  • we believe that 100% of our journeys are digital
  • we don’t measure e-commerce

Four principles on customers that will always be true, no matter what technologies we use

  1. Customers have the power
  2. Customers don’t see channels
  3. Customers want choice
  4. Customers want speed

Two things Zumiez believes

  • We believe that our customer will be more digital, but less web
  • We believe they’re going to want everything now

On e-commerce and fulfillment

  • we don’t have a fulfillment center
  • we have over 700 of them … they’re called stores ….

Smart guy!

Zumiez notes Tony brown