Smith: Stitch Fix caps fulfillment volume using inventory, styling, and warehouse limits
Mike Smith · a16z Podcast | Where's My Stuff? -- The Lowdown on Logistics and Ops · Jan 2, 2019 · at 55:31
Mike Smith, COO of Stitch Fix, explains how the company sets operational targets based on structural capacity constraints rather than unconstrained marketing demand.
0:00 / 0:14exact quote · 14.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“At Stitch Fix, ah, we try to have quality be the foundation, and the three constraints being quality of inventory, how many stylists can pick the five things after the algorithm runs, and ops capacity, And that drives what we actually do.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Mike Smith
Smith: Amazon will restrict same-day delivery to groceries and next-day elsewhere
“I don't buy that there's a lot of product demand for same day. I think that Amazon will do same day for grocery because it makes sense on fresh. I don't, I believe they'll do next day on everything else.”
Smith: Stitch Fix builds custom software because off-the-shelf tools fail
“I don't have, we're building it all ourselves, and so we use Zendesk for customer service but I'd say that the tie-ins to Zendesk are very proprietary in terms of, like, how tickets how we think about tickets related to customer segmentation, or how we think a…”
Smith: Stitch Fix scaled warehouse space from 500 to 450,000 square feet
“When I first started at the company, ah, we did pick, pack, and ship out of 505 hundred square feet. Which was half of our office. Then two months later we moved to a thousand square feet. Then two months after that, we moved to 9000 square feet, and now we're…”
Smith: Walmart.com had at least eight management layers above warehouse staff
“The, you know, sort of warehouse staff at walmart.com versus where I was in my position, there was at least eight layers”
Smith: Stitch Fix hired a Chief Operating Officer as its fourth employee
“Katrina, the founder, and sort of the investor's early stage, said, this needs to be a core competency, because we're sending stuff out and getting stuff back, and I mean, it's shocking to me now, and I'm very grateful that they sort of hired a COO as employee…”