Interview with Jerry Hum, Co-Founder & CEO of Touch Of Modern
November 27th, 2015
Touch of Modern is an online shopping spot offering a range of designer lifestyle products mainly for men. Founded in 2012, Touch of Modern was first a website only and from 2014 they started operating on a mobile app too.
What were your biggest challenges in managing your operations during a period of sudden rapid growth?
While we were scaling operations, at some point the question shifted from "what do we do" to "how do we get people to do it." Our company is pretty unique and so we require unique skills that are sometimes not transferable to other companies. That makes career-building more challenging. We had to take that into consideration when crafting employee roles because we believe providing strong career paths attracts better talent.
What role did the mobile app play in this recent growth, and how much of it can be attributed to the app itself?
The mobile app for us has been a game-changer. Our user metrics on mobile are way stronger than their web counterparts in almost every way and over the course of several months, the majority of our revenue has shifted toward mobile, which is saying quite a bit at our scale. The app itself makes a big difference. When we launched v2 of our app last year, that's when things really took off. UX patterns have not yet been fully established on mobile so innovations there can still make big impacts.
The next big challenge for us is figuring out how to show everyone we're more than an e-commerce company. Most e-commerce companies grow by just by gaining marketshare in a mature consumer base. We're in a position where we have a unique consumer market that is growing and also a supplier market, mostly made up of emerging brands, that is also growing, so we have the challenge (and the opportunity) of bringing new products to a new market. Today, we're bridging that gap just by selling stuff, but I think there's a lot more we can do here.
What were your biggest challenges in managing your operations during a period of sudden rapid growth?
While we were scaling operations, at some point the question shifted from "what do we do" to "how do we get people to do it." Our company is pretty unique and so we require unique skills that are sometimes not transferable to other companies. That makes career-building more challenging. We had to take that into consideration when crafting employee roles because we believe providing strong career paths attracts better talent.
What role did the mobile app play in this recent growth, and how much of it can be attributed to the app itself?
The mobile app for us has been a game-changer. Our user metrics on mobile are way stronger than their web counterparts in almost every way and over the course of several months, the majority of our revenue has shifted toward mobile, which is saying quite a bit at our scale. The app itself makes a big difference. When we launched v2 of our app last year, that's when things really took off. UX patterns have not yet been fully established on mobile so innovations there can still make big impacts.
What is the next big challenge for Touch of Modern?
The next big challenge for us is figuring out how to show everyone we're more than an e-commerce company. Most e-commerce companies grow by just by gaining marketshare in a mature consumer base. We're in a position where we have a unique consumer market that is growing and also a supplier market, mostly made up of emerging brands, that is also growing, so we have the challenge (and the opportunity) of bringing new products to a new market. Today, we're bridging that gap just by selling stuff, but I think there's a lot more we can do here.
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