Everlane, Unbundled

Everlane, Unbundled

Everlane is a mens and womenswear clothing brand, founded in 2010. The company offers ‘radical transparency’ into its supply chain, and has always been digitally native. According to Crunchbase, Everlane has raised a total of $86.2M in funding over 7 financing rounds.  

We had the pleasure to interview Ruchika Julapalli. Ruchika is the Head of Product @ Everlane, and is also a Venture Partner at Interlace Ventures. Ruchika hails from the U.K. and started her career in management consulting at Accenture before moving to PayPal, and later to Everlane where she became the brand's first ever Head of Product. Ruchika is also the former founder of Sku IQ, a technology company solving inventory organization challenges.

Everlane’s Tech Stack:  

• Builder - CMS
• Pixlee - Visual UGC 
• BazaarVoice - Ratings & Reviews
• Happy Returns - Post-Purchase Experience
• ZenDesk - Customer Support 
• Attentive - SMS Marketing
• Reach, ApplePay, Klarna, Afterpay, Braintree - Payments
• ContentSquare - Customer Journey Insights
• Yieldify - Onsite targeting 

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1. What does it mean to be head of product at Everlane? What are the major responsibilities in this role? 

Building a commerce platform at scale that meets and exceeds customers needs.  Ensure that we have the right resources working on the right priorities moving the right KPIs. It involves some risk taking and balancing the needs of the business and growth with customer experience and innovation. I spend a lot of time thinking through journeys for both the customer and our inventory.

2. Generally, how does Everlane evaluate a potential commerce tech solution? 

We evaluate the impact that the new tool will have on customer experience and which KPIs it could move, specifically we quantify if there are revenue attribution or margin savings associated.  Also the ease of integration, and the team’s  willingness to do a pilot or define a POC together.

3. Does searching for a new technology usually come as a solution to a problem, or as a proactive part of product development? 

Honestly, it is a bit of both. Normally internally we may have a problem and want to evaluate build vs buy  as a solution to it. We also forecast and invest in product strategy e.g. where do we want to play, and how can we win, which may necessitate seeking out partnerships.

4. If you could name 3 ‘Hero’ tools, from Everlane’s tech stack which would you choose? 

Focusing on the customer experience, first, Builder, its the head to our commerce platform Second, Happy Returns, they’ve helped us to consolidate the entire post-purchase experience at Everlane. 

5. Have you recently come across a category where the available tools were not meeting your needs? 

Login + password management versus guest checkout. This area can be a mess. For us at Everlane, the larger context here is customer identity. We haven’t found tools yet that we love for managing customer identity.

6. If you had $100k to spend on new technology, what areas would you spend it in? 

I’d allocate it towards personalization and retention. How do we keep customers engaged and coming back? This answer lies in personalization and retention. 

7. What advice would you give technology companies that are sending inbound sales messages to you? How can they stand out in your inbox? 

I think that what catches my eye is crisp use of language of what your product actually does - this sets you apart. Be crisp about the top 3 things that your product can do.