https://www.listennotes.com/e/8b3fdc9e8b634b7a90ee0a55fa94e026

Welcome to Executing the Vision podcast. I'm your host, Brad Hunter, president of Emerge Labs. On the podcast, we'll get to know the person behind the vision, their successes, their challenges, and their plans for the future. If you're interested in becoming a guest or know someone who might be a good fit, stick around to the end and we'll discuss how to apply. Now. Enjoy the show. Welcome to another version of another episode of Executing the Vision. I'm your host, Brad Hunter, and today I have Jenny Coates. And Jenny is currently the president at Boathouse Sports, which seems like a very cool concept you have going, but also on top of that, just have quite an impressive career overall. Yeah, yeah. I would like to start out just kind of understanding what was life like growing up, you know, where did you grow up? Kind of. What was the family situation? What was the whole dynamic there, growing up?

Sure. Very Ozzie and Harriet. I grew up in a very small town in North Jersey called Glenrock. I have two parents, a younger brother, and we had the, you know, Golden Retriever and Yellow Lab. So it was a very wonderful childhood. Lived in Glenrock almost my whole life. Went to public school there, and then I graduated, went to nyu, and then NYU again after that. So pretty local to the New York City area and. Yeah.

And then what did your parents do? You know what? Because you kind of seem to be in a very entrepreneurial type spirit.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. So my parents. My father worked for most of my life at Con Ed. He was the manager of environmental affairs at Con Ed. My mother actually went to. Was a nurse. She went to nursing school. You know, she grew up with the kind of mentality, if you were a woman, you were a nurse, a secretary, or a teacher, and so she was a nurse. But when I was in college, my mother actually went back to college and she got first, you know, her undergraduate degree. She really wanted to be a teacher, and then she went on to get numerous master's degrees and have a very successful career teaching in the Ridgewood public school system near where we grew up. So actually quite. Quite inspirational and a little bit of a different journey for her. Yeah.

Okay. And when you were at nyu, what were you studying there?

So when I started at nyu, I was studying vocal performance, and I quickly transitioned into the Gallatin School, which is a very cool kind of concept they have there, where you can design your own course of study, very minimal actual requirements. You work very closely with an advisor, and you are able to take advantage of all the wonderful, different types of courses. That they have at a big school like that. So my final thesis was essentially about the role of music in the minority cultures in New York City history, specifically women and Irish Americans. So maybe not the most marketable degree anyone ever had. But then I went and got an mba, a real straightforward mba. So I try to balance the scales.

And so then looking, you know, looking back at your resume. So seems like, you know, got out of college, seemed to be on a fairly normal trajectory of, you know, a career track of doing some different things, being a buyer at Macy's, account executive type stuff. Like kind of walk me through those early years and then how you kind of transitioned over to the leadership role.

Yes, I'd love to. So when I graduated college, I went straight to work for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which was a really wonderful place to work. Very just surrounded by talented, interesting people. You know, next to me there might be someone programming the back end of a website and down the hall someone making a baked Alaska. You know, it's just a very interesting place. I was at Martha for a couple of years, then I actually took a pause to do professional singing and then I went back to Macy's. So not the most traditional, but I, I got my job at Macy's and I started going to Stern at night at that time. So. So I was in the tabletop department at Macy's and transitioned over to Macy's east when that still existed after that. So certainly the Macy's network is strong and it's deep and I've continued to work with and for and hired people from all the departments of Macy's over the years. So yeah, so from Macy's, finished my mba and then I was recruited by someone I had worked with to, to come over to Hartman Luggage. So transitioned over to the brand side where I've been ever since. And Hartman was a very interesting luggage company based in Lebanon, Tennessee, right outside of Nashville. At the time they were still making a little bit in the usa and I was there a couple of years. It was really great introduction to the brand side. I had a wonderful mentor who really took me under his wing and really taught me how to, how to be successful on that side of the table. From there I jumped back to cosmetics. I did a little bit of jumping for a few years, then back into the cosmetics field at bpi, which is a part of Shiseido, and then Lancome. It wasn't the best culture fit for me and so I transitioned back to Tabletop. Then I worked for a Swedish company called Orafor's Costa Bota. I don't know many people are familiar with those brands, but if you've seen the show Friends, Monica had a very distinctive Costa Bota bowl in her apartment. So usually that will call to mind an image for a lot of people. And yeah, that was, that took me through to the, the big, the big opportunity, the next phase.

Yeah, it's in these roles were all account manager, sales type roles, correct?

Correct, correct. Up until that point was very exclusively in sales and account management. Sell in, sell through. That's actually one of the most important things I learned early on was to focus on sell through. It's not about how much I can push out the door into a store. The important thing is how much of my product is the store selling out to the customer. It's the difference between selling somebody something one time and developing a lasting, you know, growing customer base. It gets you a lot of trust and it gets you a healthier business at the end of the day. So. Yeah.

And what did you find as far as like secrets to, to accomplishing that goal? Getting to sell through does, I assume it just varied dramatically by client and by situation, but just offering them kind of more support than they would have expected.

I will say it has shifted over time. So at the beginning I would have accomplished that goal by focusing on in store point of sale presentation, ensuring signage is good, supporting retailer marketing strategies, co op catalogs, promotions, et cetera. I will say the shift has happened dramatically that it's really even more now the burden of sell through is squarely kind of on the brand, I would say. And these days I would accomplish that. The focus for me is on digital content. So by the time somebody is seeing the product in a store, they have experienced it on some social media, they've interacted with the brand on social, they've seen it, you know, come across their feed and that when you get to the product in the store that the packaging is excellent. The content, really, it's just about content. I, I often will say the extreme example of this is I had had many very successful sales meetings in my career where I went into a meeting with an empty box essentially, and I sold them on our brand's ability to connect with the consumer, to create the demand and that by the time the consumer sees this box, they will want it. And occasionally there was literally nothing in it. And that kind of almost never came up. So. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's really the name of the game. Yeah.

So obviously you were very successful on the sales side, very good at developing relationships. Right. Spent a lot of years in different things, fastest doing that. So then how did you transition over to the executive side?

So in 20 God 17, I joined the team at Storebound, which was a startup founded by Evan Dash. He was a Macy's executive when I was there in the houseware space. And he created this company with the idea that you could do housewares differently. One of my. Another thing that I've learned over the years is that it's, I would say, critical in any business to make sure you're always bringing in fresh eyes and fresh perspectives. So instead of filling his new housewares company with a bunch of people that had been selling housewares for 30 years, he filled it with just people that he felt were interesting, entrepreneurial, kind of motivated. So having the opportunity at storebound to join so early on as the VP of sales, but also when you're working at a startup environment, you have the opportunity to really do so much, you know, as much as you're kind of willing to do. And so I was able to grow at Store Bound to not only just sales, but to experience kind of the 360 of running a business and growing a business we scaled incredibly fast and successfully. And so that was worked out really wonderful to get that opportunity and to. To grow something from scratch as opposed to in previous roles really being hired to fix something. You know, a business is in decline, can we get it back to growth? Profitability is sinking. Can we get it back to profitable? Usually because the, you know, whether it was Hartman or, or Force coast of Boda, they were looking to have a change of ownership or a, you know, a new strategy. So to join Store Bound and be able to actually grow something was also incredibly exciting and different for me.

And now you mentioned the idea that the. The owner of the company was very focused on bringing the right personality, the right type. What is your number one trait for employees? You know, if employees that are looking to make their way up the ladder, what is it that you see an employee that you know, stands out to you that you say, hey, you know what, this person needs to move up?

I think when I gathering a team and training a team, it's the best part of what I do no matter where I am. And the thing I look for the most, I would say is to sum up is an intellectual curiosity. I want someone who wants to learn, wants to grow, won't be afraid to say if they don't know something, won't be afraid to seek collaboration from colleagues. I think that the way any business succeeds, truly, if you can surround yourself and create a culture of professional curiosity, collaboration, accountability, and you get people working together to feel like they're succeeding together, then that's a group of people who is going to want to win together and grow a business. So as opposed to, you know, siloed people who feel like, I'm going to get mine, you know, I'm going to do my thing and get my. Get my due, and I'm not really going to worry about kind of what that means to the people around me. And so, yeah, I think curiosity is one good word for it.

What would you say, what mistakes were made early on that you wish you could have redone in that process? Because obviously in the end, it all worked out great.

Well, it's not over yet. I think early on in my career, you know, the mistakes would be very numerous, of course. But I would say again, to sum it up, two things would be, I did not focus on networking at all. I did not prioritize building a diverse professional network. I basically worried about the person to my left and the person to my right. And I didn't get out there, and I was living in New York City, you know, I didn't get out there and join organizations and just try to get my name and my face in the conversation. I felt that later in my career, just how invisible I was outside of the people that could, you know, in my immediate surrounding. So I really wish I had prioritized networking and just generating more personal pr and, you know, I just wish I had taken my career a little more seriously as well. Kind of owned my career trajectory as opposed to just being a little bit casual about what came next and where I would go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like when early on, yep. You're just kind of like, ah, this is the job I got. It's, yeah, whatever. And then like, yeah, this, you just kind of ebb and flow a little bit. And I feel like it takes you a while to really pause and figure out a true direction.

Yeah, yeah. And now what do you.

What do you do these days as far as networking goes? What do you find as a good effective.

So I joined this year and under the heading of what took me so long Women in Retail, which has been just the most wonderful organization just from the minute I joined. It's a collection of smart, interested and interesting women, really just looking to help each other, Whether it's providing references or recommendations, looking to learn from each other. I've really never, never experienced anything so dramatic like it, it's been wonderful. So I would highly recommend that to any young women listening if they have the ability. It's a nationwide organization. They have wonderful resources, events, just. Oh, it's been amazing. I also joined, I've joined a couple of years ago, Vistage, which is another wonderful, not so much network. It's kind of networking and it's also kind of professional betterment. I took some classes for a couple of years with Section, which is an online online education platform that was started by one of my business school professors, Scott Galloway, a personal hero. And it's, that's another great way because they not only provide classes that you can take, but they foster community. They have, you know, slack groups and they foster kind of networking that way. So just. I've tried a couple different things. Excuse me.

And then what about. Okay, so take me then from store bound to Boathouse.

Yeah. So Boathouse is a wonderful company. Made in the USA apparel. Boathouse has been making apparel in the USA for 40 years. It was started by a former Olympic rower, John Strotbeck. He. It was founded with one jacket, the Stevenson jacket, which is meant for rowing. Specifically, it has some design features meant for that, that motion in a boat. And from there they expanded into making product for teams, outerwear and uniforms. And over the past 40 years, they have outfitted every team from at one point every team in the NFL. In fact, Andy Reid, the head coach of the Chiefs, the jacket he always wears on the sidelines, it has a Nike swoosh, but it's. That's a Boathouse jacket that we've always made for him. And so we've outfitted Olympic teams, national teams, D1 schools, prep schools, high schools, just boathouse. And about five years ago, they started a retail strategy. They launched a website. Unfortunately, Covid kind of derailed things dramatically. Especially again, everything being made in the usa. They had to close the factory for a while. When they reopened, they could only make ppe. And then they were very happy to do it for a long time. And so the retail strategy was a little derailed. And so in April, the founder brought me in. He had taken a break from running the business. He came back in early 2024 and he brought me in in April as part of a few people to have a new team to give the brand just a big push to try to get the retail side of things going, to try to expand the business outside of team and into more traditional retail, bookstore retail. And so that is what we have been working on. It feels really good to work for a company that's made in the usa. I have to say. Yeah, big draw.

And now you've mentioned earlier you talked about team building and things like that. Where are you guys at with AI? What have you guys done? Are you doing anything on that front?

Not officially, but in small ways I have been trying to incorporate it both, both into my own personal workflow and also to show the teams internally what we can do with it. So for me personally I use it in so many different ways. I use it as a proofreader, you know, to improve emails and things like that. But the most I would say helpful thing I do is when we are having board presentations or I'm getting ready for a big pitch. I'll feed it my deck, I will tell it about the people who are going to be in the room and I will say act like so and so person. What questions would you ask me? What do you think is lacking here? What follow up might there be? So that's been wonderful. It has a lot of use in our marketing team to help with product pages, copy, even suggestions for different ways to showcase product. And my product development team has been starting to experiment with the 3D the, the graphics side of things and how it can render more realistic images of products that we're working on. Because the more realistic we can get our product images, the better our sell in will be on the, you know, on the launches. So I do try to incorporate it a lot. When I joined Section and I took those classes a couple years ago, that, that was the huge focus I they were, they seemed to offer a very robust catalog of AI education. And so I really did focus myself on that a lot.

Yeah, yeah, it's been interesting. I initially, I don't know, I didn't pay a ton of attention to it. You know, it kind of just felt like ah, whatever, it's this chatbot thing like. And then the past say six months or so I really have started focusing on it and I do think it's very impressive what truly can be done if you spend some time to train a model, you know, especially a model with your information, your knowledge and then I think what's right around the corner with that, I think it's going to be a super valuable tool for training and team, you know, because it won't be long from right now that you would be able to create a, a replica of yourself that even on a screen like this you would not know if it was you or the AI, you know, and if you load that up with all of your knowledge and all of everything to me, you know, and I look at that and look at different uses. It just, I see it from an executive perspective as to. You spend so much more time with your team, you know, you can from a. Training from a. So it's interesting to me, like, we're kind of starting this pilot project and I'm always curious to see, like, where other people are at with that.

That's interesting. That's where it starts to. Yeah. You know, it learns obviously, the more I tell it about myself and my business, and it really. It learns so much. Sometimes it's even surprising to me how good the. How good what it kicks back is. To your point, it really is really starting to think like me in a lot of ways. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's exciting and terrifying all in the same breath. Right?

No. Right. I listen to certain podcasts. You're like, the world's gonna end, you know.

Excuse me. Yeah.

Okay, question for you. So throughout all of this, what is your biggest mental obstacle to overcome and work on a daily basis? Like, what part? I imagine there's parts of it that just come easy. Right. There's parts of the job you just don't have to think about. You love it. It comes easy. And there. What parts are like the challenging parts that, like, you just don't want to really have to deal with and really feel like a struggle.

I think the biggest mental obstacle or the, the, the, you know, every review I've ever been given, the biggest area for improvement or opportunity for improvement, however they try to put things like that, is going to be balancing a very healthy amount of self confidence and professional confidence with self awareness and realizing that you can be as, you know, I tend to be so certain, you know, that you have the right answer, the right path, the right solution. But if you are not generating consensus and creating and. And being very open to learning and taking in new ideas, that that is not going to be a successful way to be. So I would say mentally, and I do hope that if I were to ask somebody, they would say, I've made an improvement in this. In this field. But mentally, that is something I do remind myself of a lot. Yeah.

In. Do you feel successful in life?

Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm doing all right. I think when I look at. Again, thinking of the know, the hypothetical review, I think what I like to point to is not necessarily what I've succeeded at, but what have I been able to generate with the people around me. Have I created a high performing team, have I mentored people, have I created success for other people? And I really do like to view my accomplishments in that kind of realm. And I think if I were to do that, I would say, yes, I've, I've been successful and I look forward to, to more.

Oh, good, that's great. It's, it's always a very interesting, I mean, because I interview people who are very successful people and you know, and it's interesting to see how do they view it. Right. I'm sure most people see it like, yeah, of course she's, of course she has to feel successful. But it's very interesting. I do feel like by the nature of it, people that are super driven and you know, tend to accomplish a lot. Always kind of have that feeling of like, well, kind of sort I'm close to there, but I'm not there. You know, I think that seems to be the nature of a little more.

There's always a little more somebody that I worked for. Once we were having a, you know, a management, all hands kind of off site and the question was, what are you? Something to the effect of what are you? What's going to be the biggest challenge this year? What are you the most afraid of? And I remember my answer was, you know, that I've, that I won't be able to, to achieve all of the things that I know we're capable of doing something of that nature, you know, kind of never, I will never think I've hit the top of the mountain. But, but if I, like I said, if I look at it from the view of what have I been able to impart on others and generate in other people, and then it's, it's a little easier to say, yes, that that was success.

So it was for Boathouse. What's the, you know, what are we hoping to achieve this year? How can we help you achieve that?

Well, everybody can, you know, boathouse.com, shop made in the USA. What I'm hoping to achieve this year, it's been exciting so far. Really hit the ground running January 1st or 2nd. We're onboarding a lot of wonderful new salespeople, essentially looking to take the great success we've had in a very regional way right around our factory in Philadelphia and multiply it around the country. So I'm excited to work with a lot of wonderful new salespeople. And my hope is that by the end of this year you will see Boathouse product in bookstores and apparel stores and you know, in all around the country and not just kind of in the immediate Philadelphia, New Jersey kind of region. So I think just prioritizing Made in the USA is helpful. I think if you're listening to this and you have a store and you're interested in Made in the USA apparel, look me up. And yeah, it's going to be an exciting year. I think we did a lot of good groundwork in 2024. Not always as flashy and visible as some things, but really important groundwork. And I think we really positioned ourselves this year to make some big steps, which is exciting.

And what are you guys. Is it anything you find on sources like Amazon or the TikTok shop or any of those types of things you're like, no, it's altering direct to your website.

If you go to our website, you'll see. I mean, we make beautiful jackets. We make Gore Tex jackets. Our most successful product is so. And we make sweatshirts, lots of sweatshirts, all again, domestic cotton. And what customers seem to love to do the most is pick out one of our beautiful sweatshirts and then decorate it with their own. You know, that airport code style. You know, we PHL or detect or the name of their store. We do a beautiful sweatshirt for a store in Boston. They have East Coast. We do beautiful sweatshirts for a hotel on Nantucket. A C K. So essentially picking out a sweatshirt and decorating it with any number of our, our embellishment options, that seems to be the favorite. We in fact just opened a brand new store in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. And, and so that. And jackets, our Stevenson jacket. We've evolved Gore Tex jackets, like I said. So those are, those are the most popular.

And how'd you pick Steamboat Springs? I love it there. Lovely town.

I will tell you our. The founder of Boathouse was skiing in Steamboat Springs and he decided that he was going to open some business and he sure did. That's how. So yeah, I just saw those on the inspection line yesterday. So those will be hitting their shelf any day now.

All right, great. And then what about for you and your career? What else, you know, is there beyond Boathouse is right now the focus is just strictly here. What else you see in store for yourself?

I don't see beyond Boathouse, but I think outsider kind of more generally speaking. You know, one thing I'd love to explore doing more of in a professional, an official kind of way would be maybe finding more opportunities for mentorship or advising startups or other small retail companies where I might be able to add some value. I've Enjoyed joining the board of a couple local organizations here where I live. And so I think for me, that would be what I'm looking to again, kind of just get my face and be out there a little more and be useful to people who could maybe benefit from what I've done right and what I've done wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Excellent.

Yeah. Thank you.

Anything else you would like to share with the audience?

No. No, I don't think so.

Okay. Well, it's been wonderful talking to you.

Just thank you.

Very impressive career path. You know, it's always fun to, you know, kind of be able to talk to somebody and hear how things came about and everything. And we'll make sure to include all of those links and everything that you had mentioned and do what we can do to drive people out there. I'll get there and I'll be going picking out some Lions gear for myself. I'm from Michigan, so we have a.

Great store in Detroit. I will. I'll make sure to get the name of it and text it over to you. Yep.

All right, perfect. Well, thank you again, Jenny. Have a wonderful day.

Thanks for inviting me. You too.

Okay, thank you for listening to Executing the vision. If you'd like to be a guest, go to Emerge emergelabs us and click on the podcast page. If you like what you heard, please share the episode and subscribe. Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. You can find us on instagram@brad.emergelabs as well as X, Facebook and LinkedIn where we strive to provide valuable information on business and life. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show and what you'd to like, like to see in future episodes. Thank you again and have a great day.