The summit’s theme — resilience — ricocheted through the lower Manhattan event center as an impressive army of speakers from top global brands and innovative organizations not as well known — yet — grappled in lively sessions with the challenges facing online retailers today.

“Resilience in Action” was the formal tagline for the annual event and in fact while “resilience” thumped through the keynotes and break-out sessions it was the “action” end of things that stole the show. 

Ecommerce is entering a new era, which was clear from Signifyd CEO Raj Ramanand’s opening keynote presentation to the closing Champagne toast. Future success depends on profitable growth, Ramanand said, rather than growth at all cost — and profitable growth is built by establishing maximum trust of and personalization with brands’ customers. 

How do trust and personalization relate to customer lifetime value?

For hours after the opening, panels and presenters drove home the strategies and tactics that can lead to that kind of trust and personalization and ultimately to maximum customer lifetime value.

The third annual FLOW, like its predecessors, was no trade show requiring the agility of a ballerina to avoid solution providers selling their wares, all while hiking between educational sessions dispensing actionable insights. 

The day-long event in New York was more akin to a salon where more than 300 commerce professionals gathered to take in tactics, strategy and advice, but also to hand out wisdom from their experiences, successes and challenges. FLOW is a conversation — and of course it, um, flows both ways. 

FLOW Summit 2024 is available on demand

If you were there, you know what we mean. If you weren’t, well, we’ve got you covered. We bottled the wisdom, words and action in a series of on-demand videos available on the Signifyd website. 

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“There are no shortcuts,” says Riley, senior director of global ecommerce at luxury eyewear brand Dita.

No shortcuts? Come on. Isn’t success in digital commerce all about getting an edge? Being fast? Being first? 

Riley isn’t opposed to any of the above. They’re helpful. But they can’t be where you start if you want to serve customers the way they want to be served and if you want to realize the revenue a fantastic online operation can realize. 

Derrick Riley of Dita

Riley, who is a member of Signifyd’s Most Influential in Ecommerce Class of 2022, knows his stuff. You can read more of his advice in the e-book, “Secrets from Ecommerce’s Most Influential Revealed.” 

Riley knows from experience that building a strong foundation is key to producing digital sites that inform, delight and inspire consumers. And all else flows from there. 

Cutting corners no longer cuts it in ecommerce

In the early days of ecommerce, he says, merchants would look for shortcuts — cutting corners to transfer information from an Excel spreadsheet of hundreds of SKUs in order to begin building a website. 

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And you wouldn’t be wrong — although you wouldn’t be completely right, either. But you knew that. Racking up the sort of success enjoyed by the senior vice president of digital marketing and ecommerce at innovative furniture brand Lovesac, takes more than joyful imagination, intense curiosity and constant questioning of everything. 

It takes creativity based on experience, the ability to assemble a close-knit team, courage, flexibility, insight, the strength to stand up for your ideas and the wisdom to know when it’s time to change course. 

A constant state of evolution and improvement

“My secret is to live in a constant state of evolution and improvement,” Beckett says. “As ecommerce professionals, to be successful, we have to make sure that we are in this constant state of listening and learning, making sure we have our finger on the pulse of change. We’re really fortunate because we get to be storytellers. We get to be data nerds. We get to be techies and creative all at the same time — and always kind of listening for the why from our shoppers.”

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Haussling, who is VP-GM of digital commerce at consumer products giant Colgate-Palmolive, has worked at some of the biggest brands in the world and likes to make the point that creating a divide between digital commerce and brick-and-mortar commerce is deadly. 

It’s not how consumers think or shop — and consumers are why anyone in the commerce field is in business. So think of them. Think like them.  

Diana Haussling

“You shouldn’t be rewarding the digital commerce team for growing their business while the brick-and-mortar team is declining,” says Haussling, one of Signifyd’s 2022 Most Influential in Ecommerce. “If you really want to grow in this space, it’s about putting the consumer in front of everything you do and delighting them however they choose to purchase — whether it’s going in the store and leveraging their phone to drive digitally influenced sales or it’s picking a different form of modality, like click-and-collect or having something delivered to their home. We win when it becomes one strategy as opposed to siloed strategies.”

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Dawn Trenson lives it. 

The FILA sportswear vice president of ecommerce defines her team broadly. Co-workers and reports, of course. But also vendors, partners, consultants and her professional network — anyone who can help her achieve the larger organization’s goals. And as importantly, anyone she can help achieve their goals. 

Dawn Trenson, FILA

“There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle both internally, cross-functionally and externally with all of the vendors and partners that we work with,” says Trenson, one of Signifyd’s 2022 Most Influential in Ecommerce. “There have been individuals that I’ve kind of followed around and sought their advice.”

Stay in your lane? Not on this team

It’s all about constantly learning and teaching. It’s about learning by jumping in and doing. It’s about curiosity building success. When Trenson thinks of her team, she wants people who yearn to understand the whole. She seeks those whose tenacity has been forged in the crucible of the frontlines of customer service. 

“When I’m looking at resumes or interviewing folks, I always ask, ‘Have you ever worked in a restaurant, waited tables, bartended or worked in a retail store?’” she says. 

Those who can navigate an impatient — and hungry — restaurant patron who just had a bad day at the office or a harried shopper at the height of the holiday shopping season, have what it takes to multi-task and remain pleasant under pressure. 

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The vice president of digital engineering & platforms at multi-brand, modern design company MillerKnoll knows that digital commerce moves at the speed of light and that the best practitioners need to be ready to make a decision — often one they never saw coming. 

Frank DeMaria of MillerKnoll

“Flexibility is the thing, really,” DeMaria says in thinking about his most valuable success secrets. “You need to move quickly in order to keep up. When we’re talking about retail and we’re talking about technology, you need to move quickly. And so for me, something that I did learn a little bit later is just that ability to be decisive. You need to make decisions.” 

DeMaria boils his secret down to, “Cut indecisiveness from your workflow.” Read more about that in “Uncovered: Secrets from the Most Influential in Ecommerce.”

Successful retail leaders are prepared to make the quick decision

DeMaria, one of Signifyd’s Most Influential in Ecommerce, is quick to point out that his secret is not about being rash. The work doesn’t start with the decision. There is more to it than going by gut and having the steel to decide this way or that way. Successful retail leaders prepare. They make sure they are ready when the decisive moment comes.

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But Wednesday was a day for taking a breath, at least between breathlessly cheering on Signifyd’s 30 Most Influential in Ecommerce for 2022, who spent part of the day cheering on each other. This year’s honorees gathered for an inaugural and celebratory meeting. There they shared wisdom and got to know each other as they embarked on a year-long program to both acknowledge and propagate ecommerce excellence. 

The 30 honorees announced Wednesday displayed uncommon courage, creativity, compassion and commerce know-how in what was one of the most disruptive years in retail history. They found opportunity in disruption — not just opportunity to move their businesses forward, but opportunity to serve their customers, who were facing massive disruption of their own. 

Perseverance inspired the Most Influential in Ecommerce awards

J. Bennett, Signifyd senior vice president, operations & corporate development, acknowledged the odds retailers have faced since the pandemic began. While welcoming honorees, he explained that it was the stories of perseverance in the face of those odds that inspired the annual Most Influential in Ecommerce awards program. 

“We wanted to say, ‘Hey, there are human beings that are struggling and succeeding and doing really awesome things with their brands and their companies and their customers,” Bennett said to start the virtual get-together of commerce leaders from around the world. “And they’re innovating in ways that require talent and require technology. And can we help people who are doing cool things get together, get the recognition that they deserve?”

The awesome things 2022’s honorees were doing ran a wide gamut. Collectively, they recalibrated; replatformed; formed new partnerships; launched collaborations; served their communities; welcomed, served and retained legions of new customers, opened new sales channels and did so much more than survive. They thrived.

The Most Influential came from many retail verticals and roles

Having the Most Influential in Ecommerce together in one virtual room was inspirational. They came from many retail verticals and diverse backgrounds. They worked various roles vital to the ecommerce enterprise — operations, finance, digital marketing, IT, payments, customer care, fraud and risk. There were founders, CEOs and digital agencies who share their expertise to fuel success. 

The group talked about challenges — launching direct-to-consumer, managing inventory with demand spiking and supply chains crumbling, expanding into B-to-B sales, launching a serious ecommerce operation for the first time, fending off bot attacks and working with the understanding that COVID isn’t over and it’s hard to know when it will be over or even what “over” means in this case. 

They also shared chit-chat, the kind that forms the foundation of professional relationships and friendships. They shared book recommendations (“Do the **** Work: Lowbrow Advice for High-Level Creativity,” for those who are curious.) 

And the Most Influential in Ecommerce received some practical advice. First from 2021 honoree Rohan Cherian, who was recognized last year as an ecommerce executive at Toys R Us Canada and who has since co-founded his own Root Digital, a consultancy and advisory firm focused on digital strategy. 

His advice was comprehensive, but to boil it down, he urged the new class of the Most Influential in Ecommerce to take the opportunity to freely give and get advice from each other. 

The Most Influential in Ecommerce will shape the future of retail

Next came Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali, a leading retail thinker, who took honorees through the key trends that will be driving retail in the near future, including consumer sentiment on the pandemic, how market share is shifting in ecommerce and what’s ahead for buy, now and pay later.

The future, of course, is uncertain, but there is a high probability that the honorees who gathered on Wednesday will be a step ahead of whatever is coming next. For that reason, among others, the names of Signifyd’s 30 Most Influential in Ecommerce Fraud Insurance for 2022 are worth remembering. They are: 

• Aashima Sahgal, Director, Subscription and Ecommerce, Arlo Technologies
• Alex Arkhangelskaya, Senior Product Manager, Rent the Runway
• Alpheus Clendening, D2C E-Commerce & Digital Marketing Lead, Revlon
• Blas Caraballo, Vice President Digital Payments, Walmart Mexico
• Brianna Walling Burwell, Director of Finance, Ferguson Digital Commerce, Build with Ferguson
• Darin Lynch, Founder & CEO, Irish Titan
• Dawn Trenson, Vice President of Ecommerce, FILA
• Devin Miller, Chief Technology Officer at SKIMS / Senior Vice President of Technology at Good American
• Derrick Riley, Sr. Director of Global Ecommerce, DITA Eyewear
• Devan Nielsen, Director of Fraud Prevention, Overstock.com
• Diana Haussling, VP – GM, Digital Commerce, Colgate-Palmolive
• Dilip Dand, Director, Customer Service Strategy & Innovation, Albertsons Companies
• Frank DeMaria, Vice President of Digital Engineering & Platforms, MillerKnoll
• Jaanvie Asnani, Global Business Process Expert For Online Payments and Fraud, Philips
• Jamie Lee, Head of Digital Experience, Everlane
• John Surdakowski, Founder & CEO, Avex
• Jonathan Blua, Director, Ecommerce Operations, Boardriders
• Jordan Major, Head of Ecommerce, Au Vodka
• Kurt Theobald, CEO, Classy Llama
• Neill MacCarthaigh, Fraud Manager, eShopWorld
• Pablo Stobbia, Payments & Fraud Specialist, Pandora
• Philipp Göpfert, COO, Vice Golf
• René Meindl, Technical Program and Project Manager D2C, Samsung Electronics Germany
• Shawn Bradford, Director of Customer Care, Carbon38
• Sheena Brady, Founder & Tea Sommelier, Tease
• Sue Beckett, SVP of Digital Marketing & Ecommerce, Lovesac
• Ted Guglielmi, Vice President, Digital Experience Platforms, Indigo
• Tim Edwards, Founder and Commercial Director, supercharged commerce
• Tom Giacalone, Vice President, Digital and Customer Care, Vera Bradley
• Travis Hess, Chief Executive Officer, BVA

Photo by Getty Images

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And it was no different when the nearly three dozen who were just named Signifyd’s Most Influential in Ecommerce gathered virtually to celebrate each other while commiserating and reassuring their peers that as the best in the business they’d continue to dominate the pandemic challenges that arrive daily.

No doubt ecommerce is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business. But for a glorious hour and a half recently, fraud fighters, omnichannel experts, cross-border coordinators, dedicated direct-to-consumer strategists and wonderfully accomplished women of ecommerce took the time to look back via Zoom, not at how they had survived 2020, but how they had crushed it.

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