That’s the mantra Chris lives by, and it’s helped him shape a career full of fun opportunities with big brands. He’s spent over 25 years working in ecommerce, getting his start in marketing before moving into CRM, then digital product and digital experience.
And, having worked in the fashion and footwear industries for the last 16 years of his career, he knows just how important a great customer experience is to brand loyalty and revenue growth.
How much of your shopping experience is built on how customers feel, not just what they click?
When Chris first joined Skechers, the brand still had a heavy emphasis on retail and wholesale relationships, which had driven incredible growth since the company was founded. While ecommerce was still a significant part of selling DTC, he looked at the numbers and saw a tremendous opportunity to help start a digital transformation team to grow that business.
Pulling from his years of expertise, Chris knew that the on-site experience couldn’t just be about the look and feel. It was all about the impression that customers took away after navigating the site. Could they easily find what they wanted? Did the site describe what they needed accurately? Did the product fit their use case? Was there transparency at every step of the logistics process? Any misstep could erode customer trust, and that was always hard to earn back.
These are the questions that were top of mind as Chris navigated ways to smooth out the pain points from the entire shopping experience.
That consistent focus on improving the customer experience resulted in the ecommerce arm of Skechers growing over 30x in revenue since he joined.
The vision that vendors sell is often far cleaner than the reality of implementation. Solutions that appear seamless in a demo or on paper can quickly encounter integration complexity, technical limitations, and unexpected challenges in real-world environments.
“I like to poke holes in these solutions,” says Chris. “I’m under no illusion that a perfect solution exists. And if it did, I’d quit my day job and start selling it myself.”
And one of the crucial solutions underpinning his strategy was Loomi. “It’s our primary tool for on-site search and engagement,” says Chris. “The AI powering it is a real game-changer.”
Because Skechers has over 20,000 SKUs, product search is one of the first places shoppers turn to when they hit the site. The problem is, if someone’s searching for “women’s new arrivals” and they see 800 shoes, that’s putting a lot of friction between them and what they’re looking for.
With search that not only optimizes for products and catalogs but also people and behaviors, Skechers was able to level up its on-site experience and help streamline product discovery.
“It’s a very forward-thinking solution,” Chris states. “It’s helped us make sure our shoppers can quickly find what they want, and with the marketer-friendly interface, we’re able to continue to optimize for conversion.”
When a shopper searches a broad term like 'women's new arrivals,' how easily do they find what they actually want?
Chris isn’t content to rest on his laurels, however. He knows that AI technology is rapidly evolving, and as a result, he’s constantly exploring new ways to improve the product discovery process.
In particular, he knows that search has to be conversational and that having the right tools in place is critical to conversational search and agentic commerce.
But that’s part of the fun of the job. It’s another opportunity for Chris to figure out how to connect the dots and create an experience that people want to tell others about.
How ready is your site for conversational search and agentic commerce?
After 25 years, he’s still finding new ways to hit his stride — and he won’t stop now.
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Head of Marketing, 260 Sample Sale
