Inside Retail’sTop 50 People in E-Commerce is an annual ranking of the most impressive and inspiring leaders in Australia’s online retail industry. Our 2022 report features C-level executives with decades of leadership experience, alongside start-up founders and digital specialists with a wide range of skills, from marketing to logistics. You can download ithere.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing in-depth profiles of this year’s Top 10, including this year’s #5, Verity Tuck, co-founder of gifting brand, LVLY. Passionate about exposing her vulnerable side to her team, Tuck is a fabulous example of how modern retail leaders can combine empathy with entrepreneurialism.
Since the pandemic hit, many of us have spent birthdays and other important celebrations apart from our loved ones; as a result, online gifting company LVLY experienced a 500 per cent boost in sales last year, tripled the size of its casual workforce, and increased the size of its warehouses in every state. That’s a lot of flowers, chocolate, cocktails, candles, and other luxurious gifts being delivered to Australians across the country.
“I am super excited about our team and their development for the year ahead. We had a lot of team members start with us in 2021 and it was a baptism of fire being brought on amidst huge lockdowns and spikes in sales,” Verity Tuck, co-founder of LVLY, tells Inside Retail.
LVLY has indeed experienced much success since it launched in 2015, and Tuck believes some of her greatest strengths as a leader are her humanity and emotional intelligence. It’s something that has certainly come to the fore since she began managing her teams during Covid-19 two years ago.
“My approach as a leader is to be a reliable but vulnerable human being first, a manager second. I’m an open book when it comes to my own mental health struggles and what I personally do to manage that,” Verity says.
“I think it’s important that, as a leader, we are at ease with showing our flaws, our struggles, our humanity. The ability to do this allows people to connect with us in a completely different way outside of being their boss.”
Tuck’s people-first attitude has helped LVLY scale up in a short time while maintaining its tight-knit community and friendly workplace culture. Six years ago, LVLY crowd-sourced the company’s five values, which remain the same today:
- Make someone’s day
- One team, one dream
- Work hungry, hustle hard
- Own your impact
- Be a goodie
As Verity explains, when it comes to recruiting new team members, finding people who are values-aligned is key.
“When we hire our team, we look for attitude and aptitude over a shiny CV. We like to get to know candidates outside of the dot points on their cover letter so that we can see if their personal values match the company’s,” she says.
“One thing that hasn’t changed over my whole career is that I am an extremely empathic and emotionally mature leader. I like to think that I understand people’s energy really well, which helps me understand what drives them and what their potential triggers are. I use my empathy as a tool in my leadership kit and, to me, it’s one of the most valuable.”
Verity’s ability to connect with others also helped drive the business’s Thoughtful Marketing Movement last year, which aimed to change the culture around brand communications and gave people the option of unsubscribing from Mother’s and Father’s Day emails, particularly those who may have lost a parent or child.
“We had an unexpectedly huge response from our customers, thanking us for being so considerate and supportive. It really validated our hunch about the importance of being a brand that has empathy,” she says.
“It breaks all the usual marketing rules, but it feels like the right thing to do – the human thing to do. It’s what our values of being a goodie and making someone’s day are all about. It felt really good to know we’d made a difference to those people.”
The post When commerce meets compassion: Meet LVLY co-founder, Verity Tuck appeared first on Inside Retail.
