When I got to Michaels, it was 100% buy of the shelf / outsourcing model. The vision was to flip the script to become not only a leader in niche B2C and B2B crafting, but to become a leader in eCommerce technology. Today the Michaels website is a Pavlovian conditional site that drives sales via coupons. There is no value or path to betterment for our customers. Our customers are Makers! They sometimes need help, inspiration, and community. I am leading a brand new project to create a Maker Community!
I own the project, branding, design and development. I am acting as Product Manager, Project Manager, Creative Director, Lead Designer & Lead Developer. I am hiring a new team for this project.
With the release of Michaels MakersCorner, it is projected to
- Raise our revenue by 22% by promoting classes, maker events, and content
- Cut support calls by 45%
- Raise our interactions with our customers to a 24 / 7 engagement
- Add another touchpoint with our Makers and tie the existing external community together
I got together with some of our other leaders and we defined our vision!
I took on the creation of Community which I have called Michaels MakersCorner. I started by doing customer research to help define my strategy.
Click the logo to see my Strategy Deck!
I worked closely with our Customer Insights team to run a "Gorilla Research" beta site to gain insights for Community moving forward. Click here to see the results
We are on a very aggressive timeline.
I will be hiring a team to support community, for now I have started wire-framing rough design ideations so leadership can follow progress. Also I need to sell my headcount needs and timeline!
This was my mind map on community and what would make a it an innovative solution for our makers! It was this that allowed me to kick of the project and get initial buy-in from leadership and our new owners.
Here I am putting together the step by step journeys so we can better write the proper stories for design and development.
I am starting to also architect the solution and how it interacts with the existing Michaels Platform