In this episode of Smooth Scaling, José Quaresma sits down with Art Huggard, former VP of E-Commerce at Build-A-Bear, who transformed the company's online presence from a crashing website to a $70 million business over eight years. Art shares his unconventional path from chemical engineering to e-commerce leadership at Bass Pro Shops, Hudson's Bay, and Build-A-Bear. He reveals how the company went from website crashes every hour during the 2016 holiday season to successfully managing viral product launches like Baby Yoda that sold out in four hours. Art discusses Queue-it's virtual waiting room for handling extreme traffic spikes, real-time system tuning during flash sales, and the importance of balancing technical infrastructure with guest experience. The conversation covers cloud scalability challenges, order management bottlenecks in Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and what it takes to handle 300+ orders per minute. The episode illustrates how preparation and cross-industry lessons can turn unpredictable demand into business success.
Art Huggard is a leading expert in Digital Commerce. He has helped many well known brands such as Build-A-Bear, Bass Pro Shops, Tracker Boats, Hudson Bay and others move from chaos to High Growth. He has a keen understanding of the entire customer ecosystem including Web, Order Management, CRM, Loyalty and Digital Marketing. Known for building high performance teams Art has been an excellent mentor to many at the companies where he has worked. Most recently Art has formed Gateway Commerce where he provides fractional consulting to companies looking to make significant improvements to how they serve their guests.
Episode transcript (auto-generated):
Jose
Hello and welcome to the Smooth Scaling Podcast, where we speak with industry experts to uncover how to design, build, and run scalable and resilient systems. I'm your host, José Quaresma, and today I had the pleasure of chatting to Art Huggard. Art is a digital commerce leader who worked at major e-commerce websites like Build-A-Bear and Bass Pro Shops. I really love to hear how he played crucial roles at these companies by focusing on creating great visitor experiences that can stay online no matter the demand.
If you like this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps the podcast. Enjoy.
Hi Art, welcome to our podcast. It's great to have you.
Art
Hi, thanks for having me.
Jose
And Art, I would like to just start straight on and ask you a little bit about your career. You've had a long and pretty impressive career in e-commerce. Can you just start by walking us through your career and experience?
Art
Sure. Well, I'm originally a chemical engineer. I got my master's in IT and started in the web in B2B for the Monsanto company. And then from there I found my way into websites.
So I ran a very large website for a company called Sigma-Aldrich, which is now part of Merck. And that website went from about 400 million to almost a billion dollars when we were done fixing it.
But then I felt like I wanted to move more into retail because a lot of the innovation in online really happens in retail. And so I worked for Hudson's Bay Company in Canada and fixed their website for thebay.com and also Lord & Taylor back then and put in place their omnichannel program.
So I was able to essentially enable buy online, pick up in store, ship from store. And that was very successful. A lot of interesting moments there as we spun up. We actually sold a $10,000 diamond ring as a pickup in store item in Toronto, which was fun.
After Hudson's Bay, I was approached by a company called Bass Pro Shops. They're a well-known outdoor brand. And they were having web issues with the website crashing and not really realizing the revenue that they wanted. There was a lot to build with there, but they hadn't really taken advantage of everything they had.
So we were able to take that website from about 200 million to 400 million when I left and moved back to a more urban area. My wife and I are more city people than country people, I guess.
And I came to work for Build-A-Bear. Build-A-Bear—a friend of mine was the CIO of Build-A-Bear. I had worked with him before and he called me up during 2016, during the holiday season. And their website was crashing once an hour.
And so everybody up to the CEO was manning phones and trying to soothe customers and take orders. And I was asked to come in and fix it. So I came and joined them in March 2017. And by October, we were up and running on Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
So I have eight years at Build-A-Bear. I built that business from about $6 million to $70 million. And then just retired this past year and have gone into some fractional consulting where I help companies out and help them realize the revenue that's there that they may not be thinking about.
So that's me in a nutshell.
Jose
Wonderful. Thank you.
And a little bit later, I would like to go a little bit more into your journey at Build-A-Bear. But I would love to, before going there, ask something a bit broader around your experience within retail and e-commerce since you've been in that area for a while.
What would you say are the biggest changes that the e-commerce world has seen since you started with e-commerce until now?
Art
I think a lot of early retail on the web tended to be catalog companies. Bass Pro Shops was a catalog and Sigma-Aldrich was a catalog for scientists.
And so they tended to just put the product on the web and didn't think a lot about the guest experience and the guest checkout.
So, for example, when I was at Sigma-Aldrich, their website for our customers in Switzerland would take 30 seconds a page to load. So they weren't really thinking about, in a global environment, what's my guest experience?
And at Bass Pro, it was the same thing, a traditional retail company, but it's like, let's just put a bunch of products on the web.
Jose
It sounds like a lot of the work that you've been involved in has been around going to a company and somehow helping them scale and handle more traffic or improve their setup.
So was there any common through line or common aspects across them? I heard a little bit around maybe not focusing enough on the user experience to start with.
Art
I think that's one of them.
And I think the other thing that you see a lot in e-commerce is everybody's on the web and everybody's buying. So everybody is sort of an expert.
Thinking about the whole experience, there's some great references. Nielsen Norman is a company that spends a lot of time on guest experience, and they put out some really great papers on how, for different kinds of situations, you can make the guest experience better.
And that's what makes e-commerce fun is because it's not only technical, it's marketing and even color. What colors do you use on your web page? How does that guide you across the page and to do what you want? There's a little bit of psychology in it.
Jose
And maybe now we can actually get into Build-A-Bear and talk a little bit about your experience there.
So you were at Build-A-Bear for over eight years. Can you maybe walk us through your role there and how it evolved over those years?
Art
Sure. As I mentioned, I was actually called by the CIO of Build-A-Bear. I was at Bass Pro Shops and perfectly happy there. We were doing some great stuff at Bass Pro Shops.
He initially would call me up during 2016 as I mentioned when they were crashing once an hour on the website and it was chaos. In November-December he'd call me for advice, and then finally in late January he says to me, "Would you ever move back to St. Louis?" I said, "Yeah, I might."
And he asked me to come up and join Build-A-Bear. So I interviewed with the senior team there, the CEO and all the chief officers, and really came in and heard their pain.
I talked to them about what a website should be doing because in a case like Build-A-Bear, you have the web but then you also have 300 retail stores. So the job of the website is not just to sell product on the web, it's also to encourage your guests to look at your product and then go into the stores.
Upwards of 75% of our store guests would actually look at the website before they made a visit. Several of them would want to know if we had the product, so we had to implement things like store inventory.
But initially it was just getting out of this chaotic situation and having to fix something that was really hurting the brand. And so we did a very fast project for Salesforce Commerce Cloud. I think we were about six to seven months in implementation, which is insane. Usually these things are nine months to a year. Two websites, US and UK.
And what I thought was funny is I said to everybody, "Okay, we're going to start our meeting at midnight and we're going to go live at midnight to 3 a.m." And they're all like, "Why are we doing that?" And I'm like, "Because you want to introduce change when most of your guests are asleep."
And so those went flawlessly. Traffic, checkout experience was great. We built something called the Online Bear Builder because when you go in or you take children in, they get that experience of picking a furry friend, picking out what they want to dress it in. So we tried to do something similar online.
And when you look at Build-A-Bear, most people go, "Well, it's a toy company, a children's toy company." And that was the prevailing belief even by some of the people at Build-A-Bear.
When in reality, upwards of 30% of our guests are adults. They're buying things like Baby Yoda as collectors. They're buying Pokemon as Pokemon collectors, and they are almost your biggest fans.
And really once we got up and running, it was that segmentation and making it easier for those segments to come in and do what they wanted to do that went so well.
They asked me to take over some of the marketing systems. We had Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which was a mess, honestly. The data there was duplicated and we were getting charged way too much money for that.
So we hired some really bright people and cleaned that up and tied it closer to the web experience. And then from there we actually put in Salesforce CRM. Our guest services people were going on about 15 different systems to service our guests.
So we were able to consolidate that into Salesforce CRM. And that allowed you to call in and create a case right from the website, be able to say, "Hey, I need help," and get right on to talk with a guest service rep.
And then Build-A-Bear has this product where you can record your voice and put it in the bear. And the way that worked is you would buy the product, we would send you an email with a code on it, you would call the phone number, you'd punch in the code, you'd record your message, and then that message had to be listened to by somebody in our distribution center because the last thing you want is a bear swearing or saying bad things, especially in these social media times where, "Hey, look what I've got—a Build-A-Bear."
So what we did is we worked with our colleagues in another group in IT, and we took the recording where you can record right from your device, right from the website on your phone.
And then it uses AI technology from Microsoft to take that voice and convert it to text. And then it analyzes that text. Is it too violent? Is it too suggestive? And if it is, it allows us to go back to the guest and say, "Hey, what you just recorded violates our code of conduct, basically. Please re-record your message."
And then we had a separate AI module which actually checked for copyright. Because a lot of people put a song in their Build-A-Bear, and if that's a copyrighted song, that could be a problem. So we had a different AI module called Audible Magic where they tell you right away whether that's copyrighted or not.
And so doing those two checks were less than two-tenths of a second using the AI. And what that allowed us to do is we no longer had to sit there and listen to the messages.
So we could deliver that product right away instead of saying, "Hey, sorry, it's going to take us a couple of days before we're able to ship that product." We could ship it literally within 20 minutes after we got the order.
Jose
And then maybe just still with Build-A-Bear, we would love to talk a little bit about the fact that Build-A-Bear did bring Queue-it in and it was around the COVID times. I think that was the first time.
Can you tell us about what sparked that need?
Art
I think in COVID, we shut all our stores down, right? So if you wanted to buy Build-A-Bear, you had to do it on the web.
And we knew we had this product, the Baby Yoda product, that was going to sell pretty well. And there was, looking at social media, you could see the buzz around the product, people getting excited about it.
And I had actually used Queue-it at Bass Pro Shops. And so initially I said, "Hey, this is going to be a fast-selling product. We should think about something like Queue-it."
And to be honest, what they said is, "Oh, let's just try it without it and see how it goes." It didn't go well. I mean, we had the website—we were seeing upwards of 300 orders a minute for our company. And so we had over a thousand orders we had to go back and correct and manually handle.
And so after that they said, "What's this Queue-it thing you've been talking about?" And so we immediately contacted Queue-it. As I said, I had known them from using them at Bass Pro Shops, and got some really fast implementation out of Queue-it.
Johnny, who's our Queue-it rep, has been fantastic. And again, part of that is the experience. It isn't just spinning up a waiting room. It's letting your guests know what's going on and telling them where they are in the queue.
And even when the queue's ended, letting them know what's next or thanking them because this product came in waves.
We had 10,000—one day I think we sold 12,000 of these. We turned the product on about 9 in the morning, and by 1 o'clock we were sold out.
And so you have all these people who were in the waiting room, thousands of people in the waiting room wanting to buy this product.
And so we were able to say to them, "Hey, the waiting room's ended, but we are ordering more and we will let you know. Sign up here if you want us to let you know when we're about to sell more."
So it was that whole journey because you had just strong demand for the product. Baby Yoda is the extreme example, but there were several Pokemon products that had the same sort of behavior.
And then you never know what's going to go viral. So there are some products we thought would go viral—we would at least turn on the Queue-it throttle, I forget what you call it, but it's sort of the "we only want to take 200 orders a minute"—and we would just turn it on just to be safe because you never know.
And there are other products that you never expect to really take off that do. So we would put Queue-it on as a precaution.
And we had a Gargoyle product that literally sold out in a couple hours. So Queue-it not only handles those known things, but it gives you a little bit of comfort just in case.
Because there have been some things that we never thought would be like that, and merchandising would maybe buy 2,000 of them just to see how they went, and they'd go like in an instant.
So again, when that happened, we'd say, "Hey, thanks. We're going to get some more, don't worry, and we'll let you know."
What was really weird is some of the people who got in and were actually able to buy a product—there's a whole collector's market out there in Build-A-Bear. So they buy a Build-A-Bear for 50 bucks, and they go out and sell it for 300.
And so working with Queue-it, we were able to sort of say, "Hey, if you're through the waiting room and you're going to buy, you get to buy two. You don't get to buy 10."
And so that was pretty useful for us in what we were doing. So, yeah, Queue-it is still being used today.
And our approach to using Queue-it was—like I said, we had some great support from Queue-it to get it up and running—but we also had a, I wouldn't call it a war room, I guess I'd call it a defined meeting where everyone got together ahead of time.
When I put the product in, I said, "Okay, we're going to have to come up with a checklist." And they said, "Well, what do you mean?" And I said, "Well, you're going to have to think about your messages while they're in Queue-it. You're going to have to think of the message before Queue-it. You're going to have to think what happens after."
And so we had marketing, merchandising, my team, logistics, all in a meeting where we'd kick the product off.
And so what would happen is if we wanted the product to go live at 9 o'clock, we would turn the product on. You'd have to clear all the caches so it would show up. And then once it shows up, we would place some test orders to make sure everything looked good.
And then we would tell marketing, "Okay, you're good to send out the email. You're good to turn on the social media."
And it was fun because in Queue-it, you could watch it turn on. And then when the emails went out, you'd see that waiting room really fill up.
And then when you're getting close to running out of the product, we had a really great order management system called Deck Commerce, and we worked with them.
And we would actually tune down—if we were allowing, say, 250 guests a minute out of the waiting room, we would start to tamp that down and try to come in as close as we could to the amount that we had.
And we generally got within 40 or 50 units. And our goal was to leave it with 30 units.
But when you have that sort of velocity, just using the Queue-it dashboards and being able to tune it right away really helped.
And we would generally keep about 30 units on hand in case somebody got one that wasn't quite right or had a problem with their order. And so we could ship it to them.
But, yeah, generally I would say Queue-it is a big part of why Build-A-Bear was able to go from where it was to a company that is really part of the popular culture and selling products like Baby Yoda and Pokemon and the Gargoyle. It just allowed the company to really grow and sell a product where you're getting a good experience.
Jose
And out of curiosity, I think you referred to before Queue-it that you were hitting—I think you mentioned around 300 orders per minute.
Was that the right number where you started getting some problems? Where was the bottleneck then? Was it in the payment gateway or was it somewhere else in the system? Do you remember?
Art
Some of it was in Salesforce itself, even though we had told Salesforce that we were doing a flash sale. Some of it early on was in the order management system, being able to grab that volume of orders.
In fact, early on we had to sort of manually rely on the Salesforce numbers and not the order management numbers. And then after that first experience, our order management partners were like, "Hey, we're going to make this a whole lot better," and they did.
So, yeah, it was just—the speed that you can pass your order to your order management system is important, right? Because then the customer—you've got an order, you definitely know the customer has checked out.
And so those tended to be where our bottlenecks were. And like I said, the first time we had no Queue-it, that was a mess. And then when I started running Queue-it, things ran really well.
But on the Salesforce side, it tended to be database speed. And then on the order management side, it was just mainly the API because you're passing orders from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Deck Commerce and making sure that API has got enough resources to handle that kind of volume.
And they were cloud-based also. So that was like a five-minute exercise for them. And they're a good partner.
They were on those calls also that I talked about where everybody got together. They were there. And if we said, "Hey, this looks kind of slow," they would tune it right away.
So it wasn't just the different functions in Build-A-Bear. It was us also working with our vendor partners.
Jose
And you also mentioned—so still within the peak event area—but you also mentioned Bass Pro Shops that you had worked at before and also used Queue-it. I believe you were director of e-commerce there at Bass Pro Shops.
Was there any major difference in how Queue-it was being used between the two?
Art
No, it was kind of funny because Bass Pro Shops, again, is a very outdoor fishing, hunting, camping kind of company.
And when I was at Bass Pro, several of the ammunition suppliers had issues with their plants. They actually shut the plants down. And there's a caliber of ammunition called .22s, which is fairly popular. People will target shoot with those.
And so there was a belief out there in the market of people who said, "Hey, I'm not going to be able to get any ammunition to go target shoot, to go hunt."
And so at Bass Pro Shops we were able to source that because we had great vendor partners. So we actually put up a bucket of .22 rounds, and the same sort of thing—killed the site because of the rush of people trying to buy.
We approached Queue-it. Again, Queue-it did a great job of spinning things up and working with us to get the waiting room experience as flawless as possible.
And it was kind of funny because when I was at Build-A-Bear, our CEO, Sharon Price John, said, "That's great how the waiting room thing worked." And she goes, "How did you think of that?" And I said, "Well, I used to sell .22 ammunition the same way."
So it's like taking something that works in one sector of retail and moving it to another. So it was just, my having experience with Queue-it and having that good experience at Bass Pro Shops—you guys were the first people I thought of when we had the Baby Yoda problem.
Jose
Thank you. And just, I know that we're getting closer to our time, but before we wrap up, I would like to ask you a couple of rapid-fire questions. So just share whatever comes to mind.
So is there a book, podcast, a specific person, thought leader that you would recommend to our audience?
Art
"AI Snake Oil" is something that I'd recommend. Really get a balanced view of what AI—if you're looking at large language models, it's great at SEO. It's great at sort of creative things like take this Build-A-Bear photo and put it in a Halloween setting, stuff that you can get done.
You see Adobe embracing it in their suite. So "AI Snake Oil" would be the one thing.
And then, again, the Smooth Scaling YouTube podcast. Stanford Business School also has a couple really great AI podcasts. It's actually an economics course. I'd recommend people watch them. They're free.
Jose
And what professional advice would you give your younger self or someone starting right now in this field?
Art
I think to get out there and look at the research that's going on. Like we talked about earlier, a lot of people go home, they use a website and they have a certain feeling.
But there's a good body of research. Like Nielsen Norman is a very research-based company. They early on actually came up with the theory about how your eye scans across a web page. And that's very important because you want your important items to be in the part of the page that you're going to be looking at.
So go out and get that research background. Stay up to date with the new tools that are coming out and where they could be useful.
But don't—and I guess the other thing I would say is don't believe everything that a salesperson will tell you. Because a popular one is "You can implement this without any IT help." And I've never seen a product do that.
But then just think about where your guests are, what's important to them. Buying is a very emotional experience. You buy something because you feel something about that product or that company. And so how are you representing your company in the areas that are important?
Jose
Last question. To you, scalability is?
Art
Scalability is the ability to immediately sell faster than you did yesterday when you need to. And when we talked about how Queue-it enabled our scalability, but also how we had to work with Salesforce and our OMS vendor to be able to scale.
So when that demand came in, we could immediately scale it up. And so I'm a big fan of cloud-based systems, as you can tell.
Early in my career, the systems were on-prem, and I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. Microsoft Cloud, the Amazon Cloud—just places where you can go in and say, "Hey, I need 30% more CPU power," and you got it.
Jose
Awesome. Again, thank you so much, Art, for joining us. It was a pleasure to have you on.
Art
Thanks for having me.
Jose
And that's it for this episode of the Smooth Scaling Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed, consider subscribing and perhaps share it with a friend or colleague.
If you want to share any thoughts or comments with us, send them to smoothscaling@queue-it.com.
This podcast is researched by Joseph Thwaites, produced by Perseu Mandillo, and brought to you by Queue-it, your virtual waiting room partner. I'm your host, José Quaresma. Until next time, keep it smooth, keep it scalable.
[This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.]