Have you ever had to degrease your bike chain? Or fix that creaky door hinge at home? You probably used one of WD-40 Brand’s products to smooth out your problems. WD-40 Company has been around for more than 65 years and are best known for their iconic blue and yellow can with the little red top. They are the market leader in the multi-purpose maintenance product category.

Here at InsightLeap we are ecstatic to call WD-40 Company one of our customers and this week we are fortunate to profile Freddy Flores, who’s the E-Commerce Marketing Manager at the company. He speaks about the unique culture at the company, his perspective on eCommerce, and his learnings from throughout his career.

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Describe your role and what responsibilities that entails?

I’m primarily responsible for how consumers find and experience our products online via our retailers’ websites. We want to ensure our product name, images, and description are consistent, correct and current. This entails constant maintenance of our content across many retailer websites.

Another aspect of my role is to strategize and manage our Amazon Advertising initiatives and any other advertising opportunities that arise on other retailer websites. I work closely with the brand team to assess these opportunities and determine our best path forward.

What’s your career journey been like?

My educational background is in graphic design, art, film, and graduate work in education. My work experience includes a role as a Production Coordinator at a publishing company, a Marketing and Graphics Designer at a natural and organic food distributor, and eventually as an executive level marketing and sales positions at an upstart consumer goods company. The job at the consumer goods company is where I learned all about Amazon and how to manage their vendor central account. After a few years there, and a stint at an Amazon focused agency as a marketplace manager, I found my path to where I am today at WD-40 Company.

What is one thing that you’ve carried throughout your career?

No matter what field your job is in, you are still using your experience from your education and past roles in your current role. A lot of people get disappointed that they’re not directly applying their degrees in their current profession, but I believe you are and don’t actually realize it. It is also important to keep your curiosity alive and keep learning.

At WD-40 Company you define your culture as a “tribe”, can you talk about how your company embodies this?

At WD-40 Company, we live our values on a daily basis. By living our values we create a strong sense of belonging, and with that, we call ourselves a tribe rather than a team. Our CEO says that as a team you get together to win something, versus a tribe is a place where you belong. Everyone here at the company embodies this mindset. It’s rare to find a company that actually has this type of integrity about their culture. This was definitely a contributing factor for me to move from L.A. to join this company.

What were some challenges that you were experiencing before you and your team started using InsightLeap?

Both our eCommerce marketing and sales teams rely heavily on reporting so we can make more informed decisions and communicate to leadership how we are performing in the marketplace. We were constantly in Amazon Vendor Central to pull data that we needed to create our reports, which contributed to a lot of manual work that wasted time for our tribe.

What were you able to achieve by using InsightLeap?

One of the major impacts InsightLeap has had on our tribe is saving hours of time in reporting on our Amazon performance and ability to easily go to one place for everything.

This reporting has allowed us to act faster to what’s happening on Amazon. Specifically, InsightLeap’s email alerts has given us the ability to move faster to resolve issues that, at the end of the day, all relate back to affecting our Amazon sales.

What has having one source of truth for all your Amazon data enabled you to do?

In the analysis section, InsightLeap has given our tribe the ability to pair multiple data sources together. Being able to pair Amazon Advertising spend vs. Shipped COGS provides an easy way to identify what our KPIs should be as a business. As we are developing our base KPIs, the flexibility in using the data is a huge help. I also want to engage with other people in different departments to get their perspective of what we can accomplish with InsightLeap to utilize it better.

How has the comprehensive holistic view of a product helped?

I love that I am able to pull up reporting about a particular product that is being discussed in a meeting and showcase all of the data history of that product. The visual representation of trends for each metric for each product helps us easily see what’s going on for a product that is in question. I can turn the laptop around in a meeting and say “Oh, we are talking about X product and here’s what trends good or bad we’ve seen in the past couple weeks or months.” Because of InsightLeap we are able to have more productive conversations and address questions easier.

What would you tell others who might be considering InsightLeap?

I would tell others that InsightLeap is a platform that will save you and your team a lot of time. Not only does the platform have a great user interface and a lot of capabilities that you can leverage for your business, but the InsightLeap team is amazing to work with and are always responsive. The platform continues to grow and develop so I am seeing more value in the platform on an ongoing basis and I appreciate their adaptability to the market.

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Freddy Flores is the E-Commerce Marketing Manager at WD-40 Company, where he focuses on ensuring that consumers get the right brand experience online when shopping for their products. He’s also responsible for Amazon Advertising spend and strategy for the company. Flores is based in San Diego and previously worked at various held executive positions in sales and marketing.

WD-40 Company is a global marketing organization dedicated to creating positive lasting memories by developing and selling products that solve problems in workshops, factories and homes around the world. The Company markets its maintenance products and homecare and cleaning products under the following well-known brands: WD-40®, 3-IN-ONE®, GT85®, X-14®, 2000 Flushes®, Carpet Fresh®, no vac®, Spot Shot®, 1001®, Lava® and Solvol®.