Role Call | Miyon Im, Head of Product

There are few sectors of the economy that offer as wide and interesting a range of career opportunities as fashion. In our continuing series to correspond with the launch of BoF Careers, the global marketplace for fashion talent, we highlight some of the industry’s most interesting jobs and the talented people who do them.

LONDON, United Kingdom — After working at Net-a-Porter and Nokia, Miyon Im became head of product at Lyst, a fashion-tech start-up founded in 2010 by Chris Morton that enables users to build a customised shopping experience driven by personalised product feeds from brands and retailers.

BoF: Please describe your current role.

MI: As head of product, my job is to make Lyst the best experience for our shoppers and come up with ways that will make people want to come back again and again.

It’s a very multi-disciplinary role, which makes it challenging and exciting. Some days it involves observing usability testing sessions to get some real-world feedback on what we can improve on the site. Other days I’ll be knee-deep in number crunching to report back on how well a newly released feature is performing – or not!

I’m currently working closely with our marketing team to plan our upcoming holiday campaign and leading creative brainstorming sessions.

BoF: What attracted you to the role?

MI: When Chris Morton (the CEO and founder of Lyst) approached me with this role, I jumped at the chance. My background is in user experience [UX] and for my next role I wanted to be somewhere where I could be more involved in the product strategy: defining the product roadmap, managing the design and delivery, and being responsible for the commercial success of the product.

Not only was the role an attractive next step in my career, but Chris’ vision of Lyst was a real “a-ha” moment for me. Shopping for fashion online has become fragmented and it turned product discovery into a pain point. Lyst uses technology in a smart and personalised way to address that problem and I wanted to be part of that.

BoF: What is the most exciting project or initiative you have worked on?

MI: It’s got to be our universal checkout, which we launched August 2013.  Until that point, like many other shopping aggregators, our business was based purely on an affiliate model, which relies on redirecting the shopper to another website when they find what they want to buy. It’s a model that has been around for a long time and it’s not ideal because it breaks up the experience for the shopper. Imagine going to a shop, finding something you like and then they tell you to go across the street to buy it! But now we can offer a seamless shopping experience for our customers because they don’t have to leave Lyst to complete their purchase from one of our partners.

It involved a lot of late nights, but it’s really exciting because I think this is truly going to rock the future of our industry. It’s great for our users because they can shop from several places at once with one checkout, which saves them time. Our partners are excited about it because conversions to sales are higher with universal checkout. We’ve still got lots of ideas on how to continually improve the experience, but laying down the foundation was a great achievement (and the launch party was great!).

BoF: How is your role changing? What are the forces driving this change?

MI: The biggest change my role has undergone has been due to the incredible growth of the company. I started out as the only product manager and I was doing everything from wire framing to writing email copy. Now that I have several product teams to manage, I’ve transitioned to more of a leadership role. I’m there to guide them with my experience with the product and knowledge about the business, but they are given the space and autonomy to deliver their ideas. I focus on making sure that what they create is a consistent experience for our users and that it aligns with our company goals and values.

I also spend a lot of time with other areas of the business to understand their goals and challenges so that the product team is aware of the broader implications of their projects. We put our users at the heart of our decisions, but we know that we often have an effect on almost every part of the business – SEO, marketing, sales, even finance – so I act as a channel for communicating those implications and aligning projects when necessary.

BoF: Tell us about a time you failed and how you learned from it.

MI: One of the ways our users can personalise their shopping experience on Lyst is by following people – brands, influencers, other Lyst members, etc. We wanted to create a page where people can discover new people to follow. We did a lot of competitive research, talked to our partnerships team, talked with our brand team, came up with a design and then put the design in front of some users and… they hated it.

We had thought the easiest way we could build something like this would be to feature new brands on the site. However, the feedback quickly told us that we were letting our users down on our core proposition of being a personalised experience. They didn’t really care that a brand was new to Lyst; that wasn’t enough to follow someone. They wanted more information about who they were and a bit more guidance on how to make their Lyst experience better. What we thought was the minimum we could go with turned out to be not at all close to minimum and we had to go back to the drawing board. We’ve picked it up again as a project and I hope the next time we show it to our users, they’re a lot more positive about it!

BoF: What advice do you have for people who are interested in doing what you do?

MI: The hardest and most satisfying requirement to being a product manager is how broad your skill set has to be, so I think it’s really important to talk to and learn from all parts of whatever industry or business you would like to work in. Creating a product sometimes feels like putting a jigsaw puzzle together and the product manager is the one who can see that overall picture on the box that the puzzle came in. Don’t be afraid to talk to developers, designers, marketers, buyers, accounting, whomever and learn what it is that they do, how they do it, who they work with, and what the challenges in their job are. Ask questions and soak it all in!

I also think it’s really important that you find a product that you are passionate about. When you care about the overall experience and how it affects your customers, the product ultimately benefits and you will have a more satisfying career as a product manager.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

To explore exciting fashion industry roles like this and others, visit BoF Careers, the global marketplace for fashion talent.