Although the weather in Los Angeles is dependably sunny, business trends are often less consistent. The average Angeleno knows that times are always changing, and the companies that pay close attention to trends — and adapt to meet them — are the ones that flourish.
Organizations like Thrive Market, one of Built In Los Angeles’ top companies hiring, make data a core tenet of their company culture. As an e-commerce company, having a finger on the pulse of the average online shopper is crucial to its mission of making healthy living more accessible for everyone.
One exciting, data-driven initiative, according to Data Engineering Manager Jing Wang, is the implementation of AI as a tool to provide customers with a more personalized shopping experience. Personalization not only enhances the shopping experience — it encourages shoppers to return for another purchase. In a 2018 pulse survey from Accenture, 91 percent of consumers stated they are more likely to shop with brands that remember their preferences and recommend relevant products and offers.
To get a better look at Thrive Market’s data-driven company culture, its health-conscious mission and what makes it a great place for a prospective Angeleno on the job hunt, Built In Los Angeles spoke with Wang about his experience working there so far.
Thrive Market is an e-commerce platform that delivers the highest quality healthy and sustainable products at member-only prices while matching every paid membership with a free one for someone in need.
Describe Thrive Market’s company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Data-driven characterizes our company culture accurately. Thrive Market’s data-driven culture signifies our commitment to making strategic decisions and taking action based on concrete analyses, evidence and insights.
Our weekly companywide all-hands meeting embodies our data-driven culture, where our CEO shares key business performance and challenges and analyzes them through the lens of data. We dive into crucial business metrics and OKRs and review dashboards central to our company performance. It provides transparency and fosters a healthy environment where everybody can be proactive and adapt swiftly.
Thrive Market’s data-driven culture provides transparency and fosters a healthy environment where everybody can be proactive and adapt swiftly.”
This commitment to being data-driven is rooted in our mission: making healthy and sustainable living easy and accessible for all. To be true to our mission, we understand the importance of continuous improvement and innovation through data. Every strategic decision is meticulously vetted based on data and aimed at enhancing our members’ experience. In a nutshell, our data-driven culture has been instrumental in navigating challenges and has allowed Thrive Market to thrive even in times of economic uncertainties and vagaries.
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and how did it help you grow professionally?
The most remarkable project I have been personally involved in at Thrive Market is our initiative to reshape our members’ shopping experience through AI. The project encompasses analyzing our members’ purchase shopping preferences gathered through a guided quiz and building a personalized shopping cart that saves them time and energy. It involves training AI models and combining them with rules to ensure that what the member sees in their cart is what they want to buy at that point in time.
We have embraced many data challenges in this project and have iterated swiftly to learn from our members. My team has been central to this project as we collect and clean the raw data, ensure it is available for analysis and training AI models and generate insights and trends. This project has enabled us to serve our members better and stay ahead of the curve and will open the door to many new opportunities. Being part of this project of integrating AI into the shopping experience has exposed me to the cutting-edge in the retail industry. It has broadened my perspective on being strategic and adapting to technological advancements.
