Thread: Leading with Clarity and Purpose During Uncertainty
In the latest in our series of interviews with CEOs and founders backed by Beringea, we have spoken with Kieran O’Neill, co-founder and CEO of Thread, to understand how he has adapted to lead during the pandemic
The shockwaves of the pandemic were felt strongly throughout the global retail industry. Disruption to supply chains, widespread closures of bricks-and-mortar stores, and a steep decline in consumer demand contributed to a period of uncertainty and apprehension facing brands and retailers.
Thread, an online menswear retailer that brings together artificial intelligence and human stylists to provide personal recommendations on what to wear, experienced an immediate hit in March.
As Kieran O’Neill, co-founder and CEO of Thread, notes, “we had to throw every plan out of the window and begin planning for a multitude of scenarios.”
Thread was primarily impacted by a lack of consumer spending in the first weeks of the pandemic. It was initially hard to predict the severity and duration of this declining demand. Thread therefore had to rapidly develop contingency plans: “we took reports from the likes of Bain, McKinsey and the global consultancy firms and created an average of the potential ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘awful’ scenarios.”
“This enabled us to plan for the eventuality that we ended up in the ‘awful’ scenario. This type of complex scenario planning and forecasting was a new skill for the business — and luckily it has ended up playing out better than we thought.”
Half survive, half thrive — building for the future
Government interventions such as the UK’s furlough scheme and the lending programmes available to businesses ensured that consumer spending returned, and many retail businesses could turn their attention to the future.
There remained, however, significant challenges to navigate. As Kieran notes, “we had to do hard, difficult things stretching from cutting back on spending and placing people on furlough through to sadly making redundancies.”
And yet, Kieran was focused on building resilience in his team: “the story has to be about how we win and come out of this stronger — half survive, half thrive.”
Attention turned to initiatives that could drive the business forward as the economy recovered. “We had thought about doing womenswear for a long time — we knew that it would take time to get it right, but we had the time to pick off longer-term projects. The team was energised by the ambition, determination and continuous progress that we made with womenswear.”
The purpose derived from a common goal was strengthened by a clarity of communication and focus: “when you are spending less time with people working remotely, there is less space for informal communication, so we’ve tried to think about how we create more autonomous and self-controlled teams. Those teams with a clear goal and resources to deliver on it have performed well.”
Adapting to new lifestyles and new habits
With an entirely remote workforce, there were inevitable changes to communications and culture at Thread. “It has made me realize how much I enjoy the informal conversations at work — they are the things that get decimated by remote working — so we explicitly allowed meetings to start late and give people the time to have a chat, as you would in an office setting.”
This shift also required Kieran to adapt his approach to leadership and communicating with the team: “I switched to talking to the team every Monday and sharing openly the good and the bad. It has been incredibly important to retain that dialogue. And I have learnt many new skills — it will now be vital to get feedback on these changes, which we will be reviewing over the coming months.”
The shift in working habits has also had a demonstrable impact on the focus of menswear: “we saw a shift away from suits and shirts to sweatpants and hoodies, so we adapted to feature loungewear more prominently and we set up a section on our platform for working at home.”
This agility, supported by the clarity and purpose that Kieran has sought to instil throughout his team, ensures that Thread is positioned strongly for the coming months. There may be further uncertainty, but Kieran is simply focused on driving the business forward: “we need to be clear in our minds what we need to deliver rather than second-guess how the economy is going to perform.”
