1. May 2015 to Present.
Summary of Culture Change from a Marketing Culture to a Merchandising Culture
Primary: Charles Fretterd
Team Members: Sarah Yates, Tabitha Tatum
Document describes the Carrot-Top Culture before and after the changes and many of the steps that
were taken to move the company to a Merchandising Culture. The changes are now stable.
Company Culture prior to May 2015.
For decades, Carrot-Top prided itself on being a marketing culture. Management agreed this was
hindering our ability to sell. The structure had evolved as such that the marketing department was
located away from the rest of the company and had minimal knowledge of customers and products.
Marketing functions were closely guarded by the marketing staff with most of the higher educational
backgrounds situated here. It evolved to this state because the entrepreneur/CEO was a marketer who
largely focused on mailing lists analysis to grow the company. During the initial growth years of the
company the product line was not as highly commoditized as it is today so focusing exclusively on
Marketing worked. The offering was narrow, commercial flags, and a single catalog vehicle was used.
Other vehicles were frequently attempted but relegated to a lower priority when the catalog cycle
started. New product lines suffered a similar fate relative to flags.
The merchandising department consisted of a manager and one merchandiser. Introducing new
products was a painfully slow process where few products were added and the information on those
added was minimally communicated to the company. Input from sources outside Merchandising was
not effectively received unless there were customer complaints. Products generally were not positioned
and had no deliberate selling message. Promoting the product was controlled by marketing that
primarily relied on discounts and creative aesthetics. No keyword research was performed. Product
feedback was anecdotal and based on the loudest customer complaints.
Change Implementations began May 2015.
 Emphasize and re-emphasize Merchandising is responsible for knowing the customers and
products and developing the message and position to the customer. Marketing is responsible
for managing the technical components of the channels. This concept had to be accepted to
begin the process of employees loosening their grip on the functions they had done for years
and in many cases to take on new functions.
 Restructure Merchandising to include multiple experienced employees from the call center
(having product/customer knowledge). Prior, these employees were spending most of their
time handling customer problems because we had not effectively communicated the product
message to the customers or our own csr’s. Get ahead of the problems before they occur and

2. leverage the vehicles and staff to communicate an effective product message. No additional
overhead.
 Re-indoctrinate the marketing and merchandising staff that the catalog is not the base vehicle
from which to work. The merchandisers began to be measured by performance of web
categories. The company has been entrenched in catalog so long it’s difficult to change.
Emphasize the catalog, however important, is one of many vehicles used to communicate the
product message.
 Establish product groups based around web sub-categories and create measurement tools to
follow product groups’ revenues and cost of goods.
 Within their product groups, merchandisers are responsible for knowing what competitors are
offering and how they promote their products, maintaining relationships with suppliers,
knowing their capabilities and products available.
 Establish information channels and methods to capture customer ideas from csr’s and others in
the company. Cultivate rapport with agents. Expressions searched from web.
 Establish a means to track approved products as the necessary components are created and
collected, such as product position, selling points, images, knowledge base, names, related
products, pricing, web location etc…. that are necessary before Marketing adds to the web.
 Ensure Knowledge Base is complete and concise to be used by csr’s and the Marketing
Department to maintain the message as the vehicles are created. Knowledge Base
requirements were Reasons to buy (Selling points), Tech Specs, Components included, alternate
components, and Use scenarios. Descriptive Images.
 Merchandisers work with Marketing to make sure the message is staying intact as the vehicle is
being created. In addition to the products chosen and the target customers they contribute to
the following:
a. PPC – keywords, advertisement copy
b. SEO – keywords,
c. Emails – subject heading, email focus, products, copy
d. Catalog – location, layout, images, copy, timing
e. Call Center – training, Knowledge Base
 Set up feedback channels such as Returns reports, web product reviews, and monitor phone
calls with a two-fold objective. 1. Customer complaints, suggestions and how they use the
products and 2. As with the marketing vehicles, make certain the csr’s are communicating the
product message correctly.
Resulting benefits of the Culture change.
1) High participation from across the company with product ideas from many sources now that
they realize their ideas would be acted upon.
2) Products positioned against themselves as customers understand them, not arbitrarily.
3) Accurate product information presented to customers.
4) Streamlined process to move products to market. Over 700 unique products added in the initial
8 month period.
5) Use of the Knowledge Base tool by call center and marketing to increase the speed of product
knowledge and the ability to communicate it to the customers.
6) Expanded ability of marketing to go beyond just offering discounts as a method of selling.
7) On-line vehicles and the web took priority over the single catalog vehicle for the first time.
8) Process methodically informed all relevant parties in finance, call center, warehouse the
existence of the products, suppliers, stocking concerns, direct and indirect costs.

3. Top Priority challenge to the new merchandising process.
Creating Strong Copy through the marketing vehicles is the priority now. While years beyond the copy
produced prior to the changes, this is the best area for improvement.
The merchandisers are required to add the following to the Knowledge Base: Reasons to buy (Selling
points), Tech Specs, Components included, alternate components, and Use scenarios.
Professional copywriters are asked to work from the knowledge base to create compelling sales copy
from an SEO perspective.
Even with this structure, the merchandisers don’t always communicate the “reasons to buy” well and
the copywriters still don’t understand the products and customers. To ease the problem, the
copywriters have now been located next to the merchandisers to facilitate communication between the
two groups.