A Day in the Life: Director of Technology, Daelan

Meet Daelan, Poppy Barley’s Director of Technology, otherwise known as the man behind the website (and so much more)! Read on to discover how Daelan’s improving the experience of Poppy Barley’s team and community (yes, you!) one technical system and tool at a time.

 

You’ve been with Poppy Barley for more than 10 years now! Paint us a picture—what did day one at Poppy Barley look like for you?

In the early days, I was hired as a contractor to help Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Justine and Kendall build the first Poppy Barley eCommerce website. This was before we had even sold a single pair of boots. I worked with them and a designer to figure out what needed to happen for them to start selling online. It’s all kind of a blur. I remember we definitely made things more complicated than they needed to be. Eventually, I was spending so much time working on the site that Kendall asked me to join the team permanently.

 

What has it been like to be part of Poppy Barley’s evolution—any major milestones, hilarious mishaps, favourite memories?

It’s been pretty amazing to see how far we have come. In the beginning, it was just 4 or 5 of us sitting around shared desks at Startup Edmonton, a startup incubator where Poppy Barley got its start. Now it seems like every time I'm in the Poppy Barley Warespace there are new people joining the team. Kendall and Justine decided early on that they wanted to build a great team and try to do as much as we could in-house. So it’s always been kind of an all-hands-on-deck type of environment.

One of the early memories that stick with me is the first Sample Sale we hosted at Startup Edmonton. I remember about an hour before we opened there were people lined up all the way down 3 flights of stairs and out the front door. It was the first time I thought that we were on to something big and this crazy idea was probably going to work. Up until then, we were only an eCommerce company so the idea of our customers was very abstract, seeing how passionate and excited people were to be at our sample sale in person was amazing.

 

How has your role evolved over time? What exactly does “Director of Technology” entail?

My role really hasn’t changed that much. In the beginning, I was the only developer on the team, and 10 years later I'm still the only developer on the team. This basically means that I oversee and implement all of our technical systems and tools. I also build and maintain our website. So this could mean that one day I'm working on operational tools for managing inventory and fulfillment and the next day I'm adding functionality to the website. We try to map out the big projects that we are going to focus on every quarter and when I'm not working on big projects I'm trying to improve the web experience.

 

Your work supports the entire Poppy Barley team! You recently created a replenishment tool. Can you tell us what it is, how you went about building it, and why it’s so important to Poppy Barley?

The replenishment tool was built to streamline the process of making sure our retail locations always have the inventory they need to hit their sales targets. Now that we have three retail locations and two warehouses, managing inventory between all the locations is complicated. Up until recently this was all handled with spreadsheets and was very time-consuming for our product team.

The application we built tries to automate as much of this process as possible. Basically, it pulls in the active inventory and sales and fulfillment data for each location, along with core re-order points and it does all the number crunching to let the product team know how much of each item each location needs at any given time. They can then make manual adjustments to the suggested amounts and initiate the inventory transfers.

What other exciting projects are you working on?

Right now we are focused on conversion rate optimization. So I'm spending a lot of time studying how people are using our website, and trying to make it as easy as possible for them to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but it’s pretty important work and even minor improvements can have a big impact on the company and our customers.

 

Your work has caught the attention of the retail, marketing, and technology industries, landing you speaking and panellist gigs at events like DX3 and Shopify staff retreats! What is exciting you about this industry right now?

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about industry trends or what is going on in the retail industry. I do spend time learning about new technologies and how we can use them at Poppy Barley. Things change so quickly, especially with web technology, that you need to keep up or you will get lost pretty quickly. Right now I’m excited about building web apps with Node.js.

 

Okay, enough about work, what else do you like to do?!

I’m big into camping. Over the pandemic, I converted a van into a camper so I like to take that out into the backcountry as much as I can. I also dabble in filmmaking, I've made a bunch of short films and music videos. I’m always working on my next film project in one way or another. Right now I'm learning how to do 3d modelling and animation so I can create better visual effects for my films.

 

Okay, back to work, what is the most rewarding thing about working at Poppy Barley?

The best thing about being at Poppy Barley is getting to work with really smart people. Everyone on our team is here because they care about the values of the company, and the direction we are heading and being a part of a creative and focused team is very rewarding.