Tell us about your journey and how you arrived at Zulily.

I previously lived in Bentonville, Arkansas working in Sam’s Club, and I moved to Seattle specifically for this job at Zulily; I came in as a buyer in the kitchen space. I had a big interest in moving outside of Arkansas, and my options were either San Francisco or Seattle. A buyer position was a promotion for me at the time, and with Zulily I had the opportunity to do that in a space I love: kitchen categories. I’ve been here for over three years now and it’s been so much fun! I’ve been able to stretch myself so many ways. I was barely a year in, and got to have input in a company-wide initiative. From my experience, if you raise your hand enough you are going to get called on and shine more then you thought.You just have to be brave enough to speak up.

That’s great to hear—Being Brave is one of our Principles at Zulily! Tell us how being brave led to your recent Leading With Purpose recognition.

I won the Leading with Purpose award because of my work to help launch Zulily’s new wine category. For anyone who is a data nerd like me, you can see in the last few years wine sales on ecommerce are up by 200% industry-wide--this category has totally taken off! People are really feeling the need to buy wine. The launch of our wine offering required a lot of cross-team collaboration. Because of this, I now understand so much more about the teams here and how we all operate together to support the bigger picture at Zulily. Teams like Legal, Communications, Marketing, Tech were all involved to think through the implications, regulations, and more. We all had to work together to make this idea come to life.

Where did the wine idea come from, and how did it come to life?

Wine was something Zulily had been trying to launch for a few years. When our VP of the home area left, she handed the project over to Merch Director Kate Aulabaugh and me and told us this work was now on pause. Kate and I figured out together how to unlock the wine category on our site. It took 6-7 months to launch this category. So many teams were involved, and I worked closely in partnership with Kate, our Legal eagle Jamie Corning, and our Business Development partners John Starke and Heather Harle--the dream team! I was not the idea creator of the wine category, but definitely a primary executor and project manager on this initiative. We had over 20 people on this project.

In your own words, how would you say this initiative influences Mom’s shopping experience?

Diving into the wine category gives mom another great product she can get from her favorite site. The more categories we can add that we know Mom loves, the less she has to shop from multiple other channels. Data shows she is looking for this category and now Mom is buying wine from us.

How has this experience and winning the Leading with Purpose award encouraged you to continue to push the boundaries and unlock new categories for Mom?

It feels great to have not only pushed myself to work on initiative that isn’t normally in my scope of work, but be recognized for it as well. The best part is having the level of support from leadership when you win this award. I think for me, the best feeling is knowing I helped to unlock a new revenue stream for company by this one initiative, and the work did not go unnoticed. The LWP awards program helps team members like me to feel appreciated for being brave, executing on a plan and trying something new.

Love it. And what do you love most about being a buyer at Zulily?

People often describe a buyer’s job as both art and science. You must be so customer obsessed that you go and try to find the best products you know your customer wants to buy. From that aspect, you can use data all day long, but you really need to dive deep and understand your customer, which is Mom. As a buyer for Mom, I have to understand the different phases she may go through and how that affects her shopping habits, and ensure we offer products on our site we know she will need.

What I really enjoy about being at Zulily is we move super fast, we call it Zulily Time or “Zu Time.” This means while I look at the data and study how Mom’s buying habits may change, I can share an idea about a new category I know she is shopping for, and there is a high probability this category I just pitched or new product will be added to our site. I would have to say what I love most is after sharing an idea (and of course getting approval on a business case), my ideas come to life. I’ve worked at large corporations where it would take almost a year for a new product or category to get approved, and by then the customer may be shopping a different site. The endless opportunities at Zulily coupled with Zu Time is what keeps me going.

Are you involved in any other ways here at Zulily?

Yes, I am a member of the Color Outside the Lines TMRG group. I think it’s awesome we have a group dedicated to encouraging inclusivity. I’m actually looking forward to the book club starting up soon and I also like how our TMRGs are constantly pushing out relevant news that may be of interest to group members. Recently, the group also shared a list of places we could volunteer in honor of MLK Day, and this was very helpful for team members like me who were not sure where or how to volunteer.

Thanks so much Araceli. Before we close out, is there anything you enjoy doing for fun?

Funny enough, I racked up 30,000 steps last weekend. I love hiking and being outdoors, because what else can we do right now? Whenever I want to go on a multi-hour hike, I always go to Discovery Park here in Seattle or the Lake Union Trail. There are also great bike paths around the lake. Before Covid, I really enjoyed traveling, especially to visit my family and to Mexico.