How this ‘data-driven’ Sussex retailer keeps its devs energized

Every Friday, E Revolution Ventures’ five-person development team and their CTO, Ed Timmons, shift gears from the everyday grind to work on something fun and creative.
“We like to try to mimic Google in that way where you can break up monotony of task-based development with a little bit of creativity,” Timmons said. “I just kind of let them take an idea and say, ‘How can we exploit this?'”
Sometimes that means learning a new technology — maybe switching over from one cloud system to another because you’re just dying to learn it.
They even play ping-pong.
“I was the champ for a while, but [the team] has been practicing so I’ve got to sharpen up a bit,” Timmons said. “Everyone is coming after me now.”
Open-box Fridays is one way E Revolution Ventures keeps its dev team fresh. The “data-driven” retailer also holds fitness competitions in its giant employee gym.
Actually, Chief Sales Officer Jeremy Navarre used to play in the NFL for the Jaguars and the Cardinals.
“We have fitness challenges about three or four times a year,” Timmons said. “It brings together our entire company. People take it seriously.” As for winners of the fitness challenge? Timmons said they get a paid day off, or $100 if they lose a certain percentage of weight.
This is how you foster company culture. And E Revolution Ventures knows about fostering culture — in just under 30 years, the company has grown from a small 500-square-foot kite kiosk in New Orleans to a massive international online retailer (using Amazon’s platform).
Originally Kite Tails & Toys (now thinkfasttoys.com), the company relocated to Delaware in 2002 when it acquired Bethany Trading Company. Both companies now exist under the E Revolution Ventures banner. Actually, Timmons launched the company’s original site in 1997, fifteen years before officially joining as CTO.
“I loved the work because I was just starting to get into big systems and big data and scaling backend systems to make all the departments across the company more efficient,” Timmons said. He even helped Micah Sklut launch Swellinfo.com.
“I focused on taking all the data from his weather models and organized it for him in databases,” he said. “That was one of my first big data projects and I loved it.”
So how does that big data work apply to what Timmons is doing with E Revolution Ventures? Timmons and his team have developed systems for the buying team to optimize the way the company creates purchase orders.
Essentially, the company’s buyers are responsible for placing and reordering products every day. The system scouts that data and makes sure the company’s money is in the products that pull in the most profit at any given time.
“There’s definitely an element to the stock market, where you see a great buy and you go after it,” Timmons said. “If that product starts to die, you get out of it and put your money somewhere else.”
Some example products over the years? Beanie Babies, Crocs, solar-powered pool cleaners and rubber band guns.
How does an e-retailer like E Revolution Ventures keep up with changes in the market?
“It’s not always about making more money,” Timmons said. “Sometimes, it’s about losing less money.”