Behind the Software: Selling Retail Planning Software with Lauren Taubes

7thonline Director, Lauren Taubes sits down with Sue Firth on The Executive Edge to talk about balance as a working mom selling retail planning software. With over 20 years of experience in fashion tech, spanning trend forecasting to ERP systems and now 7thonline, Lauren is passionate about helping fashion companies optimize their processes.

"I want people's lives to be better, faster and easier. I want to sell them something that makes their jobs day-to-day within the fashion industry more effective, more efficient." - Lauren Taubes

Key Takeaways: Life and Selling Retail Planning Software

1. Technology Innovation: Small to medium fashion companies can significantly benefit from moving beyond Excel-based planning to sophisticated SaaS solutions

2. Work-Life Integration: Success comes from finding supportive environments that understand the realities of being a working parent

3. Relationship-First Sales: Building genuine connections and providing value leads to long-term success, even when immediate deals don’t close

4. Industry Expertise: Deep knowledge of your sector combined with genuine passion creates authentic sales conversations

5. Supply Chain Reality: Modern consumer expectations require sophisticated planning and forecasting to maintain satisfaction

   
   

Maximizing Capital for Retailers with Supply Chain Issues and the Amazon Effect

Sue: It’s not just the customer journey, it’s the data analytics of working out how shoppers are going to buy the product at full price. It’s understanding people and their buying processes so that the client, the company that makes the product in this case, gets the maximum capital.

Lauren: These big fashion, apparel, footwear companies globally, you want to make sure that what they produce, they don’t have too much or too little inventory. If you have too much, it’s sitting in the warehouse. Or too little inventory, and you’ve lost sales because you don’t have enough to put them on your shelves or your ecommerce site or the major department store you sell into. The current job I’m at (7thonline), really helps people plan more efficiently to make sure the customer has what they want at the end, and not overspend or underspend and make too much or too little.”

Sue: On the consumer side, shoppers are frustrated with long and delayed deliveries—even with tracking apps. Known as the Amazon effect, expectations for delivery times have changed to be almost instantaneous, and this has shifted down to even the younger generations. 

Lauren: With the issues of supply chain, what our planning solution does, we make sure that they have the right amount of products to get it in transit and there on time for shoppers.

Key to Success & Work-Life Balance

Sue: What do you feel were the ultimate ingredients for success?

Lauren: My parents (my dad was actually always in sales), customer success, building relationships and rapport, passion to connect with people, desire to make a difference by supporting the fashion industry. I always knew I would be driving my own success, being motivated to do the best I can at any organization. Being surrounded by like-minded individuals, a clear path and having experts around me.

Sue: Success and having children, it’s not by accident that you find many women struggle big time to balance this. What about yourself?

Lauren: When I had my first daughter, I was really fortunate that the owners of the organization really supported me. Also at small businesses! They really supported me with fluidity, made sure I was okay and set me up for success managing a brand-new baby before going back to work. It’s a fine line, I always like to say that I’m always running—there’s always something to do whether for work or for personal reasons. One of my top priorities when selecting a role is to make sure that there is that flexibility to support my two children.

Listen to the full podcast here: https://suefirthltd.com/finding-work-life-balance-with-lauren-taubes/

7thonline is a leading retail planning software, enabling more effective planning, demand forecasting and inventory optimization. To learn more, email us at info@7thonline.com or book a demo with our team.