Since their start in 2013, TeePublic has grown to become the world’s largest marketplace for art and apparel made by independent artists from around the world. Today, some of the biggest names in online pop culture, gaming, podcasting, and media can be found on their site. TeePublic’s mission? Enable artists and designers by giving them scalable tools to produce, market, and sell their art and merchandise internationally.
Given the company’s ambitious goals, TeePublic leadership recognized that an investment in data capabilities would be a critical enabler of the company’s next stage of growth. Teepublic leadership understood that best-in-class data capabilities would allow the company to better serve their customers and artists. That’s where Brooklyn Data Co. came in.
Instilling a data-driven culture across the organization
Brooklyn Data’s product manager works with department leaders across TeePublic. Regular one-on-one meetings are used to discuss the specifics of different business initiatives and to identify ways data could support each team’s objectives.
Today, the operations team is equipped with a forecasting model to estimate production volume during critical sales periods. The data warehouse implementation, along with new web analytics solutions, allow the search team to improve customer experience on the website. And TeePublic’s community team can for the first time use data visualizations to understand the drivers of artist success and reshape recruiting and account management practices accordingly.
“In my career, I’ve worked with countless agencies across every kind of discipline and Brooklyn Data is the best.”
— ADAM SCHWARTZ, COFOUNDER & CEO TEEPUBLIC
Supporting the growing volume and complexity of data
Brooklyn Data’s first step was to undertake an audit of the people, processes, and technologies supporting data and insights at TeePublic. Through interviews with a broad group of stakeholders, consultation with the data team, and examination of TeePublic’s existing systems, Brooklyn Data surfaced a number of opportunities. Key among these were improvements to the company’s data infrastructure.
As data grows in volume and complexity, it’s important to have a data warehouse that’s up for the challenge. That’s why, following the data audit, Brooklyn Data and TeePublic’s data engineering team got to work implementing an analytics-optimized data warehouse that could meet the online marketplace’s growing needs.
For data visibility and accessibility across the organization, Brooklyn Data recommended and implemented a new business intelligence tool, Mode, supported by a data model built using dbt. Mode plus dbt allows TeePublic to extend their reporting capabilities, while still supporting their legacy reporting needs.
As a result, TeePublic is now able to answer challenging analytical questions more quickly and with more confidence in data quality. A thoughtful, reusable data model reduces the time analysts spend wrangling data before diving into analysis. The data warehouse also enabled TeePublic to build out a new product feed—a solution that contributed to record sales during the 2019 holiday season.
“We turned to Brooklyn Data and within months not only did TeePublic have all its data flowing into a single warehouse, our internal teams had BI dashboards to make use of it all. The migration went perfectly and the team was such a pleasure to work with we’ve kept our engagement with them indefinitely.”
— ADAM SCHWARTZ, COFOUNDER & CEO TEEPUBLIC
Continuous learning through strong internal communication
At the end of each sprint, Brooklyn Data’s product manager facilitates collective reflection on areas for improvement: an important opportunity for the team to learn how to better work together as it takes on progressively more challenging and complex data questions.
Communication between Brooklyn Data and TeePublic is not limited to these sprint ritual meetings, though. Brooklyn Data’s product manager stays in touch with each member of the data team daily to resolve bottlenecks, help maintain focus on the priorities, and navigate challenges along the way. This strong internal communication helps the team deliver value to the company as efficiently as possible.
Leveraging data in every decision
With a robust data warehouse, a powerful and flexible BI tool, and agile data product management in place, TeePublic enables data-driven decision-making across the company, daily. As TeePublic’s data needs continue to evolve, Brooklyn Data’s team as a service will be there to support the company every step of the way.
Build data capabilities that last with Brooklyn Data Co
