Partner Portal
Fair Trade USA, Senior Product Manager
2019-2020
Focus Areas
Supply chain management, sustainability, labor rights, certification, international development, agriculture, nonprofit
Skill Set
User research, story mapping, stakeholder management, launch strategy, localization, agile software development, user acceptance testing
Background
As the leading certifier and labeler of fair trade products in North America, Fair Trade USA was seeking a way to upgrade their business value to brands and producers, and maintain their competitive advantage. Both ends of the supply chain desired increased opportunities to grow their sales and strengthen their trade relationships.
In July 2020, the Innovation team revamped the Partner Portal to expand beyond basic compliance reporting functionality and released new features to increase sales opportunities, incentivize product marketing collaborations, and foster relationship building opportunities between coffee producers and buyers. We launched a new landing page, searchable directory of partner profiles, digital marketplace and supply chain dashboards to our coffee supply chains that span across North America, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa.
This release was a major milestone in Fair Trade USA’s pathway of digital transformation, accelerating the organization’s mission to deliver greater equity, empowerment and sustainability for farmers and workers around the globe.
Responsibilities
Led competitive research on sustainability certification programs and supply chain management tools
Conducted user research and field visits with key Coffee accounts and co-ops to understand pain points and user needs
Led product discovery and definition of new features, partnering closely with Executive team, Design, Business Development, Producer Services and Impact teams
Partnered with Design, Engineering, and Data teams to prototype, develop, test, launch and monitor new features using Agile development processes
Developed multi-phase launch strategy and monitoring plans to optimize for feedback and learning
Results
Released beta version of Green Coffee Marketplace, Partner Directory and Producer Profiles to 800+ Coffee producers, traders and brands across LATAM, Asia, Africa and the US as a solution for helping producers sell surplus product to coffee buyers with spot purchasing needs
Launched beta version of Supply Chain dashboards to 50 key Coffee accounts; Visualized sourcing volumes, geographies, and impact metrics
Gathered early feedback from users via customer interviews
Developed roadmap for continued feature monitoring and expansion of features to other business verticals: Apparel & Home Goods, CPG, Produce and Seafood
Design workshop at Unión Majomut coffee cooperative in Chiapas, MX
Learnings
The Green Coffee Marketplace gained little traction from buyers after 2 months. We hypothesize that the MVP did not cover a broad enough range of functions to satisfy buyer needs in making spot purchases, such as executing contracts, managing logistics, providing product quality assurance, and price forecasting. In hindsight, we could have built a less expensive prototype to gain the same insight and further iterated on MVP definition before committing to feature development.
Initial response to Supply Chain dashboards and Producer Profiles was positive from buyers and there was clear demand from other business verticals. Buyers were excited to have some impact data and access to marketing assets at their fingertips. However, we needed more time to measure the impact these features had on overall program value to customers, customer retention and new customer growth.