Fortune features Shutterfly CEO on supply chain
U.S. business website Fortune featured a discussion with Shutterfly CEO Hilary Schneider about the company’s dominance of holiday the photo card market, supply chain issues, and its foray into NFT.
Writer Jane Their wrote Shutterfly, which on average sends out 165 million holiday cards a year, has a broad experience with supply chain challenges.
“We have a real advantage,” Schneider told Fortune. “We have a lot of foresight into manufacturing, supply chain, and seasonal staffing shortages…There certainly have been challenges, but with our ability to get the materials procured, we have everything in stock. We’ve also been able to find significant offsets on the cost side, so we don’t have to pass that along to the consumer.”
Trimming at Lifetouch
Schneider told Their that trimming staff at Lifetouch has helped keep the school photography business, which took a 50-percent sales hit, going during COVID-19. “That recovery took a lot of quick, tough decision-making about which resources we didn’t need, in terms of human capital,” she said. “Because there just weren’t as many photo sessions, we had to think strategically about those cost decisions, and which cuts will be most important, or which you can reverse fastest when things go back to normal.”
According to the article, since Schneider took the helm, the company has laid off or furloughed about 10 percent of its staff, mostly at Lifetouch.
Public listing rumors
Schneider didn’t comment on the persistent rumors Shutterfly is looking to return to the stock exchange just two years after Apollo Global Management snapped up both Snapfish and Shutterfly in a $2.7 billion transaction.
“When you’re a private equity company backed by Apollo, there are a lot of rumors in the marketplace, but we have no comment on that rumor,” she said. “We’re actively focused on how we think about the consumer, and how we continue innovating for that consumer.”