Timberland: More Than An Iconic Yellow Boot with Amber Bazdar, Director of Global Retail Design - Timberland

ABOUT AMBER BAZDAR;

Amber’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/amberbazdar

AMBER'S BIO:

As a seasoned retail executive, Amber Bazdar’s sharp foresight, expertise, and ability to guide a traditional retailer into a new phygital generation has made her stand out in the competitive world of retail.

Amber’s diverse professional background includes retail design, visual merchandising, brand experience and fixture and lighting design.  Throughout her career, Amber has excelled at developing and growing retail locations through innovative design and visual merchandising strategies, solving complex “back of house” problems with advanced solutions and attracting and developing high performing talent.  A vibrant and proactive leader, Amber excels at propelling corporate visual standards and creative direction while developing innovative concepts to engage customers.

A life-long learner, Amber was recently an Adjunct Professor of Visual Merchandising at Lasell University, where she taught at the undergraduate level.  She has been involved with curriculum development, student/industry design projects and design competitions.

Amber currently resides in the Seacoast of New Hampshire with her husband, three children and their GSP, Luna.  She enjoys living near the mountains and sea, where she can enjoy nature frequently with her family.

Amber is also the recipient of the "2022 Retailer Innovator Award"

 

SHOW INTRO: 

A of lot of brands have a story. A narrative that underpins the entire enterprise.

These stories are crucial since they establish a framework helps define the customer, their needs and how the brand’s products or services is going to satisfy them.

The brand story isn’t just about what the brand sells though, or who buys their stuff, it’s more a statement of what the brand is about, its essence, its raison d’etre.

It is what it means to be in business in the first place, why they do what they do and how they do it. It sets out a series of promises, that sort of act like a contract for engagement between the brand and its customers. 

Let’s say you were single, you already felt pretty confident about who you were, you knew what you liked and knew what you needed in a relationship.

Let’s say there was a dating service… but it matched people like you with brands in an effort to create that special relationship. And let’s say that you thought that a relationship with a brand would make a great compliment to who you already were. It's not that you need something, or someone, to make you whole but that a good brand relationship would just make experience better, more fulfilling.

Well, if there was such a service existed then you’d probably also want to check out the brand’s online profile. You know…do some research. 

If you did, you might find that the story they’d likely tell may be a little aspirational - for example a friend who is out on the dating circuit, tells me that everyone’s profile says that they are into hiking… and dogs… they may only climb up and own the stairs at home and have a dog calendar hanging on the wall, but for some that may qualify.

In any case, you’d hope that the narrative is authentic and is genuine.

You’re a little bit of a dreamer, you might even like the idea of hiking too, or maybe you area just optimistic, always looking for the thing that could augment your everyday.

If you moved along and you liked eachother then you maybe you’d accept an offer to get together. 

What you hope is that on the first date, and everyone after that, that it delivered what you were expecting. It held the relationship in the highest regard. And the act of doing life together, yes, made it your personal experience better. But more than that, you feel that you and this new brand relationship became connect