Worker Highlight: Emel Meteoglu – Vice President of Product

We’re pleased to announce that Emel Meteoglu, Vice President of Product at B-Inventory, has been named one of many  Top 50 Women Leaders of San Francisco for 2023 by Girls We Admire!

Emel is an achieved government and product chief with a ardour for constructing easy-to-use, helpful, and modern merchandise from the bottom up at a global scale, from defining the technical structure to making ready to go to market technique. At B-Inventory, she leads a crew chargeable for product growth, income development, consumer expertise, analytics, and company and product technique.

Be taught extra about Emel’s background and imaginative and prescient for B-Inventory beneath.  

Q: Are you able to inform us a bit bit about your background?

“I went to highschool in Turkey for Product Administration Engineering. I do know it’s a cliché, however I knew from a younger age that I wished to change into a product supervisor to bridge the hole between enterprise (gross sales, advertising and marketing, help) and engineering.”

Q: What introduced you to B-Inventory?

“A few issues had been occurring in my life. One, I used to be prepared for a brand new journey, however I wished to do one thing significant. I wished to make use of my abilities to assist folks. The second factor occurring was, we’d simply gotten a home and I used to be purchasing so much, and shopping for furnishings—and sadly, I used to be returning a few of it. As a result of excessive price, for those who pay full worth and suppose the merchandise could also be broken, as an finish consumer, you need to return it. You need to be sure that if you’re paying full worth, you’re getting the best high quality attainable. 

As she went by way of the method of returning a desk she’d ordered that arrived with a dent on it, her dad and mom—who had been visiting—had been amazed by the versatile return insurance policies, which aren’t distinguished in Emel’s native Turkey: “If you wish to return one thing there, you actually should battle. Even when it’s faulty, you might not get your a reimbursement. The client isn’t all the time proper.” 

This obtained Emel considering: within the midst of seemingly limitless returns, the place does the merchandise find yourself, and the way a lot waste is being generated? Is there a technique to cross these returned objects on to secondary finish customers and generate financial savings? The reply she got here up with was: by way of “second life givers;” Emel’s time period for patrons. And simply as she contemplated these prospects, B-Inventory reached out, as if by way of serendipity.

“I do know there are numerous conventional  liquidation channels, however this business is so fragmented and open to disruption. We will positively construct one thing helpful for everyone—retailers, resellers, and finish customers! Furthermore, this additionally obtained me considering that I can really not solely assist folks, however assist Earth by giving these merchandise a second, third, fourth life. That basically drew me in. I’m lastly going to do one thing significant, so 10 years from now I can inform my children the platform we constructed helped deliver billions of returned merchandise again to life. I’m very enthusiastic about what we will construct. The alternatives that we will create for resellers and for fixing inefficiencies, and the ache factors that we will remedy for retailers is limitless. As I inform my very own crew, sky’s the restrict. We simply have to focus and construct it proper.”

Emel’s imaginative and prescient for B-Inventory goes past promoting overstock to vetted patrons—it means that we will change into a serious participant within the gig financial system, fostering the way forward for patrons and serving to them not solely develop, however be taught alongside the best way:

Q: How do you envision B-Inventory enabling folks to develop into elite patrons?

“Uber has 900,000 drivers within the U.S. It’s not unrealistic to think about having a million second life givers assist us discover returned merchandise second houses. 

The variety of second life givers is barely restricted by the variety of adults within the inhabitants, and also you don’t even should personal a automobile to begin your facet hustle! For this reason I consider the sky’s the restrict: we will prolong our platform in a approach that we may help second life givers begin their enterprise in the event that they don’t know the best way to begin; assist them create their very own web site, get hold of a enterprise license, or present schooling: Enterprise 101. We’ll stroll with them, facet by facet from the start. We’ll assist them construct, handle, and develop their enterprise in order that an increasing number of folks can do that job and assist us deliver extra merchandise into life.

Q: What’s your imaginative and prescient for sellers?

On the vendor facet, we’d like to consider how we will onboard extra merchandise onto our platform. How can we make sellers’ lives simpler? How can we combine extra into the vendor so it’s much less cumbersome for them and it’s simple to add the stock in our system? How can we remedy different issues for them by way of scanning, lotting, and sorting?”

Q: Sooner or later, what do you hope you may say you probably did with B-Inventory?

“I’m envisioning that there will likely be state legal guidelines that say no reusable product goes to landfill; it should be resold. I  would additionally prefer to see B-Inventory because the ecosystem of giving merchandise a second life, in order that it connects all of the gamers, akin to returns and stock administration companies, logistics, warehouses and success facilities, and even different liquidators!

After I see these two issues taking place, I’ll say we made it: we created a platform to save lots of Earth. And that’s what I’ll strive so long as I’m right here.”

Requested what her necessities are for working with a product or firm, Emel had this to say:

“As a product supervisor and chief, serving to others is what motivates me. I need to construct helpful merchandise which might be simple to make use of and modern. These are my three standards:

It ought to disrupt the prevailing business and the methods during which we function.
It needs to be helpful to others by addressing their ache factors and offering worth.
It needs to be intuitive and easy.”