My name's Henry Davis. I'm Founder and CEO of arfa.
On His Professional Journey
My role, fundamentally, is strategy and people. So I've got to make sure that the company has a True North, and that we have the people that can get us to the True North, and they know what that True North is.
A fun fact about me is that I was a semi-professional DJ and producer for a while when I was younger and cooler. And I have thousands of records taking up space in my mom's garage, still.
So I've spent a long time working my way to being a founder and CEO. I've spent my whole roughly focused on consumer and technology and the intersection of the two. I developed a strong thesis about branded eCommerce. Forming that thesis, I met Emily Weiss of Glossier. Then, it was Into the Gloss - it was pre-Glossier. We got on very well. She had the same worldview. And I moved from London to New York to join as President of Glossier, where I was for almost five years as President and COO, and lastly CFO. I left at the end of 2018, still pursuing the same thesis. My belief that eCommerce and branded eCommerce, in particular, can offer something new and different and better, given its ability to connect with people at the individual level, but on a mass scale, and arfa is a realization of that.
On Key Habits to Success
Discipline around unit economics is one thing that I really like to think I'm known for. I believe that anyone can sell $10 for $5 and it's very easy to obfuscate numbers and not realize you're doing that. And growth seems to be the biggest mask of all. Secondly, making sure that we serve the customer in the right way. You can understand how you're serving the customer by looking at a number of things. Qualitative and quantitative feedback, but on the quantitative side, it's very clear whether you're serving the customer in the right way because customers will do things that are otherwise somewhat irrational. They'll go out of their way to share your products with their friends. They'll repeat purchase regularly. They'll come back and buy a different product than the one they bought the first time. And that's all in the metrics and you can see that, and see customer behavior and therefore their passion for what it is that you're doing. And if you can tie that with positive unit economics, you have a very good business.
