November’s A chat with Ashton Harrison, founder, president/CEO, Shades of Light

CS: And just so I get this right, are you considered president and CEO?
AH: I suppose it’s both. I wear many hats. I’ve just finished a new organizational change going from 13 people reporting to me to five. I’m in the process of implementing that so I can put on my CEO hat a little more. But I never was able to do that very well before I went to NEMOA. There I saw a presentation from a guy from Anthropologie talking about their organizational structure. We kept trying to find a sales manager who could run the catalog and retail sales. They’d always be able to get one part but not the other. Now we’ve separated those. That’s going to work well for us, I can tell already. I’ve also put all of our marketing under one hat so that all of our store signage, truck signage and catalogs match. I think it’s a plan that will improve things. It’s already better.