Lyde Spann Uffelman
City of Women Denizen: Lyde Spann Uffelman
Bona Fides: Lyde is Founder & CEO of netamorphosis, an award-winning digital marketing agency. She’s put in her time to reach this pinnacle, and as a pioneer within the digital industry, she’s headed up eCommerce and omnichannel operations for some of the world’s largest companies.
City of Women Induction: I met Lyde, appropriately enough, via her Google search and email inquiry to address her wedding invitations. She has juggled career, personal life, a corporate launch, and is now finalizing plans for her November wedding. I found her journey to business ownership and digital mastery very inspiring, especially considering that women in tech is something we need more of.
RPO: You’re the owner of your own digital agency, netamorphosis (fantastic name, by the way). Tell me the story of neta from launch to the present.
LS: I started netamorphosis as a thesis in my 311 square-foot Manhattan apartment. Prior to launch, I headed up and digitally transformed some of the most recognizable brands: launching west elm to achieve $37M in online revenues in 2002, pre-the eCommerce boom; paved the way for global arts organizations with the rebranding of the Museum of Modern Art to MoMA, where today it serves as the leader of consumer/visitor-centric marketing, to my greatest challenge of launching Zara.com global operations, which surpassed all expectations in achieving ≥$1B in global revenues within two years of launch, as the only American and second female executive at the global behemoth Inditex.
What I found in all these experiences were challenges in hiring qualified partners, battling corporate politics by speaking a language different than traditional marketing, and unfortunately, being perceived as a threat to the women executives who often were my direct supervisors.
Realizing 35 – 50% (often more as an entrepreneur) of my waking hours were spent ‘on the job,’ I wanted to collaborate with people I enjoyed, and I wanted to serve as a mentor to people earlier in their careers, to help them avoid what I experienced. I wanted to architect & grow brands that I believed would yield results for the greater good. In my corporate experience, while I specialized in aesthetic-driven brands, they were all about one thing: democratizing luxury, whether for the home, fashion, or in making complex art more approachable, therefore inspiring all the creative arts.
Today, neta is comprised of creatives, analysts, operational specialists, UX designers, programmers, and SEO specialists. We’ve helped pioneer new formats in eCommerce in healthcare, interactive entertainment and retail; as a result, we’ve achieved some of the greatest awards in website design. Most recently, we received recognition for Websites and Mobile Sites, Best Visual Design – Function, 2021 from the prestigious Webby Awards for our custom development of the Goddess Quiz, an interactive eCommerce experience developed specifically for jewelry brand www.aweinspired.com. The quiz matches individuals with their Grecian or real-life (i.e. RBG, Harriet Tubman, Madame Curie) goddess from Awe Inspired’s goddess coin jewelry collection. These types of intimate, thoughtfully-designed, digital experiences to offline events that are customized to foster prestigious brand connection and centered around data-driven decisions, is what differentiates us from other creative or performance agencies.
RPO: What are the rewards and challenges of being a business owner?
LS: Early on, the freedom or lifestyle it allowed me was very different from the 9 – 5 (or in my case, 7 – 8 PM) workday. As we’ve grown through neta’s different iterations, I’ve worked harder than ever, way outside a standard 40-hour workweek. Achieving live/work balance has always been my greatest challenge but hiring wonderful people you can trust allows for that balance, and I can confidently say I am nearing that milestone!
From a collaboration perspective, taking on clients and entrepreneurs who genuinely share in our value system has been incredibly rewarding, particularly as we fulfill clients’ visions for their own entrepreneurial success.
RPO: Please describe the corporate culture you've created and fostered at netamorphosis.
neta is first and foremost not just a learning environment, but a teaching environment. While it can be very demanding, unlike many fast-paced NYC digital agency environments, I’ve strived to create an employee-centric culture providing more employee benefits than companies 10x our size, rewarding competency and dedication in ways that I never experienced. We average 1.6 raises per year and offer up to five weeks of vacation plus ten holidays for our senior management level.
We also very much have a family environment. We care about employees and their families and take the time to check in on a regular basis, in addition to hosting family dinners and other bonding events.
RPO: What's the secret to your success?
LS: Hard work is definitely a key contributor. I’ve always said I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I do my homework, and now the‘neta growth process’ is built around a 500+ hour team strategy that takes time to listen to our clients, while also carving out the most efficient and integral means to grow/foster our clients’ opportunities. Another key factor is building a team, or ‘resource structure’ as we like to call it, of the right resources. I found in my prior business life, there was a misconception that one person could ‘do it all.’ I’m a firm advocate in hiring experts, albeit lean resource framework, to build and market a digital platform/business. The final mantra I uphold is aligned with Steve Jobs’ notion that success leads to “not enough time, and not enough resource.” We’ve witnessed too often with what you might call well-endowed resources, who are willing to just ‘throw money at the problem’, which in my experience has not led to ultimate success.
RPO: Career advice for young women?
LS: My first piece of advice would be to stick with it. I was unique in my career, working myself out of a job as each of these major brands would surpass their financial objectives. My bosses would often then say, great job Lyde, now do you want to be the CMO (of MoMA) or move to Pottery Barn (Williams-Sonoma Inc., west elm), or in the instance of Zara/Inditex, move to Ukraine!? As a digital pioneer, inspired by technology and paving the way forward for new omnichannel experiences, while these might have been promotions, they weren’t interesting to me. As a result, my tenure at most organizations was typically less than three years.
In part, I created netamorphosis as an environment catered to my work style, and too often I see young women who are leaving organizations within a year because it’s ‘not the right fit.’ My guidance would be to communicate that to your manager or person in HR, because often, as we do at neta, we want to find you the right fit within our organization and will take strides to do that. The grass is not always greener, and I’ve found that netamorphosis, my longest tenure, is where I have learned the most, and learning is what I value the most in my professional life.
"Scribbles" -- Scribe New York's short answer section:
Favorite City – New York City Last book you read – The Highly Sensitive Person (of which I am)
Favorite Font – Avenir
Inspirational women – Michelle Obama, Gloria Steinem, Coco Chanel
Love note or text? – Love note
Favorite word – Genki (a word I learned in Japan; it means, ‘I am well!’, the answer to ‘How are you?’)
Learn more about Lyde and her company netamorphosis here