Carter Cast, Hayneedle’s president and chief executive officer, was the former president and CEO of Walmart.com. Photo by Andrea Ciurej.
Before Carter Cast began building futures with the nation’s leading companies, he was more interested in the building of past civilizations.
The Stanford University graduate was a history buff during his college years. Going on to earn a bachelor’s degree in political science, Cast, as a child, was more so an archaeologist who collected rocks and had a love for dinosaurs.
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“I’ve always enjoyed learning about the history of things and trying to understand the context that surrounded a place,” Cast said. “I usually like to look at the geology of a place before I go.”
This curiosity resulted in a lot of outside reading on the creation of the earth and the history of civilization.
However, there is a thread of business attached to the spool of history, he said.
“If you’re wise, I think you look at what happened in the past,” Cast said. “You solicit the opinions of people around you and you try to get a very broad spectrum of possibilities before you make a decision.”
Rather than pursuing history as a profession, Cast, who earned a master’s in marketing from Northwestern University, decided to move into business.
“I think being someone who loves working closely in teams with people, I think it might have been too solitary for me,” he said.
Cast eventually began building a history with several companies over time as an executive marketer.
It all started in 1986 when Cast acquired a position in the restaurant division of PepsiCo Inc. Here he was able to build his marketing foundation.
After a 12-year reign with the company, Cast became the director of marketing for Frito Lay, managing the company’s $1.5 billion tortilla chip category along with salsa and dip products.
Although under one category, the marketing is very different for each product, he said.
Cast eventually strayed away from the packaged goods market in 1997, when he developed a love for the tech industry.
He first caught site of the industry as his sister transitioned into a role at Amazon, which was nothing more than a small online book company at the time, he said.
This influenced Cast to integrate his marketing foundation into general management roles on the web.
“It was like the Wild West. There’s so many interesting things going on…that everyday was an adventure.”
Cast landed his first role in the industry as the vice president of product marketing and marketing communications for Electronic Arts, launching Sims PC games.
However, Cast made his first mark on the web serving as the senior vice president of marketing, merchandising and site for the startup Blue Nile, an online retailer of diamonds and fine jewelry formerly known as Internet Diamonds.
Cast would have another “fully realized” experience working as the senior vice president of marketing, merchandising, creative and site behind the launch of Walmart.com, where he would eventually take over as the president and chief executive officer in 2005.
“It felt like we were doing another startup – people working all hours, not a lot of structure, trying to get the site up, trying to assort the product line,” he said.
The ultimate goal of the site under Cast’s tenure was to get people to shop their favorite store.
“We were agnostic as to which channel they used,” he said. “What we were there to do was to figure out what [consumers] wanted and then offer them that service or that product.
This was unlike e-commerce competitor and startup NetShops, an Omaha-based online retailer of home furnishings and lifestyle products.
Cast, however, was attracted to NetShops’ business model.
“They focused on these niche categories where you didn’t want to carry a lot of physical inventory,” he said. “I saw at Wal-Mart, we couldn’t carry everything in a store for obvious reasons because of the constraints of the four walls.”
Little did he know, Cast would receive a phone call from a venture capitalist behind NetShops – rebranded as Hayneedle in 2009 – convincing him to become a part of their legacy.
Cast accepted the offer and joined the Hayneedle team as the president and CEO in 2007, spearheading an executive team who played a role in building the new brand, restructuring the company’s website and marketing their products under the brand.
Hayneedle is the needle in a haystack of e-commerce retail and there is still room for the brand to grow.
“If I asked you, ‘What’s a great online company for home living products?’ you’d probably have to think a while,” Cast said. “We would like to be the undisputed leader of our category.”
Quick Scoop
Carter Cast’s Career Track
- Industry: Food, non-alcoholic beverage
- Position: Restaurant Division under Pizza Hut and Taco Bell; Director of Marketing for Frito Lay
- Products: Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, AMP Energy, Aquafina, Sierra Mist, SoBe, Starbucks Frappuccino, Lipton Iced Tea, 7up, Mirinda, Izze, Tropicana Products, Copella, Naked Juice, Gatorade, Propel Fitness Water, Quaker Oats Company, Lays, Doritos, Cheetos, Kurkure, Fritos, Rold Gold, Ruffles, Tositos and Slice
- Industry: E-commerce
- Position: Senior Vice President of Marketing
- Products: certified diamonds, engagement rings and fine jewelry
- Industry: Interactive entertainment
- Position: Vice President of Product Marketing and Marketing Communications
- Products: Battlefield series, Burnout series, Command and Conquer series, FIFA series, Friday Night series, Madden NFL series, NHL series, Medal of Honor series, NBA Live series, Need for Speed series, Rock Band series and The Sims series
- Industry: E-commerce
- Position: Senior Vice President of Marketing, Merchandising, Creative and Site; President and CEO
- Products: Discount stores, supercenters and neighborhood markets
- Industry: E-commerce
- Position: President and CEO
- Products: patio and garden products, furniture, home accessories, baby and children products, pet and animal products, sports and games, seasonal and gift products
Carter’s Take
You’ve made a lot of transitions in your life from company to company. Why so many?
I think you should leave a company for one of three reasons. One, your learning curve is down. This is especially when you are young in your career. Or, for some reason, you’re blocked. You have a problem with your boss or the board. Or, there’s a great opportunity that you are very enthusiastic about that appeals to you.
How is the marketing for package goods different from marketing usable products, such as games?
The similarity is you always start with the customer. You want to understand who they are, what they need and how your product can deliver on the need. Then, the marketing gets different in that you use different vehicles to communicate the need.
How do Wal-Mart and Hayneedle differ as companies?
There are a lot of ways they are similar first. They are both family oriented companies. There’s a lot of pride for the company being created in Bentonville, [Ark.] for Wal-Mart and here, there’s a lot of pride for having a top-100 internet retailer out of Omaha. Retail is retail. The biggest difference is at Wal-Mart, you’re so big that you have a lot of leverage. You have a lot of influence with suppliers, you have a lot of buying power when you’re sourcing product, you have a lot of power in distribution when choosing your carriers [and] you have a lot of marketing power. When you’re at Hayneedle, you don’t have those things.
