AI in Ecommerce Without Losing Control: Kasey Wiese, Liberty Safe

Kasey Wiese, Director of eCommerce at Liberty Safe, has spent 20 years obsessing over one question: why isn’t this converting?

From a bouncing PDP on a $900 fly rod to leading a full DTC rebuild at a $12M business, she finds the friction and fixes it. Whether it’s a broken color swatch killing rod sales at Orvis, a merchandising strategy that isn’t telling the right seasonal story, or a platform that’s simply holding the business back.

Kasey has owned ecommerce P&Ls across some of the most respected names in the outdoor and lifestyle space, including Orvis, SIMMS Fishing, Arcade Belts, and Elevate Outdoor Collective, and she understands this customer intimately. They’re anglers, hunters, and skiers who expect the online experience to reflect the brand they trust on the water and in the field.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:00] Intro
• [01:04] What Liberty Safe sells
• [01:54] Starting ecommerce at a Tahoe ski shop
• [03:15] Selling DTC without competing with dealers
• [04:17] Why AI feels like SEO 15 years ago
• [04:27] Selling online in 2006 with a custom stack
• [06:07] When ecommerce still meant calling in orders
• [06:44] Moving to Demandware at a ski manufacturer
• [08:20] Replatforming from WooCommerce to Shopify Plus
• [09:14] Intelligems
• [10:45] How the ecommerce leader role has changed
• [11:00] Bridging strategy and operations
• [12:08] The right and wrong ways to use AI
• [14:00] Unique products break tried-and-true tactics
• [15:00] Building AI agents to distill your data
• [15:55] Klaviyo
• [17:52] Why AI-driven strategy is average at best
• [18:18] Stop copying and pasting AI slop
• [20:06] Using AI to speed up CRO ideation
• [21:37] Creating AI product imagery for safes
• [23:36] Why UGC doesn't work for safe owners
• [24:23] Flowium
• [25:20] Can AI fill a brand's content gap?
• [26:52] Blending real photo shoots with AI images
• [27:40] Human QA on every AI output
• [28:23] The first 90 days at a new company
• [28:39] Starting with the path to purchase
• [29:40] Content for conversational search
• [30:09] Starting CRO closest to the money
• [31:05] Matching ads to the right landing page
• [31:44] Mapping team process and ownership
• [33:20] Building landing page templates that scale
• [34:10] Prioritizing what gets a landing page
• [34:58] When team KPIs aren't aligned
• [35:19] Two ad sets, two destinations
• [35:50] Control what you can control
• [36:10] Picking one thing and doing it right
• [36:38] Final thoughts

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
• America’s #1 safe: premium protection means configurable organization https://libertysafe.com/ 
• Follow Kasey Wiese https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasey-wiese/ 
• Book a demo today at http://intelligems.io/audit 
• Get your free demo https://www.klaviyo.com/honest 
• Book a free lifecycle diagnosis call https://flowium.com/

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!