It’s been quite a year for us. We owe much of Bear’s growth to all of you who trust in us and give us feedback to shape the future of furniture. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
📰️ In this December edition:
2021 Feature Recap: A Bear-y Amazing Year
Product Team Highlight: 🐻🐼🐻🐨
What’s New with Bear? Change Log
New Years Resolution Looking Ahead to 2022
In the past year, we made major improvements to provide merchants greater visibility and meaningful data to drive operational efficiencies. As things quieted down in the virtual Bear office, I had a moment to reflect on everything we released and launched.
The following are my personal 2021 Top 10 Bear Features:
UI/UX Redesign for an improved, consistent, and simplified look and feel.
Simplified left-side navigation bar that automatically collapses and frees up precious screen real estate.
Orders Beta for visibility into orders across sales channels supported on Bear.
Tasks for auditability, verification, and peeking at the behind-the-scene work Bear performs around the clock.
Catalog Status Beta for complete visibility into listings across sales channels supported on Bear.
Email Notifications into your inbox for Orders, Task Errors, and Catalog Status updates.
Improved Analytics with the addition of two new SKU Performance graphs.
Ability to sort by product name or SKU within Catalog Status and Inventory.
Ability to Multi-SKU Filter across the platform.
Responsive design handling for 13 inch laptop screens.
🙏 Reading this list, I hope you’re equally as impressed as I am. Our Product and Engineering Teams worked together to understand merchant pain points, create requirements, validate new functionality, develop code, and release at astounding speed. Documentation on each feature can be found in our Help Articles.
I’m incredibly proud of how far our platform has come this year, and there's so much more yet to come.
I'm privileged to work beside the following individuals that make up our "paw-some" Product Team (pictured above left-to-right): Adam Lee, myself (Isaac), Jeff Hendler, and Dane Morgan.
Putting a face to the names, let’s get to know each individual a little bit better!
🐼 Adam Lee, UX Designer
Brilliant product designer with design and vertical expertise.
Brings a holistic approach to building functional and beautiful products.
Favorite food: Fish and Chips.
Favorite article of furniture: Ikea Poäng, or at least his lumbar does.
Favorite downtime activity: Sports. Watching sports. Playing sports. Fantasy sports. Sports betting. Reading sports books. Researching sports. All the Sports.
🐻 Isaac Kim, Head of Product
Product leader with deep knowledge in B2B SaaS.
Super passionate about simplifying complex problems, product strategy, and teeing up quality GIFs.
Favorite food: Tomahawk Ribeye with sides of asparagus, mushrooms, and garlic potatoes.
Favorite article of furniture: Sofa.
Favorite downtime activity: Spending time with wife and dog. That typically looks like binge watching shows on the sofa.
Current obsession: Formula 1 (🏎️🏁Congratulations Max and Team Red Bull!)
🐻 Jeff Hendler, Executive Vice President, Strategy
Founding member of Bear, with the company for 4+ years.
Expertise in finding elegant solutions to complicated problems and is passionate about solving our merchants’ true pain points.
Powerhouse subject matter expert that designed some of the most beloved features within Bear today, including Inventory and Catalog Status.
Favorite food: Steak.
Favorite article of furniture: The standing shelf unit in his pantry. It's a bit wobbly, but he’s incredibly proud of it because he built it himself.
Favorite downtime activity: When with friends, usually playing board games, and there is no better game than Boggle.
🐨 Dane Morgan, Product Manager
Newest member of the team. Dane joins Bear this month and brings Product Management experience from Ecobee and mortgage lending startups.
Driven to deliver results through tenacity and hard work.
Favorite food: Jamaican Oxtail with rice and peas and a side of coleslaw.
Favorite food: Steak.
Favorite article of furniture: Couches. He especially loves his grandparent’s “L-shaped” couch because the entire family can sprawl out and watch movies together.
Favorite dowtime activity: He dances, creates music, and works on side projects that range from software development to furthering his cooking skills.
🎁 We made some notable changes to the platform in our most recent software updates:
Email Notifications: Improved “New Product Created” email to provide products in a “draft” state, which can be seen on Catalog Status.
Catalog Status: Channel status filters have been merged into a single filter for all channels at once.
Catalog Status: Hover over Product Names that are too long to see the entire name. The same works for long SKUs as well.
Tasks: Tasks completed while Tasks panel is visible and open no longer remain “in-progress” and now real-time update to appropriate status.
Resolved UI issue when hovering over the left navigation sidebar.
Resolved Login Bug where a strange whitespace appeared when window was resized.
Resolved bug where error messages caused the login form box to expand beyond its normal boundaries.
New fun Bear facts and quotes.
As Head of Product, I’m committed to building the Bear platform around the unique complexities you face as a furniture maker.
In 2022, the Product Team will continue to be first and foremost, merchant obsessed. This means interacting with you directly to get first hand feedback and bringing your voice into the heart of every decision-making process.
Our goal is to provide the most powerful platform in the industry that enables you to track publication projects, audit onsite SKUs, view submitted pricing to channels, control inventory, grow GMV, and expand your business onto meaningful and impactful sales channels.
The great news is that we’ve done heavy planning and validation to move forward quickly. In the first three months of 2022, we’ll have some major enhancements to Catalog Status, and additional new features that will provide visibility into your catalog publication. More to come, stay tuned!
💡 If you have ideas on how to improve the Bear Platform, submit them on the Feature Request Board, or email the Product Team (product@commercebear.com) with feedback, questions, or fun bear facts (I'd also love to hear your goals for 2022!)
🕯️I hope you get a chance to relax, unwind and spend plenty of time with loved ones. Wishing you and your family all the best. Happy Holidays and warm wishes for the New Year!
