Retail leadership is a craft. It can be messy, demanding, and it's more difficult than ever to scale while maintaining quality across every store. Shopify's new series, The Flagship, pulls back the curtain on what actually works—no buzzwords, just practical advice from leaders running stores today. Hosted by Helen Mou, Shopify's Director of Product for Retail, we cover everything from making the right hires as you grow to dealing with operational headaches like changing lightbulbs with the world's most influential retail leaders.
In this edition of The Flagship, I talk to Kim Heidt, Chief Retail Officer for Tecovas. Kim dials in from New York City during fashion week, where Tecovas is opening their new SoHo flagship store. With 35+ years of experience under her belt, Kim tells us how she got her start, why lightbulbs are one of those surprisingly important details in retail operations, and why "what got us here, won't get us there" is her current catchphrase.
Let's start from the beginning. Did you always envision having a C-Suite role for a retailer? How did you get your start in the industry?
Absolutely not. I don't think anyone in retail has ever said, "This is what I'm going to do for my career"—at least not on the store side. Almost everyone I've worked with has stories like mine: I went to college in Austin and worked at REI part-time just to make money, like most people working retail. It's an excellent way to develop so many professional skills, like operational rigor and customer service, plus you've got flexible hours and you meet a great community of fellow retail workers.
I graduated with a teaching degree and got a teaching offer. At the same time, REI offered me a supervisor role that was higher earning. I told myself, 'I'll do this for a little while, then I'll go back to teaching.' That didn't happen—I fell in love with REI's philosophy about making customers happy, progressively took on more responsibility, and never turned back.
Tell me about your role at Tecovas. What does a Chief Retail Officer actually do?
I don't know that every Chief Retail Officer has the same job. My portfolio is broad: I do everything from acquiring real estate and managing construction to owning everything that happens in our stores, plus our customer service team.
Overseeing customer service is a natural extension—we're dealing with frontline employees in both areas, and the excitement, energy, and knowledge we provide for our customers in-store needs to translate to every touchpoint. The customer expects a seamless experience from every single interaction: they don't care if they're talking to someone in a store or on the phone, and they shouldn't have to care.
With such a broad scope—how do you manage sinking your teeth into details and letting your management team take the reigns?
My philosophy is pretty simple: hire great people and make sure they understand our values and where we want to go. They might get from A to B totally different than I would, and most of the time, they do it better than I would have done it.
People are really smart and have great ideas. If you create the conditions to unleash that, great things happen. It's incredible to see what someone right out of college is thinking about in terms of AI versus me. Not only is micromanagement exhausting, it limits you from leveraging the skill set and talent of every person in your organization.
My philosophy is pretty simple: hire great people and make sure they understand our values and where we want to go. They might get from A to B totally different than I would, and most of the time, they do it better than I would have done it.
Tell us about your point of view on training your staff for product knowledge over process.
Training and onboarding for new employees is expensive. To me, any technology used by our team to follow operational processes needs to be intuitive: I'd rather spend money teaching employees deep product knowledge. In many retail stores, if you ask a specific question about the product, employees don't know—they've had to spend their time learning processes instead. For a handmade custom boot, it's important to understand product details.
I know you have a strong stance on the importance of building systems over processes. Can you tell me more about that distinction?
My biggest pet peeve is creating a business process around a challenging transaction rather than systemic control. You need to work backward from creating the conditions for success during our busy seasons when we have 50% new employees working our stores, and 50% new customers entering your stores.
Expecting new people to remember everything about the product, the building, how walkie-talkies work, and overly complex processes on top of that is too much. Systemic controls need to be in place, so our teams focus on what matters—making customers feel great.
The warm and welcoming interior of Tecovas stores.
How do you lead a distributed retail workforce where you can't always be physically present?
I show up where it's important. I never miss an all-store manager meeting or customer experience all-hands. Even if I'm not speaking, I always participate actively in our chat, congratulate people for jobs well done, weigh in, and make myself vulnerable if I don't know an answer. It's about modeling Tecovas values for the team. For some team members, their entire frame of reference for me might be on one call–or one interaction. I need to show up in the best possible way for them because, ultimately, people work for people.
We asked your colleague, Kevin Harwood, Tecovas CTO, to describe you. He said you make people feel comfortable and heard, and that you're always willing to see the bigger picture, and you take the time to explain things to help others grow. Does that resonate with you?
Oh, that's great. Looking introspectively, the approachable part comes from learning in my career how I never wanted to be treated or spoken to: you can learn who you don't want to be from observing. There's this thought that when you're in charge, you have to put on your "manager hat" or talk in a certain way. I don't believe in that. I tell my team to find their authentic leadership style, because people can see through inauthenticity right away. I'm so thankful for my team and grateful for all their questions. We couldn't succeed without them and they have more knowledge than I do in so many areas.
Tecovas has seen massive growth in its physical footprint in the last few years. You mentioned that stores reach a "tipping point" at 50 stores. What do you mean by that?
My newest saying is "what got us here won't get us there." At 50 stores, manual work becomes more difficult. It's not about opening stores anymore. It's about managing existing fleets.
Kim Heidt
If we introduce cowboy hats—we can't just think about how they'll show up in our new stores. We have a whole fleet asking: Will we do it for them? What are the costs involved? My newest saying is "what got us here, won't get us there." At 50 stores, manual work becomes more difficult. It's not about opening stores anymore. It's about managing existing fleets.
And then there are the small details like lightbulbs that I think about: if a light fixture goes out, stores need to know how to fix it on their own. That sounds fundamental, but if you go into retail stores, you'd be amazed at how many fixtures are out and they're really hard to change.
Scaling often means sacrifice. What's something you've had to stop doing during this time of explosive growth?
Core to our brand identity is this approach to hospitality: we've got musicians playing, bartenders working in-stores. Initially, we had one person in marketing who scheduled everything across all Tecovas stores. As we grew, stores were asking for more support, but that didn't scale.
Now we're giving store managers to foundational structure, tools, and guidance to work with their communities for these moments. Scaling is about giving more autonomy to stores, ensuring managers run their businesses effectively. Store managers should know their P&L better than anyone.
Looking ahead, what advice do you have for other retailers and brands thinking about where to invest resources?
I see many organizations cutting field leadership—also known as district managers—but I don't agree with this approach. If I have to choose between hiring someone in the field versus corporate, I'll choose the field. They're the linchpin to stores feeling engaged, supported, and part of the team. When stores only get visited once or twice a year, they become disengaged. Team engagement is everything: it affects the customer experience and whether someone comes back to your stores or tells your friends about you. Field leaders have very hard jobs; they're the first call when anything goes wrong, their phones are on 24/7, and they have scratched up laptops from constantly traveling. But they're the differentiator for our sales performance.
Retail is an extremely demanding industry. What keeps you here after all of these years?
At the end of the day, it's about people. How do you bring out the genuine, authentic, trailblazing side of people? We're only as good as that one employee interacting with the customer.
We spend millions of dollars getting customers through the door, and then they're on. What I tell our teams: I just want our customers to leave feeling a little better than when they walked in. We call it radical hospitality, but we're not innovating—we're going back to the roots of what people want from a store. They want to see the product, try it on, get questions answered, and feel welcomed.
At the end of the day, it's about people. How do you bring out the genuine, authentic, trailblazing side of people? We're only as good as that one employee interacting with the customer.
