We’re back with another awesome retailer’s “One Thing I Can’t Live Without” post, and after just wrapping up some big fall fashion events, it’s only fitting that we spoke to one of luxury retail’s most well-known names.

The distinguished and pervasive Louis Vuitton logo can be seen around the arm of one in three women walking any metropolitan city in the world.

Sure, so we made that stat up. But the reality has GOT to be close to that, no? It’s one of those brands that never goes away, and only gets better with age – like a good Bordeaux. Isn’t that the saying? Whatever it is, any brand that’s been around since 1854 and is still rocking our socks, deserves such cred.

Dino Pantazopoulos is a Digital Producer at Louis Vuitton North America, and he spends his time optimizing the website and delivering the best possible digital experiences to an esteemed breed of loyal fans who increasingly doing their shopping online. Here’s the one thing Dino just can’t live without (at work).

Dino Pantazopoulos

1. As an online marketer and retailer, what’s something you can’t live without? And we don’t mean coffee. We mean anything from a technology tool to a partner, to an employee or a team, to a cool trick you do on Excel to a shortcut you take in your programs. Anything you think your job would be impossible to do without.

I would have to say our weekly Out of Stock (OOS) report.

2. Can you explain what this is ­ if necessary?

Sure. It’s a weekly report that I compile using Omniture Insights, our web analytics software. I focus on our top 200 SKUs and run the page views and number of times each SKU was displayed as Out of Stock online. I then cross-reference this data with the stock level in our warehouse (Good, Tense or Critical) and mark that on the Excel document with a color code. If an item is shown to be on average Out of Stock more than 20% of the time, and our warehouse stock is good, that’s something to look into. If one of our best sellers is getting 0 page views, that’s a problem. Either way, the juxtaposition usually leads to some very useful information.

3. Why can you NOT live without this?

We have many sophisticated systems at work under the hood, and many of them brand new as a result of our complete redesign last year. Naturally, there were some kinks to work out. For a site that has over 7,000 SKUs online, it’s impossible to manually check and see if everything A-OK from a user’s perspective. This report has been instrumental in discovering technical glitches and other causes affecting product availability.

For example, we started looking at OOS on an hourly basis and discovered a huge opportunity to optimize our automated stock replenishment system, which was calibrated for our store network and not for a 24-hour web business. As a result, OOS views dropped from a peak of 26% to a consistent 5% to 6%, which is right where they should be. Beyond that, it lead to a greater understanding of, and a closer working relationship with our supply chain.

At the end of the day this all boils down to a better user experience for our customers.

4. How often do you use it and how long have you been using it?

I run this report every week, and it mushroomed to other product categories as well. We’ve been using it for the past several months.

5. If lightning struck tomorrow and you suddenly didn’t have this one thing, what would you do to improvise?

I supposed our eMerchandiser and I would be doing a whole lot of clicking on our website!

6. How can other people get this too?

Hopefully you have a good analytics package and a well-tagged website.

BONUS: And what’s the non-work related thing you can’t do your job without? This is where the coffee, or anything else comes in…

I’m addicted to Clif Bars. Specifically, and only, White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Clif Bars. I’m a huge fan of the outdoors, and would pack them on hiking trips. Now I buy them by the case at the Bowery Whole Foods Market. They make excellent stress munchies.