BROADCASTS.com

While April 2020 may forever bring to mind corporate corridors newly silenced by COVID 19\u2019s arrival in the United States, CarParts.com CFO Ryan Lockwood will likely always remember it as the month when opportunity knocked.

Having spent the previous 10 years in investment management, Lockwood, a portfolio manager for a Southern California investment house, was looking to move to more of an operational role when he got a call from David Meniane and Lev Peker of the management team at U.S. Auto Parts, the car parts retailer that was about to rename itself CarParts.com.

\u201cThey said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you come out to our offices, and we\u2019ll talk?,\u2019 which I was a little nervous about because COVID had arrived only maybe 4 weeks earlier,\u201d remembers Lockwood, who notes that in the past he had offered the business leaders friendly advice as a \u201ccapital markets buy-side professional.\u201d

\u201cThey told me, \u2018Look, it will just be the three of us in 25,000 square feet of office space\u2014just come by and talk,\u2019\u201d explains Lockwood, who adds that the two men were in the midst of executing an ambitious turnaround plan for the business. Ultimately, they offered Lockwood the position of senior vice president of finance.

Lockwood accepted, and in the months that followed, the business found new traction along its turnaround journey as the auto industry\u2019s struggling supply chains helped to spike car prices for both new and used cars and CarParts.com found itself serving a swelling population of online customers.

For Lockwood\u2014who would be named CFO in Spring 2022\u2014the focus became data insights and profitability for every customer transaction in order to ensure that the company\u2019s upward trajectory would continue.

Says Lockwood: \u201cWe needed a lot more data insights about our customers, and fulfilling this need has pretty much informed our every decision.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney