Steven Williams

Chief Technology Officer at Buff City Soap

Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, United States

About Steven Williams

Steven Williams is Chief Technology Officer at Buff City Soap. Location: Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, United States.

I partner with boards, CEOs, and private equity sponsors to turn technology into a growth engine, whether that means scaling infrastructure for a franchised brand going from 50 to 250 locations, guiding a company through an NYSE IPO, or rebuilding a platform that will outlast the next three ownership transitions. Over a 25-year career in retail and consumer brands, I've led technology through some of the sector's most demanding environments: hyper-growth, M&A integration, PE transitions, turn-around situations, public company governance, and digital commerce scale-up. A few highlights: → Buff City Soap: Built cloud-native infrastructure supporting 6x store growth and 5x eCommerce revenue growth since 2021 → Boot Barn: I led building the technology and supply chain infrastructure facilitating their 2014 NYSE IPO and four acquisitions, which still runs this $5B+ market cap company today → Stage Stores: Reduced IT opex by $15MM in Year 1, eliminated 7 years of audit deficiencies, zero security incidents I'm also deeply embedded in the AI conversation as a thought-leader. I'm a Board Member of the Retail AI Council, with hands-on deployment experience in Azure, OpenAI, Claude, Copilot, and leveraging AI-enabled analytics. This isn't theoretical for me; it's operational.

Skills

  • Digital Security
  • Data Analytics

Additional experience

  • Executive Leadership Board

    Retail AI Council

    Started January 2023

Education

  • Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), The University of Texas at San Antonio