Key facts
- Char Kurihara, senior vice president of sales and marketing at DRB Group, manages four departments including strategic research, brand, operational marketing, and customer digital journey.
- Her role encompasses online and onsite sales, DRB's realty operations, and intersects with land intelligence, product development, architecture, purchasing, and the design studio.
- Kurihara's team includes data analysts and a data scientist focused on translating market information into actionable land insights.
- She emphasizes a company culture of "interwovenness" where decisions are data-driven and span predevelopment through the operational lifecycle.
- DRB Group operates across 20 divisions, requiring cross-functional understanding to optimize the business as a whole rather than individual silos.
Char Kurihara, senior vice president of sales and marketing at DRB Group, exemplifies a shift in the homebuilding industry where traditional job titles no longer fully encompass the scope of responsibilities. In an era where land, product, and sales decisions are increasingly interconnected and influenced by customer intelligence, leaders like Kurihara are taking on broader, more integrated roles.
Kurihara's position at DRB Group, one of the nation's largest privately operated homebuilding organizations, extends beyond conventional sales and marketing duties. Her purview includes strategic research, brand management, operational marketing, the customer's digital journey, online and onsite sales, and DRB's realty operations. Crucially, her work deeply intersects with land intelligence, product development, architecture, purchasing, and the design studio, meaning her accountability begins well before predevelopment and continues through the entire operational lifecycle.
She describes her team's work as translating market information into actionable land insights, highlighting the strategic research department which includes data analysts and a data scientist. Kurihara emphasizes DRB's "interwovenness" culture, where strategy and operations are tightly connected, and decisions are increasingly data-driven. This approach is seen as a critical evolution from the "before data" (BD) to the "after data" (AD) era of homebuilding, particularly since the Global Financial Crisis and leading into the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kurihara also noted that her role requires a strategic mindset, countering the perception of sales and marketing as merely a "make-it-pretty" function. Customer intelligence, in her view, is essential for determining land suitability, product development, architectural responses to consumer preferences, purchasing standardization, product positioning, and converting interest into sales. This integrated approach, she believes, leads to greater marketing efficiency, enabling the company to "do more with less."