Ex-Google e-com leader is new SVP of Sales - “You won't survive in the jungle without smart use of data”
- New SVP of sales Niklas Fogander joins Custimy. Niklas is former Google industry lead – ecommerce
- From helping the Goliaths to helping the Davids of e-commerce
- Niklas says the importance of first-party data opens a window to win big, also for SMBs
- Customer Data Platform could be a massive boost for everyone selling online today
Copenhagen 03.02.22
Former Google Industry lead – e-commerce Niklas Fogander is joining Custimy.io as the new SVP of Sales.
Coming from a background working with some of the biggest and most successful e-commerce companies in Europe, Niklas Fogander now looks to new challenges as he joins Custimy to help SMB e-commerce companies gain access to the same insights the conglomerates have been utilizing for years.
Niklas is an expert in e-commerce and being the lead for Google’s e-commerce means that he has seen exactly how data has helped the biggest companies reach their level of success.
Showing the SMB market they can be as data-savvy as the large players, without having to hire a big team to do so and achieving it without emptying their budgets on siloed tools, is something he really looks forward to take on.
Seen first-hand what the biggest players can do with data
Companies like Zalando and Asos come with what he considers unfair advantages due to their access to unlimited resources and tools. It gives them an ability to understand customers on a whole different level than SMBs e-commerce companies.
To even out the playing field, Niklas sees the Customer Data Platform as an essential part of driving e-commerce and says:
“You are not going to survive in the e-commerce jungle if you are not data-driven. It is that simple. Any e-commerce leader owes it to themselves and their team, to at least evaluate how they are going to approach customer data.“
First-party data dictates the future
The world is currently going through rapid changes to privacy and data regulations. Over the last year, we have seen GDPR rules taken to a new level with the recent ban on Google Analytics and its use of it in Austria. We have seen the introduction of iOS14.5, iOS15, and CCPA. Furthermore, Google is looking to out phase third-party data.
SMBs have already been struggling with figuring out how to be efficient with their resources. And the new changes have added additional worries to their concerns in competitively.
Something Niklas claims makes the argument for switching to the use of first-party data an instrumental part of any e-commerce business. It is an essential opportunity to steady the waters in rough times, he says.
“Working with first-party data has its clear benefits. It provides strong control, knowledge, and insights into your customers and business. There are very few CDPs for SMBs, even less for e-commerce. That is why I argue that it should be mandatory for an e-commerce CMO to look at a CDP like Custimy. You are not doing your job if you are at least not looking into it. That is how good I think this is.”
The mission and ambition convinced him
Niklas had just recently left Google for a position as CSO at EIVEE before he met the two founders at Custimy, Martin Navne and Kristoffer Degn.
However, they left an impression that stuck with him:
“I was not looking for a new opportunity. But through our talks, I was attracted to it. The story and ambitions of the company are right up my alley. And the massive global opportunity to help e-commerce companies all over the world made an impact on me. There are clear problems I want to be part of solving. So it became an opportunity I could not turn down. It was just meant to be”
The timing seemed especially right with the additional focus on first-party data that the world is struggling to solve as of now.
Something that Niklas sees will lead to an even further gap in the e-commerce market. The bigger players get to ride the bullet train and the smaller companies are left on the platform if not solved.
Niklas explains that the mission of solving this competitive gap was a challenge he wanted to take on and something he looks forward to with huge excitement and expectation to solve.
About Custimy
Custimy is a rapidly growing start-up with offices in Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Warsaw. Since we started in 2020, we have been set on a mission to change the distortion of competition between SMB’s and multinational enterprises through our accessible Customer Data Platform.
We believe that SMBs have been forgotten in the digitalized era and Custimy was started to give SMB’s the tools to compete against much bigger enterprises with the most accessible Customer Data Platform. Our CDP minimizes the complexity, maintenance need, and friction for SMB’s to access and utilize data to extract strategic insights about their customers, marketing, and products, allowing e-commerce professionals to deliver better and more precise customer experiences in the digital sphere.