Thought Leaders in Big Data: Keith Anderson, VP Strategy of Profitero (Part 4)

Keith Anderson: Prices are really a key driver of that ultimate decision to buy from one retailer versus another. The manufacturers of course are wary of deflation. They don’t want a race to the bottom. They introduce policies like minimum advertised price (MAP). MAP policy is a policy that retailers and manufacturers enter into voluntarily. It often has implications or willingness to partner on promotions or programs. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Keith Anderson, VP Strategy of Profitero (Part 3)

Keith Anderson: Besides exactly matching products, one of the fundamental, but not obvious ways we add value is through the matching of products that are not exactly identical. There is just one example—private label products, which are the products that the retailer sells under their own label or a private brand are often positioned as national brand equivalent, but they’re not exactly the same product. From a data perspective, matching those products is possible with a unique identifier like UPC. You have to have fairly sophisticated matching algorithms that either use product characteristics or visual matching that are associated with the products. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Keith Anderson, VP Strategy of Profitero (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I’ve got this. You help retailers with pricing information and you help manufacturers optimize their channels through these retailers. Is that a good summary?

Keith Anderson: That’s a great summary. The retailers also care about assortment. We can also help them, very efficiently, identify products that they don’t carry and that their competitors carry that may be selling well and or that shoppers have reviewed positively. The retailers are getting more sophisticated in how they leverage our capability but it’s primarily about price and assortment for the retailers. For the brands, it’s an even broader set of analytics that they care about.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down a bit and give us the kinds of insights that you are able to extract for pricing optimization.
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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Keith Anderson, VP Strategy of Profitero (Part 1)

Price personalization has been touted as the holy grail of e-commerce. This conversation brings to light the state of the union in the domain of price optimization, price intelligence, and price personalization.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by setting some context for our audience of what Profitero does and what your background is.

Keith Anderson: Profitero was founded in 2010 in Dublin, Ireland by former IBM and Google software engineers. Sometimes people ask why the company was founded in Ireland and not in Silicon Valley. Dublin has established itself as a European technology hub. Our founders live there. We’re backed by Polaris Partners, which has offices both in Boston as well as in Dublin where we’re headquartered. We now have offices in Dublin, London, Boston, San Diego, Belarus, and Minsk. We’ll shortly open offices in Asia and other parts of Latin America this year. >>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Meituan Leads China’s Group Buying Market

The phenomenon of Billion Dollar Unicorn companies is not restricted to the American markets. There are several companies in emerging markets as well that are joining the club. One such company is China-based group buying site Meituan. According to Chinese research firm EnfoDesk, the group buying market in China was estimated to have grown 44% q-o-q to RMB 22.96 billion (~$3.74 billion) for the quarter ended September 2014.

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Bootstrapping to $55 Million from Rural Minnesota: Tom Fallenstein, CEO of Fun.com (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You joined the costume business in 2004?

Tom Fallenstein: Yes, I was the only one doing it full-time. It was only a seasonal business up until 2002 and then I built a website to see if I could make it a full-time job. I was doing extra orders basically through college out of my dorm room, which was just extra cash for going out. When I graduated, I wanted to do it full-time. In October, everything exploded.

Sramana Mitra: What happened that October? >>>

Making Mass Customization Work: Jodie Fox, CEO of Shoes of Prey (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: On your website, I cannot get the shape of the boots. I don’t have the flexibility to be able to change the shape of the boots. You have a certain structure to the boots that you’re offering. You offered customization on the heels, leather, and colors but in terms of the shape of the boot, I didn’t see that I have any option of changing that shape.

Jodie Fox: Currently, no. That’s something that we would love to get to in the future. It just depends on a number of things that we would need to align.

Sramana Mitra: Team-wise, what’s happening now? How much of the company is in Australia? How much of the company is in Hong Kong and US? What has been your evolution in terms of building the company and the organization?
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Making Mass Customization Work: Jodie Fox, CEO of Shoes of Prey (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The seed round was mid-2012. Then two years later, you raised what you’re now calling Series A – the $5.5 million.

Jodie Fox: Yes, we did do bridge rounds in between. In November 2013, we raised $1.75 million.

Sramana Mitra: What else is interesting in your story that is worth highlighting in the journey?

Jodie Fox: Probably the manufacturing side of it. In June 2014, we opened up a manufacturing facility. On Christmas Eve in 2014, we opened our second facility that could do 10 to 22 times the output of the first facility. I think what’s interesting about that is making things one at a time is very difficult to scale. >>>