Magento is making it easy on me to reach my New Years resolution of creating over 100 jobs in 2010:

Did you know the word “Magento” has more Google search volume than the word “eCommerce”?

Magento is a fast growth worldwide company and is looking for talent to join our team on our mission of “enabling the eCommerce ecosystem” worldwide.

Here are key roles Magento is looking for:

Head of Marketing

• Drive worldwide awareness of Magento products and brand through direct means and in partnership with our channel partners.  Manage our brands in all venues.  Oversee our web, print and event assets to drive results: awareness, knowledge, experience, and conversion.  Target and engage ecommerce ecosystem of developer, channel and merchants.
• Experience: 5+ Yr prior leadership position leading marketing for technology driven companies (eCommerce or software).  Strong track record of growing customer flow; brand awareness, engagement and conversion. Understanding of eCommerce; entrepreneurial, MBA preferred [Los Angeles HQ]
• Role is Director or Vice President level (DOE)

Head of Support Services Group

• Develop and manage our technology service and support group for our Enterprise, SAAS and Professional Services Groups.  Web based (knowledge base, email, chat, phone) and consultative. Establish strategy and build talent focused on supporting ecommerce merchants, channel and developers worldwide.
• Experience: 7+ Yr prior success experience with similar service and support management / leadership role (group or division). Experience with appropriate structure to scale, tools and systems. Technology understanding. understanding of eCommerce preferred [Los Angeles HQ preferred]
• Role is Director or Vice President level (DOE)

Business Unit GM: SAAS eCommerce SMB

• Drive the business development, launch and growth of Magento’s new SAAS offering to small and medium businesses.  Refine the plan, business model, oversee the process /timeline for successful launch and worldwide market growth.
• Experience: 7+ Yr of Business unit or growth stage leadership; small medium business solutions market experience; understanding of eCommerce; entrepreneurial, MBA preferred [Los Angeles HQ]
• Role is GM level

Business Unit GM: Training, Certification, Education

• Drive the business development, launch and growth of Magento’s Education group to developers and merchants.  Refine the plan, business model, oversee the process /timeline for successful launch and worldwide market growth.
• Experience: 5+ Yr Business unit or growth stage leadership; understanding of eCommerce; entrepreneurial, past knowledge / training product or services experience, MBA preferred [Los Angeles HQ Preferred]
• Role is GM level

Strategic Partner Manager

• Work with the business development and sales group to manage various strategic and key partnerships for growth and value.
• Experience: 2+ Yr Prior experience with partnership management in the technology industry; understanding of eCommerce; entrepreneurial, MBA preferred [Los Angeles HQ]
• Role is Manager level

IMPORTANT: TO APPLY

• email to: Magento@SchwartzGroup.com
• Attach resume and /or LinkedIn Profile link
• MUST include 5 short bullets in your email about your EXPERIENCE that best highlight why you are the talent Magento is looking for.

Magento Inc –  eCommerce Platform for Growth

Magento Inc. is focused on “enabling the eCommerce ecosystem” worldwide and is the leading provider of Enterprise open source ecommerce platforms and solutions. The Magento platform is a feature-rich, professional Open Source eCommerce platform that offers merchants complete flexibility and control over the presentation, content, and functionality of their online channel with the assurances and service of Enterprise technology.

Magento’s intuitive administration interface features powerful marketing tools, a catalog-management engine and is SEO optimized to give merchants the power to create sites that provide an unrivaled and rich online shopping experience for their customers, tailored to their unique business needs. Designed to be completely scalable, backed by an extensive support network and innovations by our worldwide developer ecosystem, Magento is the ultimate eCommerce solution.

How is Magento doing after its first 1.5 yrs in the Market?

• Over 60,000 Magento Platforms live

• Adopted by the Worlds best brands

• Powering over $35 Billion in annual sales transactions

• Over 125 Worldwide Solution Partners

• Over 2,000 extensions from the developer ecosystem

• We are profitable and have growth capital

• The word “Magento” has more Google search volume than the word “eCommerce”   http://tinyurl.com/yhhnhj5

… We have only just begun – Join us!   www.MagentoCommerce.com

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I just couldn’t take it any longer!  With all this talk and questions about Private / Flash Sale eCommerce sites, I had to come up with my own Private Sale site!  The most difficult part was figuring out what category to target?

Fashion?  Too many already out there.

Luxury?  Hmmm lots of those too.

Kids?  I know of at least 3 with more on the way.

Home?  I love OneKingsLane and I know the founder Alison and her Entrepreneur extraordinaire husband (Mark Pincus) well (15+ years) and consider them friends.  It doesn’t feel right to compete with friends.

But Sh-t!! I know the founders and/ or investors of most of these private sale sites pretty darn well and I like them all including; Ideeli, HauteLook, OneKingsLane, TheFairest, JacksThreads, Portero and Totsy…  How can I compete directly with friends?

But I was determined so I continued to think, “I need a new private sale category that has lots of excess inventory, and a set of passionate hungry customers.”

Then the big Ah Ha! I can start a Private Sale site that sells Private Sale Companies!!!! The build up of Private Sale companies will likely give me plenty of “inventory”, and the demand from the Venture and Private Equity folks gives me a great set of passionate customers … There you have it – A Private Sale Company that sells Private Sale Companies!

Next I needed a name and for some reason this just felt right: GuiltyLook.com – “Oy, Oy Vey!”.  You can get a preview  of the pre-beta site of  here (www.GuiltyLook.com).  Once done come back and read “Our analysis of the Private Sale market” – thoughts and issues to be considered.

Add your thoughts – love to hear them!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It started for me over two years ago during a conversation with Paul Hurley, CEO and founder of Ideeli. The basic concept was simple, bring the powerful aspects of the sample sale on-line.

Now mix in a fast growing successful overseas private sale pioneer (Vente Privee)  as a model to emulate, coupled with a crushingly brutal economy creating massive inventory build-ups and you have the perfect storm. A perfect foundation for launching a new private sale site…or we should now say sites as conservatively there are at least 25 private sale sites live today.

My point of view has been consistent since the first call on this segment.  Here are the short strokes that need to be considered:

• Technology: This is not a technologically difficult business to start, and in fact can be up and going very inexpensively.  I know the leaders are now investing heavily in technology trying create a technical point of differentiation and advantage.  This includes a new ground swell of innovators buzzing the venture networks with what I see as standard technological spins on this model.
• Opportunistic Business: It is analogous to the Jobber business (Jobbers have long existed in the fashion world to move excess inventory through various “approved” channels by buying the inventory for pennies on the pound). You can make great money as a jobber, but is it unto itself a venture back-able type business?
• Inventory levels then vs now: The world just went through the “perfect storm” creating the perfect time to start a liquidation business. We had inventory levels at an all time high as our economy cratered, particularly in aspirational and luxury categories. We also had consumers cutting back while still highly addicted to buying top quality brand names. Brands were fighting for their lives and a “safe” channel to clear inventory was just what they needed. Deeply discounted branded merchandise was the perfect answer for the budget squeezed consumer in need of a shopping addiction fix. But now inventories are being “right sized” or even “under produced” which intersects with a proliferation of “private sale” companies fighting for fewer excess goods – a new perfect storm. Some are talking about “MFO” (Made for Outlet) as a way to gain discounted inventory.  In a physical outlet store these made for outlet products a person can see exactly what they are buying and might disregard a few cost saving short cuts that are part of MFO.  But online people depend on the brand name to be their eyes and if they end up getting an item of lesser quality than expected it will quickly chip away at the brand and consumers confidence.
• Brands and Perceptions: The need for private sale companies to grow their business aggressively has made these sites much less “private”, which likely will reduce the way the brands look at these venues on their “plausible deniability” scale.  Add to this the following statement from my discussion with a top creative executive, “I now go to the retail stores and see luxury fashion items I might have bought before, but now I make note of them and wait to see if they show up on the private sales sites”. Retailers won’t like this either – see next point
• The Traditional Retailers: You  know those old brick and mortar, multi-channel, but also multi billion dollar businesses, are VERY important to brands for their true success and brand longevity, as well as some of the brands higher margin transactions. These same retailers can and will place enormous pressure on the brands showing that it is not in their best interest to liquidate through these “closed” private sale channels.  Retailers may also insist on first rights to excess inventory for their own “basement/ off-price” channel and/or very easily open up their own private sale site.  ”Mr Brand, we would love to buy $100′s of millions of dollars worth of your fresh high margin inventory but we have concerns… so we will take that order with rights to your excess inventory.”

Recently the number of inquires, due diligence, and strategic advisory requests to SchwartzGroup on the private sale segment have been substantial. This includes Private Equity, Venture, Top Tier Consulting Firms, Fortune 500 companies and friends and neighbors with “an idea”.  A few months ago I even got a call from someone building a company looking to aggregate private sale offers.  It’s great and I’m thrilled to be of service, but on a macro level this feels like a red flag, or should I say it feels uncomfortably familiar.

As an operator and an eCommerce leader I love these companies. They are fun. They are exciting. Your heart pounds as a shopper and your palms sweat as a operator watching the virtual doors being stampeded by eager consumers everyday.

Some private sale companies will succeed (I have my favorites) by building their own brand into a leading discount retailer brand and they will figure out how to best grow from there.  Some will succeed in a financial way, that is investors will do well but in some cases the businesses perhaps not so much. Some will fail as their efforts to fuel venture expected growth will force them away from being jobbers and into becoming less and less “private” and they will find available quality brand inventory much harder to come by.

As a person who loves building great eCommerce companies all this capital attention frankly  makes me a bit nervous.  I am worried that with an already substantially capitalized “private sale” segment companies will begin acting unnaturally resulting in an unbalanced and unsustainable market one which will be tough on all eCommerce.

Overall my point of view is the “private sale experience” is fantastic and should be part of most eCommerce or multi-channel companies. It is another way to shop and to brings excitement to your customer (and we have the platform to make it easy). For the capital partners this excitement is directionally correct – eCommerce is moving into a new phase (and it makes money), look for many new models arising.” — more on both of these in part 2.

• Note: for fun be sure to see Launching Our Private Sale Site and get a preview of my new private sale site, GuiltyLook.com, Oy Oy Vey! (I couldn’t resist!)
• Private Sale Traffic Metrics from Compete below.
• If this topic or the subject of brands and eCommerce  are of interest, connect with us Twitter @bobschwartz or email (icons on right column) to stay up to date on the follow up postings.

Compete.com Metrics (grouped as of 10/09)

The Top Traffic Group:

The Mid Traffic Group

The Lower Traffic Group

Bookmark It

Hide Sites