Profitero, a leading global enterprise eCommerce SaaS analytics platform, today announced a new executive leadership team and raised $20 million to fuel its next stage of growth.
Bryan Wiener, a 25-year digital marketing and SaaS industry veteran, has joined as Chief Executive Officer. Sarah Hofstetter, an award-winning marketing executive and current member of the board of directors for Campbell Soup Company, has joined as President. Sandor Palfy, former CTO of LogMeIn, has joined as Chief Technology Officer. For the past three months, Wiener, Hofstetter and Palfy have been serving as special advisors to Profitero’s board, developing a growth strategy and product roadmap to benefit customers, employees and shareholders.
The $20 million Series B investment round was led by Scaleworks with participation from Conviction Capital. Scaleworks Venture Equity Fund was created to invest in high-potential SaaS businesses that could benefit from increased focus on strategy, go-to-market and team building.
“eCommerce was already on a major growth trajectory, but COVID-19 has sent it into hyperdrive by forcing consumers to adopt online ordering behaviors at a much faster rate,” said Lew Moorman, Co-Founder and General Partner at Scaleworks. “These major shifts in digital purchase behavior have created a large opportunity for Profitero as one of the few platforms capable of helping brands optimize their digital businesses across thousands of retailer sites and at global scale. With Bryan, Sarah and Sandor onboard, Profitero has the veteran leadership it needs to remain the leading global innovator in the market.”
“A decade ago, search and social media were the hot trends keeping CEOs and CMOs up at night; now it’s digital commerce. The pattern is the same: consumers are shifting behavior, and brands must follow suit or face irrelevance,” said Wiener, Profitero’s CEO. “The complexity and dynamic nature of eCommerce requires platforms like Profitero to ensure brands are putting the right product in the right place at the right time with the right level of promotion behind it.”
Profitero is the platform Adidas, L’Oreal, General Mills and more than 4,000 other brands use to accelerate their eCommerce sales. Brands that use Profitero are able to grow their Amazon sales 70 percent faster than category competitors, on average. Using Profitero’s proprietary technology and algorithms, brands can optimize their 4Ps (Product, Placement, Price and Promotions) across 8,000 retailer sites and 50 countries while also uncovering competitor behavior. Profitero’s technology also estimates daily sales for products sold on Amazon, allowing brands to measure market share growth and size category opportunities for future investment. The platform was first in the industry to integrate Amazon sales and share metrics and digital shelf analytics together so brands can more quickly pinpoint the factors driving their business.
“Profitero is our lifeline for navigating the volatile conditions created by COVID-19,” said Stacy Hanks, Director of eCommerce at The Master Lock Company. “We meet daily as an eCommerce team to assess the health of our business and to prioritize critical cross-functional actions needed to drive results. Profitero’s data is powering this process and allowing us to quickly adapt our supply chain, pricing and advertising strategies so we can maintain growth – and most importantly – keep meeting our customers’ needs during this critical time.”
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Bryan, Sarah and Sandor over the last three months and their positive impact is already being felt across the organization,” said Noel Ruane, Profitero’s Chairman. “Their highly relevant domain expertise and leadership experience, combined with the significant capital commitment led by Scaleworks, is a perfect one-two punch to exploit the unrivalled capabilities and potential of the Profitero platform. This is a very important time for companies to be well-led and well-capitalized.”
“eCommerce has never been more important, yet many brands are overwhelmed by its complexity and dynamic pace of change. In fact, according to Profitero’s recent industry study, 71 percent of brand executives say their organizations are merely catching up or keeping pace with competitors in eCommerce, instead of leading them,” said Hofstetter, Profitero’s President. “My entire career has been defined by helping brands reduce the complexity of adapting to emerging digital trends: first it was social media and digital marketing, now it is digital commerce. I’m excited to help Profitero’s clients transform their businesses.”
“I have been very impressed with the scale, technology and machine learning capabilities Profitero has built for its customers, as well as the skill of its product engineering and data science teams,” said Palfy, Profitero’s Chief Technology Officer. “I love working with companies at Profitero’s stage of fast growth, and am excited to raise the bar for innovation in the eCommerce industry and build even more valuable products for our customers.”
