The rise of mobile and e-commerce along with shifts in consumer behavior has forever changed how business is conducted. The consumer is at the center of the business model, shopping and buying products whenever and wherever he or she wants.
These 10 eCommerce and digital innovators and pioneers are bringing to market new technologies to improve sales, drive traffic online (and in stores) and make payment transactions easier, as well as deploying tactics and strategies to better engage the consumer — which often means establishing an authentic and credible social media presence.
Tony King
King & Partners
For fashion apparel brands to succeed in the digital space, they might want to stop treating eCommerce as a separate entity. Tony King, chief executive officer and founder of King & Partners, advises that online and in-store should be a fully integrated experience for consumers as well as operationally.
King knows this is a challenge for many companies, but since the consumer is fully in charge of the shopping journey, creating that seamless experience is critical. And King knows what he’s talking about. He’s considered an early pioneer of luxury e-commerce, as he was responsible for launching gucci.com in 2000. He’s worked with brands that include Carolina Herrera, Kenneth Cole and Elie Tahari as well as Mulberry and Mario Testino, among many others. And he and his team have helped these brands develop digital flagship sites that feature a fully integrated e-commerce platform.
From the consumer’s perspective, the sites are clean and sophisticated. But under the hood, the e-commerce providers King works with give these sites a lot of horsepower. King told WWD that the real work is helping brands and retailers reimagine themselves.
“Brands come to us primarily looking for help with online, but quite often they need to makes changes that affect them fundamentally as a company — changes that go beyond digital in order to do digital right,” he said. “These can be anything from a shift in mentality at the c-suite level, down to bringing in a new set of systems with which the [chief technology officer] might be slightly uncomfortable. We believe that brands need to stop thinking about e-commerce and offline as separate silos, and instead just think about ‘commerce.’”
Aside from Gucci, King was creative director for the first digital flagship sites for Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, YSL and Bottega Veneta. King & Partners, meanwhile, describes itself as a digital agency “focused on true collaboration with a curated group of exceptional fashion, luxury and lifestyle brands.”
The company has a staff of 30, and also cites WGSN, 3.1 Phillip Lim, Fendi, Balenciaga, Faena, Edition Hotels and Houlihan Lawrence, among its clients. King is also a founder of Sellect Commerce, which is a full-featured e-commerce platform and content management system.
