It has been a while we haven’t interviewed a member of Lengow’s team… So let’s keep on what we usually do! Let us introduce Felicia Kron, Lengow’s Country Manager Scandinavia (Sweden and Denmark).

 

Hi Felicia, can you introduce yourself in a few words?

Hello! I am Swedish with a love for Internet shopping, horseback riding and sunny weather! I was one of the first persons at the International Lengow office in Paris and started in the end of February 2012.

What about your career before Lengow?

I have always been persuaded to live abroad and since a little girl I have loved the French language which I also studied for many years. Starting off at Tetra Pak in Sweden working with their International clients, I decided in 2010 to try my luck in France and began my International career as a Business Development Manager for Sweden at Mediastay, an Internet company within Performance Marketing. After a while I also took over the UK market but the gaming industry did not suit me very well and in February 2012 I decided to change focus and work within e-commerce at Lengow instead!

Can you tell us more about your missions at Lengow?

My first mission was to launch Lengow in the Scandinavian market with Sweden and Denmark as a main focus and thereafter, continuously building up and developing the activities within these markets which is my main focus today.

How would you define the Swedish market?

The Swedish e-commerce market is relatively new and still in growth in comparison to other mature markets in Europe. Nevertheless, it is not less interesting! It is very easy to start an e-commerce business today; the difficulty is to keep it profitable which is why many smaller companies use agencies to build up their marketing activities. Swedish companies also seem technically skilled and therefore seem to take an interest in technical products. Even though it might seem as a small market, it has plenty to give and I am looking forward to follow the continuous development of Swedish e-commerce, hopefully with Lengow as a strong player on the market.

Why did you choose to join Lengow?

I have always been very interested in e-commerce and with Lengow I am not limited to one category or one merchant only. Instead, I am given the possibility to see e-commerce as a whole on the market with daily interactions with different e-merchants which is really interesting.

What would you advise to merchants who begin in e-commerce?

To explore the Scandinavian markets and to generate traffic I would give the following advice:

• Make sure to use the proper marketing channel. You will be faced with plenty of channels; CSEs, affiliate networks, sponsored links, retargeting… Choose your channels based on the amount of time you can spend and the budget that you have!
• Constantly work on optimizing your visibility. If possible, make sure to choose a channel within your category, make sure to adapt your information to be shown in the ad space of your partner and regularly update this information.
• Follow up the results. Follow up the results on a daily basis all the way down to product level and act directly upon the results. If you notice that there is a category or a product that is not profitable, remove it from the channel. This is probably the hardest advice to follow as it could be pretty time consuming when having plenty of products….

Fortunately there is Lengow to help with this, in order for e-merchants to save time and control every single penny spent. Big company or small company doesn’t matter, Lengow fits all!

 

 

As you know, Lengow was exhibiting at Dmexco fair, leading expo & conference for the digital industry, in Cologne in early September.

This show was the occasion for Maxime Privé, Country Manager Germany to present Lengow and give some advice on the use of ecommerce channels via an interview for Media-Treff.

Here’s the complete video of Maxime explaining how to use in a professional way the different ecommerce channels (in German):

Maxime Privé, Lengow Country Manager Germany: How to use the different ecommerce channels in a professionnal way?

For those of you who can’t speak German, Maxime is explaining how to make retailers’ e-marketing campaigns work smarter with Lengow. With e-commerce needs in perpetual evolution and an increase in market competition, online retailers are facing a new set of issues: too many points of contact, too many technical requirements and too many hours spent managing feeds across distribution channels. With so many e-marketing options, how would merchants choose the most relevant and efficient management solution to meet retailers’ day to day needs? How do they improve their visibility to make smarter and more insight driven optimization? Lengow do help online retailers with those issues thanks to its solution that allows to centralize data feeds, increase performance indicators and maximize time and money spent managing campaigns across these channels: comparison shopping sites, affiliate platforms, marketplaces, social networks, retargeting, and many others.

Maxime highlights the fact that Lengow is a French company which knows a great success in France thanks to the quality of its service and the clients’ support. That’s why the company has been taking on an international dimension and has settled in Germany since the beginning of the year. Germany gave Lengow a warm welcome since we gained a foothold in the German market thanks to the acquisition of great clients such as MyToys.de, GetMobile.de, Levi’s, Quiksilver, Decathlon, etc.

You will find all the information on our websites www.lengow.de and lengow.co.uk, and of course all the news on Twitter: and .

Let’s make a trip overseas today since we have the honor to meet Virginie de Malavois, in charge of Lengow’s Canadian office.

 

 

Hi Virginie, can you introduce yourself in a few words?

Hello, I joined Lengow in October 2011 to launch the North-American subsidiary. Since the 1st of October, we have been running an office in Montreal where we manage Lengow’s Canadian and American activities.

Can you tell us more about your missions at Lengow?

My job consists in launching, running and developing Lengow’s North-American activity.
Our office is located in the city center of Montreal (on McGill College for those who know). Our short and medium-term goals are dual: we have to build a local merchants network and meet local partners who act either as commercial partner (e-commerce solution, web agencies) or as distribution channels (comparison shopping sites, marketplaces and affiliate platforms).

What about your career?

I began my career in France in 2003 at Kelkoo, leader of the French comparison shopping sites at the time, as an Account Manager. Then, I took advantage of the purchase of Kelkoo by Yahoo! to evolve within a big American group.

In 2007, I decided to join the subsidiary of eBay – Shopping.com – as a Key Account Manager. Shopping.com had just been launched in France and had to develop its e-retailers network. I was then in charge of purchase and fostering key accounts loyalty.

In 2009, I was appointed as the Sales Director at Shopping.com. I took part in the local strategic reflection, in commercial strategy set up and managed a team of accounts managers and sales managers. I am also the one who decided to raise the merchants’ PPC (Pay per Click).

At the end of 2011 I decided to join Lengow. You know what happens next.

How has the new Canadian office launch been going?

As for every company creation (Lengow Inc. is a Canadian company), time is precious. Last October has been mainly dedicated to the research and set up of the office, to the first recruitment phase and to the organization of our first fair in Canada – http://webcom-montreal.com/.
This event allowed us to test our offer with a new audience and to meet potential partners.

As a matter of interest, I started to canvass our first clients in a big apartment quasi empty where there was a terrible echo when I spoke. It is quite like the cliché of businessmen who launched their business in their garage!

Since November, several employees have joined us and we are all fully prospecting merchants and taking part in partnerships. We are already working with Shopbot.ca and Shoptoit for the Canadian part.

What would you advise to merchants who begin in e-commerce?

In this crisis period, e-commerce makes dream. A lot consider this field of activities as an Eldorado and think that they can become a millionaire just by creating a web site.

Reality is completely different. Merchants have to work hard to make the web users enjoy their website. It is difficult to make people want to get back and therefore generate incomes. Beyond the ergonomy of the site, which is maybe the most important part of the creation, it is necessary to plan out above a online communication strategy and to ask the right questions:

•    Is my site a window with a few loss leaders or a real transactional site?
•    On which tools should I communicate? Sponsored links, comparison shopping sites, affiliate platforms, social networks…
•    What are the KPIs that I can follow (turnover, conversion rates, profit margin…)?

Lengow gives e-tailers solutions to these issues and a support in their strategic reflection. Lengow offers an efficient tool adaptable to every distribution channel. Our solution is made for every e-merchant, whatever their size.  They have 10 products or 1 million? Our solution will always fit to their specific needs!

Many thanks Virginie !

As every month, someone who works at Lengow is interviewed. He/she explains his/her job, his/her career and the missions within the company.

This is a special interview today as I have the honour to interview our new European Operations Director: Nenad Cetkovic, who has been running our Parisian office for a few months.

Hello Nenad. Can you introduce yourself please?

Geek (almost compulsive!) in his forties, poker fan and hedonist… I joined Lengow on the 1st of March to run its European development. Lengow is a company I have known like forever since I am part of the jury of the Startup Academy Lengow won in 2009.

What about your career?

I have an unusual career, based on the rule “have fun while working”.

At the beginning, I gave up my thesis in computing sciences to work for the computing press. It last a decade where I quickly ran, as an editor in chief, some of the main magazines at the time.

But the “techno” virus can’t be treated. In 1999, I realized Internet was made for me. I buried myself in the first generation web at Libertysurf in the communities field (Respublica). It was such a unique experience, thanks to which I learned every day how to make business, audience and so on.

In 2001, in spite of the current boom, I took over the management of a portal – 01net – in which everything was to rebuild. In 7 years, thanks to a wonderful team, we made of 01net one of the main media portals in France and Europe. In parallel with 01net, I also launched or turned other Internet activities round (CadresOnline, RMC.fr, Latribune.fr, 01men…).

Then, in 2009, as a result of my interest into the audience aspect, I joined Adlink and Affilinet of which I had in charge the South Europe market. It enabled me to develop a deep understanding of advertising monetization problems, marketing performance and, over-all, e-commerce tools.

Since last September, I have devoted myself to the support of startups as an adviser or investor. It is by this time Jérémie, Mickaël and I met again. I couldn’t resist such an exciting challenge!

What is your mission within Lengow?

Build, expend and speed up Lengow’s activities on the main European markets. In a more practical way, we will have to identify and focus our efforts on each market depending on their configuration and specifics thanks to a dedicated team – centralized in Paris in a first time – with different backgrounds and experiences and a deep knowledge of the local market.

Our goal is to make Lengow the uncontested European leader for the optimization of all etailers feeds, as it is in France.

What advice can you give to online merchants who read the interview?

Just one piece of advice!  Give us 10 minutes… and you will wonder how you have lived without Lengow’s solutions so far?

Many thanks Nenad for this interview!