Q&A: Vincent Peters, CEO, Productsup, Berlin, Germany
Productsup frees brands, retailers, marketplaces, and service providers from commerce anarchy.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I have more than 30 years of experience in the software industry, having held numerous sales and leadership positions at fast-growing technology companies like Productsup, TIBCO, Qlik, Siebel Systems, Cramer Systems, Intralinks, and Oracle.
At the start of my career, I joined Oracle. Initially, I was doing very technical work as a consultant helping customers to optimise their database design, their queries, and their applications. Because I came from a family with a retail background, I could articulate what I was doing in language that was easy to understand. As a result, I moved quickly to presales and then eventually up to sales at the age of 24. I became their youngest-ever Account Executive globally. After that, I went on to play a key role in helping companies grow revenue and expand partnerships and market reach.
Now, as CEO at Productsup, a P2C software company, I lead an international team of highly-skilled technologists and business professionals to help today’s companies overcome commerce anarchy.
What does Productsup do?
Productsup frees brands, retailers, marketplaces, and service providers from commerce anarchy. Our product-to-consumer (P2C) platform, supported by our global team of technologists and innovators, allows businesses to better control their product data within the commerce ecosystem. Working with more than 900 global brands – including Fortune 500 companies – we enable our customers to provide their target consumers with a unified experience across thousands of marketing and selling channels, like Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Google Shopping, including Local Inventory Ads. Our platform allows brands to syndicate their product information to e-tailers and retailers. It also enables marketplaces, e-tailers, and retailers to onboard product data from their suppliers quickly, unify and enrich that data, and then make it available in their systems. This informs their target audiences that they carry these brands and these products.
What makes us unique is that we have the only global, scalable platform that can holistically manage product data as it moves between suppliers and buyers in a centralised management view. Many companies struggle to control this path that product data takes, also known as the product information value chain (PIVC), preventing them from delivering a consistent omnichannel presence. Productsup aggregates, enances, contextualises, and distributes product data to any platform, channel, or technology, so companies can ensure they’re telling a consistent and compelling story at every customer touchpoint.
What’s special about the Productsup approach?
Identified by Constellation Research as a leader in P2C management, our platform makes it easier for companies to align all product data in one place, sourcing information from an infinite number of sellers, vendors and manufacturers. Unlike other platforms that don’t integrate with other commerce systems and create data silos, our customers can access a 360-degree view of their product data ecosystem, which allows them to gain an in-depth understanding of all of their products and their value chains.
What advantage does it add?
The Productsup P2C platform enables businesses to think beyond the day-to-day optimisations of regional marketing and selling strategies and deploy locally different tools and systems. With Productsup, companies can seamlessly execute a global omnichannel strategy to grow their business and strengthen their market position. With a global enterprise platform, Productsup enables global governance and speed whilst allowing for local agility – if and when needed – without losing control. This is why we serve both global players like IKEA and hyperscalers like Uber Eats.
As more and more marketplaces emerge, social commerce capabilities evolve, and technology advances, companies can take advantage of the increasing complexity. Our customers can overcome commerce anarchy to create high-performing and scalable marketing and advertising campaigns across markets, realising their full global potential.
Are there other companies you partner with?
We have an extensive partner network of more than 50 different technology and marketing companies. We work with service providers like Salesforce, Akeneo, Sitecore, and Pimcore, as well as commerce channels like TikTok, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Pinterest.
Our partnerships allow us to add system integrations and enhance capabilities to provide our customers with better business solutions that increase efficiency and reduce costs.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail?
The pace of change in the retail industry presents both opportunities and immense challenges for companies. Traditional brick-and-mortar stores like Harrods are building up their ecommerce presence, while digital natives like Amazon are opening physical retail locations for the first time. Social media sites are building direct shopping capabilities on their platforms, while companies launch more and more digital marketplaces. Companies like Google now offer Local Inventory Ads that provide a unique experience only a retailer can offer to their consumers. Additionally, the metaverse is fast-approaching with 32% of consumers interested in shopping in the virtual world, according to Raconteur’s Future of Retail report.
It’s an exciting time in retail, but all of these advancements are more than most companies can handle. As more marketing and selling channels emerge and shopping features evolve, the path between retailers and consumers becomes more complex. And the hard truth is that the piece-meal approach companies have been relying on – where they use multiple systems to ‘optimise’ their omnichannel strategy – doesn’t work in modern retail.
A study we conducted at Productsup reveals that 97% of UK business decision-makers are concerned with the consistency of product information passing through their tech stack. As a result, many businesses are failing to maintain consistent and accurate product feeds and listings across consumer touchpoints, preventing them from creating a compelling presence in the places their customers spend their time.
With the inability to overcome commerce anarchy to provide a unified customer experience, retailers face damaged brand loyalty and missed sales opportunities. Globally, inadequate product information costs companies from 6% to even 10% of their revenue, and 3% to 7% of their profits.
How will you address these challenges and turn them into successes?
Success in today’s complex retail landscape requires a radical rethink of the commerce approach where managing product information value chains becomes simple. Most organisations currently use an average of four systems to handle product data, but with the Productsup P2C platform, retailers can bring their products to market with one single, centralised solution. By removing data silos and increasing efficiency, retailers can tackle commerce anarchy head-on.
When companies have the ability to make sense of the chaos, they’re empowered to expand to new channels and take advantage of the next-gen tools available. Not only does this better position them to strengthen customer acquisition and retention, but it also allows them to compete with the retail giants.
What is on the horizon for you as a company?
While we care about our customers’ short-term business goals, we also set them up for long-term success, which is why we’re focused on getting companies to take a radically new commerce approach. People have recognized that the retail industry has undergone a complete transformation, yet they continue to operate in the same way they have been for decades. At Productsup, our priority is waking brands and retailers up to the reality that simply optimising processes and systems of the past isn’t effective anymore. Instead of fixating on the details of omnichannel retail, they have to think about the big picture – bringing their products to consumers – and doing so on a global scale.
This becomes even more important as technology evolves, and we inch closer to a metaverse future. The metaverse will bring ultra-fast internet speeds, infinite marketing and selling channels, and limitless space for creativity. Companies that have control over commerce anarchy will be well-positioned to take advantage of this new dimension for innovation, while those that are stuck in their old ways will fail to meet the next generation of consumers’ expectations. Our mission is to equip companies with the systems and processes that will help them thrive as the world makes advancements toward the metaverse.
To find out how Productsup can help your retail operation, click here to visit their site, or click the links below.
