The Entrepreneurial Roller Coaster Ride, Digital commerce insights with Niall O’Gorman

Interesting interview with Niall O’Gorman as we catch up with him and his entrepreneurial journey.

What is your background briefly?

Got my start in Gateway computers working in call centers, ultimately progressing to manage the European ecommerce team as part of the marketing organisation. When Gateway closed down their EU operation and retrenched back to the US, I did a year in San Diego helping to migrate the best bits of all the e-commerce related projects that had been up and running in Europe and not yet operational in the US. After a year I moved back to Dublin and joined Iomega to roll out a new E-Support platform (Rightnow Technologies) across Europe, before moving with them in 2004 to Geneva in order to take over the running of the twelve international ecommerce markets.

In 2007, I flipped over to ChannelIntelligence (Ultimately acquired by Google in 2013) a ecommerce SaaS ‘Where To Buy’ platform for brands as employee number one outside of the US and built out the international sales operation before being approached by Cnet Content Solutions (Part of CBS Interactive a CBS Broadcasting Company) to help turnaround their international content acquisition and syndication business, which helped global retailers like Tesco, Carrefour and Target auto generate their ecommerce listing pages, along with descriptions, imagery and key selling points.

In 2012 in parallel with John Beckett (Ex-Gateway colleague) we co-founded and bootstrapped ChannelSight, while I got a day job with Mondelez looking after the DTC ecommerce operation for Tassimo across Europe, then the global ecommerce team to pay the bills, until the end of 2015 when we took on our series A funding at ChannelSight and I flipped full time into the business.

From there we built out the platform, secured initial clients and grew recurring revenues year over year until mid 2019 when we raised our series B round. As a scaleup we’re now focussed on accelerating our growth through geographical, industry, partner ecosystem and platform expansion. “

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

I’ve spent half of my career working within global brands like Gateway Computers, Iomega and Mondelez, helping them to build, grow and innovate there their digital commerce ecosystems, platforms and related e-retail partnerships, while the other half has been from the other side working within digital commerce startups (ChannelIntelligence acquired by Google in 2013) and now ChannelSight (Operating since 2013 and co-founded with John Beckett CEO).

This integrates with content across all digital channels belonging to a brand to help consumers easily find and buy their products both online and off, by engineering a fast, friction less buying journey for consumers. Above all,  we provide actionable marketing intelligence and ROI of their digital investments that makes a real difference to how brands succeed online.

How was the last 12 months?

For myself and John Beckett (Co-Founder & CEO of ChannelSight) The last twelve months have been an absolute rollercoaster at ChannelSight. While in the eye of the storm you always feel like your failing your way forward (hopefully towards success within a startup.

There are always opportunities to build momentum and further growth, that come in parallel with new challenges that need to be resolved and overcome in order to be able to execute against those opportunities, sustain the momentum and use that as a platform to work towards your next major milestone as a company.

There’s rarely a moment to sit still and reflect, however the end of the year around Christmas and the new year is typically a good period to process what’s happened over the last twelve months.

2019 was another year of solid growth for the company, further building out the team across multiple offices, releasing a number of exciting new and innovative product line extensions off the core roadmap, having an a method of product recognition patent granted, being featured in the Deloitte Fast 50 , closing our Series B funding round of $10 million, led by Connected Capital, the Amsterdam-based B2B SaaS investor.  This new round of investment will enable us to accelerate the delivery of innovative new product lines, geographical and industry expansion.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

Head of Strategic Alliances, Partnerships and Co-Founder at ChannelSight. Responsible for sourcing partners, structuring agreements and ongoing management of Joint Venture partners.

ChannelSight makes the world instantly shoppable. We enable brands to grow online and offline sales while giving unique insights into content and campaign performance. Our Where to Buy technology integrates with content across all digital channels.

This is to help customers jump straight to an approved retail partner to complete their purchase instantly. Therefore, ChannelSight engineers a fast, friction less buying journey for customers. Above all, providing actionable marketing intelligence that makes a real difference to how brands succeed online.

ChannelSight Overview:

Live in 62 markets and powering the digital path to purchase for 120+ Brands, helping their consumers to easily find and buy their products at  2000+ retailers around the globe

Example industries

Apparel & Fashion | Audio | Automotive | Consumer Goods | Home Appliances | Cosmetics & Skincare | Food & Beverage | Luxury & Jewelry | Medical Devices | Pharmaceutical | Tobacco | Wine & Spirits

Example clients

Philips, BSH, Perrigo, Logitech, RB, Candy, Tado, Mentos, Hillspet, Abinbev, Duracell, P&G, Fossil, Pepsi, Coke, HP, Medela, Samsung, Victorinox, Safavieh

Example Implementations:
https://ptdrv.linkedin.com/dm78w38

Example Case Studies:
https://ptdrv.linkedin.com/wy3f72y

Why did you get involved with digital commerce and the things you do now?

I got my first taste of working on digital commerce while part of theGateway Computers team in Dublin which around 1998 managed to join the dots between the cumbersome back end AS400 systems of the day the the website where consumers and business were placing their orders for computers to be customised and built to their desired specifications.

Until then there was a team of people who would literally download text files from the website, then manually and labourisily retype everything into the AS400 system, which would fire off a sequence of events that would ultimately translate in either a consumer being able to come to the factory and pick up their freshly built computer in the Gateway shop or receive it at home.

There were so many systems that were not communicating with each other along the path to purchase that many people across the organisation were sceptical that the project would succeed. Suffice to say, that the team ultimately got it done against all the odds and it was a very successful project for the organisation.

Being part of this team, got me hooked on e-commerce and everything related to it and that has taken me on a journey across a number of companies big and small to help them solve for all the related challenges of how you can get such an operation up and running, make it profitable and ultimately scalable. While at the same time playing in concert with all of the other channels of distribution both online and off versus cannibalise one channel at the expense of another. Which translates into short term success and long term pain for any brand which has over focussed on any one channel versus another.

Why do you think it is such a powerful idea?

While digital commerce has been around for quite a long time at this stage, and generating some astronomical revenues and valuations for those who have managed to get it right (thus far), we’re still at the tip of the iceberg of the true potential impact and possibilities of e-commerce (or digitally influenced sales), that there’s not a day that passes where I don’t encounter a new challenge or opportunity to help the global brands who we partner with at ChannelSight to ‘crack the digital commerce code’ and that’s what has kept me passionate about the space.

How can people find out more about you personally & your work?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ogorman/ ,  https://www.channelsight.com/blog or https://www.instagram.com/niallogorman/ where its a mix of stand up paddle boarding, sea swimming and shots I take while on the road catching up with ChannelSight clients and partners.

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked?

Brands flirting with a DTC only approach – There seems to be a growing number of brands who are retrenching from marketplaces like Amazon, we saw this as a big theme during 2019 with Nike who initially pulled their products from Amazon in order to focus on their own DTC (Direct To Consumer e-commerce operation) only to return six months later when they realised that they needed to be present and engaging with consumers wherever they are in large numbers demonstrating an indication to purchase their category.

Otherwise they would be leaving their fate up to that of how Amazon and 3rd party sellers would represent their brand or worse re-focus and double down on selling their competitors products in the vacuum of Nike pulling their support for the platform.

At the end of the day, Nike nor any other brand can prevent their products from being sold on marketplaces like Amazon, if the product is in high demand and Amazon can make money off it then they will find a way to get a sell your products with or without your support. Better to be engaged and preferably in the driving seat through strategic cooperation and demonstrating category captaincy on these platforms.

Brands seem to be shuttering their flagship physical stores in their hundreds, what does this mean for the brands, highstreet and jobs https://www.channelsight.com/bose-moves-online/

See more information about Irish Tech News and the Business Showcase here.

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 16000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

Irish Tech News

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking