London and San Francisco, 14 May 2012: Brightpearl, a pioneering vendor of cloud-based commerce software for small businesses, today announces that Fergus Gloster, Managing Director EMEA Marketo, will be joining Brightpearl’s Board of Advisors. With over 25 years industry experience, including founding Salesforce.com’s sales and marketing operations in Europe, Gloster will be advising Brightpearl on sales and marketing initiatives to support future growth.
“I’m delighted to be joining Brightpearl’s Board of Advisors at such an exciting time for the company. I’ve been really impressed by Brightpearl’s fast paced growth. I’m even more impressed at how its technology is transforming the operations of small merchants in such a challenging business environment,” said Fergus Gloster. “I’m passionate about helping small businesses grow and I see Brightpearl as a key enabler to their development.”
“We’re immensely pleased to have Fergus join Brightpearl’s Board of Advisors. Fergus is one of the most thoughtful leaders I know in scaling Software-as-a-Service businesses. He brings to the table a wealth of experience from his years at Marketo and Salesforce.com. His unrivalled experience in bringing SaaS to SMEs will further accelerate our rapid growth,” said Salman Malik, CEO Brightpearl.
In his current position as Managing Director of Marketo EMEA, Gloster is responsible for all revenue generation activities for the company in Europe, including sales, marketing, customer success, and renewals. Gloster was one of Salesforce.com’s first hires in 2000 and over his nine-year tenure with the company, served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Sales, Europe. He led Salesforce.com’s initial entry into the market and developed its hub-based sales, alliances and telemarketing model.
Brightpearl’s cloud-based software has helped its customers to see impressive like-for-like sales growth of 35 percent in the year between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012. This is compared to retail industry figures indicating growth of just 2.1 percent in offline shops and 16 percent for the online/ecommerce segment overall (IMRG/Capgemini). In February, the company announced the integration of eBay storefronts and Magento-based stores, helping retailers to sell more by reducing the complexity of managing multiple sales platforms by creating a single view of customers, inventory, prices and sales performance.
