eTail Connect Spring 2025

February, 2025

Silverstone Circuit Towcester, Northamptonshire

Speakers

Past Speakers (2019)

Matthew Mills
CEO
Deliciously Ella
Following his wife, Ella’s, enormous success online and in publishing, Matthew joined Deliciously Ella as CEO in 2015, to start a food business. Just 24 months after launch, Deliciously Ella is one of the fastest growing food brands in the UK, with three product lines that are stocked in almost 6,000 stores. Deliciously Ella has published four best-selling books, opened a central London deli, and amassed over 1.4 million followers on Instagram, generating 12-20 million impressions per week. Prior to becoming the CEO of Deliciously Ella, Matthew worked in finance and business development for a Los Angeles based tech start up. 
Rob Feldmann
CEO
BrandAlley

With an extensive background in Online Media, Music and Mergers & Acquisition, Rob Feldmann has been involved in BrandAlley since its inception in 2008.

Rob worked for News Corporation from 1998 in a variety of roles, starting as the CFO of its Global Music Group before moving into a Pan-European role as Mergers & Acquisitions Director providing financial, operational and strategic guidance. 

In mid-2009 Rob became CEO of BrandAlley.co.uk and under his leadership the business has achieved its position as the UK’s market leading fashion private sales site. Rob led an MBO of BrandAlley in January 2013 and continues to push the business forward with strong leadership and innovative ways of working, with the focus on being a “mobile first” company. 

BrandAlley UK works with top designer and high-street brands including Hugo Boss, Joseph, Reiss, J Brand, Ted Baker, Hobbs, Aspinal of London, Radley, Hackett, Karen Millen, FitFlop and many more. 

2018 has seen an exciting period growth at BrandAlley.co.uk, with the business acquiring leading homeware and beauty etailer Achica. Customers now benefit from a full range of leading brands available on both Achica and BrandAlley, with 15 new designer sales launching each day offering up to 80% off homeware, clothing, footwear, accessories and beauty.


Katy Bennett
Sales Director
Tinyclues
Katy is UK Country Manager at Tinyclues and has worked in digital for 15 years, riding a wave of tech evolution to improve multichannel campaign experiences. 
Tinyclues enables retailers to run intelligent marketing campaigns that are both customer-centric and aligned with business goals. It uses Deep Machine Learning to offer a new and unique AI-first platform experience where marketers directly input their campaign ideas and goals and, within minutes, build the best action plan and campaign targets. Retailers such as BrandAlley, Clarins, Holland&Barrett, Lacoste, and more have all achieved rapid, proven results from Tinyclues AI. 
Katy has worked with some awesome marketers across many leading brands to develop customer engagement strategies. She's now excited to bridge the AI zeitgeist with proven business value.

Angela Cearns
Chief eCommerce Officer and General Manager
Pizza Hut Digital Ventures

Angela Cearns is the Chief eCommerce Officer and General Manager for Pizza Hut Digital Ventures, leading Pizza Hut International through the digital transformation journey from a traditional casual dining restaurant to a leader in online ordering and delivery. Angela came from Amazon in Seattle where she served as the Executor Director of International Expansion of their Fulfilment by Amazon business; GM of Amazon Global Selling marketplace business; and the Head of Prime Technology Platform that powers Amazon global Prime membership and Prime benefit offerings including Prime Videos and Prime Music. Prior to Amazon, Angela spent a decade in California Silicon Valley with Symantec and the Norton Anti-Virus brand in a number of leadership positions from IT-Business Director, eCommerce Director, and finishing as Sr. Director of Customer Retention, Worldwide eCommerce. Angela has a Master of Software Engineering degree from the University of Colorado and Advanced Project Management from Stanford University.

Chris Conway
Head of Digital – Co-op Food
Co-op

An experienced strategic, operational and mutichannel leader of transformations. A customer champion who delivers growth and commercial results. I have extensive experience of category development and improving customer experience, in partnership with Global teams. This along with my MSc in Internet Retailing really ensures I stay at the forefront of Digital retailing.


Specialties: Global Grocery eCommerce, UK Online Grocery Market, Web Content Management, Product and Service Management, Project Management, Web Design Management, Online Merchandising/Conversion. Web development and usability strategy. Customer acquisition and retention. Personalisation, and enhanced content.

James Mcghee
Head Of Customer Experience
FOOTASYLUM

Having experience of running Contact Centre operations from 30 to 200 seats, all expecting similar outputs, James has learned to develop a culture alongside the Operation to truly enhance the Customers’ Experience. His approach focuses on individuals, departmental “North Star”s and embedding the Businesses values and beliefs at the most important level - the customer facing teams that are the ambassadors of your business. 8 years with AO.com have then led him to Footasylum where he continues to look for ways of driving an exceptional Customer Experience. 

Matthew Henton
Head of e-Commerce
Moss Bros

Matt is a highly skilled ecommerce professional and digital marketer with extensive experience in online retail. He has an entrepreneurial spirit and an exceptional track record of delivering ecommerce success across a variety of sectors.

As part of the Moss Bros. digital transformation, Matt has led the ecommerce and digital strategy that has delivered phenomenal online trading success. During his time as Marketing Director at eSpares, the retailer was a finalist at the Oracle Retail Week Awards for four consecutive years and his team won “Most Innovative Digital Marketing Team” at the Econsultancy Innovation Awards.

Louisa Nicholls
Senior Digital Trading Manager (Home)
John Lewis Online

Strategic, creative, agile leader, public speaker and panelist. 


Retail, digital and cultural expert
9 yrs online/digital trading/strategy/merchandising/customer experience
5 yrs store & project experience 
Broad knowledge of Buying, Merchandising and Marketing functions having worked closely alongside these areas for most of my career
Strong stakeholder engager & influencer with a track record in shaping & delivering strategic change with a customer centric approach from a short, medium & long term lense
Inspirational leader, proficient at leading big teams, multi site, sourcing/managing 3rd parties
Successful developer of people through a culture of high performance, high energy, ownership, support and stretch. Challenges self and drives team, stakeholders and the wider business community to adopt the following mindset:
- Create a culture of ‘data driven decision making’ - remove the emotion
- Good enough data is hugely valuable - it doesn't need to be perfect - make decisions on the data available - be agile
- Focus on actionable insights - if I can't do anything with it & its not informing a decision, why am I pulling it?
- Validate, test & learn, innovate - fail fast
- Really listen to customers

Anya Mackessy
Head of Ecommerce
KidZania UK

KidZania is the UK’s first educational entertainment experience where children aged four to fourteen can learn real-life skills in a 75,000sq ft. child-size city built just for them. Driven, creative and agile multitasker, Anya comes from a background in fashion, where she worked with luxury and mid-market brands as well as start-ups. She has experience in wholesale, VIP services, marketing, business development and rebranding, before settling down in ecommerce. Anya joined KidZania London last year to launch the new UK website and dynamic pricing, making it the first UK attraction to start selling dynamically priced entrance tickets. She is currently concentrating on ticketing user journey optimisation and loyalty program, as well as managing social media, digital, content and email marketing, and updating post-GDPR customer-centric strategy. 

Alex Chatterton
Head of Direct to Consumer Sales UK
Arla Foods

Alex was brought into Arla Foods to head up their newest eCommerce channel, Direct to Consumer. Prior to moving supplier side, Alex spent three years on the other side of the fence for top 4 grocer, Morrisons, where he was commercially responsible for their Beer, Wine & Spirits portfolio on Morrisons.com

Greg Moore
Corporate Solutions Specialist
Exponea

Internationally experienced in the digital and technology industries, Greg has been working with digital marketing technology for 20 years. He has developed a solid background in Digital Analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization, Personalization, Campaign Automation and Customer Experience innovation. Greg has experience in dealing with both customer and vendor interests, enabling him to understand client needs and the ability to offer up win-win strategies and solutions.

Mike Branney
Co-Founder & MD
Oh Polly

I am a workaholic who is strongly motivated by success and using that success to help others. I have a PhD in Wind Energy Systems having completed an investigation into wind turbine design (specifically multi-rotor systems) in 2015. 

In 2014 I co-founded the UK online fashion boutique Oh Polly (www.ohpolly.com) which operates in the ladies fast fashion market. As the Managing Director I am responsible for the manufacture of the garments from technical drawings through to final product as well as overall management of the company. 

In 2009 I co-founded a charity in Cambodia, now called The Brannerson Foundation (SC042175). This private charity aims to alleviate poverty from some of the poorest families in Siem Reap Cambodia and also provide free education for over 400 children in a small community on the out-skirts. In addition we support several young people through advanced learning through a University scholarship program. This organisation is entirely self funded through our eBay store and indeed the company was formed as a means to supply the charity with a constant revenue stream.

John Boughton
Commercial Director
National Express

John Boughton is responsible for all National Express Coach network revenues (>£250m), including core revenue, ancillary revenue, partnerships, sponsorships, festivals and contracts. John’s primary focus has been on growing National Express revenue since the time he first joined the company, which seen phenomenal growth in 2018. Pre National Express, at TUI, John’s biggest professional achievement was delivering TUI's mobile strategy, rolling out a single app in multiple languages to 10 countries, driving huge growth in engagement, sales, NPS. John is very passionate about nurturing curiosity and initiative to drive innovation – “there are so many good ideas that big businesses aren't often great at harnessing”. John is a passionate believer that commercial decisions are poor decisions if they don't consider the customer as too many people think those two things are unconnected. John enjoys traveling around the Falkland Islands. His dad lives down there half the year, and John notes that “…seeing the place as a local is very very different to seeing it as a tourist. Fascinating people, politics, history and wildlife.”

Albert Abello Lozano
Group Head of Marketing Automation
Treatwell

Albert is a Group Head of Marketing Automation and Technology at Treatwell where he oversees all the technical needs that the marketing team has. Albert also supports the performance operations teams to scale and grow through automation.

Albert’s team also oversees customer journeys, customer data modelling, personalisation and churn prediction.


Lindsay Mitchell
Consumer Engagement Director Personal Health
Philips UK&I

Lindsay is a hands on results driven business leader with proven ability to continually engage her team, internal and external stakeholders.  She is passionate about consumer engagement and strives for continuous business improvement in order to deliver on external customer needs in our ever evolving. 

Dmitry Shishkin
Chief Content Officer
Culture Trip

Dmitry enjoys working on the intersection of creative, tech and business and cares deeply about what innovation, effective use of data and storytelling can do together to inspire people around the world. He joined Culture Trip as Chief Content Officer from the BBC World Service, where he worked as Digital Development Editor for 41 foreign language news teams. Originally from Moscow, Dmitry has worked in various senior editorial development and innovation roles for the digital part of BBC News. (His passions in life, apart from his family, are reading, cooking and travelling as well as walking his Rhodesian Ridgeback Charlie in the parks of South West London. 


Amy Hanson
VP Product Marketing
Unbxd Inc

Amy Hanson is the VP of Product Marketing at Unbxd, a platform that improves ecommerce site search and helps online retailers increase their conversions and revenues.  Prior to joining Unbxd, Amy held marketing management positions at Visa and Facebook.

Alex Hamilton
Head of Innovation
Isobar
Duncan Keene
UK Managing Director
ContentSquare

One of the initial team at Maxymiser (now part of Oracle Group) Duncan currently leads UK operations at ContentSquare, a user experience analytics and optimization solution. In between carting his two sons around the weekend football circuit Duncan likes unwind with a few Whisky sour, though if any of his pals from Wolverhampton ask, he exclusively drinks pints of manly beer down the pub.

Maria Flores Portillo
General Manager UK
Persado

Maria Flores Portillo joined Persado as a General Manager in the UK, with a wealth of experience in the digital industry, where she's spent the most part of her career and waking hours. Maria joined Persado from Ooyala, where she built a Programmatic Advertising business from the ground up and played a leading role during the Videoplaza acquisition - she left the business as VP of Business Development, Channel Sales and Ad technology. Prior to that, Maria was a Strategic Partnerships Manager at Google, working with large media and brand companies across Europe to expand their advertising business, and a Senior Marketing Manager at EE, the largest and most advanced mobile communications company in the UK.  She holds an MSC in Mobile and Satellite Communications from the University of Surrey and Superior Degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Universidad Publica de Navarra.

Raj Ramanand
CEO and Co-Founder
Signifyd

Raj is the co-founder and CEO of Signifyd, a company that uses big data, machine learning and domain expertise to help retailers provide friction-free customer experience without the fear of fraud. Before launching Signifyd, Raj was head of risk for emerging markets at PayPal and head of payments and shipping risk for FedEx.

Nicola Fox
Head of CRM
Missguided

Nicola is the Head of Customer Relationship Management at Missguided. She is a senior marketing and digital professional with far-reaching and extensive knowledge and skills acquired while working within the retail sector. Her main focus at Missguided has been to oversee the development of data-driven CRM from batch blast email.

Justin Barrett
Senior Director, EMEA Operations
Brightcove
Isabelle Regis
Marketing and Digital Director UK and Ireland
L’Occitane
Ross Stoner
IBM Commerce Consultant
IBM

Ross Stoner heads up of the technical pre-sales team for Watson Marketing in the UKI.  Background in software development, analytics and marketing.  Works with some of the largest clients across multiple verticals.

David Lockwood
Director of Analytics
The Tapestry Agency

After 22 years at the multi-channel retail coal face, David is as close to a data driven marketing guru as you can get. As Director of Global Marketing at Boden, he managed a 30 strong team with a £70m budget delivering 20% growth and transforming customer recruitment from 60% offline to 60% digital. Before that he was Head of Analytics at Direct Wines, Marketing Director at The Cotswold Company and Head of Marketing at Dream Direct plc. David is a well- known figure in the multi- channel scene recognised by Data IQ 100 as one of the most influential people in a data driven business in 2016.

Elliott Clayton
Senior Vice President, Media UK
Conversant

Conversant's senior vice president of media in the UK, Elliott holds a decade of expertise in media personalisation, blending technology, strategy, and massive data for many of the top Fortune 500 companies. As senior vice president, Elliott focuses on the importance of accountable media spend through personalisation at scale, leading Conversant’s vision in solving the most challenging digital media issues facing CMOs and media agencies today.

Anthony Gavin
EMEA Regional Director
Narvar

Anthony has been actively involved in Customer Experience projects for the past 7 years. He has worked on initiatives with over 150 leading retailers and brands including John Lewis, PrettyLittleThing, Levi’s, ASDA and Gymshark. Anthony joined Narvar, as it’s first employee located in EMEA, during February 2017. He is Before Narvar, Anthony worked in the personalisation sector for Monetate and the CX Practice at Oracle, gaining a unique exposure to the needs of retailers.

Tayyaba Malik
Head of e-Commerce
Lulu Guinness

As Head of Ecommerce at Lulu Guinness, Tayyaba has taken on the rewarding challenge of re-aligning internal processes, establishing stronger links with acquisition and retention partners, developing new ways of working whilst striving to set ourselves apart from our competitors through innovation. A commercially minded senior digital and multi-channel retailer, experienced in International expansion, localisation and customer engagement, with over 10 years’ experience in Ecommerce and branding. 

James Hawkins
Business Development Director
Zmags

James is a Senior Account Executive at Zmags, working closely with prospective customers to build relationships and help them to overcome any content related challenges and achieve brand aspirations.


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Want to see who spoke previously? View the list here.