Shopware eyes further international growth with two critical new hires from Magento

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Shopware AG, provider of ecommerce solutions, has appointed Kathleen Claes, to the position of Director of Partnerships & Alliances and Katy Wilson to Partner Manager.

Kathleen Claes is former Director of Commercial Sales (Western Europe) for Adobe’s Magento, whilst Katy Wilson held the position of Strategic Alliances Manager for Adobe until April 2021. They join Ben Marks – also formerly of Magento – who was hired by Shopware in March 2021 as Director of Global Market Development, playing critical roles in continuing to build Shopware’s international growth.

A wealth of ecommerce experience

Claes has over 10 years of experience at Magento and generating international sales growth for the business. As Channel Manager, Claes worked across the Benelux, Eastern Europe, Nordic and Scandinavian regions, before going on to lead sales growth in Southern and Central Europe, and latterly, the Western Europe region.

Similarly, Wilson has five years of experience at Adobe, joining Magento as Channel Development Manager before going on to her role as Strategic Alliances Manager for Adobe. Prior to this, Wilson has over 12 years of experience working in digital payments and banking. As Partner Manager at Shopware, Wilson will primarily be working with partners in the United Kingdom.

Building International Growth

The new hires are a strategic move to build Shopware’s ambition for international growth. In the past 12 months, its comprehensive B2B offering has further expanded, strategic developments in Shopware 6 have been advanced, and new PaaS opportunities have emerged. To date, more than 100,000 companies have relied on a Shopware solution to enhance their ecommerce solutions and in 2020, Shopware achieved EUR 12 billion GMV in sales. Earlier this year, Shopware was also listed in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for the second time in a row, for Digital Commerce, a huge accolade in the digital commerce industry.

As a forward-thinking, open-source solution, Shopware gives users the freedom to develop growth potential quickly and easily – with more flexibility and less complexity.

Sebastian Hamann, Co-CEO at Shopware, said: “We’ve always believed that the true potential of Shopware lies in the creativity of our employees. That’s why it’s always great for us to welcome people like Kathleen, Katy and Ben to our Shopware family. In our conversations with Kathleen and Katy, as well as with Ben in the spring, we quickly realised that we share a passion for good open source solutions, openness and collaboration, which can help advance entire industries in a sustainable way. That’s why I’m confident they’ll contribute to the future success of our company. Katy was Partner Manager of the year three times in a row at Adobe. This gives an indication of the real value of what she can deliver to Shopware agency partners and the ecosystem in general, and the growing momentum of Shopware in the UK.”

Kathleen Claes, Director of Partnership & Alliances at Shopware, said: “Shopware is an extremely exciting open source solution, which is why working with shopware AG was a very attractive opportunity for me to pursue. After many long conversations, all parties agreed that we would make a great team as we share the same philosophy when it comes to openness, as well as the same community mindset. We became aware of this once again at the recent Shopware Community Day. That’s why I’m very excited to finally get started. I believe that even with its past success, Shopware still has a lot of growth potential, and I want to help unleash that potential.”

Katy Wilson, Partner Manager, at Shopware, said: “I’m delighted to be joining Shopware and its ecosystem in my new role. It is a fantastic opportunity to fulfil the needs of both SME and mid-sized companies, since in my opinion there is a real lack of adaptable commerce solutions in this segment.”