In the latest instalment of our e-commerce & payments industry executive industry interview series, we spoke to Carpio CEO Steve McCartney (pictured) about increasing competitiveness in online marketplaces, the opportunity for brands to find economies across multiple stores to regain control of margins, a growing movement towards D2C and the exciting possibilities offered by AI…
Tell us about your company, products and services.
Carpio is an AI Transformation business focussed on helping eCommerce brands, multinationals, and publishers successfully adopt AI as an enabler for improved efficiency, scalability, productivity and consistency at lower cost than manual and legacy system operations.
Over the past years we have developed processes and tools for every stage of adopting AI from advice, to providing managed or automated solutions to common challenges around content, SEO, data mapping, and legislative and rules compliance, as well as building, integrating, and operating custom solutions to tackle the larger challenges our customers face.
What have been the biggest challenges the eCommerce/Payments industry has faced over the past 12 months?
eCommerce is facing headwinds with international brands moving into European markets at an increasing rate increasing competition in all markets making it harder to stand out with a USP and customer friendly unique content.
If you add into this what seems to be a growing raft of charges and fees for operating on many marketplaces, and the threat of tariffs affecting international trade in the coming months the economic screws are being tightened for many businesses – especially those reliant on 3rd party channels for sales.
And what have been the biggest opportunities?
For our customers, at the front-end, the ability to expand their sales footprint rapidly and at lower cost by creating content for multiple platforms, marketplaces, languages, and jurisdictions with their unique rules and regulations has been key as well as automation of the SEO aspects.
In the back end, PIMs and catalogue management will be a big focus for many brands as they continue to roll out solutions that are better than their legacy ERP systems for managing the wealth of data and metadata, content, and image and video assets required to effectively bring products to market in less time than ever before.
What is the biggest priority for the eCommerce/Payments industry in 2025?
Efficiency is core to Carpio’s mission, so with this bias in full effect we see automation throughout ops as being the biggest priority for eCommerce brands trying to regain control of their margin and expand revenue opportunities.
What are the main trends you are expecting to see in the market in 2025?
A swing back towards D2C vs. marketplaces so eCommerce brands can collect and use zeroth- and first-party data more effectively….and the automation side of course.
What technology is going to have the biggest impact on the market this coming year?
Without a doubt, the use of AI within eCommerce is going to be a huge driver for efficiency and an enabler for scale this year.
In 2025 we’ll all be talking about…?
The rapidly changing global political landscape and the impact this will have on us across various aspects of work and life in general.
Which person in, or associated with, the eCommerce/Payments industry would you most like to meet?
I am not sure if he is still around, but Charles M Stack was the creator of one of the first, if not the first, online store and then books.com three years before the launch of Amazon. Where we are with AI today feels like where he was back in 1992. That would be a fascinating chat (time machine maybe required…).
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learnt about the eCommerce/Payments sector?
That there is no really dominant pan-European alternative to Amazon…yet.
You go to the bar at the eCommerce/Smarter Payments Summit – what’s your tipple of choice?
These days a Guinness Zero – almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
What’s the most exciting thing about your job?
The incredible pace at which AI is moving and the variety of ways in which we can apply it – from analysing catalogues for GPSR one week to building automation pipelines for closed-loop SEO automation the next.
And what’s the most challenging?
The flip side of the pace and the variety is the context switching and having to ensure the team can access the massively diverse set of domain and technical knowledge we have developed over the years and apply it to new clients.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Build the workplace you would want to work in.
Succession or Stranger Things?
After a long day Succession is too close to the world of work (albeit a different scale) so Stranger Things for its pure escapism.
