Meet Magento UK 2023: A Review

Meet Magento UK 2023 may be behind us but our memories of this fantastic event are still fresh in our minds.

It was an important and exciting day for the Magento community, when merchants, technology experts and agencies came together to share their love and knowledge of Magento.

We got to meet and catch up with talented retail professionals, get in touch with the latest in ecommerce trends and attend a myriad of thought-provoking talks given at the conference.

The Talks

Amongst a robust group of highly skilled and experienced retailers were our very own Zac Stevens, Akoova’s CTO, and our esteemed client ME+EM‘s CTO Paul Younghusband.

The pair hosted a refreshing conversation and Paul shared his perspective on the role and challenges of a CTO. According to the ME+EM’s executive, sourcing a solid team of good people is as important as having cutting-edge technology at hand.

Furthermore, Paul shared his views on what he believes sets a CTO apart: being able to collaborate and seamlessly converse with non-technical stakeholders. To him, communication is key.

When trying to sum up the main aspect of what it means to be a CTO, he simply put “the role is about vision”. A good Chief Technology Officer should not be focused on where they are right now, but looking ahead to where they want to be in the future.

Janis Thomas, Ecommerce & Marketing Director at beauty brand Look Fabulous Forever also gave an enlightening talk. Pulling from her experience at the cosmetics label, she explored a topic very close to Akoova’s heart: continuous improvement.

In her speech, Janis walked us through her journey of implementing at Look Fabulously Forever the five pillars of exponential growth for incremental improvement, aiming for profitable and sustainable growth while also empowering her team to pursue personal development.

During the event, visitors also had the opportunity of attending a few panels. At “Devising an Inflation-busting Ecommerce Strategy”, three experienced digital retail executives shared their stories of overcoming economy and pandemic-related challenges to ensure their businesses were able to power through tough times.

Thinking back on their past experiences with difficult decision-making that payed off were Shaun Loughlin, Head of Ecommerce at LeMieux, Dave Gorman, Director of Ecommerce at a leading football club, and Suzana Bulearca, Managing Director at PBSL Group.

Charity Partner

Every year, MMUK selects an official charity partner to take part in the event. This year, we were excited to see our partners at Pennies getting involved.

CEO Alison Hutchinson CBE gave an inspiring speech about the power of microdonations, and about how little it takes for donors and merchants to make a big difference.

If you’re interested in joining forces with Pennies for good, have a look at their website to get started.

Akoova at MM23UK

Once again, we had the honour of being Headline Sponsors of Meet Magento UK. It was a pleasure playing a part in making this key event for the Magento Community such a success.

Thank you so much for visiting us at our stand and having a chat. Hopefully, you were also able to score one of our sought-after swag and toast to the day with our complimentary glasses of Prosecco.

Prize Draw

Speaking of glasses of bubbly, the team at Akoova also organised an exciting prize draw for MMUK attendees, giving away a whole Jeroboam of Champagne to one lucky winner.

All participants had to do was take a photo of themselves under our bright heart-shaped arch and post it to Linkedin with the hashtag #MagentoForLife. More on that here.