CXBuzz Interview with Daniel Gurevitch CEO at Kimonix

Hi Daniel, tell us about yourself and share some background about Kimonix (how you ended up founding the company)

Daniel: I’ve been around eCommerce & retail for a few good years now, both as a consultant and as Head of eCommerce.
A year ago, together with Kobi Gabay, I founded Kimonix – an AI merchandising solution for eCommerce brands.

Kimonix was born out of my experience of working with hundreds of different types and sizes of brands. I realized that the eCommerce managers are facing a major problem. They are in a constant struggle to improve their store’s profitability, due to the lack of ability to simultaneously optimize their marketing KPIs (conversion rate, sales) and retail KPIs (non-moving inventory, gross margin ROI). For example, when deciding on a display strategy of products in each collection, how would you sort the products? by bestsellers? inventory? margin?

Kimonix is here to change that and help them improve both kinds of KPIs and their store ROI. We are developing a unique, AI-based, solution that automatically and optimally manages all merchandising aspects of an online store – products’ sorting, recommendations, pricing, promotions, search, and more, based on product performance, personal preferences of each customer, and business goals.

The focus at Kimonix going forward

eCommerce was booming in 2020; how did it affect Kimonix? – What are you going to focus on this year?

Daniel: Obviously, this helped us a lot in growth. But, it did more than that, it made more companies understand the crucial importance of what we do and how it can help them in a big way.
Since the online channel was accelerated to become the main one, many companies see now that their online store is not only about marketing and revenue. It should function as any retail company and that in order to be profitable, they must increase their focus on optimizing the inventory in storage and maximizing product margins.
And that’s where we come in…:)
2021 would be about establishing Kimonix and distributing our holistic approach on merchandising as a must-have for every mid-size and up online store.

How much has the eCommerce industry evolved in the last 2-3 years with the arrival of automation, customer experience, and data-driven insights?

Daniel: It has changed a lot of course. Nowadays, from a certain point of growth, an online brand cannot operate the store without any of the three you mentioned above.
The best practice would be combining the three, as we do in Kimonix.
For instance, a big part of customer experience is personalization, which helps conversion rate and sales. However, if a store relies only on what the customer wants and doesn’t relate to inventory needs, they will, most likely, create a vicious cycle that will sell only the best products and increase the non-moving inventory of others.
That is just one example out of many of why you should combine and balance between them.

Tell us about the CEO role in a pandemic crisis – what role digital transformation has in this crisis?

Daniel: A major one of course. CEOs of retail companies that for some reason, did not have an online channel, had to build one, and others that did have one, had to allocate most efforts there. The pandemic crisis accelerated the fact that a company must have a strong digital presence and provide a satisfying online customer experience.

How is Kimonix changing the e-commerce landscape?

Daniel: We aim to change the way eCommerce companies manage their store. Our AI merchandising solution will help them become retail savvy and achieve the goals they really need as a business.
Kimonix would be an eCommerce manager’s right hand and stores’ management will become 70-80% fully automated.

What makes Kimonix different from your direct competitors? And how is it different than legacy players in your space?

Daniel: We are different on 2 different levels:
First –  other merchandising solutions are focused on increasing conversion rate and sales, where we have a more holistic view that focuses on the business’s net-profit and ROI.
Second –  other solutions are mainly personalization tools that also provide the ability to make manual merchandising decisions. Our unique solution combines personalization and merchandising together, automatically optimizes itself, and executes the ideal merchandising strategy based on the customer’s business goal.

Do you think working from home is good or bad for employee experience? How is Kimonix planning it’s office strategy in Post covid19 days?

Daniel: Kobi and I are strong believers in working together in the same physical space. There is no comparison in terms of productivity between the two options. Therefore, we always try to do so (as much as we can under the restrictions). Since we are an early-stage startup and still small, it’s not too difficult to accomplish.

Check our interview section for more interviews with industry leaders!