Halil Köklü
Chief Technologist in Istanbul, Turkey
About
Building the digital platform for crafters worldwide as CTO at LoveCrafts. Formerly at Rocket Internet, Namshi and Koding.
Ecommerce-savvy CTO with more than 10 years of experience building and scaling product development organizations. Led cross-functional, distributed product teams working on various products and platforms. Delivered expansion into new geographies and categories. Drove modernization program to composable and headless commerce. Overseen deployment to the AWS cloud. Optimized internal processes with technology.
Contact
Projects
Turkish community for discussing headless and composable architecture
Speaking
Discussing migration methods, setting timelines and KPIs for projects, weighing up internal versus external resourcing, how to get management onboard for a MACH transformation.
Podcast episode about the challenges of implementing headless commerce at LoveCrafts.
Webinar with Divante about choosing a headless commerce and frontend platform.
Features
Building and sustaining a composable architecture and choosing the right SaaS solutions
Vue Storefront is our perfect choice for the “head” to headless commercetools
Work Experience
Launched in 2012, LoveCrafts operates a range of social marketplaces to provide inspiration and supplies for arts and crafts enthusiasts. At LoveCrafts we are weaving together commerce, community and content for the world of makers.
Addressing the $100bn craft industry, LoveCrafts is at the centre of the crafting community attracting millions of visitors every month. The company has experienced phenomenal growth, tripling each year and now distributes to customers in over 100 countries worldwide. LoveCrafts has physical operations in North America and Europe, and sites in English and German languages. To date, LoveCrafts has raised $75.2M from SEP, Highland Europe, Balderton, True Capital and Venrex.
Koding is a developer community and cloud development environment where developers come together and code in the browser – with a real development server to run their code. Koding received $9.25M investments by RTP Ventures, Greycroft Partners and Matrix Partners. Ad interim helped with words and deeds while enjoying a different technology stack and Silicon Valley.
Namshi is the Middle East’s leading online destination for fashion and lifestyle. Namshi’s repertoire boasts of over 550 footwear and fashion brands – many of which are internationally recognized, such as Lacoste, Polo Ralph Lauren, Jeffrey Campbell, Puma, Le Coq Sportif and Reebok. During my time Namshi raised investments of more than $34M by amongst others JP Morgan and Blakeney Management, Summit Partners and PPR. In May 2017, Emaar Malls acquired a 51% stake of Namshi for $151M. I was also the CTO of Mizado – online electronics retailer, a Rocket Internet venture – until it eventually ceased operations in August 2012.
Rocket Internet is an online venture builder and accelerator operating worldwide. Since 1999, Rocket has built more than 100 leading companies in 40+ countries. Rocket implements promising business models and support their ventures with unrivalled capabilities in online technology, marketing, business intelligence, operations, global rollout and funding.
Initially started as a Magento expert for new Brazilian ventures Kanui (sports), Mobly (furniture) and Tricae (baby products) at the HQ in Berlin, but soon moved to Rocket Internet MENA as Technical Lead and one of the first employees looking after the Turkish ventures Sporena (sports) and Evimister (furniture) based on Rocket’s technology platform.
Konexxo was a full-service agency with emphasis on software development and hosting. The client was a multi-level-marketing corporate group incorporating 12 companies including in fragrance, beauty and supplementary nutrition.
Beside building a B2B commerce platform for more than 25 countries and languages, I have developed an online perfume configurator which connects to a 63-meter custom-made perfume production machine as well as a nutrition supplement questionnaire.
Worked at an online retailer, online print office, CMS provider and a social network connecting sports clubs and enthusiasts.