It was only at the beginning of this year that Marek Fila was announced as Kinguin’s new CTO. He brings a wealth of tech knowledge to the role following 26 years at companies such as RBS, Samsung, the US Lionbridge and Cisco. Taking this position gives Marek the opportunity to put his existing tech prowess to work to help Kinguin reach their aspirations of an advanced tech company. 

Marek is looking forward to the challenge – he feels he can bridge the gap between tech and business and he’s looking forward to being a more open and transparent leader at Kinguin. We found time to chat with Marek where he told us about Kinguin’s tech potential as well as his top priorities coming into the role. 

As soon as I was approached I knew the role of Kinguin’s CTO was perfect for me. For my next move I wanted to work for a cloud based modern tech company and Kinguin stood out from the crowd. Already making technological advancements by implementing NFTs and Google Recommendations AI to their market leading website, it was their bold decision to transition from Magento, an open-source ecommerce platform, to their own marketplace engine which drew me in. It highlighted their true potential.

By using their own marketplace engine, Kinguin can meet additional business requirements, deploy digital products much quicker and provide implementations in single actions. As a result, its platform is more agile, flexible and efficient. And in a competitive market it’s all about being first – ultimately, if you’re first to market then you’re perceived a winner and Kinguin has become a standout leader. 

But what really differentiates us from our competitors is that Kinguin is dedicated to creating customised solutions and facilitating end to end services to all forms of businesses. We recognise every business is important, regardless of size – after all, big business has to start somewhere. Our tech helps these small businesses thrive by providing them with the engine and services to do so. As a global digital ecommerce platform, our customers are all over the world, but what our tech offers merchants is the agility and ability to connect their products with anybody, anywhere, in the knowledge that their transactions are in safe hands.

Heading into this role it’s all been about where I can add the most value. From my perspective, it’s important for us to connect with more merchants, to create new diverse offerings and improve our customer’s purchasing experience, such as linking recommendations to customers, based on their interests and history of purchases. I am also keen to explore customisation for specific countries. This means we need to build an IT architecture that can compete and adapt to a rapidly moving environment.  

Speaking of the environment, a long term proposition for Kinguin’s tech is to go green. By presiding in the clouds, we can alleviate processing delays and easily scale up or scale down to meet demand – this makes us cost effective as well as environmentally friendly! We can become pioneers in the market by using the newest, most efficient technology including the latest AI tech and Google tools to reduce our footprint. This is why one of the first decisions I’ve made is to completely shut down Magento by the middle of the year. Watch this green space!

While it’s essential to make these changes for our partners and our customers, it’s equally important to bring our people on the journey with us – they need to be fully engaged with our vision. With this in mind, we’re educating our employees on our tech capabilities. But to achieve our goals we also need to recruit talent – people who can support our ambitions to scale up. This means we also have to consider how we tell our story to the wider world – and that’s something we’re working on and why I feel passionate about being the bridge between the business and the tech.

While I’m only a month into the role, things are moving quickly. I genuinely believe we’re on the right track to becoming an advanced tech company of the future!