Cazoo, the used car buying and rental platform backed by Lovefilm and Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman, has appointed Moneysupermarket data boss Piers Stobbs to be its chief data officer as the tech start-up continues to build its senior team ahead of launch.
The Cazoo platform has so far raised more than £55m in two rounds of funding, and it is designed to enable consumers to purchase, finance or rent a used car online and have it delivered it to their door within 48 hours.
Stobbs (pictured) boasts more than 20 years’ experience in data and analytics across multiple industries in both the UK and the US, including multichannel and Internet retailing, market research, and five years in the hedge fund sector.
He spent four years as chief data officer at Moneysupermarket, leading the business on data science, data engineering and analytics. Prior to that, Stobbs was head of data science at DunnHumby, deploying advanced machine learning methods across the business.
At Cazoo, he will report to Chesterman, who said: “I am very pleased to welcome Piers to the Cazoo team. His experience in building customer-centric data teams and using data to drive value will create fundamental advantages in our model in terms of how we apply data across all areas of the business, most notably throughout the stocking process.”
Stobbs will also be reunited with a number of former Moneysupermarket executives, including chief customer officer Darren Bentley who was appointed this summer. Bentley took on the same role at Cazoo and is responsible for digital and brand marketing, customer experience, insight and PR.
Meanwhile, former Moneysupermarket head of digital Ercan Kamil has been recruited as digital marketing director and ex-head of brand Lucas Bergmans has joined as brand director. He was most recently head of brand at Aviva.
Separately, Katherine Hurst was hired as customer experience director from Paddy Power Betfair, where she was CRM director, looking after the customer communications globally and managing a team of 35.
Stobbs said: “I am delighted to be joining the team at Cazoo and to build a data team that is focused on the customer and purchasing behaviours as well as supporting the buying and pricing teams. The opportunity to drive the optimal use of data throughout the business is immense and it will give Cazoo a significant edge over existing players as we scale.”
Engine and Goodstuff were appointed in August to work on the creative and media business respectively. A multimillion-pound launch campaign is scheduled to break later this year.
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