Bamboo Rose announced the hiring of Jon Baron, president, and Julie Chao, senior vice president of APAC, to execute the company’s aggressive growth plans.
Baron has nearly 20 years of experience in sales, marketing and customer success, areas for which he will have global responsibility at Bamboo Rose. Baron replaces current President Brian Marsden, who will retire at the end of the year. Baron is a veteran of Microsoft, TagMan, and IgnitionOne where he held various C-level positions leading global digital marketing efforts. He helped drive these businesses from inception to over $1 billion in revenue. At TagMan, Baron created a new software category, one that Adobe, IBM, and Google replicated through acquisition or creating new business units.
“Bamboo Rose understands and addresses the serious challenges that enterprise retailers face to stay relevant in a market that is constantly evolving at consumer speed. I’m honored to be spearheading Bamboo Rose’s efforts to help enterprise retailers and their suppliers thrive during tough times,” Baron commented.
Also joining Bamboo Rose is Julie Chao, as the company’s senior vice president in Asia-Pacific. Chao is a Li & Fung veteran, where she worked closely with the world’s largest retailers and suppliers, leading one of the company’s ready-to-wear (RTW) divisions. While with Li & Fung, Chao transformed a small regional supporting team to a full-fledged direct sourcing organization and built the business to over $100 million within five years.
“I am excited to be joining a progressive company like Bamboo Rose as it transforms how retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers create, manage and bring products to market. The focus in APAC will be to ensure we serve our agent, wholesale and retail customers while helping the supplier community be relevant 24×7 to their retail customers. Bamboo Rose is uniquely positioned to enable our customers to achieve their strategic and financial goals, and I am energized to be leading our business in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Bamboo Rose CEO Sue Welch welcomed the new additions to the team, commenting, “It is a very exciting time in our company as we solidify our dominant position in providing the product platform that more than 150,000 people in 35,000 retail, supplier and trading partner companies use to discover, develop and deliver differentiated ideas and products to their customers. Jon and Julie’s backgrounds in high-growth SaaS and product development companies make them fantastic additions to our team as we continue our focus on growing delighted B2B digital communities across the globe.”