Veteran Cross-Border and Logistics Ecommerce Executive Leaves Arvato Bertelsmann to Join aCommerce as Group Chief Logistics Officer
Mitch Bittermann to strengthen the cross-border and logistics capabilities of the growing end-to-end ecommerce enabler en route to Series B and arrival of ASEAN Economic Community
Southeast Asia’s leading end-to-end ecommerce enabler confirmed the hire of Mitch Bittermann as their Group Chief Logistics Officer. Mitch joins aCommerce from arvato, where he was the General Manager for the Hong Kong branch and Head of arvato’s APAC Solution and Design team. As the Group CLO, Mitch will build and lead aCommerce cross-border initiatives to fulfill the increasing demand for easy intra-regional transactions in Southeast Asia as well as cross-border logistics with US, Europe and particularly, China. Mitch joins aCommerce at a time when eyes are increasingly on the region for both investment and ecommerce.
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“I’m excited to join the team at aCommerce. They’ve been at the forefront of driving ecommerce innovation in the region and are closely followed by many in the logistics space. The opportunity for cross-border in Southeast Asia is huge, with China outbound cross-border volume rapidly increasing as well as the upcoming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) integration, the region will be a launchpad for new innovative distribution solutions,” said Mitch Bittermann, aCommerce Group CLO. |
With the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) just around the corner, intra-regional cross-border transaction volume is expected to increase rapidly as it will open borders and stimulate trade and commerce across Southeast Asia through better logistics capabilities.
Companies like Amazon and London-based ASOS already count Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia as their fastest growing markets in Asia. Only last year, Amazon-owned Shopbop held a successful cross-border Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaign in partnership with Line and aCommerce. AEC will be a force-multiplier for this trend and allow more companies to extend their campaigns to the overseas audience.
“With ecommerce in Southeast Asia heating up and the region being strategically positioned next to China, the world’s manufacturing and sourcing hub, there’s been a rapid increase in demand for cross-border logistics services across our client base,” said Paul Srivorakul, aCommerce Group CEO. “Having Mitch’s expertise in international logistics, we will be building out our next generation of cross-border logistics products and services to continue accelerating ecommerce in Southeast Asia.”
Mitch helped set up Arvato’s cross-border operations in Singapore and Hong Kong serving customers in Asia and globally. With more than 10 years at Arvato, Mitch has worked on a multitude of international logistics projects including building up customer service operations in Canada, setting up distribution centers in Thailand and Europe and driving global freight optimization projects.
En route to Series B fundraising, aCommerce has been strengthening its management team with recent additions of a new CEO and COO for Indonesia. Snorre Larstad (CEO) and Hadi Kuncoro (COO) joined aCommerce earlier last month to drive the next phase of growth of aCommerce Indonesia, which recently became aCommerce’s biggest regional operation in Southeast Asia surpassing Thailand and Philippines with 360 employees.
“With our long term mission to make ecommerce easy in Southeast Asia, we’ve tackled the in-country logistics bottlenecks with our fulfilment centers, last-mile delivery solutions, and cash-on-delivery platform across Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Our next goal is to make intra-regional transactions as easy as possible too,” said Peter Kopitz, aCommerce Group COO.