George Kassiteropoulos, Charismatic people leader with experience leading successful sales, marketing, procurement and delivery teams with 22 years experience

About

Charismatic people leader with experience leading successful sales, marketing, procurement and delivery teams with 22 years of international leadership experience, with passion for taking an innovative and successful business or a startup to the next level. Proven track record of creating top line growth, increasing effectiveness, downscaling cost, and working on complex, often global, large-scale, and time- critical projects. I thrive leading organizations, while ensuring strong engagement and focus of key deliverables. Experience of launching a startup and working along with visionary leaders to drive success in emerging markets. Recognized as an inspirational leader, strong negotiator , passionate people builder, strong problem solving by coworkers, vendors and customers. Excels at recruiting, retaining, leading, and mentoring talented employees as well as turning around underperforming teams in to top performing teams.

Experience

GrillEye®

May 2016 – Present

Athens Greece

CEO

Coordinated the creation and development of the GrillEye brand in 2016. The process lasted less than 3 months' time, including branding, registration in international registries, development of necessary marketing material and product portfolio. GrillEye managed to dethrone the market leader upon launching in more than 10 European countries and the US. Within 6 months from launch GrillEye managed to secure agreements with top retailers like Walmart, Costco, ACE Hardware, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Tractor Supply, Amazon etc. Within 2 years' time, guiding sales and product development I managed to lead the company in: • increasing revenue by 65% • expand its sales network in 23 countries including Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico and • get recognised by BBQ experts as a leading brand for grilling and BBQ, receiving awards from several tech magazines on innovation, performance and design. In the coming years I led the company into: • extending its sales network into 32 countries including: Canada, Saudi Arabia and the UAE • increasing revenue by 50% • securing product certifications and awards from USA NIST and IF Design respectively. • extending the product portfolio with 14 new entries • developing a proprietary thermistor certified by USA NIST for its lab-grade accuracy

G&C LTD

Jun 2010 – Present

Athens Greece

CEO

I joined G&C ltd a few months after the company has been founded, in order to implement its strategy of becoming a unique point of reference regarding the distribution of app- enabled devices in Europe. During my first year in the company, I have steered its strategy to reflect a European perspective, which resulted in G&C distribution to become the 1st company to import and sell an app-enabled device in Europe. Having a deep understanding of the Apple ecosystem that drives the boom of app-enabled devices, thanks to my IT background and early professional experience, I managed to lead G&C in establishing collaborations with known national and multinational companies in Greece & Cyprus,Germany, France,UK, BENELUX and Italy, in industries like Consumer Electronics (CE), Telecommunications, Consumer Sports, Household goods & appliances, and Do-it- Yourself(DIY). Apart from driving sales and marketing activities with personal engagement in all relevant projects I have the responsibility of developing the corporate commercial policy(pricing, returns etc.) and ensure it simple implementation for achieving planned profitability and growth. Notable Achievements: • 1st app-enabled product in Europe(import and sale). • Establishment of European-wide collaborations, based on strong relationships, with known companies in the Consumer Electronics (CE) and Telecommunications industry (indicatively Vodafone, T-Mobile, Media-Saturn group, Amazon, Conrad, Boulanger, FNAC, Vodafone, Wind, TIM, Orange). • Initiation of production of G&C branded devices in the IoT space. • Development from scratch, amidst the financial recession period in Greece(where the company is based),of a sales network and product portfolio for the company, resulting in doubling the company's year-over-year revenue for each consequent year.

Multirama SA

May 2009 – May 2010

Athens Greece

B2B Sales Director

Multirama SA , which later was renamed to Public SA, was one of the largest consumer electronics retailers in Greece with a network of more than 100 megastores across the country. As a B2B sales manager I have undertaken the responsibility of negotiating with existing and new suppliers, planning and evaluating marketing activities for sales development as well as training sales personnel in sales tactics. In the context of my duties, occasionally, I had to work closely with system integrators to present business customers with complete solutions. Notable Achievements: • Led and developed the team responsible for converting sales leads into qualified opportunities, implementing the company's solutions in tandem with tech-experts and external IT business partners. • Driven rapid revenue growth through enriching customer portfolio(increased retention and conversion) • Surpassed set sales quotas each consecutive year(achieved revenue increase by 35% within one year). • Formulated the strategy and processes necessary to scale output by maximizing success of high impact deals.

Multirama SA

Nov 2007 – May 2010

Athens Greece

Senior Product Manager

Apart from the retail operations, the company engages also in B2B sales, where I started working as a senior product manager with main responsibility of developing the B2B product mix and researching for new products and suppliers. When I was assigned the position, the company had no actual B2B offerings (B2B was an implicit extension of the B2C channel). Within 2 years time from my initial assignment, I have managed to create an high-performing B2B portfolio by extending collaborations with known companies like DELL, IBM, Lenovo, Toshiba, Lexmark, CISCO etc. Although the position was a cost center for the company, I managed to develop marketing initiatives by involving suppliers in sponsored advertisements that resulted in noteworthy, direct revenue for the company and consequently my promotion into B2B sales manager. Notable Achievements: • Orchestrated and directed appropriate sales, professional services and other support resources to successfully deliver IT solutions to key B2B clients (e.g. MTV, Nova, REAL FM, National Bank of Greece, Agricultural Bank of Greece etc.). • Identified and created a pipe line of strategic prospective partners and designed a structured and flexible approach for achieving increase in the adoption of the corporate B2B offerings.

GS1 Greece

Sep 2001 – Nov 2007

Kifisia Greece

IT Manager

Administration of corporate systems and network, software development and project management. Noticeable achievements: • Worked with and developed applications with JAVA,SQL Server as well as worked in troubleshooting methods and documented solutions • Planned the delivery for new project under the name "Starter KIT" and estimated feasibility performance analysis • Reduced the IT expenses by 50% , including new hardware, software, leased lines • Created Starter Kit using VBStudio,Excel. • Created part so four CRM using Omnis Studio and Omnis DB. • Designed and implemented PHP+HTML web applications, streamlining high-server traffic resource configuration and allocation • Created a set of servers using linux in order to control outbound traffic, speed up loading time by caching content and also a firewall for controlling Inbound and Outbound traffic.

Education

University of Kentucky

Sep 2016 – Sep 2018

MBA, International Trade / Business

Piraeus University of Applied Sciences

Sep 1996 – Sep 2001

Bachelor , Automation Engineering - Robotics AI

George Kassiteropoulos

Charismatic people leader with experience leading successful sales, marketing, procurement and delivery teams with 22 years experience

Skills

Languages