ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., April 25, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rich Staten, former Director of Strategic Planning at The Coca-Cola Company, has joined SKUxchange as Vice President of Brand & CPG Beverage. In this role, he will lead the development of new and innovative Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) beverage strategies to engage consumers.
SKUxchange is a global blockchain technology company based in the Greater Tampa Bay Area that provides a “Single Source of Truth” for brands, retailers, media and service providers to eliminate fraud and double-spend, while creating transparency and proof of ROI with near real-time coupon reconciliation and settlement, all with a frictionless user interaction.
For over 22-years, Mr. Staten held senior leadership roles in marketing, brand innovation, technology applications, and business development at Coca-Cola. Prior to Coca-Cola, he was a Senior Consultant at Deloitte. In these roles, Mr. Staten developed extensive experience in both retail and foodservice, including: supermarkets, mass merchants, convenience, drug, club, value, ecommerce, restaurants, sports, hospitability, leisure, and strategic marketing partner assets.
With this extensive experience, his focus at SKUxchange will be leading brand-direct CPG marketing and promotional offers for the convenience store industry – as this is a key distribution vertical for the company.
“I’m extremely excited to partner with a fast-paced, growing company, and its leadership team that is delivering cutting-edge blockchain technology to an industry that is desperate for relevance, transparency, and efficiency in interacting with retail shoppers,” Staten said.
Launch of New Signature Product
The company recently announced the launch of its signature product, SKUx, a blockchain-based enterprise level solution for the promotional offer industry. It works directly with brands, retailers, media, and service providers to help eliminate fraud while creating transparency and proof of ROI.
By using a simple API, partners are able to send offers data into a shared blockchain database. This data is then serialized and normalized through SKUx’s proprietary technology into a common format, providing streamlined access for each partner and the network as a whole. Most importantly, it does not require partners to change existing internal processes when issuing coupons and offers. This has previously been a major hurdle when developing a widespread and adoptable solution.
“CPG Brands traditionally have struggled to effectively drive offers in the C-Store space,” Staten said. “With over 150,000 convenience store locations in the US alone, the ubiquity of smartphones, the emergence of the connected car, and the strategic alliances that SKUxchange is forming, the marketing opportunity from this powerful technology is enormous.”
The company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, James Sampey, added:
“We are honored to be working with a seasoned veteran like Rich. SKUxchange is highly confident he will add tremendous value to the company and its shareholders as we deploy our solution in the convenience store market.”
About SKUxchange
SKUxchange is empowering brands in an on-demand and convenience-driven economy.
SKUx technology offers near real-time reconciliation and settlement while leveraging the power of blockchain to improve security, transparency and efficiency of promotional offers. The company has been quietly collaborating with industry thought leaders and has assembled key distribution partnerships that will enable SKUxchange to scale quickly as volume increases.
Please visit www.skux.io to learn more.
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