Ken Kralick is a globally recognized expert in eCommerce strategy, digital transformation, and leadership. With experience at luxury and mainstream brands like Moët Hennessy, PUMA Group, and now as CEO of QualiBooth, he has built a reputation for driving innovation in the digital commerce space.
As a keynote speaker on the second day of the Balkan eCommerce Summit 2025, he will share insights on digital commerce, leadership adaptability, and accessibility-driven growth.
In this interview, Ken discusses overlooked challenges in eCommerce, the role of cultural adaptability in leadership, and why digital accessibility is more than just compliance – it’s a growth opportunity.
What is a challenging or very technical but essential topic that every eCommerce entrepreneur must understand and master to achieve success? How do you approach teaching it effectively?
I think there are 2 items that are overlooked by new eCommerce entrepreneurs and new eCommerce managers. First is attribution and the second is content management. There are hundreds of other things that are important – possibly even critically important – but most of those you can read about or intuit. But attribution and your content management process are unique to your business.
So, first – attribution – We’ve been talking about attribution for years so this shouldn’t be a new topic for anyone so I will cut through a lot of the mystery. One of the first things that I did when consulting for PUMA in 2011 was to understand and document a SIMPLE attribution model for their eCommerce digital marketing. Simple is key.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter if it’s perfect. First touch, last touch, weighted, multi-touch, linear, time decay… Honestly – there’s a model for every consultant in the room. They’re all correct and incorrect, but what’s important is that you can learn it, teach it to others, and keep track of it. It has to be simple enough that you can document it. What you need is one that you can understand. One that takes all of your actions into account. Then – use it. Actually use it. (Then go out and delete all the zombie marketing tags confusing the numbers.)
Second is content management – Getting content on your website is the lifeblood of your business and it’s the one that most eCommerce managers know nothing about. It should be a criminal offense if you rely on content but you don’t know how to manage it yourself with the tools you have in your business.
Your content is the face of your brand. You should know how it works so that you know how your team is getting on. On your first day, ask to sit with your content managers to learn their job. Then temper your requests with them in the months to come.
What’s a leadership belief you once held strongly but later realized was wrong? What made you realize it?
The easiest way to evolve in your belief system is to move to a new country and lead a team in that new place. This will teach you to flex in ways you never imagined prior to that move. It will obliterate all the leadership beliefs you gained in your former country.
Funny story – I’ve learned to be a big believer in cultural coaching. I happily pay for coaches to guide me through the nuances of difference between what I “am” and those I might encounter. The hope is that I can be flexible enough on enough encounters to build a bridge to the various around me.That being said, I was speaking to this coach about a culture I was working with and I was very proudly listing the countries where I had great success. I said, “this one and that one. And this other one…”
He looked me right in the eye and said, “That’s great! But none of that will work with this one.”
So, the answer to your question is this – travel. As much as you are able. Meet people. Try your hardest.
I honestly thought that I could understand cultures over the phone, video conference, and email. I was wrong. You need to get out there and meet the people you work with and do this on their home turf. Once you learn about other cultures and have some success, the key is to avoid getting too proud of yourself when the dynamic works well. And when it flops, don’t be too hard on yourself. There will be other days where the opposite is true. Do your best and learn from the amazing people that you encounter.
Your work at QualiBooth focuses on digital accessibility. What’s the most critical mistake companies make in designing for accessibility, and how do you convince them that it’s actually a growth opportunity?
It’s disappointing to say that most companies never consider digital accessibility in their designs. It’s just not part of their conscious thought when they are designing the digital touchpoints. The first step is to help them understand what digital accessibility is – then we can move down the path to delivering.
In reality, accessibility helps all users. Please take a look at the “Inclusive 101 Guidebook” from Microsoft. I need to give them a loud shoutout because the Microsoft Inclusive Design team is really producing some great content. (https://inclusive.microsoft.design/tools-and-activities/Inclusive101Guidebook.pdf)
Unfortunately, their content (like our content) isn’t being put into practice at enough companies. I’m not sure why other than a lack of awareness. I’m sensing real confusion around who digital accessibility can benefit. Questions like this one of “real-world examples” are quite common.
Here’s 3 real-world examples that need to be solved for:
- A prominent lodging engine – as of today, you cannot use the search tool with the keyboard only. (I.e. once you click into the search area, you cannot stay on the keyboard to tab between fields. You must switch to a mouse (touchpad) to finish the search.) The same is true of the checkout pages. Think of the friction that this introduces for all of us, not to mention people who want to use this website using their adaptive tools.
- A national airline in Europe. Their site cannot be used by the keyboard without use of a pointer. Once again, you start checking out with the keyboard and switch back & forth from keyboard to mouse & back. It’s friction. There will be drop-off.
- Google Lighthouse includes accessibility markers in their scoring. We can infer that they find accessibility to be important to their conversion rate metrics.
And all of this is to say that digital accessibility is for all users. Taking a true user-first approach to your designs will fix a lot. This will take you a long way toward true digital accessibility.
How do we get there? Managers must be aware that this is important. Then hold your designers accountable.
Having experience with both luxury and mainstream consumer brands, what key differences have you observed in their eCommerce strategies and approaches?
This is a big question. Possibly one for a panel discussion!
For context, I was directly employed by 1 mainstream consumer brand and by 1 portfolio of luxury brands. I’ve also been the consultant or agency of record for literally dozens of other brands than these two.
The most glaring difference is the way the two approach the market.
I find that mainstream consumer brands are seeking visibility to their product on their D2C channels to gain margin, loyalty, and CLV. One could argue that there is also a slightly democratized approach to their product availability so that they can reach the broadest market possible. They may or may not play games with D2C exclusivity, pricing, etc. to achieve these KPIs.
Luxury online has quite a different approach. Covid examples aside, true luxury houses are showcasing their designs to reach a broad market for visibility. This leads to conversion in store for their core customers who generally seek the high-touch service that luxury stores provide. There is also a huge opportunity for luxury brands to convert aspirational customers online via the product in the lower tiers.
The merchandising effort for luxury brands to do this correctly is quite an effort. They must highlight the product in the higher echelons and point to exclusives, meanwhile withholding exclusives for their good customers. On the other hand, they often have a requirement to drive volumes via aspirational products without becoming mass-market. This takes a good merchandising mind to get it right.
If we fast-forward to 2030, in your opinion, how will AI and automation have changed the way we shop online?
I’ve answered this one several times in the past 6 months and each time it has caused some alarm. So hold on to your hat – In 2030, I don’t believe that online shopping will exist as it does today. I think we will see 2 major shifts due to AI.
First – no more building websites as we do today. You can already feed imagery to Stable Diffusion to design a home page, product listing page, and product detail page. Then other tools to develop the code into platforms (namely Shopify today). The drop in senior engineering roles is well documented due to this situation.
Second – AI will finally allow us to load our existing purchases into an agent and then have it perform some shopping tasks around that collection. The easy element will be to fill in the blanks (out of eggs, your milk has expired, or “I am missing blue shoes to go with that suit”). The more interesting use case is when someone <finally> invents an engine that will take your existing purchases and then build some experiences to extend that collection. In other words, AI can learn what you have and learn what you like to deliver a brand-agnostic shopping experience online. A discovery tour of online shopping much like walking the high street in physical retail.
That’s where things get exciting again.
If you had a recipe for building a future-proof eCommerce business, what key AI-driven, operational, and customer experience ingredients would be essential for long-term success?
Structured, accessible, and available content.
In a PIM. (product information management)
As I started describing in the previous question (how AI changes us to 2030) – the only way to future proof for what is coming is by getting your data house in order.
For eCommerce, make sure that you have a good content process with a full-360 view of the product from ideation, prototyping, development, and marketing. Get it all in a PIM so that you can pipe it out to the new delivery systems that are on the market.
If your content is in a spreadsheet or native to your eCommerce platform… you’re late.
Ken Kralick’s expertise in digital accessibility, eCommerce strategy, and leadership across cultures offers a fresh perspective on the evolving digital landscape. His deep understanding of attribution, content management, and cultural adaptability makes him a valuable voice in shaping the future of online business.
Want to gain insights from experts like Ken? Join us at Balkan eCommerce Summit 2025 and connect with industry leaders driving innovation in eCommerce.