Cape Town-based techpreneur and angel investor Eric Edelstein has been appointed the new chief executive officer (CEO) of e-commerce site Daddy’s Deals, with the goals of optimising and improving the site while innovating its business model.
Online deals platform Daddy’s Deals was started four years ago by Daddy’s World, which is also behind the Daddy.O co-working space, the Daddy’s Dragons business academy, the Daddy Long Legs Art Hotel, Old Mac Daddy, The Old Biscuit Mill and The Woodstock Exchange.
Edelstein has previously co-founded global search engine agency Clicks2Customers along with Gyft co-founder Vinny Lingham, while he is also non-executive chairman of EntrepreneurTraction, which looks to support high-growth startups in South Africa. He was also an angel investor in Yola, Springleap and Quirk.
He takes over from Geoff Love as CEO of Daddy’s Deals, which has become one of South Africa’s largest e-commerce companies over the last few years. Love will be reverting to the role of managing director (MD), with Edelstein telling Disrupt Africa the move made sense given Love’s strengths in the day-to-day running of the company.
“My strength is marketing, PR, product, development, design and user experience, together with vision and big picture thinking,” he said.
“There was a strong fit between us to take Daddy’s Deals to the next level. It was an easy decision for me to get involved.”
Edelstein said the new management team was looking to optimise and improve the site, while innovating on its business model and launching new businesses within the Daddy’s Deals group.
“Daddy’s Deals is very low key, and so the e-commerce gurus and journalists don’t all realise that it is probably in the top 10 largest e-commerce companies in South Africa. if not the top five. With the combination of mine and Geoff’s skills, together with our incredible team, we believe it’s going to be an exciting adventure ahead.”
Edelstein said he thrived on early-stage ventures, where he has the opportunity to create structures and processes which enable rapid company growth.
“With most of my previous ventures, this has been achieved, and there are fantastic CEOs running the companies,” he said.
“I’m still involved in some of my newer ventures, but they are not taking up a lot of my time, and as I’m so passionate about the growth prospect of the Daddy’s Deals group, I’ll be putting most of my 102 available hours each week into taking Daddy’s Deals to the next level.”
1 Comment
U have to be kidding me.