João CostaBased in
Lisbon, Portugal

Head of Ecommerce& Digital Growth.

I build consumer businesses inside companies that weren't designed for them.

Portrait of João Costa

João CostaHead of Ecommerce & Digital Growth

About

I build consumer ecommerce businesses inside companies that weren't designed for them. For the past four years I've led Haworth's global B2C operation — a business I started from zero that now spans Europe, India, Southeast Asia, Australia and China across owned storefronts and marketplaces, with its own team, supply chain and operational backbone.

I've been doing this since ecommerce was young in Portugal. I was commercial lead at the 2013 launch of Worten's online platform — when digital was under 2% of the chain's sales — and the promotional operating model I helped design kept running for years after I left, as the channel climbed to become Worten's top-selling "store". In between, I operated at scale — €140M+ category P&L at Staples Europe, the commercial agenda of FNAC's ecommerce — and co-founded three ventures along the way.

I own the P&L, I lead the team, and I still build things myself. I'm most useful where strategy and execution have to be the same person.

Experience

2022

Head of B2C Ecommerce & Digital Marketing

Haworth — High-End Office Furniture (International B2C)

— Present · Europe & Asia

Built and scaled Haworth's global direct-to-consumer ecommerce business across Europe, India, Southeast Asia, Australia and China, owning end-to-end digital strategy, commercial performance and execution.

  • Launched Haworth's B2C ecommerce business from zero: operating model, digital architecture, and go-to-market across Europe, India, Southeast Asia, Australia and China.
  • Migrated from a legacy B2B platform to a Shopify-based DTC ecosystem built for international scale.
  • Launched and scaled marketplace channels — Amazon Europe, Lazada, and Shopee (Singapore & Malaysia) — alongside owned storefronts.
  • Implemented Brightpearl as an independent ERP backbone for B2C order management, inventory, and operations.
  • Hired and built an international team of 8 across ecommerce operations, digital marketing, and content, owning a $5M annual revenue portfolio.
2019

Co-Founder · Digital Marketing & Ecommerce Consultant

Oh My Digital — Digital Strategy Agency

— · Portugal (Operational role until 2023 | Partner thereafter)

Co-founded a digital agency focused on ecommerce and performance marketing, supporting brands in defining and executing scalable digital growth strategies.

  • Designed and executed end-to-end digital marketing strategies across paid media, acquisition funnels, content and conversion optimisation.
  • Advised partners on ecommerce architecture, platform selection and go-to-market strategy.
  • Worked closely with founders and leadership teams to translate business objectives into measurable digital outcomes.
2019

Head of Digital

TIMWE

— · Portugal

Led digital performance strategy within a fast-paced, international mobile services environment, managing digital investment across multiple markets.

  • Owned paid media strategy and budget across Google and Meta for multiple international markets.
  • Managed digital campaign execution, segmentation and optimisation across international markets.
  • Supported commercial teams in the development of digital-led commercial proposals for global clients.
2017

Ecommerce Manager – Commercial Lead (Ecommerce)

FNAC Portugal

— · Portugal

Orchestrated the overall commercial strategy for FNAC's ecommerce platform, ensuring alignment across business units, digital marketing, UX and content teams.

  • Led the ecommerce commercial agenda across business units, digital marketing, UX, and content teams through a period in which online revenue grew from ~€40M to ~€55–60M (c. 11% to c. 13% of FNAC Portugal turnover, 2017–2019).
  • Owned the online commercial and promotional calendar, aligned with FNAC's digital communication plan, with marketplace consolidation and Click & Collect adoption as the principal growth levers.
  • Improved the customer journey from homepage to checkout through conversion optimisation initiatives.
  • Managed traffic, conversion, basket size, and revenue KPIs against business targets.
2015

Omnichannel Merchant / Business Unit Manager – Technology & Business Machines

Staples Europe

— · Portugal

Led omnichannel commercial strategy for Technology and Business Machines categories across European markets.

  • Owned €140M+ annual P&L across multiple European countries, with responsibility for pricing, promotions and profitability.
  • Managed and led local Category Managers across all European Staples markets, within a complex matrix organisation.
  • Defined and executed pan-European category strategies to drive sales growth and margin improvement.
  • Led vendor negotiations, assortment strategy and promotional planning at European level.
2012

Ecommerce Manager / Omnichannel Project Manager

Worten (Sonae Group)

— · Portugal

  • Commercial lead for ecommerce at the 2013 launch of Worten's online platform: assortment, pricing, and promotional strategy — at a time when digital was under 2% of the chain's sales.
  • During my tenure, the online channel entered Worten's top 10 stores by sales volume; by 2016 it had become the chain's top-selling "store".
  • Led the promotional stream of Worten's omnichannel transformation, designing an operating model that ran for years after my tenure.
2008

Category Manager / Stock Manager – Consumer Electronics & IT Hardware

Worten (Sonae Group)

— · Portugal

  • Managed category and stock strategy for Consumer Electronics and IT Hardware, overseeing combined revenues of up to €70M annually.
  • Developed strong analytical, forecasting and vendor negotiation capabilities within a high-volume retail environment.

Selected work

Building a consumer business inside a B2B manufacturer

Haworth is a century-old contract furniture manufacturer. In 2022 it had no consumer muscle outside the Americas — no storefronts, no fulfilment for single-unit orders, no consumer pricing, no team.

The hard part wasn't the storefront. To make a single sale work, everything had to exist at once: Shopify architecture across markets, consumer-grade packaging engineered for parcel shipping, fulfilment and returns flows, pricing governance that didn't break the B2B dealer channel, marketplace operations on Amazon, Lazada and Shopee — and a team of 8, hired from scratch, to run it.

Four years on, it's a $5M annual portfolio across 10+ markets in Europe and Asia — built from a standing start to $5M within three years, and back to double-digit growth in 2026.

Giving B2C its own operational backbone

A consumer business running on enterprise B2B systems inherits enterprise constraints: order flows, inventory logic, and release cycles designed for dealers shipping truckloads, not customers buying one chair.

I made the case for operational independence and implemented Brightpearl as a standalone ERP for B2C — order management, inventory visibility, and fulfilment control decoupled from the corporate stack, integrated with Shopify across every market.

It's the least visible work I've done at Haworth and some of the most consequential: it's what lets a small team run a multi-market consumer operation inside a large manufacturer.

Now

How I work

I still build. Right now that means AI-powered tooling for paid media intelligence and operations — built hands-on with Claude Code and n8n — because I think leaders who stop touching the work lose the ability to judge it. My default mode is the same at every scale: understand the commercial problem, design the system, ship it, measure it.

SLNT

With my partner Miguel, I'm building SLNT — a growth intelligence studio providing fractional commercial leadership to mid-market D2C brands. It's the consulting layer on top of everything above: the patterns from building and operating these businesses, applied to brands that need senior commercial thinking without a full-time hire.

The pattern

SLNT is the third venture I've co-founded alongside corporate roles. In 2018 it was TeamSportz, a sports tech platform where I built the early brand and digital presence — I stepped away when it scaled and I had to choose between it and Oh My Digital, the ecommerce agency I co-founded in 2019 and ran operationally until 2023. I build things on the side. It's not a phase.

What I actually do

Ecommerce P&L ownership and commercial strategy. Platform architecture and migration — Shopify, ERP (Brightpearl), marketplace integrations. Paid media across Google and Meta, from strategy to hands-in-the-account. CRO, pricing, promotions, supply chain and packaging for consumer fulfilment. Hiring and leading small international teams. And increasingly: building AI-assisted tooling for the operational layer of all of the above.

Education

Degree in Marketing
Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais – Politécnico de Setúbal

Languages —Portuguese: Native · English: Full Professional Proficiency · Spanish: Professional Working Proficiency