Chrono24 Taps Zalando Executive as Next CEO
Carsten Keller will take over from co-CEOs Tim Stracke and Holger Felgner on Jan. 1 with a mandate to push product innovation and growth.
PARIS — Chrono24 has appointed Carsten Keller as its next chief executive officer.
The executive will join the watch resale platform on Jan. 1, succeeding current co-CEOs Tim Stracke and Holger Felgner, who will remain key shareholders and members of the board of the 20-year-old company, with Stracke becoming chairman of the board.
Keller's “expertise in the luxury industry and fast-paced online marketplaces and leadership experience of a publicly traded company [made] him a one-in-a-million candidate to unlock the next chapter for Chrono24,” Stracke said.
Lauding the track record of his predecessors, Keller said “a good part of [his] job will be to strengthen our ability to focus, innovate and accelerate — making Chrono24 the home for every watch enthusiast.”
Keller is currently vice president of direct-to-consumer at Zalando, a role which he took up in 2016, and is also the founder and CEO of the retailer's Connected Retail venture, which enabled more than 7,500 offline retailers to sell goods online. He is also a member of the supervisory board of online trade platform LeNewBlack and sits on the advisory board of the World Retail Congress, which will hold its next edition in Paris.
Prior to joining Zalando, Keller spent more than a decade at McKinsey & Company in various leadership positions, advising in the fashion and luxury sector.
Keller's appointment comes as the secondary luxury watch market is slowing down. During the pandemic, high demand fanned prices on sought-after models from the likes of Patek Philippe, Rolex and Audemars Piguet. Subsequent flooding of the market by would-be sellers and early 2022's crypto crash burst the bubble.
In January, Chrono24 cut 65 jobs, which Stracke described as “an important adjustment on the structure on [its] personnel, hiring more in Asia but also reducing workforce” to adjust to current economic realities.
A 2021 Series C round raised more than 100 million euros, or $118 million, scoring a $1 billion valuation for Chrono24. Led by private equity firm General Atlantic, the fundraising saw the arrival of investors including LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton chief executive officer Bernard Arnault's Aglaé Ventures, Insight Partners and Sprints Capital. It also counts Cristiano Ronaldo among investors.
Based in Karlsruhe, Germany,
Chrono24 was founded in 2003 as a peerto-peer marketplace and has gained scale as it has evolved. The marketplace carries about 530,000 watches from more than 35,000 professional and private sellers, attracting more than 9 million unique visitors a month.