Retailers and eCommerce Brands
Retail technology never gets a quiet hour. The site processes offline updates and backups overnight, stores open in the morning to overnight orders, and fulfillment runs through the weekend. Every change goes in while revenue is moving through it.
Many retailers do not need a full-time CIO or CTO. They need a senior technologist who can partner with their executive team and tell the agency, the host, and the processor what to do, and who is not selling or representing any of them. That is a fractional CIO or CTO. The first call settles which seat, if any, you need.
What we hear from retailers
"The site fell over during a sale. The agency blamed hosting. Hosting blamed the code."
We direct your agency, host, and an independent testing partner until the constraint has a name, agree a change freeze with merchandising, and name who decides on your biggest days. After peak, we find what held and what barely held.
"Our board asked if someone could talk their way past our help desk."
The 2025 attacks on UK retailers are widely reported to have started that way. We review how your help desk verifies callers and approves password and MFA resets, commission an independent call test, hold the provider to the fixes, and estimate what an outage costs per day.
"The vendor says replatforming, and its AI features, will fix conversion."
Much of what gets blamed on the platform lives in product data, integrations, or page weight, and AI shopping agents read the same data and inventory. We separate what a new platform would change from what would follow you onto it, tested against your own catalog. How we weigh a platform against point tools.
"Our processor sent a PCI inquiry. The agency says we're fine."
Under PCI DSS v4.0, payment-page script controls (requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1) have applied since March 31, 2025. The revised SAQ A drops them only if you can confirm you completely outsource to validated and compliant third parties. We are not a QSA and sign nothing. We validate your scope, inventory, and provider confirmations in order so your attestation holds up. If SAQ A doesn’t apply we work with you to ensure the right script authorizations and controls are in place to hold up to the standard.
How it starts
The simplest first step is a Technology Assessment: an independent read of your systems, spend, and risk against where the business is going. You get a position, not an inventory: what is fine, what is fragile, and what needs a decision this year. Then we hand back, or one senior principal holds the seat on retainer, with a bench behind them.
We sell no software, no managed services, and no remediation hours, and we take no referral fees, so no vendor interest sits behind the advice.
Talk to a founding partner.
Send last peak's incident, the board's security question, the platform proposal, or the processor's PCI letter. A founding partner will tell you whether an Assessment, a seat, or nothing at all is the right next step.
Contact us