BigCommerce Promotes Accenture Vet Travis Hess to CEO

Composable eCommerce platform BigCommerce has a new chief executive.

Travis Hess, who joined the company as president in May, has been appointed CEO, the company announced Wednesday (Oct. 2). He succeeds Brent Bellm, who had served as chief executive since 2015.

“It’s been an amazing journey at the helm of BigCommerce, and I’m incredibly proud of everything that we have accomplished as a company over the past nine plus years,” Bellm said in a news release.

“There is a tremendous opportunity ahead for BigCommerce, and Travis is the perfect leader to take the company through its next phase of growth. I look forward to helping the team as we make this transition.”

Hess joined BigCommerce following a series of senior leadership roles at places like Accenture, where he oversaw the company’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) commerce offering and go-to-market strategy, as well as its Shopify partnership.

Before that, he served as executive vice president at The Stable, an omnichannel commerce agency that was acquired by Accenture. He also worked as CEO of D2C/Shopify agency BVA, which was itself acquired by The Stable in 2021.

At BigCommerce, Hess will be charged with overseeing the company’s global operations and the overall health of the business.

“At BigCommerce, we have an incredible base of customers, employees and partners coupled with a robust and differentiating suite of capabilities,” Hess said. “The opportunity ahead of us is huge and nothing short of exciting.”

In other eCommerce news, PYMNTS earlier this week explored the way artificial intelligence (AI) tools are reshaping the commerce landscape. For example, AI-generated code provides benefits in terms of personalization and customer experience.

“AI-generated code can easily go through large datasets containing customer preferences and behavior quickly,” said Dhaval Gajjar, chief technology officer of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company Textdrip.

“For example, one can easily generate a product recommendation using AI by just tracking a user’s past purchases and browsing history.”

He added that the technology promises improved transaction security, as it can be used to generate adaptive security algorithms for real-time fraud detection and prevention.

“For example, an AI tool would give a code for a payment gateway so that a fraction of the transactions will automatically raise red flags based on the established fraud patterns, just like how PayPal or Stripe use AI for fraud detection,” Gajjar said.