CassarCo Strategy & Analytics was founded by Ken Cassar, a 25 year veteran of retail industry analytics and strategy. Ken has provided pioneering insights to retailers and brands since the dawn of the Internet era. He began his career as a financial and marketing analyst for traditional retailers (Ames Department Stores and BMG Direct) but made the jump into the digital retailing realm in 1998, joining Jupiter Research as its Retail industry analyst. At Jupiter, Ken became a highly visible thought leader, helping retailers chart paths in the emerging e-commerce channel.
He then spent 10 years at Nielsen, eventually becoming Senior Vice President of Analytic Solutions. At Nielsen, Ken was able to work with, and learn from, the brightest minds in market research. He built analytic and commercial teams and played a pivotal role in developing new analytic techniques that leveraged Nielsen's vast array of measurement assets.
In 2013, Ken left the comfortable confines of the world's largest market research firm to play a leadership role at its smallest, a fledgling app company called Slice, which had just raised a Series B round of financing to monetize its data. Slice pioneered the practice of using access to consumers’ email inboxes to track online purchasing, ultimately acquiring most of the world’s big CPG firms, including P&G, Unilever, Mondelez and Clorox as clients. At Slice, which was acquired by Rakuten and rebranded Rakuten Intelligence, Ken built the first commercial and analytic teams, was a prominent contributor to the first products, and represented the company as its public face at conferences, on webinars, and through the Slice blog.
Today, Ken’s efforts are focused on building CassarCo into a force that will revolutionize the practice of market research, collaborating with retailers and non-traditional collectors of data relevant to retailers.
Ken lives in Guilford, Connecticut with his wife Cathy, their three children and two dogs. He aspires to someday become a slightly-below-average golfer.