About Me

My name is Dimitri Gatowski, I was born in Moscow/Russia in 1984, and my current residence is in Hannover/Germany. I’ve been working in ecommerce agencies since I’ve started studying Computer Science at the Leibniz University Hannover in 2004 and I have dedicated all of my time to ecommerce since I’ve got my Bachelor of Science degree in 2007. After six years of working as the CTO of Visions new media, a web agency which was one of the first Magento partners and picked up Magento early at the end of 2007, I’ve been Director Technology at next commerce and since Dec 2012 Unit Director at Commerce Plus. I have gathered a lot of experience in implementing small to big ecommerce projects and growing an agency from 4 to 30 employees during my time at Visions. This included the implementation of shop platforms and the integration of them into the IT infrastructure for clients like Aria Technology, mydeco, Jack Wolfskin, Globetrotter, Gruner+Jahr, MDM, Hunkemoller, Autoteilemann, The Northface, Kipling and 7 For All Mankind.

My team at Visions has implemented a solution for Aria Technology just using plain PHP and some elements of Zend Framework. At this time, Magento didn’t exist. After 2 years of working with custom solutions we were searching for an ecommerce platform which is open source, flexible and easy to customize even at its core. We were considering to implement our own platform because we haven’t found anything on the market until we have discovered Magento end of 2007. The following projects were all implemented on Magento and we were able to grow our company from a very small team to the size of 30 employees.

Since February 2011 Visions belongs to next commerce and is a part of the SinnerSchrader Group. My new role as Director Technology was very similar to my position as CTO at Visions. In addition, my mission was to bundle all Magento experience and skill of the group and constantly enhance and increase it.

Nearly two years after the acquisition of Visions, next commerce was merged with spot media AG, also part of the SinnerSchrader Group, into the new brand Commerce Plus. Since December 2012, Commerce Plus is an agency focused on E-commerce. My role hasn’t changed much: as a technology focused unit director I am working on improving our technology skills and finding new approaches to solve complex challenges for our clients.