MC
An E-commerce Strategist, based in Manchester.

Melvyn Cross

I spent six years building an e-commerce storefront from nothing into a €1,600,000 per year European e-commerce business.

Now, at Marca Media, I help partner brands convert more visitors and protect their margins.

Melvyn Cross
◎ Add portrait.jpg to /img/
Scroll ↓
The result, before the story Nov 2020 → Sept 2026
€ 0
Average annual revenue of planetsoarshop.com, a photovoltaic e-commerce I built and ran as the sole e-commerce lead.
Chapter I The Beginning

November 2020.

No storefront. No catalogue. No suppliers. A company that wanted to sell solar online and didn't yet know how.

I joined Planet Soar as their e-commerce lead. Within months I had a temporary contract turn into an apprenticeship, and an apprenticeship turn into the build of planetsoarshop.com. What started as a side channel became the company's commercial engine.

Six years later, the online channel accounts for 60% of revenue and sources 100% of inbound demand. It is a story about scale, but also about protecting what works while everything around it changes.

Chapter II

What I built.

A Shopify storefront with 544 active SKUs at peak, served by nine European suppliers, supported by a custom shipping engine, and run by a team of seven.

0 SKUs at catalogue peak

Panels, batteries, inverters, EV chargers, accessories. Five categories, each with their own logistics constraints.

0 European suppliers onboarded

ENECSOL, VOLTANEO, KRANNICH, BAYWARE, ESTG, POWR CONNECT, ALLIANTZ, plus two irregular partners in Switzerland and Italy.

0 Shipping profiles, hand-built

The problem nobody wanted to solve: per-item shipping across nine suppliers with no carrier API. I built an internal cost model with ~90% accuracy.

0 Daily organic impressions at peak

~500 daily clicks, 2.5% CTR. All organic SEO. Paid was reserved for product launches and peak seasons only.

0 People on the team

Five sales representatives, one e-commerce assistant, plus oversight of the accounting function. KPIs, reporting cadence, process design.

0 Revenue through the online channel

Quotation funnel above €7,000. Direct conversion below. A deliberate split for a high-AOV catalogue, not a workaround.

Chapter III

Two deals I closed.

01 Lille → Miami
€ 20,485

Sunpowered Yachts

120 SunPower panels, shipped internationally from France to Miami, Florida. End-to-end ownership of the deal: quotation, negotiation, logistics, shipping organisation.

02 Lille → France
€ 21,256

EURL FCE28

Domestic enterprise account. A different funnel: longer cycle, technical discussion, supplier coordination. Same outcome.

Chapter IV Oct 17 — Nov 1, 2025

A two-week mission to Southern Africa.

Planet Soar was bidding on a European Union FASEP public-sector contract in Southern Africa. The bid needed local partners on the ground.

I flew to Gaborone and Johannesburg. Two weeks of meetings, site visits, partnership conversations. By the end, we had secured Solar Power Kgalagadi Resources Development Co. as the local partner underpinning the bid.

It is the part of the job that is rarely on the e-commerce manager's brief. I think that's why it matters.

Chapter V

What I bring.

The Stack

  • Shopify (admin, theme, app stack)
  • GA4 (custom events, funnels)
  • Search Console & Merchant Center
  • Google Ads (internalised from agency)
  • Semrush & Mailchimp
  • Doofinder, Klarna-ready funnels

The Range

  • B2B & B2C
  • Catalogue & merchandising
  • Supplier & logistics ops
  • Conversion & UX design
  • SEO & SEA
  • Team management (up to 7)

The Edges

  • Bilingual EN native / FR C2
  • Setswana (C2)
  • British citizen, UK-based
  • RGPD / GDPR fluent
  • International business dev
  • MSc Brand & e-Business (2026)

What people say

Trusted by those who've seen it.

Melvyn joined us as an apprentice and over four years became the person running our entire e-commerce operation. He built the storefront, managed our supplier relationships, led our campaigns, and took revenue to €1.6 million. I rarely say this, but he would be an immediate asset to any team in Europe.

Paul Boulch

CEO @ Planet Soar Shop

We approached Planet Soar about a commercial partnership and Melvyn handled the entire process. Methodical, sharp on margins, and clearly understood both sides of the deal. He closed it in three meetings — no unnecessary back and forth.

Sophie Marchand

Head of Digital @ Intersport France

I've reviewed a lot of e-commerce operations at his level. The breadth is rare — SEO, paid media, CRO, logistics, supplier negotiation. Most people his age specialise in one of these. Melvyn runs the full stack and understands how each part connects to the others.

Thomas Renard

E-Commerce Consultant, Paris

If you've made it this far

Let's talk.

Email melvyn.cross05@gmail.com → LinkedIn /in/melvyn-cross →

Or send a message directly