Decades of experience in furniture retail, ecommerce, and engineering
Blueport has built websites for furniture retailers since 2001. Our leadership team brings that experience to every retailer we work with.
Carl Prindle
CEO & Founder
Carl provides Blueport with strategic and product leadership as the company helps furniture retailers solve the unique challenges of selling online and build connected omnichannel shopping experiences.
Born and raised in Boston, Carl left the East Coast for Stanford University, where he graduated in 1990 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering with a Product Design concentration. While at Stanford and after graduation, Carl led product design efforts for Fortune 100 firms, and worked on projects including the design of the original Reebok Pump, the 1995 Ford Explorer, and a Dust Buster for Black and Decker. Carl holds 10 U.S. Patents.
Seeking to capture a modicum of return for his design efforts, Carl turned to the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he received his MBA in 1995. After Sloan, Carl joined McKinsey and Company, where he served as consultant and engagement manager for retail, technology, and growth strategy projects.
In 1999, Carl left McKinsey to serve as SVP of Product Development for Furniture.com, a pure play furniture ecommerce site. Responsible for the company's website design, merchandising, and direct marketing efforts, Carl drove online furniture sales to an annualized $84M in less than a year. Carl later led the effort to purchase the company's name and technology, applying lessons from the dot-com boom to the $100B brick and mortar furniture industry.
Today, Blueport is the cloud ecommerce platform built for furniture retail, used by furniture retailers across North America to run their omnichannel websites, give shoppers a better experience, and drive sales online and in their stores.
Marcos Elugardo
Senior Vice President, Engineering
Marcos brings over 25 years of software engineering experience and technological leadership to Blueport, where he is responsible for delivering effective and quality solutions. Marcos also focuses on building technology skill sets and supporting career growth across our development team.
Before joining Blueport in 2013, Marcos was Lead Software Engineer at Trizetto, a software solution provider for the healthcare industry. At Trizetto, Marcos led a mixed discipline team developing the next generation of their web service offering, while building complex enterprise systems, including one of Trizetto's first SaaS offerings.
Before Trizetto, Marcos led application development for numerous organizations, including Children's Hospital in Boston and CambridgeSoft in Cambridge. He has also worked with the Colorado Avalanche, the Boston Red Sox, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, where he led a redesign of mbta.com and built its widely used trip planner.
Marcos holds a degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and teaches Internet Programming at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. He has also taught computer skills and HTML to at-risk youth and members of Boston's Tibetan community. In his free time, Marcos supports his wife in her role as state representative for their district. When he is not doing the political stuff, you can find him playing board games with just about anyone.
Jesse Akre
Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Jesse Akre brings over 25 years of experience at the intersection of ecommerce, omnichannel retail, technology, and operations. As SVP of Sales & Marketing at Blueport, he leads the company's go-to-market strategy, aligning sales, marketing, and brand initiatives to connect more retailers with Blueport's purpose-built ecommerce platform for the home furnishings industry.
Jesse's career spans the full customer experience, from launching and scaling a home furnishings ecommerce company to leading global go-to-market strategies for SaaS, POS, PIM, data, and digital transformation across both supply and retail. He has held executive leadership roles across DTC, marketplaces, B2B, and brick-and-mortar environments, consistently driving growth, optimizing operations, and building high-performing teams.
A recognized omnichannel technology evangelist, Jesse is a frequent speaker at industry events and works closely with associations and thought leadership groups focused on the future of retail. He brings a strategic point of view shaped by firsthand experience and a deep understanding of what it takes to succeed in commerce today.
Jesse holds a Bachelor's degree in Business and Marketing from the University of Wisconsin and is based in Greenville, South Carolina. Outside the office, he enjoys fitness, time with friends, the beach, lake, mountains, industry events, and staying ahead of what's next in retail and digital innovation.
