Benjamin Crudo

At the dynamic cross-section of Retail and Technology, you’ll find Ben. An experienced retail-strategist and software engineer, Ben founded ecommerce agency Diff in 2011 to provide retailers with a better way to do business. Brought up in the world of retail, Ben worked in his family’s business since his youth, learning everything from managing the warehouse to selling on the shop floor, to forecasting purchasing and analyzing sales data. The experience gave him a deep understanding of how retail businesses work and what’s required to run them successfully. In the quest to master the technology of the retail business, Ben earned a Software Engineering Degree from Concordia University in Montreal — and it was here that he started to fuse his retail acumen with his technical expertise. Several years into running his own, highly successful ecommerce consultancy, he expanded his offering to form Diff. With 100+ employees, three offices worldwide and as one of the world’s top Shopify partners, Diff takes a full-service approach to ecommerce: planning, designing, building, integrating and optimizing e-commerce products to drive success online. While known for his technical expertise, Ben remains passionate about demystifying ecommerce for his customers: communicating clearly in the language of retailers to ensure cooperative and successful projects. Some of his notable clients include Boll&Branch, Popsockets, YM,inc., WWF, Ecobee, KITH, and Yellow Shoes. Ben takes great pride in the service, success and growth of the Diff team, and in the agency’s position as one of “Canada’s Great Places to Work.” He is passionate about human-focused leadership and has written frequently on this and other subjects for Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider and other leading publications. When he’s not building the winning stores of the future, he can be found cycling around Montreal looking for great new restaurants or mentoring his Concordia computer science student alumni.