Reporter staff
Mercer Island High School graduate and MIHS athletic Hall of Famer in boys’ swimming, Andy Lloyd, was recently appointed to the post of chief executive officer at Fluid, Inc., developers.
“Andy has been instrumental to Fluid’s growth ever since he joined the company — he has a unique understanding of the needs of the online retailer and a proven ability to deliver the best combination of software and services to meet those needs,” said Roger Lang, chairman of Fluid, Inc. “As our new CEO, he’s already putting those capabilities to work to help our retail customers manage their online presences more strategically and achieve dramatically greater conversion rates and better bottom-line performance.”
Lloyd, who has previously served as Fluid’s vice president of marketing and as chief operations officer, will be responsible for driving the company’s continued growth and innovation both in online retail solutions and agency services.
After beginning his career at desktop video conferencing software innovator Avistar, Inc., Lloyd became part of a team that founded Internet appliance pioneer Diba, Inc., which was acquired by Sun (SUNW) in 1997. After Diba, Lloyd became director of Marketing with Kintana, later acquired by Mercury Interactive for more than $200 million and now part of Hewlett Packard (HP). Lloyd’s initial foray into consumer-facing Software as a Service (SaaS) was as the founder and CEO of Chariteam, a hosted solution provider for non-profit organizations (later acquired by Kintera (KNTA)).
Before software, it was swimming for Lloyd. Captain of the Stanford swim team in the early ‘90’s, Lloyd led the Cardinal swimmers to an NCAA championship, where they set records for the largest margin of victory and the highest point total in NCAA history. He was ranked among the top 25 swimmers in the world in 1991, and competed in the Olympic trials in 1988 and 1992. In February of this year, he was installed in the Washington Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Lloyd’s 1988 high school record for the 200 meter Individual Medley still stands.
“Fluid has great customers and an even greater opportunity – I can’t imagine a more exciting place to be, or a better team to be working with,” said Lloyd. “We rescue online retailers from the terrible disconnect between the transaction software developer and the ‘beautiful website’ developer - one doesn’t fully understand brand and customer experience, and the other doesn’t really understand software. We allow marketers to apply enterprise and third-party data, along with their own sound judgment, to optimize product presentation.”
