Lub ten Napel

As co-founder and CIO of New Black, I'm driven by a deep-rooted curiosity for new technology, whether it's software or hardware. I love diving fully into new subject matter, understanding it at its core, and projecting that knowledge forward at scale. Mediocrity is never enough for me: I never accept an easy answer and keep pushing until we reach the best possible result. My drive as CIO is simple: turning creativity into the best of the best.

Key Achievements

Architected a technology-agnostic infrastructure within the EVA platform, allowing essential components to be replaced by newer technologies whenever better alternatives become available, creating a platform that can outgrow its own legacy.
Designed EVA Watchtower, a hybrid cloud architecture that keeps stores running locally even when the cloud is unreachable.
Brought hands-on experience running retail IT departments into New Black, grounding technical decisions in real business needs from the retail floor.
Led, together with his team, the global scaling of a high-performance, enterprise-grade retail system.

My Vision

I believe the future of retail technology lies in building platforms that can outgrow their own legacy, systems designed from the ground up to evolve rather than calcify. Technology-agnostic thinking is essential: the moment a better alternative exists, the platform should be able to adopt it. At the same time, I strongly believe that with the right direction and ideas, autonomy and execution power should sit with the team and the individual. The best results come from people who are trusted to run with a vision, not micromanaged toward it.

Let's Connect

If you share my passion for enterprise-sized retail, software architecture, and scaling technology to meet the demands of global brands, let's connect. Together, we can build platforms that outgrow their own legacy.