Ryan Gnesin grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa and earned a Bachelor of Commerce at The University of New South Wales, majoring in finance and economics. After university, Ryan moved to Switzerland where he worked as a logistics manager for the commodities trading giant, Glencore. In 2008, Glencore promoted Ryan to Junior Trader and relocated him to Jakarta, Indonesia, where he spent the next eight years trading OTC physical commodities, eventually becoming Head Trader and President of a $500 million trading office. In 2016, Ryan moved to New York City to pursue his dream of being an entrepreneur and became fascinated with the growth potential of Amazon’s third-party marketplace. Ryan began experimenting with retail and online arbitrage. In 2017, Ryan and his Co-founder, James Stein, grew to be one of the fast growing stores on Amazon where they primarily traded closeout branded footwear and apparel. In 2019 they were joined by Chief M&A Officer, Jeremy Bell, who assisted in the start of acquiring Amazon third party brands. Today, Elevate Brands is a leading Amazon Aggregator and accelerator with a global team of brand builders, backed by some of the world’s most esteemed investment institutions.