Rolf Kater
CEO

Rolf is a big believer in the kind of innovative thinking that comes from starting with one of his favourite tools – a blank sheet of paper (or whiteboard). It means everything is up for discussion and analysis starts from scratch, which removes as many assumptions as possible. And from there, one can solve almost any customer problem.

Since the start of his career, Rolf has been all about solving problems – at first focusing on financial ones in financial controller roles and then moving into systems design. However after joining Coghlan in 1999, his passion for both solving customer problems and the fulfilment business grew. He became all about making hard things easier for Coghlan’s customers – through systems, process and staff training. That and saying ‘yes’ as often as possible.

During his almost 17 years at Coghlan, he’s seen the business change quite significantly moving from a direct marketing fulfilment house to ecommerce back-end systems warehousing and fulfilment. He’s also overseen Coghlan’s expansion into Auckland and Melbourne – two offices that have done immensely well in their own right.

Rolf and Kevin have grown a team of core Coghlan-ites who’ve been with the business well more than a decade – which means there’s almost nothing they haven’t seen, worked on or come across – of course customers keep throwing new things into the mix and that keeps it interesting. To this day, Rolf’s greatest delights come from enabling the business to service clientele from the smallest to the largest of orders – holding fast to the belief that no matter how small or great the order, all customers should be treated with the utmost respect and care.

Feel free to connect to Rolf on LinkedIn.

Junxi Guo
IT Development Manager

Prior to joining Coghlan, Junxi was as a systems developer in China – where one of the systems he put in place is still being used – almost seventeen years later! He then joined Coghlan in 2000, so it’s fitting that he considers one of his best assets his ‘loyalty’. He also describes himself as adaptable and open-minded – which given the speed of change in IT (the fulfilment industry) always being open to new ideas is a useful and necessary skill.

Heading Coghlan’s IT development team means Junxi looks after anything and everything from developing more traditional systems to specific, customer-centric solutions for the e-commerce platforms Coghlan uses today.

He sees his role as ensuring that Coghlan stays not just at the forefront of the industry, but delivers a seamless experience – both for Coghlan’s own customers and its customers’ customers. Junxi’s feels it’s imperative to listen to what the customers want, and come up with customer specific systems accordingly. However, above all, he sees his role as making all the systems as easy to use as possible.

Junxi’s very proud of the fact that making things easier for customers is a way of life at Coghlan.

Feel free to connect to Junxi on LinkedIn.

Kayla Walsh

Customer Operations & Service Manager

Coming soon

Sam Gular

Ops Manager, Australia

Coming soon

Anthony Evans

Manager, Auckland 

Born and raised in Wellington, Anthony joined the Coghlan team in 2006. However prior to that, he’d worked in an online fulfillment role with a CD manufacturer, so transitioning to Coghlan at the time was rather seamless.

And between his years at Coghlan and his previous experience, he’s racked up almost 20 years in fulfillment roles.

Anthony feels the secret to customer satisfaction is making sure he (and the rest of the Coghlan team) listen and really understand what the customer wants as well as knowing what they need (and explaining the differences). He believes that honesty is the best policy – if he doesn’t think that Coghlan is best placed to deliver the service a customer needs, he won’t beat around the bush. But he’ll make every attempt to get it done and he’s proud that Coghlan is part of the chain in providing life saving services shipping heart valves out as quickly as possible to the relevant hospitals.

He also believes it’s important to maintain good relationships with courier companies, so that the shipping and transportation processes is as easy and trouble-free as possible for his clients’ customers.

When considering his decade-long experiences at Coghlan, Anthony would say the craziest one was recently, shipping a plastic horse’s head for a customer specialising in breeding masks for horses. Anthony’s dream is to make his courier’s day more interesting sending it in a cardboard box with the horse’s head just sticking out of the top, as it is! If Anthony were to pick three words to describe himself, he would say that he was honest, straight-up and fair.

Feel free to connect to Anthony on LinkedIn.

Kevin Ryan
Founder (retired)

Kevin was born in Malta, and split his youth between England, Switzerland and Majorca. After studying in Cambridge, he started his commerce career in 1972. It wasn’t great timing as by the end of 1973, the financial climate of England was a mess. So Kevin made the decision to take an early and lengthy sabbatical.

For the next 10 years, he travelled the globe, with stints operating iron ore processing equipment for Hamersley Iron in Dampier, skippering inter-island cargo vessels in the West Indies, and running a spare parts warehouse operation for Bell Helicopters in Amsterdam.

However, in 1988, some four years after moving to Sydney, he decided to utilise his warehousing and product handling skills to establish the Coghlan Group. His mother’s maiden name, ‘Coghlan’, was chosen as homage to a grandfather who regretted not taking the opportunity to start his own business.

Kevin is very proud of having built a business that’s not only survived the rapid changes of, but thrived through the move to digital. Coghlan’s longevity, and the loyalty of its customer relationships, comes about through a unique, constantly evolving product offering, making it a leader in the warehousing industry.

When not wearing his CEO hat, Kevin eagerly participates in the Sydney Musical Theatre and Amateur Dramatics community – the perfect way to escape from the day-to-day pressures of running a multifaceted business. Although he is often cast as the good guy, Kevin confesses that his favourite role will always be the villain!

 Feel free to connect to Kevin on LinkedIn.