Jonathan Ernst

Commercial growth, P&L ownership and platform strategy. Most recently owning Samsung's device leasing, trade-in and insurance platforms across four Nordic markets.

Résumé

Impact

$0M+Vertical owned

+0%Device leasing revenue

−0%Trade-in programme cost

+0%Order volume, Finland

+0%Programme profitability

0%Attachment at launch

+0%Device insurance sales

+0%Referral lead volume

0%Email open rate

0xReturn on ad spend

0.0%Paid social click-through

0%Email click-through

0.0%Email conversion rate

Case studies

Re-procuring a leasing platform

Four financiers, one scoring matrix fixed before any proposal arrived.

+58%leasing revenue
60%sales from upgrades

Owned the commercial side of Samsung's device leasing platform across four Nordic markets, and led the programme to replace it.

The existing platform limited what could be sold through it, so the whole thing went back to market. I held the P&L, the sourcing process and the delivery programme, working across Commercial, IT, Customer Service, Finance, Legal, the Suwon development teams and the incoming partner.

An RFI to the financier market, then an RFP and Statement of Work to four bidders, scored on weights set in advance.

Weights were 20 percent compliance readiness, 30 percent technical capability, 30 percent speed to delivery and 20 percent pricing, with pricing sealed until technical scoring finished. Two bidders came out on regulatory grounds once it was clear that, as registered banks, their product would fall under CCD2 and its stricter credit checks.

Secured development funding from Global HQ and delivered Phase 1 two weeks ahead of the contracted milestone.

The agreement carries commission rates that step down as the portfolio grows, performance SLAs, delivery milestones and Samsung guaranteed residual values. Phase 1 moved the full customer base onto Samsung's own sales system with no service interruption, which meant sequencing monthly payment support ahead of the migration rather than after it.

Catching a cost gap before it landed

Monthly variance moved from around five percent to twenty. Total spend still looked fine.

−50%programme cost
+27%trade-in revenue

Owned the P&L for the Nordic trade-in programme, including the accrual reserved with Finance each month.

Trade-in is device buyback, run through an external partner. I reserved the accrual monthly and reconciled it against actuals at line item level, device volumes and per unit cost, rather than against the total. Reconciling only the total is what would have hidden this.

Isolated a population of devices carrying a passing grade but no assigned residual value, and reserved the shortfall before the variance landed.

Finding it once was not the point. I amended the three way match rules in the ERP so any device graded above F with no residual value blocks the invoice, and required partner invoices to arrive with the underlying sales data attached. The control now catches it rather than a person remembering to look.

Programme cost down by more than half, with the control gap closed structurally rather than noted.

The cost reduction came from renegotiating residual values with the partner, which changes the economics of every device that comes back. The reconciliation work is what made the negotiation possible, because it produced a per unit picture rather than an invoice total.

Turning a credit rule into a growth channel

The barrier in Finland was not price. It was the credit check.

+77%order volume
+91%attachment

Owned Samsung Flex across four Nordic markets. Finland was the weakest on both order volume and attachment.

Four markets look alike from a distance and behave differently up close. Finland was not underperforming on demand or on price. It was losing customers at the point where a financing product ran its credit check.

Repositioned leasing as the lower barrier and greener alternative to buy now pay later, using the lighter credit requirements that device as a service carries.

CCD2 tightened consumer credit checks across the Nordics, which pushed approval rates down on financing products. Leasing is not classified the same way, so it clears more customers at the same basket size. The proposition and the checkout journey were rebuilt around that, market by market rather than centrally.

Order volume up 77 percent and attachment up 91 percent in the market that had been furthest behind.

The same reading applied elsewhere in the region, which is how the regulatory change stopped being a constraint on the portfolio and started being the reason to choose it. Compliance sat inside the commercial model rather than beside it.

Pricing a hundred SKUs on one model

Raising prices without losing attachment, then bringing the cost side down to match.

+20%profitability
72%launch attachment

Owned pricing for more than a hundred leasing SKUs across smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and laptops.

Built on a model calculating gross margin, churn cost through a residual value curve, cost of goods, outbound shipping and insurance, so every price could be traced back to the drivers underneath it rather than to last year's number.

Ran price sensitivity testing to find where the ceiling actually sat, then renegotiated subsidy and insurance to scale down as the portfolio grew.

Testing came first because raising a price on a guess costs attachment, and attachment is the number the whole programme rests on. The cost side was renegotiated to move with volume, so growth improved the margin instead of diluting it.

Profitability up more than twenty percent with attachment holding at 72 percent through the flagship launches.

Attachment rose from 65 to 72 percent across the Z Flip7, Fold7, S26 and Z Flip8 launches while prices went up, which is the part that matters. A price rise that costs volume is a different result wearing the same number.

Projects

Athena

A complete AI workspace that runs on your own machine, built in evenings and weekends.

projectathena.dev

108Klines of Python
41Klines of JavaScript
306API endpoints
1,571tests
13modules

13 modulesChat, Code, Mail, Calendar

One gatewayevery request

Egress guardclassifies the host

This machine

Your network

Allowed endpoint

Look-alike hostrefused

One process on your machine, and one door out of it. Every request is classified before a socket exists.

02GarageAppVehicle telemetry, concept to App StoreA React Native application leveraging Gemini AI and background spatial analytics alongside a resilient, local-first architecture to deliver live driving metrics, automated route generation, and privacy-focused offline operation.
03DosigotganNordic market entry for a Korean brandBuilding the cross border supply chain, setting pricing from landed cost to shelf, and opening retail accounts directly with category buyers.
04Mercedes-BenzManagement consulting, CEMS and CornellLed a consulting team to benchmark and build a tech talent attraction and retention strategy for Mercedes-Benz, delivering a C-suite-approved career ladder and compensation framework informed by HR leaders at Google, Meta, and Apple.

Core capabilities

Sellout PlatformsHeld the P&L for leasing, trade-in, insurance and SIM across four Nordic markets, and grew the vertical from $18M to over $24M in a year. Sole owner of it inside a six person team.
Samsung FlexPriced more than a hundred leasing SKUs on a model built from gross margin, a residual value curve, cost of goods, shipping and insurance. Tested where the ceiling actually sat before raising anything.
Trade-In accrualReserved the monthly accrual with Finance and reconciled it device by device rather than against the total. That is how a group of devices with a passing grade and no residual value surfaced before the variance landed.
Flex 2.0 tenderTook the leasing platform to market with an RFI, then an RFP and Statement of Work to four financiers. Weights were fixed before proposals arrived and pricing stayed sealed until technical scoring finished.
CCD2, NordicsRead CCD2 closely enough to remove two bidders from a tender on regulatory grounds, then to reposition leasing in Finland against the financing products the same rules had slowed down.
Flex and Trade-In dataStood up an external PostgreSQL database for partner data with the data engineers, then modelled churn, contract type and device type in Power BI rather than waiting for analyst time.
Samsung Flex CRMBuilt the leasing CRM pipeline end to end in Customer.io, covering the customer portal, email, push and SMS, including the trigger logic and the audience segmentation.
Flex 2.0 programmeRan the programme across Commercial, IT, Customer Service, Legal, the Suwon development teams and an external partner. Phase 1 landed two weeks ahead of the contracted milestone.
Internal tools and AthenaWrote an HTML newsletter generator now used across Samsung Electronics Nordics. Outside work, built Athena, a local-first AI workspace of roughly 150,000 lines.

Sellout Platforms

P&L ownership

Held the P&L for leasing, trade-in, insurance and SIM across four Nordic markets, and grew the vertical from $18M to over $24M in a year. Sole owner of it inside a six person team.

Background

I grew up between Colombia, Switzerland and Sweden, then studied in Japan, South Korea and the United States.

Working across markets that behave differently from each other has been the normal case for me rather than a stretch, which is most of why the commercial side of this comes easily.

Lived and studied

Colombia · Switzerland · Sweden · Japan · South Korea · United States

Languages

SwedishFluent
EnglishFluent
FrenchHigh
KoreanIntermediate
JapaneseIntermediate

Contact

jonternst@gmail.com

Open to commercial roles, based in Stockholm. Email is the quickest way to reach me.