ChannelAdvisor has promoted one of its executives to handle more of the daily operations at the fast-growing Morrisville technology company.

David Spitz, right, who joined the company four years ago and is now chief operating officer, will take the title of president, and oversee global sales and marketing.

The move will give CEO and co-founder Scot Wingo, left, more time to spend with customers and "to chart the strategic path of the company," said spokeswoman Delisa Reavis.

ChannelAdvisor develops software and services that helps more than 3,000 retailers sell products online.

... a giant banner with the name of a volcano that no one can pronnounce.

The folks over at ChannelAdvisor printed up this banner to welcome home 10 colleagues who have been stuck in London for almost two weeks. The 10 were grounded in the air travel chaos following the volcanic eruption in Iceland on March 20 that stopped European flights for several days.

Channel Advisor, a RTP company that designs software that allows retailers to sell and market goods online, had a team of about 25 in London for an annual company conference. The 10 people who got stuck have been living in hotels and working out of the company's London office. They started coming home Thursday night and should be trickling back over the weekend.

The mood at ChannelAdvisor is significantly brighter than it was a year ago.

Last January, the Morrisville-based technology company reported it was cutting about 50 workers, its second round of layoffs in four months.
 
This morning officials announced that they plan to hire about 60 salespeople, engineers and other employees in 2010. That's on top of more than 50 hired in the second half of last year as the economy and ChannelAdvisor's business recovered.

The company sells software and services to help retailers sell products online. ChannelAdvisor last year added new customers such as Lenovo, Newport News and Spiegel, and saw record volume during the recent holiday shopping season.

The private company doesn't disclose financial results, but finished 2009 with a profit, CEO Scot Wingo said in a prepared statement. "We're the most efficient we've ever been and have set the stage for solid, profitable growth in 2010."

The folks over at ChannelAdvisor certainly are in the Halloween spirit today.

The RTP company designs software that allows retailers to sell and market goods online. But the costumes over at the company's offices today range far beyond retail -- from the H1N1 virus to a bunch of grapes.

Check out the photos on the company's Halloween contest Web site.

It's worth the click just to see CEO Scot Wingo dressed like... a convict. (That's him in the orange in the picture on the left.)

Wingo assures us it's just a costume.

When you're a tech company CEO in Research Triangle Park looking to hire 25 new sales staff and other employees, some free national publicity can't hurt.

The Wall Street Journal, in its front-page story this morning about July's U.S. jobs report, cited ChannelAdvisor as an example of employers that are slowly returning to growth mode.

The story also quotes ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo about his plans to add about 25 new employees by the end of the year.

ChannelAdvisor is hiring. A few years back, that wouldn't be stop-the-presses sort of news.

But this is the great recession, after all. And it is the same technology company that in January announced its second layoffs in four months, cutting about 50 workers, including 25 at its headquarters in Research Triangle Park.

Now its business has improved and the company is hoping to hire 20-25 people, mostly in sales but also a few engineers.

"In January, we were sitting there looking over a cliff and we didn't know what was at the bottom," said CEO Scot Wingo. "The word a lot of our partners are using is 'stabilized,' which is good."