• by Sara Guaglione , January 19, 2017

The New York Times Company (NYTCO) has named David Perpich president and general manager of The Wirecutter, a gadget recommendation site acquired by NYTCO in October 2016.

Perpich was previously NYTCO’s SVP of product. He takes on his new role on March 5.

The Wirecutter and its sister site, The Sweethome, were founded in 2011 by tech journalist Brian Lam, previously an editor at Gizmodo and Wired. The sites curate lists of gadget and gear recommendations and generate revenue primarily through affiliates. When customers click on direct links to merchants, such as Amazon, and buy products, the site gets a cut of the sale.

The Wirecutter is “one of our most important new ventures,” stated Mark Thompson, president and CEO of NYTCO, adding the goal was to “continue to grow The Wirecutter and to more fully integrate it into the life of the Times.”

NYTCO reportedly bought the site for $30 million in October.

Josh Payne, CEO of native commerce platform StackCommerce, called the acquisition “an affirmation of the continued emergence of commerce as a new and meaningful revenue stream for digital publishers.”

Payne added the move was “only the first of many investments we'll see large media companies making into commerce-enabling companies as the trend continues to embed itself into publishers' strategies.”

Perpich is a grandson of the late Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the former publisher of The New YorkTimes and chairman of NYTCO. He is also a nephew of the current publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.

Perpich's cousin A.G. Sulzberger is deputy publisher and another cousin, Sam Dolnick, oversees many digital initiatives at the newspaper.

According to Thompson, Perpich was a “key part” of the team that launched The New York Times’ digital subscription model in 2011. Perpich also led the team that created new digital products, like NYT Now, Cooking and Crosswords.

He has been with the company since 2010.