Walmart made news this month for hiring its first-ever chief customer officer, plucking Janey Whiteside from American Express, where she oversaw benefits, services and customer engagement for the financial services company.
The nation’s biggest chain is just the latest merchant to tap talent from other industries and retail disciplines for top-level posts.
This month alone, the Neiman Marcus Group named Darcy Penick, the CEO of Amazon’s fashion subsidiary Shopbop, president of its Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store, just as The Container Store hired John Gehre of San Antonio-based grocer H-E-B to be its executive vice president of merchandising and planning, the first time the storage and organization retailer filled a key role with an executive from outside the company.
Retailers, shaken by how pervasively digital technology informs consumers’ path to purchase, are shaking up senior ranks to meet the still-unfurling demands of a changed shopping landscape.
Pre-Internet economy merchants are gambling on these outsiders to bring a fresh eye and best practices from other sectors in the race to stay relevant and meet digital-economy consumers’ heightened expectations.
“I think it is the natural and right progression, given the size and scale of the transformation that is underway,” said Chris Walton, a retail consultant and former vice president of Target’s Store of the Future, who is also a fellow Forbes’ retail contributor. “The playbooks legacy retailers used don’t work anymore,” he said.
“So they the go outside the [retail] industry, or they take the other approach which you don’t see as much, but should – [tapping] someone within retail interdisciplinary and curious —[like bringing in a drugstore merchant to run a department store] that has actually touched traditional merchandise, e-commerce, store operations and product development."
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For Walmart, long known for a C-suite composed of career employees who rose from the stock room to the corner office, turning to an American Express executive to fill a newly created role is yet another expression of its corporate-culture revamp.
That revamp blossomed in 2016 with the acquisition of Jet.com and the hiring of its founder and former Amazon executive Marc Lore to run Walmart.com, kicking off an acquisition binge of hipper startup e-tailers like Bonobos and Modcloth as it pursues younger, more affluent consumers.
Now Walmart is turning to Whiteside to leverage her experience at a financial services firm at a mass discounter.
The new chief customer officer role is pegged to “looking after our brand and thinking through the customer journey — from acquiring new customers to their shopping experience and resolving any issues they may have," Walmart's letter to employees on Whiteside’s hire read, according to Reuters.
At the high end of the retail-shopping spectrum, Bergdorf is mining Penick’s expertise honed at Amazon, the nation’s largest online merchant and the retail sector’s biggest disruptor, to navigate its digital growth.
Her appointment comes as Neiman Marcus Group CEO Geoffrey van Raemdonck aims to grow digital sales from 35% to 50% of the business, which he sees as integral to fueling Bergdorf’s global growth.
“The unprecedented change in our industry requires us to reimagine how we serve customers and drive growth,” he said in a statement. “Digital technology has already had a fundamental impact on the way consumers experience brands and shop … To reach a new era of growth, we’re doubling down on innovation …completely focused on being digital-first.”
From Selling Suave Shampoo To Stella McCartney Slacks
As executive vice president of CVS, Helena Foulkes was integral to the retailer’s makeover from a traditional drugstore chain into a destination for health-and-wellness geared fair built largely around higher end private-label products.
By naming Foulkes CEO this year, The Hudson’s Bay Company is betting that a merchant who oversaw items like Suave shampoo and Sudafed sinus sprays can revive shopping venues selling Saint Laurent slingbacks and Stella McCartney slacks.
Richard Baker, executive chairman of HBC, which owns department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor that have lost their luster, is looking to Foulkes’ “transformational” leadership skills to “invigorate the business with a new perspective.”
Foulkes has earmarked the European market for growth at HBC (which also owns Canada’s Hudson’s Bay and Germany’s Galeria Kaufhof), but where it has underperformed.
She’s also shoring up its senior ranks with digitally experienced executives from outside the department store world.
These include appointing chief marketing officer Bari Harlam from BJ’s Wholesale and CVS in a bid to ground HBC’s marketing in data-driven consumer insights; naming Stephen J. Gold chief technology and digital operations officer from CVS in its efforts to create a seamless bricks-and-clicks consumer shopping experience; and luring Vanessa LeFebvre, vice president at hot apparel e-tailer Stitch Fix, to be president of Lord & Taylor, “a change agent with strong experience leading a digitally focused strategy,” Foulkes said during HBC’s June earnings call.
“With these leadership changes … I believe we now have the right team to drive actions necessary for profitable growth.”
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