The retail industry is changing, and so too should the retail boardroom – Retail Week explores the new roles seated around the table

  • Retailers including Asos, Nike, Missguided and Majestic Wine have all appointed new roles to their boardrooms
  • Ikea boss Peter Jelkeby says his additional role of chief sustainability officer ‘signal Ikea’s total commitment’ to its goals
  • Industry headhunters say that subscriptions director will be the role to watch out for in 2021

Sustainability

As the retail industry reacts to the peaks and troughs of the past few years, new subjects and trends have worked their way up the boardroom agenda.

Sustainability, diversity, technology and data insight have all become increasingly important to understanding the customer and their journey, and to retain their loyalty.

Appointments and newly-created job functions at successful retailers such as Asos, Nike and Ikea indicate that the rest of the industry may need to play catch up and add new places to their board tables.

Retail Week explores six new, emerging roles that are growing in importance and prominence across the industry.

Chief growth officer

Robert Birge

Robert Birge, Asos chief growth officer

Asos made headlines in 2019 with the hire of Robert Birge as its chief growth officer. His appointment represented a first for the retail industry in general.

At the time Peel Hunt analyst John Stevenson said: “If you asked me to name all the businesses that have a chief growth officer I could name Asos, and that would be it”. But times have clearly changed and the role is becoming increasingly popular. 

While B2B businesses such as Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s have had this role for a number of years, it has only recently begun to grow in popularity in the retail sector as companies seek to diversify the functions within the retail boardroom.

Gap appointed Asheesh Saksena to the newly created chief growth officer role in November 2020, while eBay named Julie Loeger as global CGO a month later.

Fellow British fashion retailers Missguided and Matches have also both jumped on the bandwagon by hiring or internally promoting, people to the role.

While the exact remit of the chief growth officer has yet to be determined, key responsibilities boil down to overseeing how things work across all different functions within the company and how they interlink to establish a pattern of growth.

Asos outlined Birge’s role as “taking end to end ownership for the customer journey, from engagement and acquisition through to customer care”.

Chief channel officer

With non-essential stores shuttered for the best part of the last year, the industry has seen a spike in consumers resorting to ecommerce for their shopping needs. 

While stores are now set to reopen permanently, the channel shift will be here to stay, meaning getting the mix between physical and digital right is more important than ever. 

“There’s definitely a surge in chief channel officers, direct-to-consumer [DTC] directors, omnichannel directors - there’s a plethora of titles, but really what they’re doing is operating your retail channel alongside digital, wholesale and potential partnerships,” says Altrua founding partner Lucy Harris.

“That function is much broader but also so are the channels through which businesses are reaching their customers. Necessity is the mother of invention with channel activity, but people are still looking at how you combine things, what’s the optimum channel mix of physical, digital and partnerships - through wholesale and concessions.”

Harris cites brands such as Nike, Adidas and Disney who have been leading the charge on DTC, and believes other retailers are now trying to catch up.

This has led to a rise in retailers creating new, hybrid roles which sit across multiple different functions within an organisation, says HI Executive Consulting partner Melissa Reed.

“It fits into a wider trend we’re seeing across retail businesses of creating big, overarching, more cross functional roles, that serve almost as conduits of collaboration between other teams,” she says.

“Another thing that retailers have learned from the pandemic is the need to really break down silos within their own organisations. Some are maybe more idiosyncratic and call these roles chief channel officer, or whatever it might be. As long as they know what it’s set up to do and how that role fits within the rest of the business structure, then it’s set up for success.”

Chief sustainability officer

Sustainability has become one of the most important elements on the retail agenda over the past few years, with consumer awareness of environmental issues boosted by the pandemic.

“There’s definitely a move from corporate social responsibility to environmental, social and governance and with that, that’s developed into the role of chief sustainability officer,” says Harris.

“It’s now expected for retailers to push this agenda and this could be shared around the top table, they could invest in a chief sustainability officer who would work throughout the supply chain, or could be in their general strategy,” Harris adds.

Companies such as McDonald’s, L’Oreal and Walmart all have chief sustainability officers on their boards, while Ikea has taken the novel approach to assign the role to the chief executive of each country in which it operates. 

Peter Jelkeby IKEA

Ikea’s Peter Jelkeby - CEO and chief sustainability officer

“I think being a CSO means that there is total engagement – it starts here,” Ikea UK boss Peter Jelkeby explains.

“One of the reasons we’re taking big leaps in our sustainability agenda is because we have big engagement across the leadership team, not only in the UK but globally.

“Sustainability is not a siloed function or a specific team’s responsibility, you shouldn’t just have one sustainability officer who is responsible for solving everything,” he says. 

“By having the title I have, it is a signal of our total commitment, starting with myself. And also across the business, it’s not one department’s task, it’s all of ours, and that creates a big mindset shift.” 

Chief diversity officer

While the pandemic has served to speed up many customer behaviours that existed before the crisis, it has also further exposed the inequality in societies across the globe. 

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement really came to international prominence following the killing of George Floyd in the US, while the UK has also been experiencing its own reckoning with racial inequality. 

Like any other societal trend, this has come to be reflected in new roles at retailers. Luxury brands Prada for example recently recruited a chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer for its North America business. 

Events of the last year have cast a spotlight on UK diversity and inclusion

Reed says that while UK retailers are catching up on this issue, they are “still lagging behind” their counterparts in the US. 

She says the events of the last year have “cast a real spotlight” on UK retail diversity and inclusion practices at c-suite level, and predicts that in 2021 the sector will look to bring diversity and inclusion officers, or some other similar title, onto their executive boards. 

“The last year has seen issues around diversity really gain traction, and retailers know in order to build momentum that needs to be moved up to the c-suite,” she says. “We’re seeing more directors of things like people or culture, which is really interesting. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see UK retailers adopt some American titles, such as chief happiness officer and chief wellness officer”. 

Chief data/technology officer

While there has been a focus on data and technology for many years, the roles of chief technology officer and chief data or digital officer have been given a new lease of life recently.

The role now brings together all technology - both internal and customer facing, according to Barracuda managing partner Justin Linger. He explains that technology is “no longer just a service to the business” but “becoming a major business enabler” and a “fundamental epicentre”.

“People are still trying to drill down on data in order to be able to listen to how the customer right now is behaving, and that’s a bit of second guessing,” Harris adds. “We’re anticipating how the customer will behave but we don’t really know how they’re going to do it. A chief data officer would fit in here. 

“Is there a switch to hiring more people in data and insight? There’s definitely a focus on businesses understanding the customer journey better.”

Companies such as New Look and Marks & Spencer have recently hired in this space, while Reed says that data is also being added alongside other functions such as customer and corporate affairs titles.

Veggie Pret Great Eastern Street

“Pret a Manger is a good example of creating hybrid roles,” she says. “They’ve recently hired a chief customer and growth officer. He comes from a very digital background, but you don’t think of Pret as being a particularly digital-first company. But the pandemic has forced Pret to think about its business model and going where the customers are”. 

Data has begun to play an increasingly important role in how retailers strategise for the future, and with the merging of digital and physical is only going to become more important a function in the boardroom.

Subscriptions director

Majestic Wine appointed its first-ever subscriptions director earlier this year, naming Mark Capon to the newly-created role.

Majestic Wine full-year profits fell

While Capon held a similar role at Laithwaites, Majestic’s appointment is one that has yet to take off across the wider industry despite an uptick in subscription services.

Reed says the growth in subscription services during the pandemic has driven home to retailers the importance of protecting and nurturing the loyalty of customers.

“The subscriptions director role is ultimately all about customer loyalty - acquiring it and then retaining it, which has only become a bigger focus for many retailers during the pandemic,” she says.

“If you think about what businesses have learned about their customer base over the last 12 months, then they are going to want to keep that momentum and accelerate beyond the pandemic. And that momentum is all going to come from your most valuable customers, and subscription models we think are going to fly.”

Harris agrees: “Subscriptions director comes under partnerships and would be part of the DTC function [which is increasing in popularity]. There’s plenty of activity going on in subscriptions, but there’s less evidence that these roles are being hired specifically yet - it might come.”

With subscriptions emerging as a coronavirus winner, the role is definitely one to watch.

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