Head of online, John Lewis

Brown came to the attention of many in the ecommerce industry as the director of multichannel at B&Q. Having been in his latest role at John Lewis for around a year, he is the ecommerce brains behind the site many other retailers would love to emulate.

While John Lewis commercial director Andrea O’Donnell is leading the merger of the retailer’s store and internet channels, Brown is the one with the ecommerce pedigree. And he has a big job. The intention is to double John Lewis web sales to £1bn by 2014; Brown has sales accountability for the remaining specialist online team.

Before his three years at B&Q, he was head of echannels for Aviva, and previously worked in online marketing for Coca Cola. Under his leadership, B&Q’s website was transformed to offer advice, inspiration and a growing product range. If he can bring the same level of lifestyle content, tools and ease of use to the John Lewis site, he could be on to a real winner.

Brown has spoken at many events of the importance of getting store staff to promote the online offer, and this marries well with John Lewis’ aim to be the leading multichannel retailer in the UK. One of the latest developments he has been involved with is the launch of a mobile version of the retailer’s website, which allows consumers to buy the full 100,000-strong online range using their mobile phone.

And helping its older and more affluent customer base online by having partners demonstrate how to order from the site in store means that an increasing number of the traditional John Lewis store visitors are also active on the website too. The multichannel offer is particularly important to the new John Lewis At Home stores, which offer a limited assortment.

Proof that Brown is pushing John Lewis ahead of its competitors online comes from its latest interim results, for the first half of 2010. Its online sales were up 36%, against market growth of 16.7%.It will be interesting to see how the extension of the Never Knowingly Undersold promise to the website drives sales further in the second half of the year.