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24 January
New CMOs at Ulta Beauty and Away; Danone names deputies
On the Move has hiring updates from Pinterest, Walmart, BigCommerce, Purple and more.

Michelle Crossan-Matos is CMO of Ulta Beauty. (Courtesy photo)
On the Move has hiring updates from Pinterest, Walmart, BigCommerce, Purple and more.
Michelle Crossan-Matos is CMO of Ulta Beauty. (Courtesy photo)
Welcome to On the Move. Every week, The Current is rounding up the comings and goings of leaders at brands and retailers across the ecommerce, retail and CPG landscape.
This week, the founders of KIND Snacks are launching a platform to build a new generation of businesses, there will be new CEOs at Michael Kors and Dollar Tree and there are new CMOs at Away and Ulta Beauty. Plus, check out new appointments to roles in owned retail, DTC marketing and Walmart technical fellow.
Daniel Lubetzky, the entrepreneur behind KIND Snacks, is launchingCamino Partners, an investment and business-building platform for purpose-driven entrepreneurs. Lubetzky and team are aiming to apply lessons from launching and scaling KIND to new businesses. The firm has already launched Mexican food brand Somos, and invested in European snack brand Belgian Boys, gimme seaweed snacks and Mediterranean brand CAVA.
Cedric Wilmotte will become the CEO of Michael Kors, effective April 3. Wilmotte previously served as interim CEO of Versace from January-September 2022, and is currently the CEO of that label. Wilmotte has prior experience with Michael Kors as president of EMEA, and also held senior positions at Marc Jacobs and Donna Karan.
Danone, the CPG company that owns Activia, evian and other brands, named three deputy CEOs:
Rick Drelling will step into the CEO role at Dollar Tree, effective Jan. 29. Drelling is currently executive chairman of the discount retailer. He succeeds Mike Witynski, who served as CEO since 2020 after 10 years in leadership roles. Drelling brings over 50 years of retail experience in expansion and transformation efforts.
Todd Klein will become the president of Fila USA, serving as the North American lead for the South Korean sportswear company. Klein has held past roles at adidas and Reebok. It comes as Fila is executing a five-year strategy to offer “unified products and marketing worldwide by redefining Fila’s brand value, building a customer experience-oriented business model and pursuing sustainable growth,” Fashion Network reports.
Julie Bornstein is moving to the role of advisor at Pinterest,Glossy reported. A longtime ecommerce operator, Bornstein joined Pinterest following the acquisition of The Yes in June. Now, The Yes team has integrated into Pinterest under new CEO Bill Ready, and the social platform is continuing a push into social commerce. Pinterest also made the following executive appointments, according to Retail TouchPoints:
Michelle Crossan-Matos was named chief marketing officer of Ulta Beauty. She will “lead an expansive roster of marketing and communications functions that work to engage our guests, share our stories and unlock new, beautiful possibilities,” the company wrote. Crossan-Matos previously held chief marketing officer among her titles at Samsung Electronics America, and spent 16 years at Procter and Gamble.
Jason Gowans was named SVP and chief digital officer at Levi Strauss & Co., where he will focus on bringing together engineering, data, AI and digital product management in both ecommerce and go-to-market. Gowans most recently served as SVP of digital commerce at Nordstrom, where he led ecommerce for both Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack.
Jason Forrester was named technical fellow at Walmart,The Information reported. Previously, Forrester helped Amazon, Apple and Target develop networking technology for in-store experiences. His exact role at Walmart is not known.
Carla Dunham is the new chief marketing officer of travel brand Away,Retail Dive reported. Dunham was previously the chief marketing officer at grocer Foxtrot, and held VP roles at Equinox gym and Kate Spade. Dunham succeeds Melissa Weiss, who departed the brand in July.
Scott Kerby was appointed chief of owned retail at digitally native mattress brand Purple. Kerby comes to Purple from Sephora, where he served as VP head of stores and led a long-term planning effort in Canada. He also previously worked at Old Navy, Bath and Body Works, L Brands and American Eagle.
Bobby Goodwin will lead DTC marketing for Vans Americas, Shop Eat Surf reported. Goodwin previously served as head of merchandising at Tilly’s. Goodwin has been a buyer with Vans, and previously worked at Active Ride Shop and PacSun.
Mark Adams is joining BigCommerce as SVP and general manager for EMEA. Adams joins BigCommerce from Attraqt, which was acquired in December by K1 Investment Management. He previously cofounded and led digital transformation agency eComp Consulting, as well as SAP hybris systems integrator Portaltech Reply.
Focus Brands, the parent of food brands like Auntie Anne’s, Jamba and Cinnabon, made a trio of executive appointments:
Speed Commerce, which provides ecommerce order fulfillment and a 24/7 contact center, added five executives to its team from Rakuten Super Logistics. The company is also opening a new fulfillment center in North Las Vegas. The executive appointments are as follows: Michael Manzione was named Chief Operating Officer; Jason Chan is Vice President of Sales and Marketing; Gregg Beall has been chosen as Vice President of Information Technology; Robert Tillman is the Senior Director of Operations; and Lauren Groh has been named Director of Finance.
FMI, the Food Industry Association, named its 2023 board of directors. Lowes Foods CEO Brian George will serve as chairman. Find the rest of the board slate here.The retailer's marketplace is expanding quickly.
When it comes to ecommerce growth, was the pandemic a blip or a new trendsetter?
As we move further from the height of COVID-related closures, it’s a question that will start to be answered through the lens of history.
So far, the narrative of ecommerce growth in the U.S. from 2019-2022 has gone like this: Ecommerce’s share of overall retail saw a huge spike at the height of the pandemic in 2020-21, when goods in general were in demand and online shopping was necessary to preserve health and safety. Experts looked out and saw a permanent exponential change in the penetration of ecommerce as a share of retail that would last beyond the pandemic. Then, in 2022, everyone went back to stores and the trendline came back to 2019 levels. Growth was no longer exponential. There was still growth, but it was not happening as fast as during the pandemic period.
With this in mind, it’s worth pointing out that 2023 is the first year that there likely won’t be a pandemic-influenced swing to influence ecommerce growth. It is also a year where demand has suffered challenges amid inflation and interest rate hikes.
So as we seek to determine the importance of ecommerce to overall retail, it’s worth it to continue taking a close look at what growth trends retailers are seeing now, whether ecommerce is remaining resilient amid consumer pullback and how retailers are preparing for the future.
The latest example arrived this week from Macy’s. It’s a fitting one for the times. Overall, Macy’s is seeing a slowdown as consumers pull back on discretionary purchases, with sales declining 7% in the first quarter versus the same quarter of 2022. Digital sales were down 8%.
Macy’s is particularly susceptible to the macroeconomic headwinds that many brands and retailers are facing, as spending among the middle-income consumers it counts as a primary customer base is particularly softening, said GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders.
But while ecommerce is slowing overall, the importance it gained to Macy’s business during the pandemic is remaining in place.
In 2019, ecommerce made up 25% of Macy’s revenue, CEO Jeff Gennette told analysts on the company’s earnings call. That jumped to a high of 44% in 2020. By 2022, digital reached 33% of sales after the pandemic boom. In the first quarter of 2023, it remained at 33%. So, while the trend line dipped after shoppers returned to stores, ecommerce share still settled in at a higher post-lockdown point than it was before the pandemic.
This came in a quarter in which traffic was “relatively good” across both online and in-store, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette said. It was “flattish” online, and slightly up in stores.
“We do expect that this is the reset year with the penetration between them,” Gennette said. “But we do expect more aggressive growth in digital in the future versus stores as we think about '24 and beyond. And that's going to be foisted by a lot of ideas and strategies.
Over the last year, the retailer has made investments in boosting ecommerce, even as shoppers returned to stores. In a bid to boost the assortment of goods available online, Macy’s launched a marketplace in September 2022 that welcomes goods from third-party sellers.
The marketplace had an “outstanding” first quarter, said Macy’s President Tony Spring, who is poised to succeed Gennette as CEO next year. Gross merchandise value increased over 50% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, while the average order value and units per order for marketplace customers was 50% above those not shopping at the marketplace.
Macy’s is continuing to build the marketplace even as it racks up sales. The retailer added 450 brands, ending the quarter with 950 brands.
This is helping to draw in new customers, as well as younger existing customers who are buying more items, resulting in increased basket size.
“We're very excited as to how marketplace is really attracting the Gen Z customer, particularly in categories where it was not economically feasible for us to carry in the past,” Gennette said.
In the end, Gennette said a strong digital and social presence is key to attracting younger consumers. That's a different type of shopper than other age groups.
“We know the younger customer starts first online,” Gennette said. That behavior will still be in place as the generation gets older, and gains more buying power in the process.
Going forward, Macy’s is seeking to expand the model to other retail banners in its portfolio. Bloomingdale’s will open a marketplace in the early fall.
The Macy’s ecommerce trajectory isn’t that different from the wider U.S. ecommerce narrative detailed above. With one quarter of 2023 data, there is evidence that ecommerce share settled out at a higher point after the pandemic than where it started before COVID arrived. There is flattening now, but the retailer is taking it not as a sign of a slowdown, or a signal to change course. Rather, it sees changing consumer behavior as a reason to build for the future.