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On the Move has the latest executive-level updates in ecommerce and consumer goods.
(Illustration by The Current)
Welcome to On the Move. In this hiring-focused weekly feature, The Current is rounding up recent arrivals and departures at brands and retailers across the ecommerce landscape.
Last week, the big news in ecommerce executive-level moves came from Amazon: Dave Clark, the CEO of Amazon's consumer business, announced he is leaving the company in July after 23 years. Check out our look back at his legacy in logistics.
This week, CEOs are departing at The RealReal and Sephora. Plus, Peloton and InterParfums are making changes at the CFO spot.
Check out the latest details:
Luxury resale platform The RealReal announced that founder Julie Wainwright is stepping down as CEO.
Wainwright’s departure is effective Tuesday. She will serve in an advisory role for the rest of 2022. The San Francisco-based company will retain an executive search firm as it seeks a new CEO. In the meantime, COO Rati Sahi Levesque and CFO Robert Julian were named co-interim CEOs.
“I am deeply proud of the company we have built and am honored to have worked with a team that champions our founding vision of creating a more sustainable future for fashion,” said Wainwright, in a statement. “The RealReal continues to make progress on its path to profitability, and I feel now is the right time for the next generation of leadership to guide the company through its next chapter.”
Wainwright started The RealReal in 2011 after leading ecommerce and tech companies including SmartNow.com, Bellamax, OntheFrontier and Pets.com. Over the 11 years that she led the company, the resale platform grew to host more than 27 million members.
In that time, online resale has also picked up, with ThredUP projecting recently that the secondhand apparel market is expected to grow 127% by 2026 to a value of $218 billion. At the same time, more platforms are offering resale. It’s not just marketplaces, either. The number of brands with their own resale shops increased from eight in 2020 to 30 in 2021, according to ThredUP.
On the company’s recent first quarter earnings call, Wainwright said the company is projecting a good year, despite inflation and cost pressures facing many retailers. She called the luxury business “tremendously resilient.” For the quarter, gross merchandise value was up 31%, and active buyers rose 21%.
“We have a phenomenal flywheel where our buyers become sellers and our sellers become buyers and that gives us great confidence,” Wainwright told analysts on that call.
Martin Brok is leaving the CEO role at prestige beauty retailer Sephora at the end of June over “a divergence of views,” according to an internal memo cited by WWD.
Brok was named CEO of Sephora in 2020, bringing experience from executive roles at Starbucks and Nike. He succeeded Chris de Lapuente, who rose to the CEO role of the selective retailing division of Sephora owner LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
Now, de Lapuente will return to the role of CEO at Sephora, which he previously held for 10 years. During his last stint, he was heralded by LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault for turning Sephora into a global beauty leader, WWD reported.
Interactive fitness platform Peloton said Liz Coddington will become chief financial officer of the company on June 13.
Coddington previously served as VP of Finance at Amazon Web Services, and held senior leadership roles at Adara, Walmart.com and Netflix.
She succeeds Jill Woodworth, who stepped down as CFO after working with the company since 2018.
Peloton is making a series of moves as it attempts to right itself following a post-pandemic period when demand for its stationary bike-based connected fitness platform cooled, and the company faced a glut of inventory. Losses have followed, and the company cut 2,800 jobs this year.
In February, former Spotify and Netflix executive Barry McCarthy succeeded John Foley as CEO. The next month, former Grove Collaborative COO Andrew Rendich was hired as chief supply chain officer.
In its most earnings report, McCarthy made stabilizing cashflow the first of his three primary goals toward a turnaround, TechCrunch reported.
"Liz is a deeply talented finance executive and will be an invaluable addition to Peloton's leadership team. Having worked at some of the strongest and most recognizable technology brands, she not only brings the expertise needed to run our finance organization, but she has a critical understanding of what it takes to drive growth and operational excellence," said McCarthy, in a statement. "I have seen her intellect, abilities, and leadership firsthand and am excited to work closely with her as we execute the next phase of Peloton's journey."
Nick Beighton, who left British retailer Asos in October, is joining the board of directors at the marketplace Secret Sales in the role of chairman.
Secret Sales was purchased by Lifestyle Retail Group in 2019. Under new leadership, it was transformed from a flash sale website into a discount marketplace featuring apparel and beauty products, Fashion United reports.
At Asos, current chief commercial officer José Antonio Ramos Calamonte is expected to be appointed CEO in the coming weeks, according to a report in The Sunday Times. Calamonte is the former CEO of Salsa Jeans, and led commercial strategy for brands at Inditex.
Perfumes company Inter Parfums announced an upcoming transition in the role of chief financial officer.
Current CFO Russell Greenberg will retire September 6. With 30 years at the company, he has served alongside Jean Madar since its early days.
“Russ has played an integral role in the growth and evolution of our company for 30 years. He has been by my side for all the significant initiatives we have undertaken, through the best of times and the most challenging,” said Inter Parfums CEO Jean Madar, in a statement. “He has earned, and well deserves, to devote more time to family, friends, and the activities he most enjoys.”
In turn, Michel Atwood, the former VP of Finance and Strategy at Estée Lauder, will assume the top financial role and join the company’s board. Atwood brings experience overseeing the company’s fragrance business, and served as a member of the cosmetics company’s senior finance leadership team. He previously served as CFO of global prestige fragrances at Procter & Gamble.
Founded in 1982, Inter Parfums manufactures and distributes fragrance products as the exclusive licensee for brands including Abercrombie & Fitch, Coach, Guess and Kate Spade.
Microservices architecture allows the company to give retailers ownership over omnichannel software.
With the growth of digital commerce, providing consumer choice is at the center of all of a retailer’s operations.
In recent years, that became especially evident in the area of fulfillment.
Ecommerce made the process of moving an order into place for delivery a crucial function, as the ability to source products close to demand quickly was an imperative.
“Retailers are looking to own more of their fulfillment destiny because consumer expectations have increased,” Chap Achen, VP of product strategy and operations at Nextuple, told The Current on the floor of the NRF Big Show 2023. “Fulfillment is now a competitive weapon.”
As digital operations increasingly blend with the physical store, a host of new fulfillment options are coming online. They can have an item delivered from the store on the same day, or they pick it up. Even a wider offering such as in-store pickup has a host of different choices inside of it. Consumers can pick up an item at a counter, or a locker. They can stop by anytime, or schedule a pickup on Saturday.
While this optionality helps retailers meet customers where they are, it also adds complexity to the systems that run them, and requires operational adjustments to put them in place.
It means the software that powers fulfillment operations must also meet retailers where they are, Achen said. Many retailers have specific setups and processes. They may have a store located in a mall with a nearby distribution center, or a series of small storefronts. At the same time, retailers need to have flexibility with the software that they use so they can provide options to consumers.
For Nextuple, the vehicle to provide this is microservices, which describes a software architecture in which the parts of an application work independently, but are also built to work together. The company harnesses microservices to offer an ownership-centered approach to deploying its software through a product called Nextuple Fulfillment Studio.
“Today, there are only two ways to buy software: [software as a service] or custom building,” Achen said. “You can do it yourself or with a partner. We are a third option. We will help you accelerate your time to market because we've already developed 80% of your requirements, and then we'll give you that as source code.”
The software is composable. Retailers own the source code, and they can iterate. Along the way, they have the ability to swap out components of the software for pieces that enable them to better respond to the needs of customers, if they choose.
It shows how composable commerce is spreading throughout retail operations. A first wave of development applied the approach to the “front-end” of commerce, such as operating an ecommerce store and marketing. With fulfillment software such as Nextuple coming online, there are signs it is being applied to backend operations, as well.
In all, Nextuple offers 14 microservices as part of the Studio, including engines for same-day delivery, storage, inventory management and sourcing.
At the NRF Big Show, Nextuple announced that it is live with five national omnichannel retailers. Together, they have $50 billion in annual revenue and 7000 store locations.
The company is aiming to serve a group of retailers that are widely known, but still looking to hone operations for omnichannel retail. When it comes to fulfillment technology, the retail landscape has distinct tiers.
The largest players have built their own fulfillment tech to power logistics networks that reach across the country.
Name brand retailers with a national presence also want to offer competitive fulfillment, but haven’t made the move to acquire platforms or developed their own software in-house. Typically, they would seek out a software provider that offers a set platform on a subscription model. But the particular needs of commerce require software that powers physical operations with digital tools. That requires a different type of solution, Nextuple believes.
“We want to level the playing field,” Achen said. “We're helping the mid-tier [retailer] compete with Target, Amazon and Walmart.”