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04 October 2022
New CEOs are stepping in at Utz, Spanx and Atoms
In this week's hiring updates, Kimberly-Clark, Balmain Beauty and Lightspeed Commerce make key leadership appointments.

In this week's hiring updates, Kimberly-Clark, Balmain Beauty and Lightspeed Commerce make key leadership appointments.
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, retail and CPG landscape.
This week, The Current is covering the latest news about leadership appointments at Utz Brands, Kimberly-Clark, Spanx and Atoms. Plus, Burberry brings on a new chief creative officer, and Kroger forms a new team to focus on innovation.
Utz Brands announced a CEO succession plan. Current CEO Dylan Lissette will become executive chairman of the board at the snack brand on Dec. 15. Howard Friedman, who is currently COO at Post Holdings, will join the company as CEO at that time. Lissette joined the company in 1995, and has been CEO since 2013. The company said a CEO transition was contemplated at the time of its merger with Collier Creek Holdings, and called it a “natural next step as Utz continues to develop as a public company.”
Andrea Zahumensky is set to take the helm of the North American personal care portfolio at Kimberly-Clark. As president, she will oversee brands including Huggies, Depend and Kotex. Zahumensky is joining the company after 20 years with Procter and Gamble. She also previously served as chief marketing officer at Yum! Brands for KFC.
Andrea Zahumensky. (Courtesy photo)
Sidra Qasim stepped into the CEO role at the footwear brand Atoms, Fortune reported. Qasim is a cofounder of the brand. Qasim had been running the brand alongside cofounder Waqas Ali. They wrote in a note that it felt like the “right time” to make a change. In the last three years, the founders wrote that they have "moved Atoms to NYC, lived through the pandemic, grew the company 300% year on year, launched several key products that are now used by hundreds of thousands of customers, and built a thriving global community,” they wrote.
Womenswear brand Spanx made a series of executive appointments, including naming a new CEO. Here are the moves:
Spanx CEO KIm Jones. (Courtesy photo)
Daniel Lee joined Burberry as chief creative officer this week, succeeding Riccardo Tisci. Previously, Lee served as creative director at Italian luxury brand Bottega Veneta. He also served as director of ready-to-wear at Celine, and worked at Maison Margiela, Balenciaga and Donna Karan. Lee will present his debut runway collection at London Fashion Week in February 2023, the London-based fashion brand said.
Ryan Tabone. (Courtesy photo)
Ryan Tabone is the new chief product and technology officer at Lightspeed Commerce. Tabone joins the commerce platform used by retailers and restaurateurs after 15 years at Google, where he was a member of the original team that built Chromebook and most recently VP and GM of Google Pay and Google Finance. He was also an executive in residence with companies at Alphabet VC firm Other Bets, including Wing, Intrinsic and more.
Meal kit company Blue Apron announced a transition in the CFO role. Randy Greben resigned, having accepted a position with another company. With this, Mitchell Cohen, who the company said is an experienced CFO, will step in as interim CFO. Going forward, the company will conduct a search for a permanent replacement.
Carolyn Everson is joining the board of directors at the Walt Disney Company, effective Nov. 21. A longtime tech executive, Everson most recently served as president of Instacart, and was previously VP of the global business group at Facebook for Meta. She also held top roles at Microsoft and Viacom. Everson also serves on the boards of The Coca-Cola Company, Creative Artists Agency. With this move, Disney said it reached a support agreement with shareholder and hedge fund Third Point LLC, which had been pushing for new board members, among other measures, the Hollywood Reporter reported.
Kareem Daniel. (Courtesy photo)
Kareem Daniel, an executive at Disney, will join the board of McDonald’s Corporation, effective Oct. 1. Daniel is the chairman of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, which oversees streaming channels including Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Star+, as well as TV stations such as ABC, ESPN, and FX, and film distribution. He has also held leadership roles in consumer products, games and publishing. The McDonald’s board now has 15 members.
Nathalie Berger Duquene was appointed SVP and global general manager of Balmain Beauty by the Estee Lauder Companies. This follows the announcement that French luxury house Balmain will be launching a line of beauty products in 2024. Duquene has been with the company since June 2019, and has held executive positions at Tom Ford Beauty. She previously worked at Armani Beauty, Lancôme, Helena Rubinstein, Biotherm and Guerlain.
Supergoop made a pair of appointments to expand its executive team, HAPPI reported. Britany LeBlanc, SVP of marketing, was promoted to chief marketing officer. Ryan Crowley will serve in a dual role as chief financial and operating officer. Crowley previously served in CFO roles at Intermix and Marc Jacobs.
Ezio Garciamendez was appointed SVP and chief supply chain officer of Kontoor Brands, the owner of apparel brands including Wrangler and Lee. Garciamendez is joining on Nov. 1 from online wellness shopping club Melaleuca, where he served as SVP of global operations. He previously held various roles at Procter and Gamble.
Ezio Garciamendez. (Courtesy photo)
The Kellogg Company made a series of appointments as it prepares to spin out its North American cereal brand into a standalone company. The following team members are all current members of the Kellogg Company team, and will round out leadership of the new company, which is one of three that will be created with the separation:
New tools from Adobe and Levi's generate product images in multiple variations.
An AI-generated model. (Photo courtesy of Levi's)
AI is at the top of the conversation across technology in 2023, as new models such as ChatGPT and GPT4 show how ingesting and training large amounts of data can not only help businesses find insights in what already exists, but create something new.
While there is plenty of off-hours time being devoted to experimentation with these new models, the uses of tools that bring together automation and creativity in a way that is valuable for businesses and embraced by their customers are still coming into view.
In ecommerce, the promise of AI appears to be massive. Across marketplaces, advertising and customer service, brands and retailers have seen demands for content and customer touchpoints grow exponentially. With executives constantly in search of efficiency, AI tools stand to help generate voluminous content at scale.
To be sure, it remains early days. AI has not yet arrived permanently in ecommerce workflows, and some of the tools that lead to it arriving may not use the same models that are gaining so much press today. But the teams inside brands and retailers are interested in experimenting with this technology, and pilots can offer hints at where it might be heading.
This week delivered a pair of new launches from Levi’s and Adobe that showed how new tools can help to change how product images are generated. Let's take a look:
Photoshoots featuring models wearing products in real-world settings have long been a staple of the marketing playbook in fashion. Levi’s is piloting a new approach that could bring AI into the equation.
Through a partnership with Amsterdam-based Lalaland.ai, Levi Strauss is planning to test the use of customized, AI-generated models. Designed to supplement human models, Lalaland.ai’s technology is built to help show products for a diverse range of body types, ages, size and skin tones.
Levi’s positioned this as a move to supplement human models. Typically, a product page on the Levi’s app or website only has one model. Using this technology to create multiple images can help create a way for customers to see themselves represented in the products that are shown. It can also help to increase diversity, equity and inclusion within Levi's ecommerce stores, the company said.
“While AI will likely never fully replace human models for us, we are excited for the potential capabilities this may afford us for the consumer experience,” said Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles, global head of digital and emerging technology strategy at Levi Strauss & Co., in a statement. “We see fashion and technology as both an art and a science, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Lalaland.ai, a company with such high-quality technology that can help us continue on our journey for a more diverse and inclusive customer experience.”
A new tool from Adobe is also aiming to automate the work of showing images in multiple variations on ecommerce stores, but this goes beyond fashion.
According to Reuters, the new tool is designed to allow ecommerce brands and retailers to create 3D images that show products from a range of categories in a variety of formats and configurations, as well as settings. It can be used for home goods, toys, furniture, apparel and more. Product images are used across a range of content, from product pages to emails to social campaigns. So the content needs for brands and retailers are voluminous. From Reuters:
But even keeping up with making renderings has created a tremendous amount of work for e-commerce companies as marketing campaigns have become more tightly targeted, said Francois Cottin, senior director of marketing for Adobe's Substance 3D business.
For example, Cottin said, a company selling a coffee machine might want to show the gadget against a different background in different countries, because German kitchens might look different from California kitchens. Most companies have to tap 3D artists to create each image.
This advance is as much about transforming the work of teams as it is about creating the variations of product images themselves. 3D models are currently used by many of the large ecommerce players, but creating them remains the work of large teams with specialty skills in visual effects. The images then head to the hands of marketers and merchandisers who find a home for them on product pages within the customer experience.
Automation can help make all of this work more efficient. Such a tool could also have a huge impact on smaller brands and retailers. If these capabilities move into wider release, a pool of content that would’ve only been available to the most-resourced companies now could be opened up for everyone to use.
While Adobe typically works with enterprises and this product is likely designed for that market segment, its release presents a question worth asking for the future: Will AI be the next ecommerce advance that further levels the playing field between storied brands and fast-rising startups?