Shop Direct, the UK’s integrated pureplay digital retailer and financial services provider, has named Guy Farmer as group trading director. He will join the company in September 2019 and report to Sam Perkins, managing director, retail. Shop Direct offers a wide range of brands, market-leading technology and data capabilities, and financial services.
Guy is currently vice president and global retail own brand director at Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), responsible for all Boots branded products worldwide. During eight years at WBA, he has led a 155-strong multifunctional team and set up a global centre of excellence for the development of WBA’s own brand business. Guy has also held the roles of global director for Boots cosmetics brands, trading director for healthcare and lifestyle, and trading director for beauty. Guy previously spent 13 years at L’Oreal, progressing from marketing director to managing director and country manager for Portugal, following six years in brand and category management positions at Procter & Gamble.Shop Direct, the UK's integrated pureplay digital retailer and financial services provider, has named Guy Farmer as group trading director. He will join the company in September 2019 and report to Sam Perkins, managing director, retail. Shop Direct offers a wide range of brands, market-leading technology and data capabilities, and financial services.#
At Shop Direct, he will work with category directors and the director of the company’s global sourcing operation to oversee multi-functional teams including buying, merchandising, design, sourcing, data intelligence, finance, and trading. The amalgamation of these previously separate functions into category teams represents a new approach to the end-to-end customer experience and supply chain. It began last year with the appointment of fashion, home, electrical and developing category directors and is generating strong results, including a successful peak period which saw group revenue up 3.7 per cent year-on-year for the seven weeks up to and including December 28, 2018.
Shop Direct’s retail team has also consolidated marketing activity under the position of chief marketing officer (CMO). Carly O’Brien, who joined the business in early 2019 and has been interim CMO since April, will take over the role permanently. She has 18 years’ customer management and financial services experience, most recently as marketing director at Virgin Money Digital Bank. She was previously head of customer acquisition marketing for current accounts at Royal Bank of Scotland and head of marketing at Bank of America. Her appointment as CMO shows Shop Direct’s ambition to use its rich data in new ways to create an even better customer experience.
“Guy’s and Carly’s expertise will allow us to make big steps forward in our mission to give customers the best products and online journey, while helping them spread the cost. Guy’s outstanding trading and product experience means he’s ideally placed to cement our category management approach and even further improve the speed and quality of our commercial and customer decisions. Carly is already an integral part of the team and will use her marketing expertise to bring us closer to our customers through data and enable them to connect with our retail brands in new ways,” Sam Perkins, managing director, retail, at Shop Direct said. (GK)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India
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