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Archive for the ‘People’ Category

JC Penney Takes a Bite Out of Apple with New CEO

Posted in General News / Technology, People, Retail, tagged , , , , on June 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Ron Johnson’s work in building and expanding Apple’s retail offerings into a global force has been described by some as “iconic.”  Apparently, JC Penney feels the same way.

The department store chain has tabbed Johnson to be its new CEO, effective November 1.  Johnson will take the reigns from current Penney’s CEO Myron Ullman, who now becomes executive chairman.  Johnson will also join the retailer’s board of directors starting August 1.

“Ron is widely recognized and highly regarded in the retail industry for his creativity and innovation, his commitment to empowering employees to deliver an unparalleled customer experience, and to making stores exciting places where people love to shop,” Ullman says.  “His tremendous accomplishments at Apple and Target speak to his great consumer merchandising, marketing and operational talent.”

The 52 year-old Johnson has spent the past 11 years as senior vice president of retail for Apple, during which he oversaw the opening of 300-plus Apple stores and led the company’s overall retail strategy.  To say his tenure at the company was marked by Apple’s emergence as a retail powerhouse would be a gross understatement.

Prior to Apple, Johnson spent 15 years at Target, where he was a merchandising executive in charge of several different product categories, including men’s and women’s apparel, children’s items and home goods.

Johnson himself seems excited about the move.

“I’ve always dreamed of leading a major retail company as CEO, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to help J. C. Penney re-imagine what I believe to be the single greatest opportunity in American retailing today, the Department Store,” he said.  “I have tremendous confidence in J. C. Penney’s future and look forward to working with Mike Ullman, the Executive Board and the Company’s 150,000 associates to transform the way America shops.”

J.C. Penney also announced that Johnson will invest $50 million into the company as part of the move, purchasing warrants for more than 7 million shares of Penney stock.

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Two E-tailers Announce Personnel Changes

Posted in Ecommerce, People, tagged , , , , on May 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

With Memorial Day behind us and the summer shopping season pretty much underway in earnest, two online retailers are making some changes to their leadership structures.

For starters, Diane Sullivan has been promoted to president and CEO at Brown Shoe, the parent company of Shoes.com. Sullivan previously served as the company’s president and COO and replaces Ronald From, who stays on as Brown Shoe’s chairman.

Sullivan has been with the company since 2004 and became COO in 2006.  In the past few years, she spearheaded the company’s branding strategy, oversaw the $145 million acquisition of American Sporting Goods and had an active leadership role in building Brown Shoe’s global sourcing network.

From 2001 to 2004, Sullivan was vice chairman of the footwear group for Phillips-Van Heusen.

With more responsibilities now under her domain, Sullivan will be focused on building on Brown Shoe’s strong 2010, in which e-commerce sales for all of its brands increased 21 percent.

“In my first few months I am prioritizing the identification of opportunities to strengthen the alignment of our businesses with our key consumer focus areas of healthy living, contemporary fashion and family,” she says.  “I’m committed to building on our great foundation to further the momentum of the past year as we inspire people to feel good and live better, feet first.”

Meanwhile, Canadian contact lens and eyeglass e-tailer Coastal Contacts has named Peter Lee as its new vice president of information technology.  Lee will be tasked primarily with expanding Coastal’s world wide information technology capabilities as it begins expanding its eyeglass offerings.

“We are pleased to have Peter join the Coastal team at this crucial point in our development,” said Roger Hardy, Coastal’s founder and CEO.  “His experience with high-growth organizations such as Netflix, where he led the infrastructure design to support a subscriber base of 20 million users, is particularly beneficial here at Coastal as we build a world leader in the vision category.”

Lee joins Coastal after holding the same position with web technology firm Synacor.  He also previously worked as director of I.T. operations at Netflix and held positions at both Intuit Inc. and Oracle.

Much like Sullivan and Brown Shoe, Lee joins Coastal at a good time: the company recently reported that eyeglass sales for Q2 2011 were up 117 percent year-to-year and Coastal has spent the last few years investing heavily in European e-tail sites, which now account for nearly 35 percent of its total sales.

Got an e-commerce hire or promotion you want us to cover?  Send us an email with the details and we’ll make sure to get the word out!

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Leadership Change Coming at Groupon

Posted in Ecommerce, Online Shopping, People, tagged , , , , , , on March 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Looking for an exciting, executive-level e-commerce job? Polish up your resume folks and keep your eyes on those want ads because Groupon is ditching its president and chief operating officer in the next few weeks.

The daily deal site announced this week that Rob Solomon, who’s held the post at Groupon for just over a year, will be stepping down.   No specific reason was reported for Soloman’s departure, though he will be retained as a company advisor after he leaves.

“Rob Solomon joined Groupon just over a year ago, doing what he once considered unimaginable and relocating his family from ‘God’s Country’ in Woodside, CA, to Chicago, bringing his experience as a seasoned Internet executive to help us turn Groupon into the next great technology company,” said Groupon CEO Andrew Mason “Now, Rob is moving on, taking his family back to God’s Country.”

(Editor’s Note: one of us has been to Woodside and unless something’s changed, hearing it called God’s Country is truly baffling. Anyway, we digress…)

In all seriousness, Soloman’s departure is pretty baffling as well, at least on the surface.

In the 12-plus months that he was on the job, Groupon saw enormous growth, to say the least.   The company expanded  from about 200 employees to nearly 6,500, expanding its daily deal offerings to 44 different countries after initially only running a U.S.-based operation and becoming the preferred daily deal resource among most shoppers.

“Rob has added enormous value to Groupon and we’ll miss having him around,” Mason continued.

Enormous value indeed, but the leadership change comes at a crucial time for Groupon.  The company hasn’t exactly had the best year thus far thanks to some glitches with a few of their discount offers that caused a couple of public relations headaches.

Meanwhile, both Groupon’s main competitor (LivingSocial) and an increasing number of internet players like Google and Facebook are either building up their own daily deal offerings or starting their own deal programs to compete directly with Groupon and grab a share of the top spot in the industry.   It’s an industry that could generate upwards of $6.1 billion in sales over the next 3-4 years, according to recent studies.

We’ll let you know who replaces Soloman as soon as we find out about it. In the meantime, we welcome your thoughts and comments!

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PayPal Brings in Blackhawk CEO to Lead Upcoming Expansion Efforts

Posted in People, tagged , , , , on March 10, 2011 | 1 Comment »

With an aggressive expansion plan in the works that will fundamentally change the way it does business, PayPal Inc. has hired Blackhawk Network CEO and found Don Kingsborough to head up efforts that will eventually see the payment processing service in more physical storefronts as it aims to better compete with the likes of Visa and MasterCard.

PayPal has an ambitious strategy in place for the second half of this year that ties in quite well with the hiring of Kingsborough.

The plan is defined primarily by a redefined point-of-sale system that PayPal hopes to implement with brick and mortar retailers.  Recognizing the changing landscapes of both payment services and shopping in general, the system would offer in-store payment options for consumers that serve as an alternative to traditional credit and debit cards at checkout.

Employing mobile devices to complete transactions is part of the equation for PayPal, which says that it could double its revenue up to $7 billion by 2013 by incorporating real-world payments into its business model.

The company believes that its’ already solid reputation handling transaction data across multiple platforms will be an advantage as shopping and payment options continue to grow and overlap.

“We’re going with a whole new experience that is different than the traditional card-like experience,” says PayPal’s president Scott Thompson.  “That requires us to rebuild the whole infrastructure around point-of-sale.  Don, because he did that at Blackhawk, is the type of person we need here.”

The new venture will build on Kingsborough’s work designing and operating Blackhawk’s prepaid card network, which  sells gift cards from retailers at kiosks in Safeway stores and other grocers.

Got news about an e-commerce professional or new hire? Send us an email with the information at ecomjunkie@mail.com.

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Google Shakes Things Up at the Top

Posted in General News / Technology, People, tagged , , , , , on January 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Search giant Google is making some big changes to its leadership team just as the company released data revealing that it saw a substantial boost in paid clicks during the final quarter of 2010.

Google has announced that co-founder Larry Page will take over as CEO on April 4th, replacing Eric Schmidt. Schmidt, who served as chief executive since 2001, will now transition into the role of executive chairman.  The shake-up is designed to simplify Google’s management structure while streamlining important decision making.

Page has served as president of products at Google and, along with Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin, formed a triumvirate handling all daily management decisions at the company for the past decade.  As CEO, Page will oversee day-to-day operations while Brin will take the lead on strategic development of new products.

In his new role as executive chairman, Schmidt will primarily focus on building and cultivating Google’s business relationships, as well as governmental outreach.

Of course, after looking at the data Google rolled out this week on how the company closed out 2010 you might wonder why they’re making any changes to the leadership team in the first place.

Paid clicks were up 18 percent during Q4 2010 according to Google and the average cost per click also increased by 5 percent from the year before.  Overall revenue for the fourth quarter was $8.44 billion, a nearly 27 percent increase from the $6.6 billion during Q4 2009, while the company’s net income was $2.54 billion.

“Q4 marked a terrific end to a stellar year,” said Schmidt.  “Our strong performance has been driven by a rapidly growing digital economy, continuous product innovation that benefits both users and advertisers, and by the extraordinary momentum of our newer businesses, such as display and mobile.”

Stellar indeed!

Google’s total revenue for last year was reported at a staggering $29.32 billion, up 24 percent from $23.65 billion in 2009. Net income for 2010 also jumped, from $6.52 billion to $8.51 billion, a 30 percent increase.

With numbers like that, it doesn’t seem like much really needs to be changed over at Google.  The company continues to grow at an impressive rate and is widening its scope seemingly by the day. But it will still be interesting to see what tactically changes with the new leadership hierarchy.

Leave us your thoughts and comments below.

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BuyWithMe Names a New CEO

Posted in Ecommerce, General News / Technology, People, tagged , , , , , on January 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

It seems like the daily deal site industry has been dominating e-commerce coverage lately, what with all the talk of acquisitions, buyouts, international investments and the like.  Today’s no different either, though the news for once doesn’t involve either Groupon or LivingSocial.

Instead, it’s BuyWithMe.com, which has named a new CEO.

Jim Crowley will take over the chief executive post from Cheryl Rosner, who held the position for just under a year yet oversaw a $16 million funding round during her tenure.  Rosner will remain on the company’s advisory board when Crowly takes over.

Crowley joins BuyWithMe after a stint as president and CEO at Turbine Inc., an online gaming studio, where he oversaw Warner Bros. Entertainment’s acquisition of the company in April of last year.

Prior to Turbine, he served as chief operating officer of m-Qube Inc., a mobile content management, billing and delivery company, during their acquisition of VeriSign Inc.

Crowley faces a daunting task in his new role, namely trying to cut into the overwhelming market share that daily deal giants Groupon and LivingSocial have carved out for themselves recently. Nevertheless, he seems up to the task.

“The marriage of social and group dynamics with technology is fundamentally transforming how consumers and local merchants meet, interact and transact,” he says. “With its national footprint, leading technology platform and expertise in understanding consumer behavior, BuyWithMe is uniquely positioned to be an industry leader.”

Got a new hire or promotion announcement you’d like to see reported on here at Ecommerce Junkie?  Send us an email with all the relevant information and we’ll take a look!

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LivingSocial Brings in Former Walmart Executive

Posted in Ecommerce, People, tagged , , , , , , , on January 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Flush with cash and better positioned than ever to make a run at Groupon for dominance in the daily deal/featured product shopping market, LivingSocial has made another big splash as part of its continuing evolution.

The company has named John Bax, a former e-commerce executive with Walmart, as LivingSocial’s new chief financial officer.

“We’re excited to bring John’s fantastic track record and diverse background in all things financial to the team, as well as a solid reputation among the financial community and a deep understanding of LivingSocial’s business,” says Tim O’Shaughnessy, LivingSocial’s CEO and co-founder.  “We are confident he will contribute to our company’s continued growth and stability.”

The hiring comes on the heels of last month’s $175 million investment that LivingSocial received from web giant Amazon.

At the time, competition in the daily deal site arena was at a fever pitch. Industry news sources were abuzz with Amazon’s investment package and the rumored $6 billion investment by Google in Groupon that preceded it.  Though the Google deal never materialized, those frantic few weeks highlighted just how popular daily deal sites have become with consumers and how many big e-commerce names were quickly moving to snatch the leading ones up to add to their own offerings.

Now, with the holiday shopping season behind us, it appears that the competition among daily deal sites is going to be heating up throughout 2011 and continue to be a major story in e-commerce news this year.

Bax arrives at LivingSocial having most recently served as the chief financial officer at RecycleBank, a New York-based company that runs a retailer-funded rewards program where consumers can earn points simply by recycling household goods.  He held the CFO position at Sentient, a private travel firm, prior to that.

Bax’s time at Walmart preceded both Sentient and RecycleBank, where he first worked as a vice president of planning and analysis for the chain’s brick and mortar locations before taking over the Walmart e-commerce position.

Got a new hiring or promotion you want the e-commerce industry to know about? Send it to us and we’ll give it some coverage!

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