Brands
Ted Baker
Ted Baker appointed Rachel Osborne as CEO. Osborne joined Ted Baker as chief financial officer (CFO) in November before being appointed as acting CEO in December.
Prior to that, she was with Debenhams, where she had worked as CFO. Previous roles include CFO at Domino’s Pizza Group, finance director of group enterprise at Vodafone and finance and strategy director at John Lewis.
The company’s board also said the search for a chairman is progressing well and that Sharon Baylay will continue to as acting chair in the interim period. The board also confirmed that Jennifer Roebuck, currently a non-executive director on the board, will be taking up her previously announced leadership role of chief customer officer.
Eastpak
VF Corp. appointed Nina Flood as president of its Eastpak division.
Flood will be based in Antwerp, Belgium, where the brands’ marketing and sales operations are based, and will report to Martino Scabbia Guerrini, executive vice president and group president of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
Eastpak makes stylish and functional backpacks, shoulder bags, travel gear and accessories.
Most recently, Flood served as president of Kipling Americas. After joining VF in 2003 as senior director of marketing for the Nautica brand, formerly part of VF Corp., she quickly progressed in her career holding various senior positions, including leading global marketing and strategy for Nautica before joining the Kipling brand in 2016.
VF also appointed Paula Gozzo, senior director of merchandising and product development at Kipling Americas, as vice president and general manager of Kipling Americas. Gozzo will report to Vera Breuer, global president of Kipling, which also makes bag and accessories.
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In addition, VF appointed Markus Hamm as vice president and general manager of Kipling EMEA. He will also be based in Antwerp, and will report to Breuer.
After joining VF in 2004, Hamm held various key sales positions for Jansport and Eastpak, and most recently taking over wholesale, strategic accounts, sales operations and digital for the Eastpak brand.
Retail
Hibbett Sports
Hibbett Sports Inc. appointed Robert J. Volke as its new CFO and senior vice president of accounting and finance, effective April 13.
Volke will replace Scott R. Humphrey, who has been serving as the company’s interim CFO. Humphrey will remain with the company for a period of time in order to facilitate the transition of his duties. Humphrey has served as the company’s interim CFO since September 2019.
Volke was most recently with Fleet Farm since August 2018, serving in the role of interim CFO.
Hibbett, headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., is an athletic-inspired fashion retailer with approximately 1,100 stores under the Hibbett Sports and City Gear brands, primarily located in small and mid-sized communities. It also operates the hibbett.com and citygear.com e-commerce sites.
BJ’s Wholesale Club
BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. appointed Paul Cichocki as executive vice president of membership, analytics and business transformation.
Cichocki will be responsible for the company’s membership, marketing and analytics organizations, and will report directly to BJ’s president and CEO Lee Delaney.
Prior to joining BJ’s, Cichocki was a partner in the Boston office of Bain & Company. Prior to joining Bain in 1997, he was an operating manager for Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo.
Headquartered in Westborough, Mass., BJ’s Wholesale Club operates 218 clubs and 145 BJ’s Gas locations in 17 states.
Technology
Thomas
Tom Greco was named vice president of data products and services, and Al Hamid Benbrahim head of data for Thomas Industrial Data, a new unit of Thomas, a data analytics firm for sourcing and supply chain.
Thomas Industrial Data is meant to be a premier resource for all sourcing and supply chain trends in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
Greco brings deep experience in supplier sourcing from his 10 years as the head of product for Thomasnet.com. Benbrahim joined Thomas to lead the data science team and unite the multiple data sets and resources within the company. He brings big data experience to the Thomas data sets from his time as CEO and co-founder of Natural Numerix, a provider of innovative capital markets technology solutions and real-time intelligence capabilities for trading and risk management.
The Thomasnet.com platform has 1.5 million buyers that source products and services from 70,000 categories, containing 500,000 North American suppliers and 7.8 million product listings.
Symphony RetailAI
Symphony RetailAI, a global provider of integrated AI-enabled marketing, merchandising and supply chain solutions for consumer goods, retailers and manufacturers, announced Daniel Lyons as head of CPG (consumer packaged goods) enterprise sales.
Before joining Symphony RetailAI, Lyons served as executive vice president of sales for Atlas Technology.
Powered by AI and machine learning, Symphony RetailAI’s solutions for CPGs provide a suite of decision-support solutions designed to incrementally increase revenues and margins by sensing, predicting and shaping consumer behavior to optimize product, price, promotion, space, assortment, and inventory strategies.