Marks & Spencer has poached the chief executive of Halfords in an attempt to revive its struggling clothing, beauty and home sections. Jill McDonald will have accountability for all aspects of M&S’s non-food business, from design and sourcing through to getting goods on the shelf, and will report directly to the chief executive, Steve Rowe.
The appointment comes after a months-long search for somone to take charge of clothing and homeware after Rowe was promoted to the top job last year. M&S had courted the former Next clothing chief Christos Angelides, but he signed up as head of fashion chain Reiss.
The role is important for the future of M&S, which has struggled to increase clothing sales in recent years amid tougher competition from high street rivals and difficulties with its online service. The chain has started switching space towards its more successful food business and away from fashion.
McDonald’s appointment is likely to disappoint the womenswear, lingerie and beauty head, Jo Jenkins, who will report to her. However, Jenkins’ role has been expanded to all clothing including womenswear, menswear and childrenswear.
McDonald will also work with Neal and Mark Lindsey, the multimillionaire veteran rag trade brothers, who have been tasked with sharpening up M&S’s buying over the past few years. She will join M&S in autumn as managing director for clothing, home and beauty, after working out her notice period at Halfords, which ends in October.
McDonald moves on from Halfords two years after joining from the fast food chain McDonald’s, where she was in charge of the north-western Europe business.
Rowe said M&S was making progress with improving its clothing and home ranges, adding: “The time is now right for this appointment. Jill’s first-class customer knowledge and great experience in running dynamic, high-achieving teams make her exactly the right person to lead this all-important part of our business.”
McDonald said she had long been an M&S customer and a fan of the business, “so working with the brand was a career opportunity that I just couldn’t turn down”.
Rowe is thought to have been keen to hire a business heavyweight with strong leadership skills who would be able to pull together strategy for M&S’s clothing and home business and develop a strategy suited to the rapidly changing consumer environment.
But industry watchers questioned the logic of hiring a clothing industry novice, whose career began at health and beauty group Colgate-Palmolive before she spent 16 years at British Airways and nearly a decade with McDonald’s.
One leading headhunter said McDonald was known as a good people manager, but suggested her lack of specialist knowledge of the fashion sector meant she was a high-risk choice for one of the UK’s biggest clothing businesses. “Genius or madness? Only time will tell,” they said.
David Jeary, a retail analyst at Canaccord Genuity, said: “This is an interesting appointment from an M&S perspective, since Jill McDonald, whose prior roles include long stints at McDonald’s and BA, cannot be seen as a clothing expert. What she does bring is considerable experience in marketing and customer relationship management, which have become even greater areas of focus under Steve Rowe’s tenure.”
