B&Q strengthens board to 'ensure that the customer has real authority'

Kingfisher-owned B&Q has bolstered its board with two new appointments and shuffled a number of roles and responsibilities.

Interim multichannel director and former head of M&M Direct, Steve Robinson, has joined B&Q on a permanent basis as customer director, reporting to Martyn Phillips. This new position has been created to leverage knowledge from customer insight, store formats, pricing and promotions, and will “help the business become a true omni channel retailer and ensure that the customer has real authority”.

Ebru Sayilan is the board’s second new appointment, having been promoted to commercial director for seasonal and decorative. She has worked for Kingfisher for 11 years and moved to B&Q from Kingfisher’s Turkish chain, Koctas, three years ago.

Sayilan will work alongside commercial director for building, showroom (kitchen bedroom and bathroom) installations and TradePoint, Ian Herrett.

B&Q believes that having two commercial directors will bring additional focus to both the hard and soft sides of the business, and follow Veronique Laury's return to France to take on a group Kingfisher role.

Supply chain director Chris Ward is now responsible for a newly created business transformation team, in support of the ‘Creating the Leader’ strategy

Marketing director Katherine Paterson has gained additional responsibilities around new group-wide own-brands.

Other board roles including retail (Damian McGloughlin), people (Fraser Longden) and finance (James Skelton) are broadly unchanged.

Source : Insight Team