Dive Brief:
- Qurate Retail Group on Friday announced the appointment of Scott Barnhart as the company’s chief operating officer, effective immediately.
- Barnhart leads supply chain, procurement, global business services, corporate real estate and workplace services for all Qurate brands; all customer service and experience for all U.S. brands; and QVC and HSN’s U.S. fulfillment operations. Barnhart also oversees the transformation management office for the company’s three-year turnaround plan, dubbed Project Athens.
- Barnhart joins Qurate from Cardinal Health, where he was the president of global medical products and supply chain.
Dive Insight:
Qurate Retail Group continues to transform its C-suite as it pushes forward with its turnaround strategy.
In August, the company announced that CFO Jeffrey Davis resigned from his position and named James Hathaway as interim CFO. (In a separate announcement, Dollar Tree stated that Davis was joining the company as its chief financial officer.)
At that time the company also launched the position of chief transformation officer and promoted William Hunter, who was previously the senior vice president of business transformation and share services, to the role.
A month later the company revealed additional executive appointments: Soumya Sriraman, most recently the head of Prime Video Channels at Amazon, was named president of Qurate’s streaming unit. Stacy Bowe, who’s held merchandising leadership roles at Macy’s and G-III Apparel Group, took over as chief merchandising officer for QVC U.S.
All the leadership maneuvering is happening amid a backdrop of declining sales. In its latest quarter, losses were seen across nearly every section of Qurate’s business, with the company reporting a 16% decrease in revenue.
Qurate was downgraded to B+ at S&P Global Ratings, with analysts citing “ongoing supply chain constraints and lower discretionary spending [that] will weigh on the company’s efforts to turn around operations” as reasons for the downgrade.
“As we work to reignite our performance as Qurate Retail Group, we continue to augment our leadership team with new talent that will blend fresh perspectives and skills into the deep institutional knowledge already on the team,” Qurate Retail CEO David Rawlinson said in a statement. “As head of operations, Scott will play a key role in helping us accelerate Project Athens, our strategic growth plan. Scott’s expertise and experience in driving operational excellence, as well as his deep knowledge of global supply chain management, will be critical to our execution of the five pillars of Project Athens.”
