Product is king, again.
In the past year, major brands including Michael Kors, Burberry and Merrell have created the position of chief product officer, a role designed to connect the dots between what designers dream up, how and where those products will be marketed and sold, and at what price. At Salomon, Vans and Dickies, executives who held that title have recently been elevated to chief executive or brand president roles.
The chief product officer is a job that has always existed in retail under various titles, but in the last decade or so has played second fiddle to marketers and tech wizards at many companies. The ability to master social media, crunch customer data and win over values-driven young shoppers often seemed to matter more than what those customers were actually being sold. Merchant princes in the Mickey Drexler mold, who walked shop floors and chatted with customers and salespeople to understand the nuances of how every last item was perceived, seemed a bit passe.
But the merchant princes and princesses are making a comeback.
Experts point to a few key drivers behind this renewed emphasis on product savvy. A slowdown in brand heat and product innovation — blamed for falling sales at luxury houses, sportswear giants and fast fashion retailers alike — has companies racing to discover the next big “it” item or category. High-profile missteps by data-driven executives like Nike’s John Donahoe have further reinforced the need for leadership rooted in product know-how.
By consolidating different product-related functions under one leader with a singular vision, companies hope to avoid costly disconnects (think: a marketer hyping a product that merchandising under-stocks), streamline operations and boost profitability.
“Brands are challenged because everybody is copying everybody, and it’s just hard to find your identity,” said Caroline Pill, partner at executive search consultancy Heidrick & Struggles in London. “In that context, does it not make sense to put brands and products together under one person?”
The Rise and Role of Product Chief
Simply put, a chief product officer’s job is to be the company’s “one voice speaking to product,” said Jaimee Marshall, managing partner at Kirk Palmer Associates.
This means overseeing related but often disconnected functions — like design, merchandising, production, and parts of marketing — to keep the focus on the actual things a brand sells (i.e. products) and ensure teams don’t unintentionally work against each other.
That emphasis on greater cohesion across divisions is a common theme in the job announcements for many of the new CPOs. At Michael Kors, newly appointed CPO Philippa Newman, a company veteran and former president of accessories and footwear, oversees merchandising, production, licensing, and design across all product categories. In November, Wolverine World Wide tapped Adidas and Columbia Sportswear alum Mike Maloney as product chief to lead across product development, merchandise strategy, and market expansion for all its workwear brands, including Wolverine, Bates, Harley-Davidson, and Merrell Work.
“It’s [ensuring] all the pieces in the product life cycle are speaking to one another,” said Lisa Yae, managing partner of the retail & luxury goods practice at CAA Executive Search. “For so long … you had merchandising buying deep into a style or a silhouette that didn’t have a ton of marketing behind it, or a marketing campaign about an item that was running in all the editorials, and none of the stores bought deep into it.”
Brands in a period of “transformation or transition” may also turn to a CPO to help them “find their way back to their customer” or break into a new category where they’re struggling to gain traction, Yae said.
Burberry, for instance, has underperformed the luxury segment in recent years, as its efforts to move upmarket have failed to gain momentum. In November, the British trenchcoat maker rehired its former chief merchandiser Paul Price as its CPO (specifically, chief product, merchandising, and planning officer). CEO Joshua Schulman, in a press release, described Price as “a key member of the Burberry leadership team during the company’s peak era of value creation” and credited him with driving “product strategies that led to consistent double-digit growth” during his tenure from 2007 to 2017.
Footwear brands like Merrell, which appointed Noreen Naroo-Pucci — former product chief at Mizzen+Main and senior vice president of menswear design for Calvin Klein North America — and Under Armour, which hired Adidas and Puma alum Yassine Saidi, are likely looking to emphasise product innovation at a time when performance footwear makers like On and Hoka are snapping up market share with their emphasis on technical design, Yae said.
“The major footwear brands and sneaker designers and some of the big retailers have really had to think about how they innovate in this space,” Yae added.
The Right Person for the Job
The best product chiefs are merchants at heart, with hands-on experience in high-touch product roles and time spent in stores, said Marshall. Ideally, they’ve worked in merchandising, planning, or design — if not a combination of all three.
“It’s somebody who has that next level of connection to the product,” said Marshall. “There’s 1739945458 an appreciation for vision at the top of the brand [which] we lost a little bit of during the heyday of digital when the world was moving more analytical and more [towards] data.”
For instance, Merrell’s Naroo-Pucci’s experience includes “design across performance and sport lifestyle products, brand creative and product storytelling,” per a company press release. Similarly, Crocs’ CPO since 2021, Lori Foglia, was the architect behind a new store design concept at American Eagle’s Aerie brand, Crocs highlighted in a press release announcing her appointment.
An effective CPO must bring “financial acumen” and have managed budgets with direct accountability for profits and losses, Yae said, something that’s crucial as brands look to tie as much of their efforts as possible back to the bottom line in the year ahead.
“They have to be able to balance the creative and design direction aspects,” Yae said. “They need to be well rounded and have owned the sales function and the merchandising life cycle.”
Experience across different regions is a plus — proof “they understand the demand from the regions, as opposed to just creating from the center,” (or hubs like New York, Paris and Milan), said Pill.
Not every brand will need a CPO. For now, the role is gaining the most traction in the US, particularly in mass retail, contemporary fashion, and sportswear across mid-priced apparel and accessories brands, Pill said. In luxury, however, fashion houses may see the CPO’s commercial emphasis as clashing with the creativity and vision traditionally driven by star designers and creative directors. (That said, Prada-owned Miu Miu has had a CPO, Carolina Brodasca, since 2021. Brodasca was previously CPO at Stella McCartney.)
“I don’t see a world where some of these luxury designers would report to a chief product officer rather than directly to the CEO,” Pill said.
Still, her luxury practice has been receiving an influx of calls for chief merchants (in many cases, companies are hiring one for the first time) — a role nearly identical to CPOs — which signals a renewed focus on product and sales, regardless of the title.
“We’re back in a world where we touch things — where we appreciate craftsmanship at every level,” she said. “So the products need to be consistent, coherent, and commercially sound.”