Women’s fashion brand New Look has a new retail director with Mark Matthews joining at “a pivotal time” for the 18-44 age-group-sector retailer. He replaces Elaine Cartwright who has just joined M&S as stores director of innovation and implementation.
New Look
With extensive retail experience across a range of brands — Bonmarché, George at Asda and Selfridges — Matthews will be responsible for New Look’s store estate and, importantly, implementing its omnichannel strategy across stores “to drive sales and enhance the customer experience”.
From those previous three businesses, his expertise spans operations, visual merchandising and in-store digital. He also brings “a strong track record of enhancing product ranges and modernising stores to improve service and sales”, while also having worked on “future store propositions that strengthen omnichannel integration and colleague engagement”, New Look said of its new appointment.
Key will be his focus on the brand’s omnichannel strategy “optimising its store network to better serve customers across the UK”, it added.
Matthews will be part of New Look’s director team, succeeding Cartwright who had spent over a decade at the retailer.
Helen Connolly, CEO of New Look, said: “Our store estate is a vital part of our omnichannel strategy, and… Mark brings extensive industry expertise and a customer-first mindset that will be key to our next phase of store development.”
That evolving strategy has already seen recent store upgrades, including concept launches at the Bluewater mall in Kent, and in Manchester, which have “delivered strong double-digit like-for-like sales growth, reflecting the brand’s focus on innovation, digital integration and elevating the customer journey,” New Look noted.
It said over the past five years it has “transformed the business and its digital offer, upgrading the website and app, developing a 10 million-strong engaged customer base and maintain category-leading positions in dresses, denim, outerwear, and footwear”.
Earlier this year, it announced a £30 million investment to power the next phase of its digital growth. Part of this investment has supported the development of New Look’s first loyalty app, Club New Look. Following a successful soft launch in summer, it now claims over 700,000 members, “which the store teams have played a significant role in securing”.
