Nordstrom continues to shuffle the ranks of it top leaders as it looks for new ways to attract and engage with customers in an increasingly digital retail world. On Monday, the Seattle-based company announced that it had created a new executive team role — chief innovation officer — and named Geevy Thomas to the position.
Thomas brings 34 years of Nordstrom experience to the job. He most recently served as president of Nordstrom Rack.
“Our new chief innovation officer and his team will lead the most forward-looking customer-centric effort that Nordstrom has taken on to date,” Erik Nordstrom, co-president of Nordstrom, said in a news release. “Our business was founded and built over the years through our full-line stores, and today they still represent the largest portion of our sales volume. However, the way customers are choosing to shop in a more digitally-connected world continues to change, and we know we need to find ways for our stores to evolve with them. This is a challenge, but we also see a tremendous opportunity to leverage our stores in ways that will allow us to serve customers into the future better than anyone else.”
The announcement of the new CIO position comes less than a week after Nordstrom announced that chief technology officer Kumar Srinivasan would be leaving the retailer. Srinivasan had been with the company less than a year.
In 2016, Nordstrom struggled through layoffs and departures on its digital team as it adjusted its strategy for competing more effectively against Amazon and others.
The company said Monday that it has been working over the past few years “to deliver a more seamless, personalized and relevant shopping experience for customers by enhancing its stores, Nordstrom.com site, and Nordstrom app.” The new Innovation team will be tasked with “helping the company ideate how its full-line stores of the future will better serve customers through further integration of digital and mobile.”
“We’re looking to answer big questions and to get there, we’re giving our Nordstrom Innovation team the ability to move quickly and boldly to find solutions for the stores of tomorrow right out of the gate today,” Erik Nordstrom said in the release. “Creating a fully separate team will help remove restrictions or boundaries around what’s possible for the Innovation team to test and try.”
Last week, the company said it would continue to actively search to fill several key VP roles in technology.
