Matchesfashion.com announces three leadership appointments

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
May 16, 2018

Matchesfashion.com is moving into its next phase of growth with a top leadership team strengthened with three new hires.

The global luxury shopping destination is preparing to open a massive 6-storey retail concept in London later this year and expand its logistics capacity with a new distribution centre.

Tom Athron, former group development director at the John Lewis Partnership has been appointed as new chief operating officer, and Lea Cranfield, who was merchandising manager for Liberty of London, will take up the role of commercial director.

Meanwhile, Kim Hartlev has been appointed as chief technology officer. He joins from Sainsbury’s, where he held the same role.

“With their wealth of experience Lea, Tom and Kim will join forces with our leadership team to deliver our mission, which is to be the most personal luxury shopping experience in the world,” commented CEO Ulric Jerome.

“These appointments round off a year of strategic investments that will help us continue our incredible momentum,” he continued.

“We have just launched a new state-of-the-art 24,000 sq ft creative studio in East London; we are about to move to a new logistics centre, which will quadruple the size of our current facility, and we are looking forward to the opening of 5 Carlos Place, our totally new retail experience and broadcasting hub launching this September in Mayfair.”

All three new directors will report to Jerome. Athron will have responsibility for scaling the business globally, overseeing the company’s e-commerce, logistics, customer experience functions and studio teams. Cranfield will lead the buying and merchandising teams, focusing on the commercial strategy across women’s and menswear alongside the in-house private label Raey, and Hartlev will have responsibility for technology across the business including architecture, software engineering, infrastructure, service operations, and mobile apps.