John Lewis has announced a new executive director appointment: Pippa Wicks will take up the post of executive director of John Lewis department stores and will be responsible for trading, merchandising, marketing and developing propositions and services for John Lewis stores and johnlewis.com. She will take up her appointment in August.

Pippa Wicks has a rich experience including Bain, Courtaulds and Pearson, and most recently was the deputy chief executive of retailer Coop. She replaces Paula Nickolds who left early 2020.

The executive director team of John Lewis Partnership now has 8 people of whom 5 are women. It is also a fairly ethnically diverse team. They include the recently appointed Sharon White as chairman and Nina Bahtia in charge of strategy and development. The two retail divisions are headed by Pippa Wicks for the department stores and James Bailey, also recently appointed as head of supermarkets Waitrose. He also has considerable experience with Sainsbury's.

The 4 remaining members are John Lewis internal appointments Tracey Killen for HR, Andrew Murphy for operations, Patrick Lewis for finance, and Bérangère Michel for customer service.

There is thus an interesting mix of non-retailers to bring a fresh perspective (including the chairman), of experienced retailers from outside the company to contribute a different retail point of view, and of internal appointments to ensure a degree of continuity. Arguably continuity is especially important in a company such as John Lewis with its unique "partnership" structure; while a fresh outlook on retail and leadership from outside retail will hopefully feel free to address some of the problems of retail in the new era. While John Lewis has performed relatively well in the UK compared to its competitors, its profits have suffered.

Note: recent research into retail executive directors across the UK, Europe and the US shows that out of a total of 337 positions, 70 are women and 17 are BAME (black, Asian, ethnic minority).

press release: Executive Directors appointment at John Lewis