David Meire
EMEA President
Hurley
NOVEMBER 2020
Retail has been one of the hardest-hit sectors during the pandemic and the economic fallout from it. The transition to digital – if it hadn’t taken place already – was essential for survival. We talked to 25-year retail industry veteran David Meire, EMEA President at Hurley, about how the retailer managed the crisis, what’s next for their digital transformation, and what he wants from his IT Function and CIO leadership.
What was your path to EMEA President of Hurley?
My path to Hurley started in Nike, where I was based for 20 years out of Barcelona and Amsterdam. I held a number of different positions, mostly commercial and marketplace-related. I started in wholesale before moving into Football. I then became the GM for Nike Football EMEA for roughly 5 years. My last role in Nike had responsibility for direct to consumers, and that encompasses all owned stores, franchise stores, factory stores and shops, as well as nike.com.
Late in 2019, Nike decided to sell the Hurley brand to a New York-based group called BSA, Blue Star Alliance. Together with my partners, we licensed the brand from Hurley EMEA, and purchased the operational company in EMEA in January 2020, so we've been operating it for almost 2 seasons.
How has the current situation impacted your perception of the retail landscape across EMEA?
Hurley has definitely felt the impact that the entire retail industry has - we have not been immune. There is a strain around cash flows and the plans for new ventures and new operations. At the same time, we do feel the business has accelerated in some other areas. This is why I believe that it’s those organisations who are nimble, flexible, and willing enough to take some risks that will perform well in the months to come. If you stay grounded in the past and do not prepare for the new future, consumers and customers won’t have any share of wallet, or open-to-buy, for you.
As a leader within Hurley, what are your key priorities when it comes to the future of digital transformation?
When it comes to priorities within our business, we do need to look inside, but we also need to look for the right advice and stay connected to what the best-in-class players are doing. It’s fair to say that for our brands, and indeed for a lot of retail brands, more than 55% of our business will be digital in a short period of time and that percentage will be higher in a few years. It’s critical in my role that I’m able to understand wide scale transformation and how it can make our business successful in the long-term.
Then, we need to understand where we have an opportunity to lead, and where we can quickly copy best practices most efficiently and economically. Those are the insights we need from our CIO. I’ve experienced in the past that CIOs can become “too attached” to the technology and what has previously worked. They have developed technologies themselves with their teams – teams of hundreds of engineers. Sometimes when this happens, you get too attached to your technology.
There is nothing wrong with that and on one hand, this is great because from a security perspective, you know that the proprietary technology is harder to break into and you own it from A to Z. However, you cannot let legacy be the driver of the calls that will create the future state. Technology needs to be flexible, adaptable, and quick to market. Therefore, our CIO needs to play a balancing act. You need to balance the technology we want to own versus what technology we need to have access to through partnerships with third parties so that your suppliers feel like true partners. Security is also an important aspect, and you need to balance security with flexibility and quickness.
I see this as the age of CIOs becoming CEOs.
Previously, you would only see IT leaders acting as a ‘support role,’ adding their thoughts on technology to the HR department, Commerce or Marketing functions for example. I don’t think this is the case anymore. There’s just too much transformation. I’m seeing the need for almost all new business ideas to be underpinned by technology. Indeed, it’s the technology itself that is creating new business opportunities.
Therefore, a CIO is now perfectly placed to make these executive and leadership decisions, as do CEOs in their capacity. If I’m working with a pure player and the key business unlock is inventory sharing, I may have questions about what stock to showcase and how, or which categories, I now expect my CIO to help and have a business point of view with these critical questions.
Where do your digital services go from here?
In the very near future, I think that every customer who buys a Hurley product will, at some point in their journey, have had a digital interaction with us before making their final purchase. This goes beyond commerce. It could be on Instagram, maybe on Twitter, TikTok, also our web page, or maybe with someone else's web page that digitally displays the Hurley products. Or maybe an influencer that endorses our product or an athlete – our digital services will touch every customer! Therefore, all of these experiences need to be seamless and consistent.
What advice would you give to the IT leaders in your organisation when they are looking to leverage influence at the Board level?
I do expect the next crop of great CEOs to be ex-CIOs. If you look around in management books, it used to be the case that those who made it to CEO were at some point engineers. Then, marketers and commercial executives took those CEO positions. Now, it’s the CIOs’ turn.
I have come across some brilliant-minded CIOs, but sometimes the way they talked about the technology became too narrow and therefore detached from the business reality. Some may say it was not easy to bring them out of their tech bubble. However, it was a big missed opportunity because with such bright-minded people, just a little more insight and I would even say passion for the business would have made them excellent executives.
CIOs now are doing a much better job at positioning themselves as both technology and business leaders. I think that’s the reason why some of the best corporations around the world today are planning to have their CIOs at the helm soon. I would tell CIOs to go broad with your skill sets – being a CIO today puts you on the springboard to becoming a CEO tomorrow.
In these uncertain times, what information is critical for you to see from your IT leaders in order to approve new initiatives and budgets?
One of the key criteria we need to see is flexibility. When I’ve been in situations like this, the notion of legacy can be particularly frustrating. I think we can all recall a number of times we have had to write off a technology investment because, for example, a POS system is no longer working, or because we are changing a system or supplier. No technology investment decisions can be rushed or taken with a short-term view. Otherwise, two years later, you realise it’s a big mistake.
No one has a crystal ball, and I don’t pretend to think that an investment made today will be ‘immortal’ for the next 5 years or more. However, I want to see a good balance of short-term and long-term thinking, together with a flexible and open approach. This way of thinking is critical, especially at the moment, because otherwise you risk wasting a significant amount of money and energy.
As we move into 2021, what is your message to your teams – to get them motivated for what lies ahead?
We all need to become digitally native. When I say ‘we,’ I mean every single employee – that starts with my partners and myself. We need to be an ambassador of the digital transformation we’re going through. There is no such thing anymore as ‘the IT function’ and ‘the rest of the company.’ We are all part of the digital team and we need to embrace the future.
As a leader in retail, do you see technology as a key challenge or opportunity?
Without a doubt, it’s an opportunity. Traditionally, from the minute one of our designers thinks about a garment until the moment that garment reaches the end consumer would have taken around 15 months. From samples, shipping, retailer buy-in and order placing, there is an amount of inefficiency in all of that. There is lots of activity that does not add value to the consumer. Technology allows us to reduce these inefficiencies as consumers, and the pace of change will not allow most brands to get away with them.
I definitely see it as an opportunity; however, it is also a threat if you do not embrace it. It’s reshaping the way the industry works – I think for the better. It is making consumers more informed; they are making more informed buying decisions. The power is shifting onto consumers more than ever before. It is simple at the end: consumers decide which brands they like. The ones that they don't like will struggle.
Special thanks to David Meire and Hurley.
by CIOs, for CIOs
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