Regional Managing Director — Omnichannel Retail Network

The mandate

The region's loyalty programme has grown quickly through member pricing, points and frequent acquisition offers. Membership penetration is high, yet the commercial value is uneven. Some customers deepen their relationship across stores and digital channels, while others enrol only to access a price that non-members perceive as punitive. Store colleagues spend time explaining complex eligibility, and benefit failures create service recovery at the checkout. Regional teams receive programme targets but do not fully own the economics or execution choices that shape trust.

The Regional Managing Director will lead the loyalty redesign as a general-management agenda. The role carries full regional accountability for profit, cash, stores, digital trading, customers, operations and people. Central product, finance and marketing functions will provide platforms and portfolio standards. The Managing Director must define what the programme should achieve for regional customers, ensure stores and digital journeys deliver it consistently and prove that benefits change valuable behaviour rather than merely subsidise existing demand.

This urgent, unplanned appointment follows a board review that exposed a gap between loyalty activity and enterprise value. The answer is not predetermined. Some member prices may remain, points may be simplified, service benefits may expand and partner-funded value may play a larger role. The executive will make those choices through customer and economic evidence while protecting commitments already earned.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Seattle, the role leads approximately 2,350 employees and material partners across the United States and a wider international region. The leadership team includes stores, e-commerce, merchandising, marketing, supply, customer service, finance and people. Technology and loyalty-platform ownership sit partly outside the region, requiring the Managing Director to secure central change while remaining accountable for local adoption.

The customer base includes individuals and households with very different shopping frequency, category breadth and channel preference. Household recognition may reveal broader value, but sharing must be customer-directed and privacy-conscious. Some shoppers prefer not to enrol or use an app. The region must offer clear pricing and competent service to them rather than make basic fairness conditional on data participation.

Store execution is central. Colleagues need to understand benefits, resolve simple problems and recognise valuable customers without creating queues or intrusive interactions. Digital journeys should show eligibility before commitment and preserve earned value across pickup, delivery, substitution, return and refund. A promise that functions in one channel and fails in another weakens the whole relationship.

First-year agenda

The first one hundred days will establish a regional loyalty baseline by cohort and journey. The Managing Director will review enrolment, active participation, repeat, category breadth, margin, points or benefit cost, returns, service contacts and household behaviour where authorised. Store visits and customer listening will test whether members understand the programme and whether colleagues can execute its rules without workarounds.

The executive will then define a regional loyalty thesis within enterprise guardrails. It will state which customer behaviours the programme should reward, how value is shared between points, price, service and partners, and which benefits should stop. The thesis must distinguish recruitment, retention and relationship deepening; a single offer cannot be credited with all three.

Several proposition tests will follow. These may include replacing a blanket member discount with targeted category value, offering service or convenience benefits to high-engagement households, simplifying redemption, or testing a partner benefit that expands usefulness without exposing customer data. Each test will specify eligible groups, funding, expected behaviour, operational readiness and stop conditions.

Store and digital execution will be treated as one workstream. Training, colleague tools, signage, checkout logic, service remedy and customer communications must launch together. The Managing Director will establish a regional issue room during major changes so technical, commercial and operational failures are resolved from one evidence base. Repeated manual credits should trigger root-cause action rather than become normal programme cost.

By the end of year one, the region should have a simpler proposition, fewer unexplained benefit failures and a clearer bridge from member activity to retained contribution. Colleague confidence and customer understanding should improve. The executive should also have influenced the central roadmap through evidence that can transfer to other regions without assuming identical customer behaviour.

Leadership responsibilities

The Managing Director will own regional strategy, plan and performance, integrating loyalty decisions with merchandising, inventory, service and capital. They will chair a cross-functional member forum that decides propositions and execution, not merely reviews campaign metrics. Forecasts will show benefit cost, expected incremental behaviour and operational capacity.

The role will reset leadership accountability. Store and digital leaders need shared customer outcomes but distinct responsibility for the parts they control. The executive will assess the team, strengthen succession and ensure regional product and analytical capability is strong enough to challenge central assumptions. Front-line feedback must reach decisions without being filtered into general sentiment.

The Managing Director will represent the region with central functions, major partners and the board. They must advocate for necessary platform change, decline enterprise initiatives that the region cannot execute safely and contribute learning without turning every local preference into an exception. Partner negotiations should protect customer consent, benefit reliability and full economics.

Measures of success

The board will review active and retained membership, incremental contribution by cohort, category breadth, repeat, benefit cost, redemption, breakage, household engagement where consented and partner funding. Customer measures include programme understanding, checkout success, service contacts, remedy speed and trust among members and non-members.

Regional operating performance will include comparable contribution, availability, digital completion, returns, cash and store execution of loyalty changes. Colleague capability, leadership succession and reduction in manual adjustments will demonstrate organisational progress. Enrolment driven by gated basic pricing, without sustained value or trust, will not count as healthy growth.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring at least 28 years of leadership in omnichannel retail, loyalty, consumer services, marketplaces or another membership-based business. They must have held a substantial regional or country profit-and-loss remit spanning physical and digital channels. Direct ownership of loyalty economics and front-line execution is essential.

The board will look for evidence of simplifying a loyalty proposition, changing member pricing after customer evidence and measuring incremental behaviour beyond enrolment or gross sales. Candidates should be able to explain how store colleagues were equipped, how earned value was protected and how non-member fairness was considered.

The successful Managing Director will combine customer instinct with financial and operational depth. They must influence central product leaders, remain visible in stores and make a clear decision when marketing enthusiasm, platform capability and customer understanding diverge. Experience across diverse regional markets is valuable.

Compensation and appointment terms

The expected annual base is USD 500,000–750,000, with incentive and long-term participation linked to regional and enterprise value. Final positioning will reflect comparable P&L, transformation experience and present arrangements. Mobility support and responsible treatment of forfeited awards will be considered individually during appointment discussions.

Confidentiality

The retailer remains unnamed because the regional leadership change and loyalty proposition are not public. Detailed customer, store and programme evidence will be disclosed only after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must anonymise member data, partner terms and unreleased pricing changes from previous organisations.