Global recruits flown in to execute new strategy.
Two global heavyweights have been headhunted into the Breville Group to aid with the company’s ‘strategic transformation’ outlined last week by CEO Jim Clayton in the company’s half year results.
The former role of Breville marketing manager which has been vacant for around a year, has been re-engineered and absorbed into a new position badged Global Go-To-Market Officer. Cliff Toring will fill the position and be based in Sydney.
Toring has worked for some of the world’s leading marketing agencies, Grey Advertising in New York, Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in Hong Kong as well as leading luxury and lifestyle companies like Polo Ralph Lauren and Nike. His most recent role was VP Global Brands director consumer for Nike.
During his 10 years at Nike, Clayton told AR that Toring helped to strategise, launch and globally scale many of Nike’s critical categories including soccer, Jordan and lifestyle apparel. Most recently, he was responsible for driving the branding and service propositions for Nike’s direct-to-consumer offerings inclusive of new service experiences and digital platforms.
Breville’s new Chief Operating Officer is Mark Payne, who will be based out of Los Angeles. According to Clayton, Payne is an “exceptionally talented operations executive” with over 25 years’ experience managing operations for global product companies both the size of Breville. He worked for Linkysys, a subsidiary of Cisco, which is about a US$1 billion company and Compaq, at around US$30 billion.
Payne has a particular methodology he uses to run operations, which he’s described in a book he authored, ‘Make the Numbers, Don’t Chase the Numbers’.
“During his career, he has received numerous awards for operational excellence. Using his approach Mark has delivered exceptional improvements at every company in which he has worked, and we expect he will do the same at Breville.
“Mark is leading the implementation of a global sales and operations planning process, which will be the centrepiece for managing the global product flow, and we are continuing to roll out our business application infrastructure, which is expected to be completed by the end of FY17,” Clayton added.