Target hires ex-Walmart exec Jeff England as supply chain chief

Target Corp. has named retail veteran Jeff England as its new Chief Supply Chain Officer. The executive hire is the latest move by CEO Michael Fiddelke to aggressively restructure the retailer’s leadership team, streamline logistics, and reverse multiple quarters of stagnant sales growth.

Fiddelke, who stepped into the chief executive role in February, has launched a comprehensive turnaround strategy anchored by a $6 billion capital plan. The massive initiative focuses on optimizing product inventory, enhancing the in-store guest experience, and drastically accelerating online delivery windows, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.

England will officially join Target at the end of May, succeeding long-time company veteran Gretchen McCarthy. He transitions from building materials distributor QXO, where he also served as supply chain chief. Crucially, England brings deep big-box retail expertise to Target, having spent nearly two decades at arch-rival Walmart between 2004 and 2022, culminating in his role as Senior Vice President of Supply Chain.

His appointment rounds out a rapid management shakeup orchestrated by Fiddelke over the last few months, which also includes the promotions of Cara Sylvester to Chief Merchandising Officer and Lisa Roath to Chief Operating Officer. Fiddelke previously signaled these changes to Wall Street, highlighting a massive opportunity to extract structural efficiencies out of Target's logistics network to support same-day delivery expansions across its 2,000 U.S. stores.

As part of this logistical overhaul, Target opened its first specialized upstream "receive center" in Houston. The facility is engineered to buffer bulk vendor inventory, ensuring high stock levels on store shelves while preventing local distribution centers from becoming bottlenecked. Alongside these back-end upgrades, the company is cutting corporate overhead to reallocate funds toward frontline store employees, and it recently slashed prices on roughly 3,000 everyday items to win back inflation-weary shoppers.

The leadership announcement arrives just one day before Target is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings. Institutional investors will be scanning the financial results for vital commentary on the health of global consumer spending, which is currently navigating persistent domestic inflation and heightened maritime supply chain volatility.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada