C-Suite Transitions – Former Ulta Beauty CEO Mary Dillon Named New CEO Of Foot Locker

Retail is a notoriously difficult industry for investors. Fickle consumer tastes, competition from other brick-and-mortar as well as e-commerce retailers, high employee turnover and low margins are some of the issues management teams at retailers face. There are however some rockstar retail CEOs that have managed to buck the trend. Hubert Joly, the former CEO of Best Buy (BBY) comes to mind considering his outstanding performance during much of the last decade despite strong competition from Amazon (AMZN). His Masters in Business podcast interview with Barry Ritholtz is an absolute delight if you haven’t heard it yet. Another rockstar CEO was Mary Dillon of Ulta Beauty as discussed below.

There was quite a bit of executive turnover at several well recognized large companies including Starbucks (SBUX), Paychex (PAYX) and Foot Locker (FL) last week. The CEO of Paychex left the company after 12 years at the helm and the company performed well during his tenure. The stock is up more than 140% over the last five years and despite the recent rout in technology stocks, it is still up 18% during the last year.

Foot Locker (FL), the mall-based mainstay for athletic footwear and apparel, announced a CEO transition last week. After a three-decade long career at Foot Locker, Richard A. Johnson will be stepping down as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective September 1, 2022, and will be replaced by Mary N. Dillon, former Executive Chair and CEO of Ulta Beauty (ULTA).

During her 9 year tenure as CEO of Ulta Beauty, Mary Dillon turned the company into a powerhouse of beauty retailing. She took the helm of Ulta Beauty in 2013 and drove significant growth across the company, with a focus on expanding Ulta’s e-commerce business, a strategy that Foot Locker is also adopting. Ulta’s market capitalization tripled to more than $18 billion during her tenure. Mary also expanded the company’s footprint across the nation by doubling the number of stores.

Ulta Beauty has significantly outperformed its peers during the tenure of Mary Dillon as CEO of the company. The company’s performance during Ms. Dillon’s tenure is similar to the turnaround at Best Buy (BBY) after Hubert Jolly took over as CEO.

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