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.