UNION, N.J. -- Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. has named Joe Hartsig as executive vice president, chief merchandising officer of Bed Bath & Beyond and president of Harmon Stores Inc. ("Harmon"), effective immediately.
Reporting directly to Bed Bath & Beyond's president and CEO, Mark Tritton, Hartsig will be a key member of the senior leadership team and responsible for developing and implementing its product strategy, one of the five pillars of the company's preliminary strategic plan. His responsibilities will include oversight of the Company's omni-channel merchandising, planning, and owned brand strategies.
As President of Harmon, Hartsig will also be responsible for developing the growth strategy for the cosmetics, health and beauty retailer, operating under the names Harmon, Harmon Face Values or Face Values.
Said Tritton, "To rebuild our business, we need leaders of change. Joe's experience as one of the leading innovators in retail makes him perfectly suited to help re-establish our authority in the Home, Baby and Beauty markets and we're excited to welcome him to this critically important role. Improving the curation and differentiation of our assortment is our number one strategic priority, and Joe will be the driving force behind our ambition to make it easy to feel at home with Bed Bath & Beyond, while also providing the leadership and vision needed to grow our Harmon business."
Hartsig has more than 30 years of experience in consumer brand development and retail merchandising, as a senior leader at some of the world's largest and best-known consumer brands, including Walmart, Motorola and SC Johnson. Most recently, he served as senior vice president & chief merchandising officer at Walgreens, where he managed the front of store Retail Products division and drove transformational change. He was responsible for a team of over 500 merchandising, planning and field team employees across a variety of categories, in addition to leading the owned brand organization and e-commerce and digital merchandising strategies to advance the company's omni-channel capabilities.
"The opportunity to help rebuild an iconic brand like Bed Bath & Beyond was too good to miss," said Hartsig. "Mark has a clear vision to reconstruct a modern, durable business model with a differentiated merchandising strategy at its heart. It is an exciting time to be joining Bed Bath & Beyond and I look forward to working closely with Mark and the organization."
The company is on track in its search to fill a number of other strategic leadership roles. "I am very grateful for our associates who have stepped up to provide key interim leadership and partner closely with me to build our plan. We look forward to providing an update on additional hires soon," said Mr. Tritton.