House of Fraser confirms start date for Harding replacement Walmsley

He takes up the chief customer officer role at House of Fraser, recently vacated by Andy Harding. Harding left the business in May, at which point Alison Lancaster was parachuted in on an interim basis.

The department store chain revealed that it was recruiting Walmsley at the beginning of last month. He had exited M&S in May, as part of a slew of high-profile names that departed in the wake of an internal shake-up by new chief executive Steve Rowe.

Walmsley was digital director at M&S for five years, before which he was director of ecommerce at Dixons for two years. Previously, he had been at John Lewis as head of web selling and customer services from 2007 to 2009. Before that he worked outside of retail in various marketing and web roles.

At M&S he relaunched M&S.com, taking it from an Amazon platform to its own infrastructure. At John Lewis he launched the department store chain’s online fashion offering and developed its next-day click-and-collect proposition.

Chief executive Nigel Oddy confirmed the date in an email sent today to House of Fraser suppliers and business partners, adding that the team looked forward to “embracing the next stage of our brand, digital and customer proposition”.