New Look has poached Mango’s womenswear boss as trend and design consultant to boost its buying, merchandising and design departments, RetailWeek.com can reveal.
Rosa Gutierrez Sanchez will join New Look next week on a contract basis, initially joining for three months and working three days a week.
She will report directly to chief creative officer Roger Wightman, according to an internal memo seen by Retail Week.
Gutierrez Sanchez has spent the past year based in Barcelona as Mango’s womenswear director after joining the retailer in 2015.
Previous to that, she worked at various Inditex fasciae, holding roles such as trend director of Pull & Bear and senior roles at Zara’s youth brand TRF.
She began her retail career as a store manager at Zara in 1991.
Her appointment comes after news that former Esprit womenswear boss Paula Dumont Lopez was taking over from Wightman in September, as revealed exclusively by Retail-Week.com yesterday.
Dumont Lopez also honed her skills at Inditex, exiting the Spanish conglomerate as head of product for Zara Basic.
New Look’s financial performance suffered over the past year. Adjusted EBITDA tumbled 31.8% to £155m in the year to March 25, due to lacklustre sales performance and ongoing investment in strategic initiatives.
Underlying operating profit plummeted 44.1% to £97.6m as like-for-like sales in its core UK business fell 6.8%.
Like-for-like sales of New Look’s own-brand products slipped 6.6%, while total sales were also down 2.4% to £1.45bn.
Chief executive Anders Kristiansen has attributed the retailer’s poor performance to its product and lack of trend authority, and both Gutierrez Sanchez and Dumont Lopez will be charged with solving that problem area.
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