Next chief executive Lord Wolfson has been appointed to the board of Deliveroo, as the delivery app continues to strengthen its non-executive team ahead of an awaited stock market float.
Deliveroo chief executive Will Shu said Wolfson will “bring great knowledge and insight” to the business and follows the appointment of Claudia Arney to the board as the business’ first chair in November.
Wolfson will take up his new non-executive role next week, and has been the chief executive of fashion multichannel giant Next since 2001.
In his time at the helm, Wolfson has been credited with driving Next’s successful strategic pivot to a blended bricks-and-mortar and online model, which has seen it not only survive the seismic shifts being felt in apparel by many of its competitors but thrive.
Despite store closures in the run-up to Christmas and a year of on-and-off non-essential retail closures, Next’s most recent update saw it increase its profit guidance, with full-price sales dropping just 1.1% compared to 8% across the sector.
Shu said of Wolfson’s appointment: “Simon will bring great knowledge and insight to the company and help us in our mission to become the definitive food company. We are excited about his appointment.
“We are looking forward to working with him as we continue to innovate, developing new tech tools to support restaurants, to provide riders with more work and to extend choice for customers, bringing them the food they love from more restaurants than ever before.”
Lord Wolfson added: “I am delighted to be taking up this role. Deliveroo is an exciting, innovative and fast-growing company that, like Next, relies on advanced technology to deliver a market-leading proposition. I look forward to working with the talented leadership team on the many opportunities ahead.”
Deliveroo has also completed a remarkable turnaround since the Covid-19 crisis first emerged in March last year and forced the closure of many of the restaurants the delivery app had been partnered with previously.
To counteract this, Deliveroo spent much of 2020 pivoting into providing home delivery services for retailers that either did not have the capital and bandwidth to offer such services themselves or wanted to supplement existing online channels.
The company partnered with grocers including Morrisons, Aldi, the Co-op, Waitrose and Booths. It also partnered with retailers in other categories such as Naked Wines and Holland & Barrett.
On Sunday, Deliveroo completed a fresh $180m fundraising round ahead of a much-touted potential float at some point in the spring. This followed a $575m fundraising round in 2019 led by Amazon, which was finally cleared by the Competition and Markets Authority following an investigation last August.
No comments yet