Exclusive: Amazon poaches Tony Hoggett from Tesco to run international stores arm

Hoggett will move to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington and take up his new role as senior vice president of physical stores in January 2022, reporting directly to the giant’s chief executive of worldwide consumer Dave Clark. 

In an internal note to Amazon staff seen by Retail Week, Clark said: “I’m excited to share that Tony Hoggett will join Amazon in January 2022 as Senior Vice President of Physical Stores, reporting to me. Tony was most recently group chief strategy and innovation officer at Tesco where he led strategic planning globally and development of new businesses, customer and tech innovations.

“Tony joined Tesco in 1990 and has served in a range of global leadership roles, including being appointed to the Executive Committee as CEO Asia and later overall Tesco Group COO. In this role he had P&L responsibility for $50B in revenues across all channels, global operations, fulfillment and supply chain, including 5,000 stores and 350K employees across all formats: hypermarkets, superstores, convenience, and ecommerce.

“Over the next few months we’ll put together a plan for Tony’s transition to Amazon. I want to thank Stephenie Landry, Dilip Kumar, John Mackey, and their teams, for the incredible work being done for customers. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Tony, he’s going to be a great Amazonian, and here’s more about him in his own words.”

Hoggett said: “I’m so excited to be joining Amazon. I started at Tesco as a 16-year old student in a store in Yorkshire, I spent my early career as a trolley boy, as well as filling shelves and serving on checkouts, and over the last 30 years I’ve had great fun working with teams across Europe and Asia. 

“It was a big decision to move on from Tesco but after meeting members of the Amazon leadership team and hearing the ambitions for the business and physical stores, I know it’s a journey and an opportunity that I want to be part of. I plan to move to Seattle with my wife Claudia and our three children, Oliver, Amelia and Finley. 

“When not serving customers, we love to travel and spend as much time outdoors as possible walking, cycling and playing all sorts of sports. Especially soccer of which we are proud supporters of Manchester United.”

This comes after Retail Week revealed that Hoggett was leaving Tesco after more than 30 years.

• Tony Hoggett is one of the leaders featured in the Retail 100 2021 – find out who else made the ranking of the most influential people in retail here