Online value retailer, Studio.co.uk has bolstered its senior team as Gareth Powell takes on a new role of Director of Data, creating an entire, new data team.
The data team brings together Studio’s analytics, data governance, data engineering and architecture talents and the team is expanding to 35 members, with Powell having onboarded 10 new members of staff.
Further evidencing how Studio recognises the important role data plays in delivering a great customer experience, the online value retailer is also investing in data technologies, including Snowflake and Microsoft Azure.
Powell is implementing a huge data programme, comprising several key deliverables; a target operating model, a data governance framework, an approach for data integrity as well as a new cloud data platform (Snowflake and Azure). This will enable Studio to capitalise on their data asset significantly more in future.
Gareth brings with him a wealth of data experience across retail and telecoms sectors, including N Brown, where Powell was Director of Data Science and TalkTalk where he led a centralised Insight and Analytics division.
On his role, Gareth Powell said: “Since joining Studio.co.uk back in June we have been on an exciting journey as a business. My vision is to make data and insights easy to access for our employees. A positive customer experience is underpinned by easy-to-access and good quality insight.
“We have successfully embedded a hub and spoke model for analytics which ensures we have close insight partnerships with our Customer & Digital, Trading and Customer Experience teams, ensuring we utilise data in the most efficient way possible.”
The online value retailer recently reported having over two million active customers – a 79% increase over the last five years.
Lockdown served to accelerate Studio’s digital transformation plans and its app has over 1.2 million users, representing 32% of sales and 25% increase year-on-year.
Paul Kendrick, Chief Executive of Studio Retail Group, said: “Gareth has a proven track record in data management, his skills are therefore pivotal to our ambitious plans to utilise data to grow and expand the business. We have already seen fantastic results from Gareth and look forward to seeing what he brings to an already strong leadership team on the challenging journey we have ahead of us.”
Studio.co.uk is part of Studio Retail Group and provides online access to a wide range of value products to over two million customers each year. The range of products includes 1000s of gifts that can be personalised at no extra cost.
