Ascena Retail restructures; some execs to leave

Ascena Retail Group, whose brands include Ann Taylor, Justice, and Lane Bryant, announced organizational changes expected to provide cost-savings of $100 million to $150 million by fiscal 2019.



The changes will see a number of executives leave the company, although Ascena did not disclose who would be leave. Also, Brian Lynch, CEO and president of Justice, has been appointed company COO.



As part of Ascena’s “Change for Growth” program, the retailer has restructured its business into four operating segments: premium fashion (Ann Taylor, Loft, Lou & Grey); plus fashion (Lane Bryant and Catherine); value fashion (Maurices and Dressbarn); and kids (Justice).



Gary Muto, president and CEO of the company’s Ann brands, will retail the title for the premium segment.



Lane Bryant CEO Linda Heasley has been appointed president and CEO of the plus fashion segment. George Goldfarb, most recently president and CEO of Maurices, has been appointed president and CEO of the value fashion segment.



Lece Lohr, most recently head of merchandising at Justice, has been appointed president of the kids Segment.



In addition, a new Ascena Brand Services (ABS) team will assume the responsibilities for the company’s existing centralized shared services group functions, including supply chain, logistics, sourcing, and IT, as well as additional brand support functions.



Ascena said the restructuring will be accompanied by “a number of executive departures,” which will result in a pretax charge of about $10 million to $12 million in the first quarter.



“Our Change for Growth program is designed to ensure Ascena is lean, agile and playing to win,” said David Jaffe, CEO and president, Ascena Retail Group. “Through this transformation work, we expect to deliver incremental cost savings of $100 to $150 million by fiscal 2019. We will continue to work aggressively on customer-facing capability and operating efficiencies to drive benefits on both the margin and cost side of our financials, and we believe there is additional opportunity beyond what we have highlighted today as we continue our transformation work with Accenture.”



Ascena currently operates 4,900 stores throughout the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.