Boots appoints new retail director

The UK’s leading health and beauty retailer has hired a new retail director following a 20% drop in profits in 2018.

Peter Bowrey, who was formerly retail director at Dunelm, is to join Boots next week, according to media reports. He replaces Andrew Caplan, who has been appointed director of retail operations at the beauty chain.

Bowrey has plenty of experience working at large scale UK retailers, having spent 30 years at Tesco across many parts of the business before becoming the operating model director in the UK. At Dunelm, he led the furniture firms’s retail operation, M2M business and Pausa coffee shops.

Boots, which is controlled by America’s Walgreens Boots Alliance, is planning a turnaround after reporting a slump in sales in profits last year. Some of the measures it has already taken included cutting up to 350 jobs at its head office in Nottingham and relocating its IT service desk overseas.

Additionally, 200 Boots stores are expected to close across Britain over the next year. The health and beauty retailer said the move will mostly affect locations which have several other nearby stores.

Meanwhile, the business is amplifying its beauty credentials with the addition of hundreds of new products and brands, including cult phenomenon The Ordinary and Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, and the opening of a new beauty-focused flagship store in Covent Garden, London.

Boots appoints new retail director

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