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Kering appoints inaugural Chief Client & Digital Officer

Kering appoints inaugural Chief Client & Digital Officer

Luxury group Kering has appointed its first-ever Chief Client & Digital Officer, in a bid to sharpen the French firm’s senior management team and drive the group’s digital transformation as part of Kering’s executive committee.

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The owner of fashion darlings Gucci, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, Kering has said Grégory Boutté will lead the charge. Known for his stint as Director of eBay France between 2000 and 2007, Boutté is a creative-minded manager with significant international experience.

The Frenchmen’s mission will be to “lead the group’s digital transformation and spearhead the expansion of the e-commerce, CRM and database management functions,” said Kering in a press release. He will report to group Managing Director Jean-François Palus.

Boutté is a graduate of Paris’ École Supérieure de Commerce business school and started his career in consumer goods, kicking goals in the marketing department at Procter & Gamble France.

In 2000, he changed industries and joined French online auction start-up iBazar, which a year later was bought by eBay. From here, Boutté led eBay France until 2007, before being promoted to Vice-President Europe. In 2010, he moved to San José, California, to join eBay’s Motors and Electronics divisions.

In 2013, Grégory Boutté left eBay and moved to San Francisco to join Sidecar, the first online company to offer ride-sharing and business-to-business delivery services, which was bought by General Motors in 2016. In 2015, still in San Francisco, Boutté worked for online educational courses start-up Udemy.

He joins Kering at a time of digital transformation for the luxury behemoth, which is intent on harnessing its current success in online sales across key brands.

SEE ALSO : Kering’s 2016 growth driven by Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci

Kering’s revenue reached 3.9 billion euros ($4.6 billion) in the third quarter, up 23.3 percent on a non-organic basis.

Sales of luxury goods are picking up after the industry was hit by an economic slowdown in China and militant attacks in Europe in recent years, which hurt tourist spending.