Just as Intersport International Corp. announced the appointment of its future chief executive, Victor Duran, starting next Jan. 1 (see our last issue), Amer Sports announced the promotion of Michael White to the new position of chief commercial officer. He will also have additional responsibility for the company's global Business to Consumer (B2C) and Go to Market (GTM) marketing operations, which have been run since 2010 by Duran out of Amer's European office in Geneva.
White's new job goes well with Amer's reinforced omni-channel strategy. As today's consumer is navigating across all channels from wholesale to brand stores to e-commerce, combining GTM operations under one leadership should help accelerate the group's commercial operations, said Heikki Takala, Amer's president and chief executive.
White had already been promoted to the position of chief sales officer at the end of 2013, moving from Munich to Geneva. At the same time, he was made then general manager of the Americas as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The 51-year-old British executive took charge of EMEA in 2010, occupying a seat on the executive board of the Finnish group, after acting as general manager for the U.K. and Ireland, and then as general manager of Europe.
In announcing his latest promotion, Amer said that White will continue to hold his regional responsibilities for EMEA and the Americas. It added that Matt Gold will continue to run the Asia-Pacific region for the group, with a seat on the executive board as well, because of the strategic importance of China and other parts of the continent.
Meanwhile, at the European level, Olivier Gros, a French executive who has been with Michelin over 18 years, has just been appointed GTM marketing manager of the group for the EMEA region. At Michelin, Gros was most recently the GTM marketing director for Turkey and before that held a variety of roles in the areas of commercial management, marketing and digital marketing across the French tire company's different business units in Scandinavia, France, the U.S. and the U.K.
