B&Q has today announced two new permanent appointments to its board and a shake-up of board responsibilities.
The company said the moves reflect a more customer-driven strategy at the business.

Steve Robinson, who joined the board in the interim role of multichannel director earlier this year, will be joining it permanently as customer director, reporting to CEO Martyn Phillips.

This is a new role that will bring together the omnichannel team and the areas of customer insight, store formats, pricing and promotions. B&Q says it has been created to help the business become a true omnichannel retailer and ensure that the customer has real authority across the business.

In the second new board appointment, Ebru Sayilan has been promoted to commercial director for seasonal and decorative. She joined B&Q from Kingfisher's Koctas business in Turkey three years ago and has been with Kingfisher for 11 years.

She will work alongside Ian Herrett, who adds building to his portfolio as commercial director for building, showroom (kitchen bedroom and bathroom) installations and TradePoint.

The business says that having two commercial directors will bring additional focus to both the hard and soft sides of the business. The appointments follow Veronique Laury's return to France to take on a group Kingfisher role.

At the same time, supply chain director Chris Ward is to head a new business transformation team, while Katherine Paterson will be adding responsibility for the new group-wide own-brands to her current remit as marketing director.

Other roles on the board - retail (Damian McGloughlin), people (Fraser Longden) and finance (James Skelton) - remain broadly unchanged.