BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
A story on FT.com reports that Rob Templeman and Chris Woodhouse are leaving Halfords to join Debenhams, the department store group sold today for £1.7bn to Baroness Retail, a vehicle funded, in part, by CVC Capital Partners.
Templeman and Woodhouse were the tough guys, brought in to make redundancies, negotiate more favourable trading terms (more favourable to Halfords, that is) and generally throw their weight around.
For some months. day-to-day control of Halfords has been in the hands of David Hamid, a former director of Dixons. And recent exec-level appointments have included a new finance director, Nick Carter, ex of Birthdays, the card shop group; and Asda’s Ian McLeod, now trading director at Halfords.
It’s not yet known whether these execs will continue in the same vein as Temple and Woodhouse now they are completely off the scene. However, with CVC lining up Halfords for an expected post-Christmas disposal, it’s unlikely the management style will become benign overnight.
It would therefore be fanciful to expect the relatively new management team at Halfords to re-consider the bonkers decision not to join the Bike Hub scheme…
