La-Z-Boy Names Retail Veteran To Stores Post

October 9, 2008  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on October 2008 Mark Bacon Sr., a retail veteran with experience at Pep Boys, Staples and Wal-Mart, has been named La-Z-Boy’s chief retail officer. He succeeds Mark Wiltshire, who had been president of La-Z-Boy’s retail segment before recently leaving the company.

Bacon, who reports to La-Z-Boy President and CEO Kurt Darrow, has responsibility for all sales, store operations, training and merchandising for the company’s retail segment, which includes 69 company owned La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries stores.

He was executive vice president of sales, commercial and operations for Pep Boys, where he was responsible for 593 stores that generate sales of $2.4 billion. According to a news release, he spearheaded the turnaround of a nine-year decline in sales. Prior to that, he was senior vice president of sales and operations at Staples and earlier, was director of operations at Wal-Mart, where he oversaw operations for the mid-Atlantic region.

In an announcement, Darrow thanked Wiltshire for his 11 years at La-Z-Boy and said Bacon, “brings with him a wealth of superb retail excellence and experience and will undoubtedly be a strong leader for our retail segment, which has gone through a huge transition over the past several years while operating in a very difficult environment. Mark has a proven track record of turning around and growing retail businesses and I have every confidence he will make a significant contribution to our company.”

The La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network includes 333 stores.