Afterpay creates global strategy role

Buy now, pay later firm Afterpay has poached Accent Group’s Mark Teperson for a new role of global chief strategy officer.

Afterpay has enjoyed a resurgence of interest from investors during the pandemic. Picture: AAP

Buy now, pay later company Afterpay has created a new role of global chief strategy officer within its organisation to mine the wealth of data flowing from its millions of shoppers and merchants.

To fill the role, it has poached highly regarded e-commerce executive Mark Teperson from Accent Group.

Mr Teperson is currently chief digital officer for Accent, the footwear business whose retail and footwear brands include The Athlete’s Foot, Platypus, HypeDC, Stylerunner, Skechers, Vans, CAT, Timberland, Merrell, Sperry, Saucony and Subtype.

The digital expert has been at the ASX-listed Accent for 10 years, most recently as its chief digital officer and before that director of its multichannel operations.

It will be a big loss for Accent, with Mr Teperson one of the drivers behind the footwear group’s stunning growth online where its digital sales have rocketed 33 per cent over the first half of fiscal 2020 and through the coronavirus pandemic leapt 150 per cent between April and June.

Such is the strength of Accent Group’s digital strategy that in June online sales made up 23 per cent of total sales — one of the strongest penetrations on digital sales for a bricks and mortar retailer.

Mr Teperson is highly regarded in the e-commerce sector and was named number one in a list of the Top 50 people in e-commerce in 2020 by industry magazine Internet Retailing. It also named him number 11 in Top 20 people in Technology 2019 and number 18 in Top 30 people in Australian Fashion Industry 2019. He has also received international recognition as Commerce Leader of the Year at Magenta’s world conference in Las Vegas 2018.

Now he will put that experience towards helping Afterpay. As global chief strategy officer he will be tasked with driving deeper customer and merchant insight.

Afterpay has enjoyed a resurgence of interest from investors and its customers in the coronavirus pandemic, with its shares rallying from $8.90 when global markets crashed as the health crisis took hold to touching $60 this month.

On Tuesday its shares jumped 7.2 per cent to $60.99, on the back of the appointment.

Last month Afterpay announced that Clearpay, part of its instalments payments business, had reached more than one million active shoppers in Britain. This had been achieved after launching in Britain just one year ago — making Clearpay one of the fastest growing e-commerce payment companies in the European market.