Myer takes on former Cue boss Simon Schofield to reinvigorate its private label, and Sass & Bide

Struggling for more than a decade under Myer’s ownership, Sass & Bide has a new boss that the department store hopes will restore its fortunes.

Sass & Bide founders Heidi Middleton and Sarah-Jane Clarke with model Victoria Lee wearing one of their designs. Picture: Sam Mooy

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Myer executive chairman Olivia Wirth has continued to build her senior leadership team as she revamps the struggling department store, hiring the former boss of Cue and Veronika Maine, Simon Schofield, to run its private label fashion lines as well as its standalone fashion brands such as Sass & Bide.

Mr Schofield, a veteran retailer who has also worked for Myer in the past, as well as for Country Road Group, will be Myer’s new chief product officer, a newly created role under Ms Wirth. He will lead the direction of the Myer Exclusive Brands (MEBs) – or private label fashion business – across apparel, footwear and accessories, sleepwear and intimates across the womenswear, menswear and childrenswear categories.

He will also take on executive responsibility for the Sass & Bide, Marcs and David Lawrence businesses – the department store’s stand-alone fashion brands that have struggled since before the Covid-19 pandemic. Former fashion powerhouse Sass & Bide, which once wowed fashionistas on the catwalks of New York and London, has seen most of its Australian stores closed and its earnings sink.

Myer executive chairman Olivia Wirth in Myer’s Bourke Street store in Melbourne. Picture: Aaron Francis

The latest executive hire comes as Ms Wirth last year contemplated – but then binned – a plan to sell off Sass & Bide, Marcs and David Lawrence, as the embattled fashion chains bought last decade have caused headaches for Myer management and drained the department store of profits.

But Ms Wirth has now attracted Mr Schofield to her senior management ranks and back to Myer, hoping that some of his success with key women’s fashion brands will rub off on Myer.

It marks a return to Myer after a 15-year absence for Mr Schofield, who in 2010 helped run its Miss Shop arm and who has since held senior positions at Country Road, where he was the managing director of Witchery and Trenery, and from 2024 was the CEO of Cue Clothing. Cue Clothing and the Veronika Maine label were recently sold to Hilco Capital, a British investment firm.

In a note to staff detailing the new appointment, Ms Wirth said Mr Schofield was taking on a “pivotal role” to ensure Myer’s apparel met the needs of customers.

“I am very pleased to advise that experienced retail leader Simon Schofield will be joining us as chief product officer. He has significant leadership experience across major fashion and retail brands, including the Country Road Group, Witchery, Trenery and David Jones,” she wrote.

“As we announced in March, the CPO role is a newly created position on our executive leadership team.”

Mr Schofield will be responsible for the growth and expansion of the MEBs private label range, a division that Ms Wirth announced at her strategy day briefing in May would undergo a significant redesign of its apparel. Currently, Myer’s private label brands only make up 0.4 per cent of beauty, 22.6 per cent womenswear, 16 per cent of menswear, 38.1 per cent of children and 21.2 per cent of the home category. Myer’s private label products for the home category has delivered compound annual growth of 10 per cent between 2019 and 2024, and Ms Wirth was now applying those principles to apparel.

A key responsibility of Mr Schofield will be to turn around the embattled fashion chains Sass & Bide bought by former Myer CEO Bernie Brookes 14 years ago, and Marcs and David Lawrence, bought in 2017 by his successor, Richard Umbers.

Mr Brookes, who ran Myer under its former private equity owner TPG and then led the retailer when it listed on the ASX in 2009, first invested in Sass & Bide in 2011 and paid $72.5m for the fashion label founded by Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton.

Sass & Bide founders Heidi Middleton and Sarah-Jane Clarke.

However, the founders later left the company, as did many Sass & Bide executives, and by 2017 it triggered impairments of $39m on Myer’s full-year accounts. In September last year Ms Wirth – presenting her first set of results for the retailer – revealed that continued poor performance by Sass & Bide, Marcs and David Lawrence had driven about half of the year-on-year decline in Myer’s total net profit.

Later it was decided that Sass & Bide would close 10 of its stores, leaving just four stand-alone shops, but a plan to sell the brands was later cancelled as Myer then forged a deal to buy the apparel brands business from Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments.

This handed Myer stand-alone brands and stores Portmans, Just Jeans, Jacqui E, Jay Jays and Dotti.

Addressing investors and analysts at the recent strategy day, Ms Wirth highlighted the opportunities now available to the retailer by retaining the fashion brands and complementing them with the group of brands purchased from Premier Investments.

“With the (Premier Investments) apparel brands acquisition finalised earlier this year, combined with our decision to retain Sass & Bide, Marcs and David Lawrence, we created the Myer Group – a unique and scaled retail platform,” she said.

“We are no longer a traditional department store.”

Part of her strategy will include the extension of Myer’s popular loyalty scheme program, Myer One, to the apparel brands.

Apart from the hiring of Mr Schofield, Ms Wirth has restructured and refilled Myer’s executive ranks to help build her revival of Myer, which has also drawn from her former employer Qantas, where she was head of the airline’s loyalty program.

Originally published as Myer takes on former Cue boss Simon Schofield to reinvigorate its private label, and Sass & Bide