Artico Search Assists Jane in the Recruitment of Chief Marketing Officer

June 17, 2022 – Long before COVID-19 flipped the world upside down, the retail sector was in the midst of a grand makeover — with retail companies pivoting and sometimes completely reinventing themselves to keep up with customers’ changing habits in how and where they shop. At the outset of the pandemic, mandated shutdowns fast-tracked those changes, and retail leadership had to shift again to manage evolving customer demand and the ever-changing dynamics of their organizations, according to executive recruiters. This has especially impacted the chief marketing officer’s job of planning and coordinating marketing activities, which has become more challenging, recruiters say. Yet executive search firms are seeing no shortage of assignments for this important C-level position.
In one recent search, Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor, co-founder of Artico Search, recruited JP Knab as the new chief marketing officer of Jane, a curated boutique marketplace featuring the latest in fashion trends, accessories, home decor, children’s clothing, and more. “To continue Jane’s strategic transformation away from a three-day flash deal marketplace to a traditional evergreen model, I’m thrilled to welcome JP to the executive team,” said Joana McKenna, CEO. “JP’s extensive experience in E-commerce marketing will be critical as we focus less on deals and more on brand recognition and attracting new sellers.”
Mr. Knab is an online marketing professional with over 20 years of experience and a track record of building strong teams that leverage OKR processes to deliver innovative solutions. (OKR stands for “objectives and key results,” a collaborative goal-setting methodology.) Most recently, he was senior vice president of marketing at Aura, a digital security company. Previously, he served as CMO of online retailer Overstock.com, where he drove profitable E-commerce growth.
Mr. Knab’s appointment is part of a broader effort at Jane to further establish an experienced C-suite and build on the company’s more than $1 billion in sales to date. Knab’s team will focus on supporting and attracting sellers and embedding social and live commerce marketing capabilities into the Jane ecosystem. “I’m thrilled to be joining Jane at a pivotal moment in the company’s strategic journey,” said Mr. Knab. “Jane’s exceptional curation makes the brand unique and I look forward to building on that strong foundation to attract more sellers and better meet the Jane customer where she’s at when shopping.”
Fast Start
With offices in San Francisco, New York, and Austin, TX, Artico is off to one of the fastest starts among boutique search firms in recent memory. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor co-founded Artico with Matt Comyns, a cybersecurity leadership expert, to lead the firm’s rapidly expanding growth executive search team. Given the billions of dollars flowing into venture capital and private equity investments these days, as well as the ever-present threat of cybersecurity breaches, the founders expect big growth acceleration ahead. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor has completed over 75 CEO searches as well as partner, principal, and other CXO level assignments.
Artico Search Launches to Help Companies Build, Scale and Protect
No one could argue that Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor and Matt Comyns, both of whom recently departed from Caldwell to co-found their own executive search firm, Artico Search, are anything less than ground-breaking search leaders. They are both among the very best in their respective specialties, recruiting some of the most sought after, and costliest, hires in the search industry and building successful practices and teams in their areas of specialty. In joining forces, they are looking to create a powerhouse search brand that reflects their experience, passion, and core values focused on delivering the people to drive change and transformation in the tech industry.
Ms. Chatfield-Taylor’s team focuses on executive-level search for scaleup venture capital and private equity-backed technology companies. The team has deep expertise in global enterprise software, data and consumer internet businesses. Ms. Chatfield-Taylor is deeply passionate about the importance of diversifying the industry, with a full 53 percent of her placements tracked since 2019 being underrepresented executives.
Ms. Chatfield-Taylor recently placed Wendy Werve as chief marketing officer for Nashville, TN-based CM Group, a family of marketing technology companies. Ms. Werve was previously CMO with Virgin Pulse for over six years. She brings more than 20 years of experience developing, leading and executing growth-focused marketing strategies for a diverse range of technology, B2B and SaaS software companies, from start-up to IPO, mid-market to $1 billion-plus.
Related: Artico Search Assists Insightful Science in the Recruitment of New CMO
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media