Hudson Group parent company Dufry Group last week announced a new organizational structure that is designed to delegate greater responsibilities to the regional level, including in North America where Hudson Group president and CEO Joseph DiDomizio will become regional COO for Dufry’s new Region North America.
Dufry will also merge its current procurement organization into a single global procurement platform to serve Dufry operations worldwide.
The organizational changes will be effective on July 1, 2012 and will be fully implemented by September 1, 2012.
“We have multiplied by five our size in the past eight years and we have grown Dufry’s to become the leading travel retailer with 8% market share,” noted Julian Díaz, CEO of Dufry Group. “The reorganization is a critical step in the further development of the Company.
“We want to continue to grow profitably -in terms of sales and sales per passenger, gross and operational margins while reducing net working capital requirements- and for this we need to reinforce our structure and re-think the way we work,” Díaz added. “The reorganization is designed to get closer to the customer and landlords by decentralizing the business execution and to centralize where we can leverage our scale, like procurement and logistics. At the same time, we strengthen the business development in the regions to identify and execute new projects.”
In addition to the North America appointment, the new regional structure includes three other regions: Region Europe, Africa and Asia; Region Latin America; and Region Brazil. All regional heads report to Díaz.
Dufry said the role and functions of the regions will be redefined, enabling the regional COOs to assume greater P&L accountability for their regions. Each of the regions will be structured into business units, which monitor the day-to-day management of the respective operations. In total there will be 15 business units.
The Switzerland-based company also announced changes in the global executive committee, which will be reduced to eight people, from the current 10. Dufry will also introduce a new “advisory president” function per region to reinforce local business development, as well as to foster political and institutional relationships. For Region North America, Mario DiDomizio was appointed to that role.
Finally Dufry said it will centralize its procurement processes, allowing it to maximize economies of scale and knowledge. Logistics will also be centralized and be structured to match the new procurement setup.
