poundstretcher

Poundstretcher has appointed Mike Morrison as trading director, three years after he resigned from the same role.

Morrison has previously served on the variety discounter’s board on three occasions. He was buying and merchandising director from 2003 to 2007 and MD from 2009 to 2010, before his previous stint as trading director from 2012.

Between leaving that role in 2018 and his reappointment, he worked at 10ofthose.com, a publisher and seller of Christian faith books and resources. Morrison was the company’s sales and marketing manager before spending a year as MD.

He is also a former trading director of home and garden discounter TJ Hughes and head of marketing for Matalan.

Morrison describes himself in his LinkedIn profile – which he recently updated with his new Poundstretcher role – as a successful senior commercial general manager who has operated at board level for over 20 years.

His efforts at senior level in Poundstretcher will follow those of Burcu Kerpicci, chief operating officer from 2019 to 2020, Somnath Saha, group commercial director from 2018 to 2019, and Chris Edwards, the founder of Poundworld, who was Poundstretcher CEO from 2017 to 2018, charged with reviving flagging sales.

Poundstretcher did not respond to The Grocer’s request for comment on Morrison’s appointment.

Poundstretcher has about 360 stores, having closed a number since 2020 in an ongoing ‘company voluntary arrangement’, a restructuring process designed to turn around the business by cutting costs.

The estate includes stores trading as Bargain Buys, a banner introduced in 2018 with the intention of dispelling customer misconceptions of Poundstretcher being a single-price discounter and aligning it more with B&M and Home Bargains.

More recently, stores have begun converting to JTF Mega Discount Warehouse, which Poundstretcher’s owners rescued from administration in September last year.

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