Milestone achievement is ‘very cool’
Former South Auckland woman Andrea Scown is the first female chief executive of Mitre 10 New Zealand. She talks to Aimee Shaw.
BUCKING the trend within the typically maledominated hardware industry, Andrea Scown is now the first female chief executive of DIY chain Mitre 10 New Zealand.
The mother of seven, now living in Auckland’s Parnell, found herself immediately dealing with a severe structural building timber shortage after Carter Holt Harvey cut supplies because of accelerated house construction.
Ms Scown joined the 84store chain in 2017 and quickly made her desire to be the boss known. She hopes her appointment inspires the next generation of women.
She took over the reins from Chris Wilesmith, who clocked up an outrageous number of days (74) in managed isolation and quarantine as the transtasman commute to and from Coffs Harbour under Covid19 restrictions became unsustainable.
Ms Scown says she has picked up the baton and will continue to lead the firm through its fiveyear transformation plan, which is said to be costing Mitre 10 north of $100 million.
Asked how she feels to be the first female chief of Mitre 10, a first for the wider industry, she says the milestone achievement is ‘‘very cool’’.
What was surprising after the announcement of her appointment was the ‘‘reachouts from younger women across the organisation’’.
‘‘You forget how important those role model pieces are for younger women,’’ she said.
‘‘[When] you do get reached out to from younger women in the organisation you realise actually they are looking [for representation], particularly in this type of industry.’’
Ms Scown says some of her biggest supporters have been male colleagues. Surprisingly, Mitre 10’s employee gender ratio — just like its customer base — is slightly skewed towards a higher female representation versus male.
There are three women in Mitre 10’s executive team and one — Tricia Indo — on its board.
Ms Scown says there was an ‘‘understanding around a transition plan’’ for her to take over as chief executive at the end of last year, outlined internally around the time she stepped into the chief operating officer role.
‘‘I knew [becoming chief executive] was coming. I didn’t know exactly when it would come but it does feel like it has been part of a managed plan. There was no shock factor with it.’’
She first applied for the role of chief executive at the same time Mr Wilesmith did in 2019 when former Pumpkin Patch boss Neil Cowie announced he would step down.
The 52yearold says her appointment represents stability within the business.
She is focused on steering the company through the second year of its multiyear transformation programme.
‘‘We’ve got a very clearly defined strategic path that we want to take — we’ve got support from the board and membership around that — so [I will be] managing all of those things and taking care of the team. There could be some reprioritising of things [ahead] but no wholesale change.’’
The transformation is part of a major overhaul of the way the Mitre 10 operates both in terms of its internal systems and as a cooperative. It is also looking at how it can employ new retail technologies from store sales through to backend fulfilment.
It is centred around enabling the business to operate more as a ‘‘bureau service’’ and is expected to be completed by 2025, she says.
‘‘We’re a very inefficient business. Again it’s not unusual for retail — retailers don’t tend to spend a huge amount of money in that real tech space,’’ she says.
‘‘For us that inefficiency means we take a lot of people to do things and we’d love to have more people focused on customer service and valueadded things.’’
The programme will be the ‘‘biggest investment and transformational change for Mitre 10 since the building of Mega’’.
The hardware chain, which doubles as the largest garden centre in the country, is expanding that larger box store format at present and new stores are planned for construction in Silverdale and Papamoa.
‘‘We’re at an age now with the store network that there is probably more significant store refurbishments happening [than new openings]. We’re also working on evolving [the concept] of what is our store of the future.’’
In the past 14 months of trade, following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the business has been trading at levels typically seen over its Christmas peak.
‘‘If you imagine what four or five weeks around that Christmas boom time would feel like in terms of everyone under that pressure, and then turn that into 14, 15 months — that has become the new normal for us.’’
Overperforming has proven to be tough work, she says, and the opposite of what the board originally forecast would happen in the months that followed the outbreak.
Like most retailers, Mitre 10 forecast sales would pull back and it held a fairly pessimistic view of business performance. However, the polar opposite had occurred.
‘‘The level of spend in garden and garden care, the level of spend in outdoor furniture and seasonal goods, the amount of fences being built, the amount of paint we’ve sold — it all points to people enjoying making the most of the nest they live in.
‘‘There’s also been huge challenges around supply chain — the timber piece is another aspect of that with phenomenal demand on products. We’re kind of rolling with that.’’ see anything happening that will pull that back. We’ve still got a housing shortage, we’ve still got unprecedented levels of consents that we haven’t seen since the ’ 70s; there’s no proof point for me or other senior leaders in the business or our members to say that will ease off anytime soon, subject of course to being able to get materials to do that building.’’