Crate & Barrel CEO out, but firm won’t say why
Crate & Barrel’s CEO, who is at the center of a lawsuit from rival Restoration Hardware, is out after less than two years at the retailer.
Crate & Barrel of suburban Chicago confirmed Friday that Doug Diemoz, who was recruited from Corte Madera’s Restoration Hardware to head Crate & Barrel in 2015, left this week. A spokeswoman declined to say why.
“I can confirm that Mr. Diemoz left the company,” spokeswoman Vicky Lang said.
A memo obtained by the Chicago Tribune that was sent to staffers by Neela Montgomery, an executive board member at Crate & Barrel’s parent company, the Otto Group, said that she would assume “most of Doug’s current responsibilities,” working closely with President Steve Woodward and Chief Operating Officer Mike Relich.
Montgomery added that the company had seen a “strong turnaround” in the past two years and “I firmly believe that the best is yet to come.”
Diemoz filled the void at Crate & Barrel after the 2015 resignation of Sascha Bopp, who had been CEO since 2012. Adrian Mitchell, Crate & Barrel’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, served as interim CEO during the search for a replacement.
A 20-year retail veteran, Diemoz joined Restoration Hardware in March 2014. He was responsible for developing and leading the company’s global expansion efforts and emerging businesses. He had previously worked with San Francisco companies Williams-Sonoma and Gap.
In 2012, Restoration Hardware started developing a concept to include food and beverage services at some locations, according to a January lawsuit the company filed in San Francisco Superior Court against Diemoz and Crate & Barrel. The first location opened in Chicago in October 2015 after the company turned a rundown circa-1914 building into a six-floor space that melded a gallery, retail shop, coffee and pastry shop, wine bar and a garden courtyard cafe.
Lang said that Diemoz’s departure has nothing to do with the suit, which seeks to prevent Crate & Barrel from opening a food and beverage operation in any of its stores for a year.
The lawsuit also alleges that Crate & Barrel sought to hire Diemoz for his know-how to create such a program.
Crate & Barrel “effectively sought to steal a page from the successful RH playbook,” using inside information such as how to sell coffee and wine in the same store in which customers buy stemware and settees, the suit alleges.
Crate & Barrel founders Gordon Segal and his wife, Carole, opened the store in Chicago in 1962. Now its brands, including CB2 and children’s furniture store Land of Nod, are owned by the Otto Group of Germany.