Cue Clothing Co hunts for full-time CIO

Cue Clothing Co is seeking to reinstate a full-time chief information officer role as the women’s clothing brand "keeps pushing the envelope in the digital space”.  

The Australian brand has around 200 stores across Australia and New Zealand and is one of the country’s biggest fashion manufacturers.

A spokesperson for Cue Clothing Co told iTnews that the company wanted to "stay at the forefront of technology”.

Under the role, the new CIO will join the company IT team “in implementing new IT operations, focusing on upgrades to our internal administration and point of sale software which we are currently replacing [or] evolving.”  

“They will also help to forge our international business with the Dion Lee brand, which requires distribution centres and stores internationally," the spokesperson said.

The new CIO will take over from Shane Lenton, who was CIO until late 2018 before continuing as a consultant to the business.

Once a new permanent CIO is found, Lenton will continue working with Cue as a consultant where needed.

“Shane’s full-time role as our CIO ended 15 November 2018. He has been working on a consultancy basis for the last four years," the spokesperson said.

“We’ve realised that to keep pushing the envelope in the digital space [that] we want a full-time CIO to join our already successful team.

“Shane has been a great asset to the company. We will continue working with him as a consultant depending on the needs of the business,” the spokesperson said. 

During his time at Cue, Lenton told iTnews that the retailer established itself "as a market leader from an omnichannel, unified commerce point of view.”

“We're the first retailer in the world to implement Afterpay in-store. [We implemented] everything from 30-minute click-and-collect to 'endless aisle', being able to fulfil online orders from store [also] first, fashion business to launch Uber for one-hour delivery around the country," he said.

“So, there's been a long history of first-in-market with a real focus on customer experience and delivering service-orientated offerings to the customers.”

He said that the use of technology at Cue had resulted in a substantial revenue uplift.

Filling his role while Cue searches for a full-time replacement is head of ecommerce, Lauren Cantwell and IT operations manager Peter Koureas.

The Wishlist platform

One major reason for Lenton’s transition out of his Cue duties and “even stepping back from consultancy” is to focus on a startup he co-founded called The Wishlist Company.

Back in 2020, Cue launched its own ‘wishlist’ platform which enabled staff to capture customer behaviour in-store and add it to a digital profile.

Co-founding The Wishlist Company with Matt Hampshire around this same time, Lenton said that is now his "real focus".

“We'll officially launch into market this year," he told iTnews.

“We've got a raft of retailers that we're working with to onboard at the moment and will officially launch towards the end of February [or] early March.

“The timing was right to step away from being a retailer and working on that side of things to actually lead the startup that myself and my co-founder have been working on over the last few years in the background.”

He added the consultancy work with Cue “has been fantastic”, however, “now my real focus is The Wishlist Company and I do have a few board roles I'm looking to pick up.”