Dive Brief:
- Stitch Fix appointed Sree Sreedhararaj as its chief product and technology officer on Monday. He will tackle a broad remit, overseeing the company’s technology, product, data science, security and IT teams, according to a press release, and will report to CEO Matt Baer.
- Sreedhararaj brings more than 15 years of retail technology experience to the role, including stints at Walmart Labs and Sephora. Most recently, he served as CTO at personalized beauty subscription service Ipsy, where he established a microservices-based architecture and developed the company’s AI strategy, according to LinkedIn. Sreedhararaj will succeed Tony Bacos, the company’s first CPTO. In March, Bacos informed the company of his plan to retire from the position effective Aug. 1.
- “Stitch Fix was early to bring technology and product together because our business has always depended on the two working in close partnership,” the company said in an email to CIO Dive. “Uniting these teams under one leader creates stronger alignment and ensures our product and technology strategies are both focused on the same goal: delivering the most client-centric, personalized shopping experience.”
Dive Insight:
Sreedhararaj’s Stitch Fix appointment reinforces a trend for technology leaders: Hybrid roles are becoming commonplace as companies seek to break down silos and tie technology directly to revenue.
In some cases, companies are expanding the CIO title to include digital, data and transformation, such as Delta’s appointment of Amala Duggirala as its chief digital and technology officer in January.
But in other cases, CIOs are absorbing product as an area of responsibility, a shift that is gaining momentum, according to Martha Heller, CEO at Heller. IT veteran Jim Fowler took on a dual technology-product role when he joined Lumen Technologies in January. More recently, UiPath CTO Raghu Malpani expanded his role to include product in March.
“It is more often that you’re going to have a tech person grab product than a product person grab tech, because the technology is still the rarer knowledge,” Heller said.
Bringing the two disciplines together means companies can move faster and achieve “tighter alignment between the technology that goes into the product and what customers want,” Heller said, not unlike the transition companies made as they shifted from a waterfall to an agile software development methodology.
“We keep reducing the translation layers,” she said.
While the push to combine tech and product departments started about 10 years ago, the rise of generative and agentic AI is putting consolidation in a pressure cooker as companies strive to remain competitive, according to Heller.
Stitch Fix’s chief product and technology officer appointment comes less than a week after the company reported Q3 earnings, which included quarterly growth in active clients for the first time since 2021. The company, which launched a transformation strategy in 2024 to focus on long-term growth and AI initiatives, also reported higher retention rates and increased sales per active customer. Still, active users fell 3.5% to 2.3 million year over year.
As it continues its turnaround strategy under Baer, who joined the company in 2023 from Macy’s, Sreedhararaj will play a vital role.
“Sree has built technology platforms that make personalization at scale possible,” Baer said in a press release. “That perspective will be critical as we shape the next era of retail.”
