Recruiters Seek E-Commerce Executives

The moves are being spurred by the fast growth of online sales and a realization by some big brick-and-mortar chains that they're still behind the curve.

Target Corp. is looking for a new president of Target.com after a disastrous website crash in September led the last person in the job to resign.

In hopes of catching up with competitors, department-store chain Kohl's Corp. is bringing in a new senior vice president, a person familiar with the matter says. The company had $18.4 billion in sales in 2010, but only $717 million came via the Internet.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has said it will announce a new CEO of global e-commerce in January, succeeding Eduardo Castro-Wright, who will retire in July. Recruiters are seeking e-commerce executives who can build and manage websites and handle complex inventory management.

Jeweler David Yurman has just hired Beth Sash, a former e-commerce vice president at Polo Ralph Lauren, to run its online operations, a person familiar with the matter says. E-commerce heads-who a decade ago made $50,000 to $100,000 a year and lurked in the back offices of retailers' catalog businesses or in tech support-have joined the C-suite.

Les Berglass, the founder of executive-recruitment firm Berglass & Associates, says that 20% of his assignments now involve looking for someone to head a company's online operations. The scramble has been spurred by the strong performance of online sales, which are growing quickly even as brick-and-mortar growth remains sluggish.

When brick-and-mortar retailers took their first steps online, they typically gave e-commerce responsibilities to the executives who ran their catalog businesses, says Hal Reiter, chief executive of headhunter Herbert Mines Associates.

Coach Inc. now has e-commerce sites in three countries, informational websites in 17, and a mobile-commerce platform.

That sort of complexity is forcing companies to boost spending for both talent and infrastructure. Kohl's, for instance, plans to make large capital expenditures to increase its online sales, which are now only 5.5% the size of its regular business, Chief Executive Mansell says. This year, Kohl's added its third e-commerce distribution center, and it plans to add another in 2012.

Mr. Rohling's résumé-former vice president of direct marketing and online sales for Office Depot and e-commerce positions at other companies-is typical of what retailers and their recruiters are looking for. The company has unveiled a mobile app, has designed a tablet app and has expanded its online product offerings from 3,000 items last year to more than 40,000 this year, Mr. Boire, the CEO, says.

Julie Bornstein, the senior vice president of Sephora Direct, has an M.B.A. from Harvard. Some retailers are looking to acquire Web help wholesale. With the online space relatively new, companies are wrestling with who makes the best candidates. Reporting lines are also in flux, with e-commerce bosses reporting to everyone from the CEO to the marketing team. Retailers are under growing pressure to get it right.