Hammitt Names First Chief Digital Officer to Lead CX

What happened

Hammitt, the premium handbag and accessories brand, has named its first Chief Digital Officer, a move that formalises digital experience as a distinct leadership function within the company. The appointment signals that Hammitt now views end-to-end digital experience — spanning e-commerce, customer engagement and digital operations — as a strategic priority rather than a support role sitting under marketing or IT.

Details of the incoming executive's remit have not been fully disclosed, but the creation of the role itself is the news: Hammitt joins a growing list of consumer and luxury-adjacent brands elevating digital leadership to the C-suite as shopping, service and brand engagement increasingly happen online.

Why it matters

For premium and luxury-adjacent brands, digital experience has moved well beyond running a website or app — it now shapes how customers discover, buy from and stay loyal to a brand. Appointing a dedicated Chief Digital Officer suggests Hammitt is preparing to unify what are often fragmented functions — e-commerce, CRM, data and digital marketing — under a single strategic owner, rather than leaving digital decisions distributed across departments with competing priorities.

This kind of structural change tends to matter more than any single product launch or campaign. It determines whether a brand can move quickly on personalisation, omnichannel consistency and digital service quality, or whether those efforts stay siloed and inconsistent. For leaders watching the accessories and broader premium retail space, Hammitt's move is a useful signal of where organisational investment is heading industry-wide.

The Renascence take

Titles are easy to create; the harder question is whether the mandate behind them has real teeth. A Chief Digital Officer role only changes outcomes if it comes with authority over budget, data and cross-functional decision-making — not just oversight of the website.

The real test of an appointment like this isn't the headline, it's whether the new CDO can force alignment between commerce, service and brand teams that have historically optimised for their own metrics. Premium brands often bolt digital leadership onto an existing structure without redesigning how decisions get made — and then wonder why the customer experience still feels disjointed six months later. A customer-obsessed operator would use this moment to map every point where a shopper's digital and in-person experience currently breaks down, and give the new CDO explicit authority to fix the handoffs, not just the interface.