Lahage brings more than two decades of extensive offline and ecommerce retail experience. She moves from the US business, which she joined in August 2010 to grow and drive innovation across eBay’s multibillion-pound fashion category. She spent more than 20 years with TJX companies, the discount global retailer of clothing and home fashion, rising from store manager to senior executive roles in merchandising and general management. In 2007, she successfully launched Koodos, the first online discount boutique for designer brands in the UK and managed the successful sale of Koodos in late 2009 to E-Trader Group. More recently, Miriam worked as a consultant at Net-A-Porter to help grow the Outnet business.
eBay Inc’s Q4 2010 financial results included strong performance in the UK and Germany boosted by its Fashion category, which grew faster than ecommerce in Q4. Fashion is eBay’s most successful category with millions of visitors each month to this category alone. As part of its ambitious plans to increase fashion sales, last year the site launched its Fashion Outlet in the UK and Germany, attracting well known high-street brands, including Superdry, L.K. Bennett, Jigsaw and Ted Baker. Last week’s completion of the acquisition of German fashion site, brands4friends, is another example of eBay’s efforts to cement its position in the fashion market.
Clare Gilmartin, Vice-President of eBay Europe said: “As our fashion business strategy evolves, we realised the need for someone like Miriam to lead our business in Europe at this exciting time. Miriam will oversee our continued drive to innovate, offering the UK’s largest online shopping audience access to an unrivalled selection of clothing, shoes and accessories at great value. There is still huge potential for growth in the online fashion market and her extensive retail experience and entrepreneurial vision for fashion ecommerce will be instrumental in leading this growing part of the business from strength to strength.”
For more information please contact:
Vanessa Canzini at eBay on +44 7885 627601 or
Nicola Marshall / Lisa Malyon from Blue Rubicon at ebay@bluerubicon.com or tel: +44 207 260 2700
About eBay.co.uk
· Founded in 1999, eBay.co.uk is the UK’s number 1 ecommerce site, providing a platform for over 17.7m unique visitors per to buy and sell new, unique and used items in a fun and easy way.
· Far from an online auction house, eBay currently has 17 million live listings on the UK site, with fixed price goods accounting for the majority (60%) of items sold globally.
· Sellers of all sizes, including 160,000 registered businesses and over 30 high-street retailers use eBay.co.uk to reach the UK’s largest online shopping audience.
· eBay supports buyers and sellers by promoting the best value deals through Daily Deals, and the eBay Fashion Outlet sells products from well known brands at up to 70% off the recommended retail price. Follow www.twitter.com/eBay_life4less for alerts to great deals on eBay and beyond.
· eBay.co.uk is owned by eBay Inc, which has expanded to include some of the strongest brands in the world, including eBay, PayPal, StubHub, Shopping.com, and others.