The company announced the closure of three regional headquarters in March 2020 – alongside the loss of 180 jobs – when it restructured the business into 10 ‘Clusters’, with the Asia-Pacific region divided into China, Pacific and Rest-of-Asia.
However, the Rest-of-Asia division, including Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore, will now be assimilated into exisiting Clusters.
David Allen, current general manager of the Pacific Cluster – which includes Australia and New Zealand and is based in Sydney – will take control of the Japan and Singapore markets, as well as 11 other distributor-controlled markets throughout Southeast Asia and Korea.
Allen told Jeweller, "The leadership team in the Pacific is reviewing the required resources, including the current organisational structure, to ensure that we are able to realise the full potential of our expanded Pacific and Greater Asia business."
Meanwhile the Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau markets will be absorbed into the new Greater China Cluster, headquartered in Shanghai and led by current China general manager Jacques Roizen.
The transition is scheduled to be completed by February 2022, at which point Rest-of-Asia general manager Alan Chan will depart the company.
According to a statement from Pandora, the decision to reduce the number of regional clusters was made to “optimise our operating structure and create further commercial synergies – with the overall goal of capturing the growth opportunities that we are targeting in our new Phoenix strategy.”
Phoenix is the title of Pandora’s new strategic initiative, announced at the end of Q1 2021.
Martino Pessina, chief commercial officer, Pandora, said, “With this merger, we look forward to building two strong clusters that will be both aligned to our Pandora values and focused on the strategic objectives outlined in Phoenix.
“We strive to create synergies within each new cluster enabling them to be more agile in responding to market conditions and to meet strategic goals.”
Pessina added, “I would like to thank Alan Chan for his many contributions to Pandora and I wish him success in his future endeavours.”
Pandora recently released strong financial results for the second quarter of 2021; approximately 5 per cent of its global store count is predicted to remain closed throughout the second half of the year due to government-mandated lockdowns.
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