Smith has been part of multiple turnarounds—at brands that Phil describes as having “lost sight of what customers loved about them, but which still had large reservoirs of goodwill to draw upon.” She led finance at Nordstrom while the retailer was going private and was at Target between 2015 and 2019, when the retailer needed to redo many of its stores.
“All brands drift over time, and I have pattern recognition,” Smith says. “I’ve seen this with a number of brands, and the great ones recapture what made them great.”
Smith gets into the weeds. Before taking the Target job, she took her family on a road trip to 65 Target stores in 10 states, Phil reports. She has taken a similar approach at Starbucks, visiting a coffee roasting plant, a distribution center, corporate HQ, and with plans to serve customers as a barista in store.
“I see where the brand is today,” Smith says. “It should be the Starbucks I remember, and it can be so much more.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
