Meet Stuart, our founder. Stuart is an experienced retailer and technologist having begun his career at Tesco Stores Plc in the UK as a system designer.
Throughout his career, Stuart has held senior positions in retail, including Head of Service Delivery to Director of Infrastructure and more recently Chief Digital & Technology Officer, leading the e-commerce and technology divisions.
In 2012 Stuart moved out to Australia with his family, leading the technology team of a large Australian university, before moving to Melbourne in 2015 to take up the role of General Manager of Digital and Data for a food and beveridge retailer. During this time, he began to explore ways to integrate technology and set up Lithium Digital to pursue his interests. This led to Stuart and his team creating Greenshoots.Technology and later selling it to a leading ASX listed fintech business.
Today Stuart is a leader in industry, known for its innovative approach to retail and technology and works with a number of Australia’s based companies including Equal Experts, Grant Thornton, MindArc, Insider and Atomic.io.
Equal Experts is a global technology consultancy with over 3000 practitioners, of which 150 are in Australia.
Insider is the No 1 platform form individualised, cross channel customer experiences.
Connect data across channels, predict future behavior with AI and automate cross channel journeys
Stuart is the Strategic Advisor to MindArc.
MindArc Digital was created in 2010 by Matthew Craig and Sean Pieres with a mission to create beautiful and innovative eCommerce solutions. David Mulgrew is a founding partner of MindArc, and operates MindArc Communications - a leading telecommunications infrastructure provider in Australia.
Stuart is the Technology Consultant to Grant Thornton Advisory.
Grant Thornton is one of the world's leading organisations of independent assurance, tax and advisory firms
Stuart was the Chief Digital & Technology Officer, responsible for Technology, Data and eCommerce.
- Office365
- Digital Transformation
- Marketing Technology
- Personalisation
- Data & Analytics
Stuart was the Chief Digital and Data Officer at Mecca, Australia's leading beauty retailer, where he led the Digital and Data team, rebuilding platforms , introducing integration , data management and analytics via the AWS cloud.
- replacement of ERP, POS , Master Data via transformation agenda.
- rebuild of core applications and servers on AWS with API's.
- introduction of converged infrastructure
- introduction of cloud based BI/ MI and Analytics
- innovation trials for ML and personalisation
- introduction of M-Sec ( security program )
- agile squads for digital ( eCom ), marketing technology and CRM
- Improvements to team devices via SOE, Office 365 and networking.
- payments (Afterpay)
Stuart was the Genera Manager for Digital ( Coles online, Coles Express, Coles Liquor, Data, Marketing and Experience )
Reporting to the Coles Group CIO, Stuart was responsible for driving digital innovation to make shopping simpler for customers, whilst leading the digital teams for:
- Flybuys,
- Coles Online,
- Customer ( Marketing, Property, Store Development, Customer Insights and Coles brand) , * added September 16
- Big Data ,
- Marketing Technology
- Liquor ( Vintage Cellars , First Choice and Liquorland) - 860 stores plus online.* added March 16
- Digital Experience.
- Coles Express - 700 stores
Stuart was recruited to from the Uk to lead two directorates; Service delivery and Infrastructure, for 54,000 students , 150,000 Alumni and 20,000 staff , reporting to a C level executive.
During his time , he re-set university wide service delivery and infrastructure strategy, transforming service quality and delivery , focusing on cloud 1st since 2013.
Stuart built strong relationships with Faculty general managers to support their needs and strategy, whilst introducing the first Cloud enable application virtualisation service.
Stuart led and built a team of 210 IT professionals, whilst managing a 35 seat contact centre receiving 120,000 calls per annum.
The role included the running of two DC's, 2500 servers and over 600 applications for academics , researchers and students.
Turning Argos into the UK’s No1 digital general merchandise retailer, whilst being responsibility for group infrastructure for all of digital and stores across Argos and Homebase , reporting to the Group CIO ( Board Member).
Leading major parts of the Discovery Digital Transformation agenda , delivering new capabilities to stores and on-line.
Commissioning and management of a tier 3 (owned) data centre, group WAN re-tender and rollout , enterprise storage replacement, virtual desktop, managed print service introduction , managed mobile devices, security upgrades, integration upgrades , outsourcing , contract negotiation and management.
Responsible for the technology and platforms that underpinned Argos.co.uk and Homebase.co.uk. ($3-4b ecommerce).
Stuart was leading areas of transformation at Dixons Retail during a time when the business was fighting through the GFC, competing against a BestBuy (USA) and Carphone partnership, shortly after a stock market rights issue to raise capital for the turnaround.
Stuart had operational responsibility for all UK IT systems delivering capability to the Currys and PcWorld brands, across 650 stores, plus distribution, contact and repair centres.
This included the management of technology across all ecommerce platforms including dixonstravel.co.uk, currys.co.uk and pcworld.co.uk. ( £1b) , as well as management and renegotiation of an outsourcing deal with a view to extending to 7 years. Savings delivered over an above original deal in excess of £1m pa, plus in-source of key skills.
Stuart was in various roles at Tesco , where he led the development of a new operating model for Tesco UK / Group to deliver a group service delivery, including the selection of new service management tools, followed by the UK Head of Service Delivery for Supply Chain and Distribution, where he managed 44 distribution centres and 300 stores ordering.
His teams varied from 5 people to 40 locally with 180 in India, frequently travelling to Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore.
Advisory board member for CIONET community in Australia.
Stuart is advising a fabulous little technology start-up in India, support their growth in Australian markets. Mintworxs specialises in building digital assets fast, focussing on web and apps.
