Former Apple Diego Sebastián signs for Spanish company Mango

Former Apple executive Diego Sebastián joins the Spanish fashion company Mango, which is reinforcing its team to face its new stage. The fashion distribution group, number two of the sector in Spain, has signed Diego Sebastián as new customer experience and retail innovation director. Sebastián had experience working for Apple, among other companies.

In Mango, Sebastián will lead the strategy and the development of new initiatives in the store network, as well as all the projects related to customer experience. The executive will report to Elena Carasso, online’s and customer director of Mango.

The company, immersed in transformation plan to recover the growth path, has reinforced its bet for the digitalization in recent years. The group has just started a new innovation hub in the 22@ district in Barcelona and will sponsor the fifth edition of Jbcn Conf with the aim of capturing Java programmers for its team.

Mango, already generating the 20% of its billing through the Web, has launched in the last few years new online and store tools. The company started in February an image recognition system in its app and, last year, sealed an alliance with Vodafone to bring the Internet of Things to the retail.

Diego Sebastián will lead the strategy and the development of new initiatives in the store

To face this new stage, the group has armed a new team with Toni Ruiz in charge as general director. In the last few months, the company also choose digital talent for its financial department, with the signing of Josep Barberà, ex-Privalia, as new responsible for the area.

Besides, Mango has underpinned supply chain team with the incorporation of José Ignacio Ejido as projects and supply chain operations control director and Sergio Márquez as supply chain’s project manager.

Trained in Innovation for Oxford University and the Imperial College of London, and with a professional program for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Diego Sebastián worked during more than six years in Apple, where he was retail’s innovation director and worked alongside Angela Ahrendts in group’s headquarters in Cupertino (California).

In 2017, the executive joined the Spanish company Hawkers to lead the leap to its retail after the arrival of Alejandro Betancourt to the capital. In December 2018, he left the company due to team’s reorganization.

Awaiting for the group to publish the results of 2018, Mango ended 2017 with a sales worth 2,194 million euros, a 2,9% less than the previous exercise. On the other hand, the Spanish group reduced its losses a 45% in the same period. Mango was operating with 2,190 stores in 110 worldwide countries at the end of 2017.