HSN Chief Operations Officer Mark Ethier Named CEO Of Cornerstone Catalog Unit, Home of The Territory Ahead

HSN Monday named Mark Ethier CEO of its Cornerstone catalog division, which includes Ballard Design, Frontgate, Garnet Hill, Grandin Road, Improvements, Smith+Noble, The Territory Ahead and TravelSmith.

Previously, Ethier was executive vice president and chief operations officer of HSN and a Cornerstone director. He will now focus exclusively on driving and maximizing performance of Cornerstone. Ethier will continue to report to HSN CEO Mindy Grossman.

“Through strict financial and operational rigor, we have begun to see bottom line improvements in the Cornerstone business overall, despite ongoing sales challenges in the luxury home and apparel categories,” Grossman said in a prepared statement. “Mark has been instrumental in achieving this progress. We expect that having Mark focus his attention exclusively on Cornerstone will allow us to maximize the performance of these businesses.”

Ethier had been executive vice president and chief operations officer for HSN since 2004, responsible for all aspects of operations across HSN, HSN.com and Cornerstone. These responsibilities included overseeing customer care, fulfillment, logistics, quality assurance, information technology and administration.

He was HSN’s executive vice president of operations between 2001 and 2004. During his tenure, Ethier led the company’s upgrade of its fulfillment capabilities and improved shipping times, customer service and product quality.

“I am proud of what has been achieved by the operational teams at both HSN and Cornerstone with the transformation of HSN’s multichannel business and the strategic realignment that has been made at Cornerstone in response to the overall retail environment,” Ethier said in a statement. “I look forward to devoting all of my energy to building momentum, maximizing the potential of these prominent brands, and positioning them for future success.”

Prior to HSN, Ethier was with Walt Disney Co. as senior vice president of global operations at The Disney Stores, where he defined and implemented strategies to improve revenue, profitability, and productivity throughout the company’s store base in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Tags: Cornerstone, Garnet Hill, HSN, Mark Ethier, Mindy Grossman, The Territory Ahead, TravelSmith