People: Retail's main job moves in September

Despite falling a few days after the month ended, the highest profile move of the last few weeks came when former Pets at Home chief executive Matt Davies was announced as Halfords’ new boss, following David Wild’s departure in July.

In general, seems the industry has decided to get on with the task of moving forward – it has been interesting to see appointments for key roles have now been filled after long vacancies, with Didier Drouet going to LK Bennett as the Chief Executive and Rebekka Bay taking on the role of creative director at Gap.

Ecommerce recruitment continues to thrive. New etail appointments have included Lisa Bridgett at Net a Porter, Joanna Stephens and Nicola Copping joining My-Wardrobe and Brian McBride taking up the role of chairman at ASOS. Bricks and mortar retailers such as Hobbs and Coast have also made new appointments in their ecommerce departments with Gràcia Amico moving to Hobbs from Topman and Jayne O’Keefe moving to Coast from Marks & Spencer.

The pace of recruitment was affected by the Olympics in August and early September – as was retail in general – and recruitment slowed for a while over the summer. But retailers are now strengthening and expanding their teams and boards once more.

The rate of change in the job market often slows in the run up to Christmas, so it will be interesting to see if 2012 bucks this trend.

• September’s main retail job moves