The resignation, effective from December 31, will see Moir appointed as managing director and CEO-elect of the company’s majority shareholder Woolworths Holdings in South Africa.
Together with creative director Sophie Holt, who started at the company in 2003, Moir turned the listed retailer from the brink of receivership six years ago to celebrating its third consecutive year of profit growth in fiscal 2009.
Full-year profit after tax was up 60.4 per cent to $15.6 million and sales were up 18.4 per cent from 2008.
“There won’t be a change at all in the creative direction of Country Road,” Holt said. “We’ve worked so hard on developing the right formula – giving great fashionability and value for money. Ian will be on the board and still involved with the brand, but obviously, not in the same [capacity] he is now.”
Holt said the domestic launch of sister brand Trenery earlier this month, aimed at consumers aged 40-plus and with five stores across Australia, would be the pair’s final major collaboration.
“It took us about eight months to develop and create a different product [in Trenery] that wouldn’t cannabalise the Country Road brand. We wanted to expand our customer base rather than spread them out across the two businesses.”
This meant the creation of a separate team of 10 designers to produce 12 collections per year, with fresh product drops scheduled monthly. A sixth Trenery store will open in Australia in November and 16 Woolworths stores currently carry the label in South Africa.
Moir’s appointment to Woolworths Holdings comes five years after the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported the company was considering selling its 88 per cent stake in Country Road.
Its second largest shareholder at the time, Australian Retail Investments (ARI), owned by retail giant Solomon Lew, had also called for Moir’s resignation after reports the company had racked up $30 million in losses since he joined in 1998.
Moir was expected to assume the position of Woolworths Holdings chief executive in November, 2010.