Dive Brief:
- Tyson Foods has appointed Tim Madigan as its vice president of e-commerce, a new position at the company.
- Madigan will oversee all aspects of Tyson's e-commerce strategy, from development to execution, in addition to the direct relationships with all pure play and online retailers.
- Prior to joining Tyson, Madigan served SC Johnson & Son as director of e-commerce, North America, and later global e-commerce director. He also had e-commerce experience at P&G, where he established the company's e-commerce relationship with Wal-Mart. The megaretailer presented Madigan with three Supplier of the Year awards.
Dive Insight:
This extensive experience in e-commerce is what earned Madigan the newly created position at Tyson, and Tyson management is confident his experience will enable him to "have an immediate impact on our ability to succeed in this critical channel," Brett Van de Bovenkamp, senior vice-president of customer growth capabilities for Tyson, said in a statement.
Madigan could be challenged by the logistics involved in the type of products he will be handling. At P&G and SC Johnson & Son, he dealt primarily with shelf stable personal care and household cleaning products. At Tyson, the complexities of food e-commerce will come to play, particularly products that are not shelf stable, have expiration dates and/or require refrigeration, like meat.
Tyson already has experience in this arena, having developed an e-commerce strategy that includes partners like Amazon and Alibaba and the new meal-kit driven brand Tyson Tastemakers. Madigan will be involved in expanding these existing partnerships further and forming new partnerships that will allow Tyson products to be increasingly prevalent in e-commerce channels, a fast-growing area in food and beverage.
Food and beverage e-commerce sales will hit $12 billion by 2018, though that will still be only about 2.5% of the overall e-commerce market, according to eMarketer. As manufacturers continue to explore this retail channel, more companies may add executive and management roles that deal exclusively with e-commerce as Tyson and PepsiCo have.