RadioShack continues to build retail team, naming Michael De Fazio SVP store concepts

FORT WORTH, Texas — In a SEC filing, RadioShack last week confirmed it had recruited Michael De Fazio, one of the architects behind Duane Reade's new store formats, to help the small-box specialty retailer recapture some of its lost retail pizzazz. 

As SVP store concepts, De Fazio joins a team that includes Troy Risch, who came to RadioShack from Target as EVP operations in December, and Huey Long, formerly of Wal-Mart and now RadioShack EVP strategy and consumer insights who also signed with RadioShack in December. 

Heading up that new RadioShack team is CEO Joe Magnacca, who with De Fazio, helped re-configure Duane Reade and later Walgreens as go-to shopping destinations and helped redefine what consumer's connotation of what shopping in the drug channel entailed. 

Magnacca told analysts in late February that he likes how the new team at RadioShack is shaping up. "What you'll see is that there's a customer-first mentality inside our business, and probably has been for 5 or 6 weeks, that we'll continue to build on. … We have a marketing strategy that touches different communities in different ways, and our objective is to really use social, mobile and mass media in a way that will encourage and drive traffic," he said. 

But RadioShack is still looking to round out its executive team. "We spent a lot of time looking at the [executive] team and where the voids are inside our business," Magnacca said. "Clearly, as you know from previous calls, we're still without a chief merchandising officer inside our business. So that's definitely a void," he said. "The work that I'm currently doing and assessing, it is getting very specific to roles and functions, so whether it's store development, renovation programs, et cetera, and what expertise do we have inside our business. Again, I'm going to take much more of a four-wall view of the store and look at the voids as it relates to that and start to build the transformation story and putting the right people in place to ensure we can do that."