When Gina Drosos took over as CEO at Signet Jewelers in 2017, she inherited a company with a broken culture, seen by many as hostile to women employees, and a business in decline. Now, more than seven years later, she's is handing over the reins of a company that is stronger on all fronts.
Signet announced Drosos' retirement on Tuesday, but she will be staying in her role through Nov. 4. She will be replaced by J.K. Symancyk, the former CEO of PetSmart.
Under seven years of Drosos' leadership, Signet overcame several critical challenges. The company has become a much bigger e-commerce player, and 23% of total sales are now digital. Drosos also solved the problem of two company subsidiaries, Kay and Zales, cannibalizing each other's sales with similar products and locations. Signet is undeniably in a better business position today: annual sales are now about $7.3 billion, about $1 billion more than when Drosos took over as CEO. (Investors like her: shares fell 8% on news of her imminent departure.)
But Drosos' most notable achievement may have been to repair the company's culture. Signet, which also owns Jared, Blue Nile and Rocksbox, made national headlines in 2017 after an exposé in the Washington Post reported that hundreds of former employees alleged sexual harassment and discrimination against women at the company, in which men dominated management roles.
For Drosos, fixing the culture and making sure women felt they had great career paths was a top priority, she told Fortune in late 2022. She proactively took steps to dramatically increase the percentage of women in roles at the vice president level or higher; at the store level, an overwhelming majority of assistant managers and above are female. Drosos also jettisoned Signet's old “top-down culture of command and control." In 2022, Signet paid $175 million to settle a class action suit.
Drosos' successor is a man, but she dismisses the notion that would be surprising choice considering her achievements bringing more women into management roles.
"In my mind, it's not about gender. It's always about having a team that is diverse in its thinking and sees around corners," Drosos says of Symancyk in an an exclusive interview about her retirement with Fortune. "What is key is to continue create a culture and environment that's right for all of our team to be able to be themselves."
Finally joining the digital age
Drosos has overseen a major and largely successful transformation of Signet's e-commerce business.
Like most jewelers, including LVMH's Tiffany, Signet was slow to embrace online sales, believing that many consumers wanted to see an item in person before plunking down a lot of money. But the pandemic gave the company a nudge in a direction Drosos was already taking it, and she equipped stores with digital tools that enabled them to interact with customers remotely.
That emphasis on e-commerce led the CEO to buy Rocksblox in 2021, a jewelry rental business that has since become an online retailer, and Blue Nile the following year. But that acquisition was not without pain. "Some things have happened a little bit more slowly, and the some of the integration difficulties that we've had with Blue Nile are ones that we didn't fully expect," she says.
To be sure, Drosos and her team are facing a tough period now. A weak jewelry market in a tough environment has prompted much of Signet's middle-income clientele to postpone bigger ticket purchases, and sales growth has eluded the company for several quarters. But Drosos told investors last month that comparable sales had returned to growth so far in the current quarter. And despite the sales softness, Drosos still sees a path to hitting a long-held goal of $9 billion in sales fairly quickly— a goal she first set out in 2021.
The long-dormant engagement market is coming back to life, she says, adding that fashion jewelry like earrings are also making a comeback. She's also betting that Signet's burgeoning services business, which includes repairs, continues to grow, and that its tech edge in an industry dominated by independent jewelers will help it keep winning market share.
Drosos will stay on as an advisor to Signet for a few months after retiring, and looks forward to a less busy calendar. Still, she won't remain inactive: she recently joined United States Golf Association's executive committee and believes it has "a great opportunity to become a more inclusive and sustainable sport."
"I'll probably play a little more, too," she says of golf. "I look forward to spending time with friends and family and on pursuits and interests that I put on the back burner to be single-mindedly working with the Signet team on all the things we've been able to accomplish," she says.
