Dive Brief:

• Bark on Thursday announced the expansion of its leadership team, according to a company press release. Anil Nair, most recently the director of global logistics at Amazon, has been named the company's chief supply chain officer and will oversee the company's inbound, fulfillment and outbound operations.
• Michael Novotny, who served as the company's chief operating officer since 2019, was named the president of Bark Eats. Novotny will work with co-founder Carly Strife to lead its personal meal business, which will begin a nationwide rollout in 2022.
• Olly Downs was named vice president of data, analytics and machine learning, where he will manage the retailer's strategies in those areas, expand personalization efforts and lead data-driven decision making at scale. Prior to Downs' time at Bark he was the vice president of marketing technology, data and machine learning at Zulily.

Dive Insight: 

Bark is in the midst of building out its leadership team.

About a year ago, the company entered into an agreement to be acquired by Northern Star Acquisition Corp. — a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition company. The deal was meant to help scale the Bark platform and "add joy to the millions of dogs and families who love our products through our monthly subscription service and grow our omni-channel distribution," Matt Meeker, founder and executive chairman of Bark, said at the time of the announcement. The merger valued the direct-to-consumer retailer at $1.6 billion as it prepared to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

However, this September — only months after Bark went public — Chief Financial Officer John Toth said he was stepping down from his role. Now the DTC brand is in the midst of filling out some other key positions in order to push forward its strategic plans for growth.

"Over the past several months, we have made significant headway bolstering our management team with individuals who are proven leaders in their respective fields, share our core values, and have a profound love for dogs," Bark CEO Manish Joneja said in a statement. "Anil possesses significant expertise in optimizing e-commerce and supply chain operations, while Olly is a renowned machine learning and artificial intelligence specialist with a distinguished track record of leveraging data and technology to improve business outcomes. Additionally, Michael has been instrumental in expanding Bark's key businesses and he is well suited to spearhead Bark Eats."

The company also said it has "significantly expanded" a fulfillment center in Columbus, Ohio, to support the rollout of Bark Eats. 

Bark, which is known for BarkBox and Bark Super Chewer subscription services, has benefited from increased demand in the pet category during the pandemic and currently has 1.8 million active subscribers, according to its website.