Li & Fung creates new role as digital grows in importance

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 22, 2019

Sourcing-to-retail giant Li & Fung has signalled its heavy focus on digital with the appointment of a new Chief Digital Officer. Briton Darren Palfrey takes up the role and has been tasked with realising the company’s ambitions in creating the “supply chain of the future.” 

Palfrey is “a successful entrepreneur with over two decades of industry experience” and has held a number of leadership roles including Divisional Director of Supply Chain at Allport, Development Director at Uniserve Group, and in the supply chain team at TTC Global. Most recently, he co-founded and was COO of Gravity Supply Chain, where his team “developed and brought to market, a state-of-the-art digital supply chain management platform.”

His new role comes as the firm said it has reached “a defining point in its digital transformation journey” and wants to accelerate its digital strategy. 

As CDO, Palfrey will “build the LF Digital Platform – a fully-integrated digital platform that connects suppliers, customers and other partners with end-to-end visibility.”

And the company said the appointment highlights its focus on continuing to build on the “strong progress it has already made in its Three-Year Plan” from 2017 to this year and the plan’s “themes of speed, innovation and digitalisation.”

The most significant part of this progress has been the development of “industry-leading 3D design capabilities that are a key contributor to increasing the speed of customers' supply chains and reducing, on average, 20% of the lead time from design to store, leading to a decrease in markdowns and inventory for its customers,” it claims.

Spencer Fung, CEO of Li & Fung, said: “Our role as a traditional sourcing company is quickly transitioning to becoming a provider of supply chain services and solutions that leverage technology and data to create value. 2019 is the year of acceleration of our digital strategy and that’s where our new CDO Darren comes in. I look forward to creating a new generation of digital solutions to help our customers and partners revolutionise their supply chains.”