Episode
CPO Stories: Katya Denike - Holland & Barrett
- Podcast
- One Knight in Product
- Published
- Sep 8, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2884
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Summary
In this episode, I speak with Katya Denike, Chief Product Officer at Holland & Barrett, the 150-year-old health and wellness retailer that has become a household name on the UK high street. Having previously worked at McKinsey, Yandex, Ozon, and Beyond 100, she now leads Holland & Barrett's ambitious digital transformation - helping the company evolve from a traditional retailer into a global wellness ecosystem. We cover a lot, including: Transforming a heritage retailer: Holland & Barrett is delivering double-digit growth through a sweeping digital and cultural transformation, investing in everything from supply chain systems to customer-facing apps. Global vs local: The company builds strong global digital capabilities (like search and e-commerce infrastructure) while tailoring ~20% of the experience for each market to meet regulatory and customer needs. High street resilience: Despite doom-and-gloom headlines, Holland & Barrett is thriving by focusing on product-market fit, preventative healthcare, and efficient tech-enabled operations. The app transformation: Taking the mobile app in-house turned it from a struggling third-party product (<5% of digital revenue, 3-star rating) into a core strategic channel (>30% revenue share, 4.5+ rating). Internal product management is sexy too: Katya insists that logistics, pricing systems, and data management are some of the most rewarding areas for product managers, enabling everything else to work. Team structure: Around 100 people in product, design, and research, split between "firm foundations" (core systems) and "omnichannel customer experience", plus a small but mighty product ops team. Leadership leap: Moving into her first CPO role was daunting, but support from her manager pushed her to take the l…