After nearly seven amazing years as head of LOVEFiLM, I have decided the time is right to hand over the baton to the next leader. Growing this company has been a fantastic experience and I have had the pleasure of working with a truly talented team, real innovators who introduced a brand new way for millions of movie lovers to enjoy films. They provided our customers a vast selection of over 70,000 DVDs and Video Games, and, more recently, led the way in streaming great titles through PCs, TVs, Blu-ray players and games consoles.
I cannot name everyone individually but they know who they are. We have achieved great things for our customers and have positioned LOVEFiLM to do even more. I’d like to thank every member of the team, every customer, every investor and every partner for helping us get to this stage of the journey.
Some of the early milestones and speed-bumps along the way included losing most of our DVD stock in a distribution centre fire; important mergers uniting a number of truly great teams, and embarking on our first national TV campaign which paid off greatly. Every twist was interesting and I learnt a great deal along the way. In 2008, we forged a relationship with Amazon, which was to prove the ultimate home, and the best home, for the future of LOVEFiLM. They have been true to their word and continue to invest even more on behalf of customers. We have now over 2 million members across Europe and are innovating in new services on the PC, PS3, Xbox and iPad, to name but a few.
I am now delighted to be handing over to Jim Buckle, who has been part of the leadership team from the early days in 2006 and he knows LOVEFiLM inside out. Jim has led Finance and led Commercial, and will now lead the whole business. LOVEFiLM could not be in better hands and I wish Jim and the whole team tremendous success.
Rest assured I will be keeping my subscription and following every single new turn in this fascinating industry and great company. Thank you for making it such a fantastic company to be part of.
Simon Calver, CEO
What are you going to do next?
Mothercare.
[...] COO Jim Buckle, who has run both Lovefilm’s commercial and financial operations since 2006, will take over from Calver in the “coming months”, the company says (Calver’s blog). [...]