[An earlier headline has been updated to reflect continued changes at the company.]
Hasbro implemented a sweeping round of organizational changes ahead of its third-quarter earnings report this week.
The Toy Book exclusively revealed that fewer than 100 employees will be affected by the layoffs as part of a comprehensive streamlining of operations. These changes should shorten the process by at least three months, while enabling the team to make decisions quickly and “design for value” from the start (taking price into account), resulting in faster time to market. The changes reflect Hasbro’s “all-in” bet on digital, direct and technology-assisted innovation.
The changes are as follows:
- Commercial integration into Hasbro’s toys and Wizards of the Coast business units. Tim Kilpin will expand the Toy Games Licensing and Entertainment division, bringing global brands, regional marketing and commercial units into one team.
- Lisa Gilbert will lead the commercial business in the Americas and Bhavesh Somaya will lead the commercial business in EMEA and Asia Pacific, both reporting to Tim.
- Kim Boyd will serve as president of global toy brands and licensed consumer products, reporting to Tim Kilpin. Toy leads and licenses will be reported to her. Brian Baker at Board Games will continue to report directly to Tim.
- Hasbro is combining design and development with demand and supply planning.
- The newly combined innovation, design and development team, led by Dean Carley, will be dedicated to accelerating innovation and design and emphasizing production efforts at the source.
- Dan Rawson now leads Direct across the company, where he is developing a unified back-end platform and managing the front-end for brand-centric initiatives such as Hasbro Pulse, Secret Lair and DDB. Dan Shull will integrate IT and technology into a cohesive team.
- Hasbro is boosting its internal marketing organization
- Chief Marketing Officer Jason Bunge will oversee Wizards and digital games marketing as well as the centralized marketing services function.
- Gina Goetter will serve as chief operating officer in addition to her role as chief financial officer
The following announcement provided to Toy Book was emailed to Hasbro employees this afternoon. Its full, unedited content is below:
Winning organization update
team,
Today, we are announcing organizational changes to drive our Play to Win strategy. These changes are designed to enable teams to make decisions faster and deliver innovation faster. As a leadership team, our commitment is to provide each of you with a great place to work and opportunities to impact and grow.
Authorized business department
We are integrating our commercial teams into the Wizards and Digital Games and Toys, Games, Licensing and Entertainment (TGLE) business units. Hobby (including WPN) under Brian Trunk and Direct under Dan Rawson will report to John Hight. The mass and specialty retail division will report to Tim Kilpin. As part of the merger, Matt Austin will assume an advisory role, reporting directly to Tim. Lisa Gilbert will lead our commercial team in North America and Latin America, and Bhavesh Somaya will lead our commercial team in EMEA/APAC, both reporting directly to Tim.
Our business units will support each other in relevant pipelines (for example, Wizards will support board game sales to Hobby; Consumer Products will help democratize D&D and Magic: The Gathering). However, most sales of each unit will be done autonomously.
As part of this transformation, we are also moving demand planning to our supply chain team. We will integrate our demand and supply planning platforms to improve order fulfillment and forecast accuracy.
With these changes, our business unit will contain all the design, go-to-market and business decision-making disciplines needed to drive our product plans and achieve our business goals, with streamlined marketing, finance, legal, communications and HR partners support.
Reorganize toys to promote growth
In addition to commercial integration, the toy team will combine design and development at the source. Our newly combined innovation, design and development team, led by Dean Carley, will focus on accelerating our innovation and design and emphasizing production efforts at the source. We will prioritize operations in Asia, getting closer to key suppliers and strengthening collaboration with manufacturing partners. Our goal is to reduce time to market by more than 3 months, allowing us to better compete in an environment that favors companies that can capitalize on trends.
We are also creating a unified brand and licensing organization led by Kim Boyd. In addition to overseeing our global gaming leadership in Action, NERF, Play-Doh, Preschool and Fashion, we will consolidate our North American marketing team, licensed consumer products team and location-based entertainment team under Kim’s leadership. This franchise model helps evolve our strategy as we focus on building profitable franchises and working with partners to expand our reach to more than one billion people over the next five years. The new structure will support the speed and scale of decision-making to achieve victory.
These changes will increase productivity and empowerment, but will require some hard choices to be made. So today we’re saying goodbye to a few team members who are leaving Hasbro. We thank them for their contributions to our mission and wish them all the best.
a new marketing organization
Marketing is our largest investment each year, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Recognizing the unique nature of our business units, we are marketing each business unit in a customized manner, supported by a centralized marketing services team that manages these investments for the company.
Jason Bunge will join the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to focus on supporting John Hight and the Magic, D&D and digital gaming teams, while continuing to spearhead marketing efforts for toys and games. As part of this change, Wizards’ marketing team will report to Jason. The regional marketing teams supporting consumer products will move to TGLE to align with our regional commercial teams.
This model provides Wizards with digital and gaming experts to help us build our publishing organization, as well as providing TGLE with core marketing services for seasonal and promotional marketing, and dedicated brand teams for each of our major brands.
Kim, Brian Baker and other TGLE leadership will continue to be supported by a central marketing services organization reporting to Jason, covering media and event planning, social, influencer and digital marketing, agency management and creative services, and marketing analytics.
2025 and beyond
Part of our strategy is to bet “all in” on digital, direct and technology-assisted innovation. Dan Rawson now leads Direct across the company, where he is developing a unified back-end platform and managing the front-end for brand-focused initiatives such as Pulse, Secret Lair and DDB. Dan Shull will integrate IT and technology into a cohesive team. You can read more about his new team here. Finally, we will continue to make significant investments in our video game studio, introducing new studio capabilities and expanding partnerships with some of the biggest and best companies in digital games.
Our work to adjust our cost base continues, and thanks to the hard work of many people across the company, we are on track to achieve our long-term cost savings goals. We are resetting our processes, committing resources, including a new indirect procurement team led by John Hewitt, and will roll out clearer spend guardrails and expectations across all areas as we enter 2025.
We will also invest in our team, most notably exploring a new headquarters with a collaborative, modern environment that reflects our brand and fosters innovation. It is expected that our location strategy will be updated in the first quarter. We won’t be relocating until mid-2026 at the earliest, prioritizing accessibility to public transport and working closely with the team to ensure we are building a space that suits our unique needs.
Finally, recognizing the importance of operational excellence and the progress to date and the road ahead, I am very pleased that Gina Goetter now serves as our Chief Operating Officer in addition to Chief Financial Officer. Gina is an outstanding leader who has established a solid operational foundation to drive our strategic goals and profitability. This foundation will advance our legacy as we entertain fans for the next 100 years and make Hasbro one of the best places to work in the gaming industry.
Thank you for being on this journey with us. I look forward to speaking at our State of the Company briefing in a few weeks on November 7th.
— Chris and the Executive Leadership Team
Hasbro will report third-quarter earnings tomorrow morning.
