Excerpt from BusinessWire
James “Jim” Barr IV, Miami ’84, was named chief executive officer of Nautilus, Inc. Barr is a C-level leader with multiple successes transforming and growing large scale digital and multichannel businesses in diverse industries.
Barr, a digital/e-commerce veteran, most recently helped lead, as group president at Ritchie Bros., a global leader in the sales of used industrial equipment with transaction value of $5.3 billion, a successful digital transformation that expanded the 60-year-old company’s offerings from its core onsite auctions to a full array of onsite and online formats, enhancing the value proposition by giving customers unprecedented choice of ways to buy and sell. He led the company’s global marketing, technology and online product teams, ran its online businesses and helped the company launch new offerings in asset management software.
Prior to Ritchie Bros., Jim was EVP and chief digital officer of OfficeMax, a global retailer/wholesaler of office equipment, supplies and business services with revenue of over $7 billion and a top ten largest online retailer. There, he transformed its online and omnichannel experiences and turned around its online business from declining revenue to double-digit growth every quarter before the company ultimately merged with Office Depot.
In 2008, Barr was named the first president of Sears Holdings’ newly-formed Online Business Unit, another top ten online retailer, where he developed and drove an omnichannel and online strategy that rapidly expanded the product assortment and produced strong double-digit online growth and rapid increases in customer satisfaction.
Jim’s foundational digital experiences came as an executive for 12 years in Microsoft’s online businesses as GM, MSN Business Development, where he partnered to bring revenue, content and capabilities to the MSN network before heading the company’s B2C online businesses as GM, Commerce Services, where his engineering and business teams developed and ran online shopping, classified advertising and auction businesses, as well as platforms and technologies, which ultimately powered the ecommerce experience in Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
When a member of the Ohio Alpha Chapter of Phi Delta Theta, Brother Barr served as its president. He is also from a long legacy of Phi Delta Theta men. His father, James Barr III, Iowa State ’62, son James Barr “Quint” V, Indiana ’16, and biological brother Brett C. Barr, Iowa State ’87, all share the Bond of Phi Delta Theta.
