The chief executives at four top 500 retailers were paid a total of $11.34 million in 2008, for an average of $2.83 million. Compensation included base salaries and in some cases bonuses and stock options and awards.
Dawn Lepore, president, CEO and chairman of the board at online health, beauty, vision, and pharmacy products retailer Drugstore.com Inc., led the group with total compensation of $3.59 million for 2008. She was followed by Mindy Grossman, CEO of TV and web retailer HSN Inc. at $3.23 million. Reed Hastings, president, CEO and chairman at online video rental service Netflix Inc., received $2.76 million and Jeffrey Housenbold, president and CEO at Shutterfly Inc., an online personal publishing service, was paid $1.75 million. Salary information for the four CEOs was contained in each retailer’s recently filed proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
HSN’s Grossman and Netflix’s Hastings had the highest base salaries for 2008, at $1 million and $994,000, respectively. Drugstore.com head Lepore received a base salary of $442,000 and Shutterfly’s top executive Housenbold’s base salary was $377,000.
2008 web sales at HSN rose 4% last year to $1.01 billion from $969 million in 2007, the company reports. Total sales fell 3% to $2.82 billion from $2.91 billion. Sales at Drugstore.com grew 8% in 2008 to $366.6 million from $339.3 million in 2007. Netflix reported sales of $1.36 billion last year, up 13% from $1.20 billion in 2007, and 2008 sales for Shutterfly rose by 14.4% to $213.5 million from $186.7 million in 2007.
All four executives’ pay came in under the $4.16 million average salary determined by an examination of executive compensation at more than 3,000 U.S. public companies including those in the Russell 3000 index. The cross-industry survey, conducted by the AFL-CIO labor federation, was based on proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The survey findings were released Tuesday and are part of the AFL-CIO’s 2009 Executive PayWatch report.
Drugstore.com is No. 41 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, HSN is No. 25, Netflix is No. 17 and Shutterfly is No. 76.
Tracy Wright, vice president and CFO at Drugstore.com will be speaking at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, June 15-18 in Boston, in a session titled Understanding web site financials: Managing to success.
Brian Bradley, executive vice president at HSN.com and Advanced Services, also is speaking at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, in a session titled Unlimited shelf space = unlimited opportunity for disaster.
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