Daniel Heaf and the art of getting people to come back

A candle is an awkward product for a digital executive. It asks to be smelled. Its appeal can depend on a memory, a room, a season, something a product photograph cannot quite supply. Daniel Heaf, chief executive of Bath & Body Works, has arrived at a business where the distance between discovering something online and wanting it in person is unusually easy to understand.

He took the job in May 2025, after senior positions at Nike, Burberry and BBC Worldwide. Viewed as a list of employers, the journey looks eclectic: television, trench coats, trainers, fragrance. Viewed through the people on the receiving end, it becomes more coherent. Each business has a recognizable identity and an audience with plenty of other places to spend its time or money.

The question running through his career is how to turn that recognition into another visit. His answers have included apps, stores, partnerships and membership. Now the question belongs to a company whose products can be familiar long before a customer reaches the checkout. Familiarity is a useful beginning. Heaf has been hired to make more happen after it.

A festival with no train journey

In 2006, when Heaf was Radio 1’s interactive editor, the BBC’s Big Weekend in Dundee acquired a second setting: the online world Second Life. Visitors could watch performances through streamed video and meet presenters without being at the festival. It was an early experiment in bringing a familiar entertainment brand into a place where its audience could participate differently.

The detail is pleasingly of its time. A music festival in a virtual world sounds like a future that arrived early, left its coat somewhere and promised to return. Yet the practical issue survives every change in technology: people need a reason to gather. The broadcaster already had music and personalities. The experiment put those assets into another social setting.

Heaf’s earlier route had involved Time Out, an evening startup building a user-generated London guide, and AOL. He also helped develop the BBC’s first on-demand audio player. His subject matter changed, but distribution and participation kept meeting in the same job.

The audience refuses to stand still

At BBC Worldwide, the broadcaster’s commercial arm, the work became international. In a 2010 interview, Heaf discussed digital properties reaching 65 million monthly visitors, with travel among the developing subject areas. The internet offered another way for established programming and editorial brands to find people beyond their domestic setting.

By June 2011, he was discussing more than 10 million BBC app downloads across categories including travel, magazines, games and news. He also raised the less glamorous question of whether those apps would retain their usefulness. A download could record interest in a moment. Continued use required something worth returning for.

A year later, he was talking about the limitations of closed app ecosystems: discovery could be difficult, and web experiences might travel more easily between platforms. In another appearance, he described the commercial potential of on-demand television, including Doctor Who on iTunes. These were distribution decisions with consequences for audiences. A programme could be loved and still need a better route to its viewer.

A seat between worlds

There is a photograph of Heaf at the first Chief Digital Officer Summit in New York in 2013, on a broadcasting panel with executives from PBS and Disney/ABC. He sits at the left, smiling while the conversation continues. It is a useful image of the professional world he inhabited: people responsible for changing how familiar institutions reached the public.

The panel’s subject was what digital change meant for broadcasters. That meant new forms of programming and new working practices, alongside the rather human business of dealing with colleagues running established operations. Technology could be purchased. Agreement about what to do with it required conversation.

Heaf’s career also reached beyond commercial media. Shakespeare’s Globe welcomed him as a trustee in 2015, citing his knowledge of developing digital business. The appointment placed his experience inside a cultural institution with an unmistakable physical home. Even a theatre associated with a particular London building had reasons to think about audiences elsewhere.

A coat, then a pair of trainers

He joined Burberry in 2014 as senior vice president of digital commerce, following four years at BBC Worldwide. His previous work included Channel 4’s investment operation, 4iP, where he worked with early-stage digital businesses. He was arriving in fashion with experience of both large organizations and smaller companies trying to establish themselves.

At Burberry, his responsibilities eventually encompassed digital commerce, digital marketing, customer service and data. That combination matters. The customer saw a brand; the organization divided the work among departments. His remit crossed several of those divisions, from attracting someone’s attention to handling what happened after a purchase.

He moved to Nike in 2018 and held leadership roles in digital commerce, Nike Direct, and strategy and transformation through 2025. The geography graduate from Nottingham was now working across a global consumer business. His academic training had earned a first-class degree. His professional education had supplied a succession of different products and different ways of reaching their buyers.

The shop was still part of the answer

Nike Rise in Seoul offered a concrete expression of the work. The 24,000-square-foot store, opened in 2021, combined a city-specific identity with digital services. Shoppers could compare footwear using an interactive table, personalize products and use services connected with the Nike app. The shop gave technology a job on the selling floor.

Heaf described expansion as a decision made place by place, with the format fitted to the customer and location. A neighborhood store and a large urban shop could serve different purposes. Putting the same logo above both doors did not make their customers interchangeable.

There is an appealing practicality in that approach. Retail strategy often sounds as if every shopper has agreed to follow the same diagram. A city contains people with different errands, preferences and levels of patience. A useful store has to accommodate some of that untidiness. In Seoul, the proposition included services, customization and a connection to the surrounding city, alongside products available to buy.

An app needs something worth buying

When Heaf discussed Nike’s digital growth in 2023, he put membership, international scale and the experience of shopping among its drivers. He explained how the business thought about an existing member’s next purchase, rather than repeatedly treating that person as a stranger to be acquired again.

His caution was memorable: “upstream of that is product and brand”. The app depended on what it offered. A smooth journey through the checkout could help, but the thing in the basket still had to earn its place there.

He also described membership connections with retailers including Dick’s Sporting Goods and JD Sports. Separately, he argued for giving customers a fuller Nike experience through wholesale partners. Direct retail and outside distribution could coexist. This part of his record complicates the shorthand attached to a digital commerce career: he was already discussing how a brand could follow its customers into somebody else’s shop.

“upstream of that is product and brand”

Daniel Heaf · 2023

Columbus, and a different kind of loyalty

Bath & Body Works appointed Heaf effective May 16, 2025, announcing the change three days later. He succeeded Gina Boswell and subsequently joined the board. Chair Sarah Nash emphasized his experience with consumer brands and his willingness to pursue change. The assignment brought product, brand and operations under his responsibility as chief executive.

His opening ambition was international: to make Bath & Body Works a home fragrance and beauty brand chosen around the world. The business brought an existing North American store network, supply chain and a substantial loyalty membership. He was taking responsibility for an established enterprise, with all the opportunities and obligations that implies.

A customer’s favorite fragrance poses a particular management problem. Familiarity can encourage another purchase, while change may attract somebody who has never considered the brand. The company’s subsequent strategy explicitly sought younger consumers. Heaf’s task therefore involves attending to people who already know the products while giving others a reason to try them.

The formula leaves the building

In November 2025, he introduced the Consumer First Formula. Its four priorities concerned product innovation, renewing the brand, marketplace growth and operating more quickly and efficiently. The plan arrived alongside lower quarterly sales and a reduced outlook. It was a response to commercial pressure, with performance still to prove.

By 2026, distribution was changing in visible ways. Bath & Body Works launched an authorized Amazon storefront in February. A partnership with Ulta Beauty followed, taking a curated assortment into more than 600 stores beginning July 12 and onto Ulta’s website. Those moves put the brand in shopping routines outside its own network.

Heaf described Amazon in terms of convenience and Ulta in terms of discovery and trying products in person. For fragrance, the distinction has a pleasantly literal quality: a customer can encounter a scent while browsing. The routes serve different occasions. They also make his earlier discussions about partner retailers relevant to the business he now leads.

The next visit is the test

The results published on August 26, 2026, supplied evidence of progress and a reminder of the work remaining. Second-quarter net sales were $1.514 billion, down 2.3 percent. Direct sales rose 3 percent, while sales attributed to U.S. and Canadian stores fell 5.4 percent. The direct channel had returned to growth for the first time since 2021.

Heaf said elements of the strategy were beginning to work, while describing the transformation as early. The distinction matters when reading the figures. An improving online business can coexist with weaker stores. A promising partnership can expand access before the wider company returns to sales growth.

That leaves him with a very public version of the question he has worked on for years. Audiences once needed a reason to open an app, watch another programme or enter a different kind of Nike store. Bath & Body Works customers will make their own decisions about the next fragrance and the next visit. Heaf can arrange more opportunities for those encounters. The customer gets the final say, occasionally after lifting the lid.