Eric Hunter

The Man from the Market

There is a store in Alameda, California, that sells Moroccan tagines three shelves down from Norwegian flatbread crackers, which sits next to a hand-woven rug from India, which is close enough to the Argentine Malbec to make the whole section feel like a very organized airport lounge. That store is World Market. The person responsible for its direction is Eric W. Hunter, who arrived as Chief Commercial Officer in May 2021, became President fourteen months later, and took the CEO title in July 2023.

Two years from CCO to CEO. That is not typical. In specialty retail, ascents tend to be measured in decades, not quarters. Hunter's trajectory at World Market suggests either unusual circumstances, unusual talent, or - the more interesting answer - a category in genuine transition that needed someone who had been around enough retailers to know which parts of the playbook still worked.

He had been around a lot of retailers. Before World Market, Hunter spent five years as Executive Vice President of Marketing at Pier 1 Imports, a company that occupied adjacent cultural territory - globally inspired home goods, an emphasis on the decorative, a customer who cared about ambiance. Before that, he held the acting Chief Marketing Officer role at JCPenney during one of the more scrutinized periods in that company's modern history - overseeing strategy, research, creative, media, CRM, and digital. Before that, Group President and CMO at Kellwood Company. Earlier still: Creative Artists Agency and PMK/HBH, which is to say he began his career in the entertainment marketing world before pivoting to retail.

That path - from entertainment to mass retail to fashion to specialty retail - is unusual. Most retail executives specialize. Hunter collected verticals. He led Ascena Retail Group's plus-size division, which encompassed Lane Bryant, Cacique, and Catherines, from 2018 to 2020. Before that, Pier 1. The pattern is not an executive drifting from job to job; it is someone who has spent a career studying what makes different kinds of customers buy things, and what kinds of products and stories attract them.

Oxford, Northeastern, and a Career in Retail

Hunter studied Marketing and International Business at Northeastern University from 1991 to 1995, then earned a Master of Science in Business at the University of Oxford from 1995 to 1997. That combination - a practical American marketing education followed by a British postgraduate degree - gave him something useful: an international frame of reference for what commerce looks like across cultures. At a company whose entire identity is built on global sourcing, that background is not incidental.

Northeastern's cooperative education model is notably hands-on, alternating classroom semesters with industry work placements. Oxford's business approach, meanwhile, tends to emphasize case-based reasoning and long-form analytical thinking. Hunter got both. Then he went to work for Creative Artists Agency, which is not where most people expect a future retail CEO to start.

From Entertainment to Home Decor

The Creative Artists Agency stint is the detail that does not fit the pattern, which is exactly why it matters. CAA represents actors, directors, musicians, athletes, and brands. It is a place where talent meets commerce, where understanding cultural value is a professional requirement. Hunter then moved to PMK/HBH and Momentum Worldwide, staying in the marketing and brand world before making the pivot to product-centric retail.

At JCPenney - during a turbulent period that followed Ron Johnson's controversial overhaul attempt - Hunter ran the full marketing apparatus: strategy, research, creative, media, customer relationship management, and the digital direction of a department store chain that was simultaneously trying to rediscover its identity. That experience with large-scale consumer brands trying to reconnect with their core customers proved formative.

Pier 1 Imports followed, where Hunter spent five years as EVP of Marketing. Pier 1 was, in many respects, World Market's older cousin - globally inspired home goods, a similar customer demographic, a similar product philosophy. Running marketing there was preparation for running World Market. By the time he crossed over to Cost Plus in 2021, he had already spent years in the exact market category he would eventually lead.

World Market's Particular Mission

World Market operates nearly 250 retail locations across the United States, plus an e-commerce platform. Its product mix is genuinely unusual: imported furniture sits alongside artisanal food, international wine and beer selections, global home textiles, and handcrafted decor items sourced from more than 50 countries. Annual revenue runs approximately $858 million. The workforce numbers around 4,100.

The chain's origin story goes back to the 1950s in San Francisco, when a ship's captain named Charles Bargman opened an import shop after trips to Asia. The company eventually became Cost Plus, then Cost Plus World Market, then World Market - a long trajectory that has always revolved around the same core proposition: bring the interesting stuff home.

Under Hunter, World Market has pursued two tracks simultaneously. The first is experiential - the store as a destination, the place where you go specifically because you do not quite know what you will find, which is a harder thing to maintain in an age of algorithmic recommendation. The second is operational - modernizing the infrastructure that makes a specialty retailer function at scale, including the technology stack (the company uses Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce CRM, Snowflake, and a dense array of supply chain and analytics tools) and the payment experience.

The Affirm Move

In May 2025, Hunter announced World Market's partnership with Affirm to offer buy-now-pay-later options at all stores and online - up to 36 months, at rates as low as 0% APR. This was a specific strategic bet. The World Market customer is not buying fast fashion or commodities; they are buying a $600 hand-carved console table or a set of Portuguese ceramics. The purchase is considered, not impulse. Flexible payment terms lower the friction on exactly the kind of high-consideration, high-value items that make up a meaningful portion of World Market's revenue.

It is also a move that signals something about where Hunter sees the business going. The partnership was announced as applying across both the physical retail network and the online platform - a signal that the distinction between channels matters less than the continuity of the customer experience. That framing - unified, flexible, customer-first - echoes consistently through how Hunter describes the company's direction.

A Different Kind of Retail Executive

Hunter also sits on the Board of Directors at KT Tape, the sports kinesiology tape brand, a role he has held since February 2021. The connection to KT Tape is not obvious from the outside - it is a sports and wellness product, adjacent to neither home decor nor food. But board roles often reflect professional relationships and investment in diverse sectors, and Hunter's presence at KT Tape suggests an interest in brand-building that extends beyond his day job.

What makes Hunter distinctive as a retail CEO is the combination of deep marketing instincts with operational responsibility. Many retail executives come up through merchandising or operations; they think in terms of inventory turns, margin, and supply chain. Hunter came up through brand strategy and customer-facing marketing, which shapes how he frames World Market's identity. The mission - "helping customers bring home unique finds they love" - is a marketing executive's formulation: it centers the customer's emotional relationship with the product, not the product itself.

That framing matters for a chain whose competitive moat is not price or convenience but discovery. In a retail landscape where Amazon has largely won on efficiency and off-price chains have largely won on value, World Market's argument is that not everything worth buying can be found through an algorithm. Some things require walking through a store that smells faintly of sandalwood and Moroccan spice, turning a corner, and finding something you did not know existed until that moment.

Running that kind of retail operation requires an executive who believes in the proposition. Hunter, with his Oxford international business degree and his CAA background and his years at Pier 1, seems constitutionally suited for it.