Ashley Buchanan, who was fired from the top job at Kohl’s over conflicted business ties with a romantic partner, kept his relationship hidden from three major retailers over a period of at least five years – even as the two lived together in a Texas home, according to a report.
Buchanan and Chandra Holt, the founder of coffee business Incredibrew, live together in a $3 million mansion in a ritzy neighborhood called The Vaquero Club, where they go on dinner dates at the clubhouse and play tennis together, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Both Buchanan, 51, and Holt, 45, filed for divorce from their respective spouses in 2020, and court records from Buchanan’s divorce showed his affair with Holt played a role.
Buchanan had reposted a video on LinkedIn of Holt advertising her collagen- and melatonin-infused java, The Post earlier reported.
But the couple, who first met in 2015 while they were both working at Walmart, allegedly kept their romance a secret from top brass at Walmart, Michaels and Kohl’s despite conflicts of interest that required them to disclose the relationship.
They each ran major retailers – Holt had been chief executive of Bed Bath & Beyond’s parent company – and hired from one another’s companies.
And Holt’s Incredibrew was being marketed to both Kohl’s and Michaels when Buchanan was leading the companies, according to the report.
Kohl’s canned Buchanan on May 1 after just four months on the job following an investigation that found he brokered a “highly unusual” deal with Holt’s company Incredibrew and penned a multi-million dollar agreement with a consulting firm that employed her.
Michael Bender, Kohl’s chairman and now interim CEO, confronted Buchanan on April 30.
He had been unaware of the relationship despite knowing Buchanan and Holt for years, after the three worked together at Walmart a decade earlier.
But executives at major retailers said they were never clued in on the relationship.
Michaels, for example, tried to recruit Holt for a senior role soon after Buchanan took over as CEO. She didn’t take the job, but Buchanan had never disclosed their relationship during the process, according to the Journal.
He also didn’t disclose their relationship when Michaels later agreed to start selling Incredibrew coffee capsules at its stores.
Employees started to whisper their suspicions that the two were having an affair, according to the paper. Some former Michaels employees told the Journal they had wondered at the time why the chain was selling coffee capsules near the cash registers when it doesn’t have a grocery section.
Rumors had also swirled at the start of their relationship, back when they both worked at Walmart, and Holt, her then-husband and young daughter lived in a home just around the corner from Buchanan, his then-wife and their three daughters in the same Arkansas country club, according to the Journal.
Buchanan, Holt and their children started spending time together without their spouses, all while Buchanan was telling friends and co-workers about his marital issues, since his wife suffered from a serious illness, according to former and current Walmart executives.
Then in 2019 Buchanan accepted a role at Dallas-based Michaels and moved his family to Southlake, Texas. He filed for divorce soon after they arrived on Jan. 3, 2020.
Court documents from those legal proceedings revealed that his affair with Holt played a key role in the divorce.
Around the same time, Michaels sought to hire Holt for a top job, but she ended up staying at Walmart due to a nonpoach agreement, the Journal reported.
She separated from her husband in March 2020 and filed for divorce later that year. The couple twice called off the divorce before making it official in 2024, according to court filings.
In 2021, Holt left Walmart, took the helm at homegoods retailer Conn’s HomePlus and moved to Texas. She left Conn’s the following year to launch Incredibrew, and then took the helm at Bed Bath & Beyond in 2024.
During this time, Buchanan and Holt recommended their companies to each other for potential hires. Holt, for example, gave a job to an executive who had worked at Michaels.
Buchanan’s divorce proceedings turned messy in 2021, just before it was finalized, when Apollo Global Management signed a $3.3 billion deal to take Michaels private.
Buchanan stood to receive $32 million from the deal, so his ex-wife sued to set aside their settlement, accusing him of not coming clean about the transaction, according to court filings. The terms of their final settlement are not known.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
