Comfort footwear brand, Hotter, has added to its senior team with the appointment of Dan Lampard as CFO and Antonia Jones as Head of Product, who will both build on the firm’s future growth and digital-first focus.
Lampard brings more than 20 years of finance and commercial experience, specialising in online direct-to-consumer retail. He joins from Netherlands-based Glanbia Performance Nutrition, where he held the position of CFO at a time of significant scale up with double digit revenue growth. Within this role, Lampard re-built the finance function and oversaw significant geographic expansion.
Previous to this, he was the UK Finance Director at ao.com and held senior finance and commercial roles at Manchester Airports Group (MAG). As a fellowship member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales, Lampard started his career at KPMG.
Jones, joining as Head of Product, is a highly successful leader in the footwear industry. Having worked for brands including Adidas and Redfoot Shoes, she brings strategic vision and product management to Hotter in a newly-established role to grow the business.
Jones held several positions at Adidas, most recently Category Director – Core Footwear, when she was responsible for the product strategy and subsequent delivery of the product management function covering a €260m business stream. As Footwear Development Manager at Redfoot Shoes, Jones created a strategic product roadmap and detailed product strategy for brand creation and repositioning, underpinned with growth targets.
The duo join Hotter at a time when the business is securing further growth post-pandemic after successfully accelerating its transformation to become a digital-first retailer in the last two years.
Hotter has so far reported a 25% rise in sales from both online and physical retail this year compared to last year. The brand, which has more than 4 million customers worldwide, has invested more than £1.5m in technology, including in its app, website and in-store Footprint technology, during the last 18 months.
Ian Watson, Chief Executive Officer at Hotter, said: “It’s an incredibly exciting and important time to join Hotter; we’re delighted to welcome both Dan and Antonia to the team. Both bring huge amounts of credibility and knowledge from their extensive backgrounds in the retail and direct-to-consumer space, and will both help us to drive forward with our continued focus on digital-first growth.”
“We’ve seen really promising results so far this year, with ecommerce sales alone increasing by 26% and +32% in our lead UK market. There’s lots of great opportunities out there for further market penetration and growth; which we’re confident Dan and Antonia will be able to help us to build on in the coming months and years.”
It was announced in August that Hotter will become part of the Unbound Group, which will float on AIM in Q4 2021.
