We were hired by the leading pizza-oven company, Ooni, to hire a General Counsel. Launched in 2012, Ooni quickly became one of the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 fastest growing businesses in the UK, reporting over 400% year on year growth. With revenues in excess of £200m, Ooni sells its ovens and expanding range of other products in over 90 countries.
The brief for our search was to find a commercially-astute and agile GC who could play a pivotal role in this fast-paced business, which described itself as “growing in multiple directions at once”. They wanted someone who could turn their hand to a broad range of challenges and opportunities, and who could act as a trusted advisor whilst building an in-house legal function from scratch. It was considered vital to find someone who would enjoy and enhance the dynamic, values-centred culture and thoroughly modern corporate personality of the business.
Diverse commercial candidate pool and successful appointment
Saxton Bampfylde’s unique approach of assigning a dedicated researcher to this project – and nothing else – for 2 weeks meant our consultants could have rich and varied conversations with potential candidates from a range of sectors, looking for people who understood international expansion and intellectual property, ideally within a consumer-focused business. We also sought out individuals who would understand complex, high-quality production and supply chain operations.
- Diversity was a key focus, as always, and the call list we built was nearly 80% female.
- Candidates came from a range of areas including the drinks industry, publishing, retail, financial services, hospitality, home appliance manufacturing, as well as FMCG companies.
- Eight candidates were taken through to the longlist stage, seven of whom were women.
- Of those longlisted, five candidates were selected for a first stage meeting, with three taken forward to a more formal interview.
The appointed candidate came from a billion-pound turnover multinational drinks company where she was Lead Council for business units and central services. At the time of writing, she has been in post for almost 2 years.