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 拢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 鈥済rowing in multiple directions at once鈥�. 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
天美传媒鈥檚 unique approach of assigning a dedicated researcher to this project 鈥� 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.聽 At the time of writing, she has been in post for almost 2 years.