The Business
Joules is a British clothing retailer, based in Leicestershire and trading across the UK, Europe, USA, APAC, Australia and Africa. They began specialising in country style meets fashion, clothing, footwear and accessories. They have since evolved to a broader appeal lifestyle brand with a quintessential British twist. When ORESA undertook this first project with Joules in 2010, the business was a £30 million turnover business.
The Challenge
The company was looking to revaluate their structure for growth. Tom Joule, the Founder, was willing to invest significantly in order to get the structure right to spearhead that growth and engaged ORESA on a multi-strand project. We needed to immerse ourselves deeply in their current organisational design, conduct a competitor insight study of other similar businesses, and comparative analysis exercise.
We then co-created a new structure to achieve the Founders vision, helped with the transitionary planning, and recruited seven directors and many team members capable of delivering the ambitions.
The Solution
We successfully delivered on all stages of the project and as a result the company reached the £100m milestone almost 18 months ahead of plan. This included the appointment of a Chief Operating Officer with CEO potential.
The COO subsequently succeeded the founder as CEO and led the business through private equity backing and later an AIM listing; reporting revenues of £218m in 2019.
