Former Tesco exec Dawn Lavalette among trio of high profile arrivals for company.
Wow Stuff has significantly strengthened its management team, welcoming former Tesco head of buying Dawn Lavalette and promoting Jon Birch.
Dawn (pictured centre) has joined the company as commercial director, overseeing global sales and major UK and international customers. She was previously head of buying at Tesco for toys, UK and Central Europe.
In her new role, Dawn will implement systems to help Wow Stuff’s products reach more retailers and distributors internationally.
“The breadth of [Wow Stuff’s] pop-culture toy innovations is beyond anything I’ve ever seen before,” Dawn enthused. “The excitement and the ability of the co-founders, as well as the people they have attracted to the business, has ensured the culture is one of warmth, passion and drive.
“This business is eminently scalable and the opportunity to be part of that growth, as a shareholder in the company, was too good an opportunity to miss.”
In addition, sales director and shareholder Jon Birch (pictured right) has been promoted to md of the newly created Demonstration Division at the company.
Jon commented: “I’m excited to be expanding the Demonstration Division internationally. This is a skill set unique to our business that now requires a focus of its own.
“Sales have increased 20-fold in every location where we have rolled out our Demo Programme, and it delivers more sales per sq. ft of retail space than any other business driver, including TV advertising. Our Science Museum patented Mystery UFO is perhaps what we are best known for, however, we have a dozen Demo lines that remain best sellers in the stores where Demo Artists operate. We also have plenty of new products in the pipeline that will absolutely blow the minds of our demo retailers’ customers.”
In addition to this, Alice Yung (pictured left) joined the company earlier this year as director of sales for APAC.
Simon Gardner, chairman of Wow Stuff, continued: “We have seen a near 50% growth in the business so far during 2018 and it’s our resolute focus on building a world class leadership team which has made this possible.
“I am confident that Jon’s promotion and Dawn’s recruitment, as well as the appointment of Alice Yung as director of sales APAC earlier this year, will aid Richard in his vision to make the business a first-class global operation.”
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