The Hut Group

The Hut Group Limited 2011 Trading Update

narogers2006 — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:28:22 +0000

The Hut Group Delivers Strong Growth in 2011

The Hut Group, one of Europe’s fastest growing online retailers, today reports on trading for the 12 months ended 31 December 2011.

Financial Highlights:

Group sales growth of 70% from £84m to £143m in 2011.
92% of combined Group sales were generated through the Group’s own sites, with the balance of revenues generated from services delivered to major retail partners.
International sales now account for 35% of total sales.

Operational Highlights:

The Group continues successfully to execute its strategy of retailing fast moving consumer goods across its multiple branded websites, powered by its proprietary technology.
78m visits to Group websites during the year.
Acquired MyProtein.com in May 2011, which contributed £16m to Group sales in the seven months post acquisition.
134 NVQ apprentices trained in operations across the Group, investing in the young, local workforce whilst creating a recruitment talent pool for the Group.

Matthew Moulding, Chief Executive, commented: “2011 has been another record year for The Hut Group. Our focus on delivering best in class value and service to our UK and international consumers has enabled the Group to gain market share, particularly in the final quarter. Our business model positions us well against the backdrop of a challenging High Street retail environment and the continuing sales channel shift towards online retail and therefore the Group is very well placed to continue its high growth. Our focus for 2012 is on driving strong organic growth by further improving our service to our customers, continuing to expand our product range and increasing our international sales.”

Enquiries:

Hudson Sandler – Tel: 0207 796 4133
Andrew Leach / Kate Hough / Alex Brennan

Notes to Editors:

About The Hut Group

Founded in 2004 and based in Northwich Cheshire, The Hut Group is an online retailer focused on fast moving consumer goods including health and beauty; sports nutrition; gifting; clothing; handbags; footwear; and entertainment.

The Hut Group retails online through its own sites including TheHut.com, Zavvi.com, Myprotein.com, Lookfantastic.com, Iwantoneofthose.com, Gifted.com, Allsole.com, MyBag.co.uk, Washbag.com, Lookmantastic.com, Mankind.co.uk, HQHair.com and sportdiscount.com. In addition, it delivers technology services (e.g. loyalty reward schemes) for blue-chip retail partners such as DMGT (The Daily Mail).

In September 2009, The Hut Group was ranked no.1 in the ‘Sunday Times Tech Track 100 of the UK’s fastest growing companies’ and ranked the 3rd fastest growing digital company in Europe at the ‘GP Bullhound Media Momentum Awards’ in May 2010.

For further information, please visit thehutgroup.com

Please find below a list of websites owned by The Hut Group. For more information please visit their websites.

TheHut.com Myprotein.com lookfantastic.com lookmantastic.com zavvi.com zavvi.es zavvi.nl Mankind.co.uk Gifted.com Washbag.com SportDiscount.com IWantOneOfThose.com MyBag.com MyLabel.co.uk AllSole.com HQhair.com Beautysleuth.co.uk Beautyexpert.co.uk

The Hut Group Nurtures Young Talent and Creates Hundreds of Jobs

narogers2006 — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:17:03 +0000

The Hut Group Apprenticeship Program Now Surpasses 500

The Hut Group’s Apprenticeship Program has flourished since it’s launch in 2010, creating jobs and opportunities for over 500 young people across the UK.

As one of the fastest growing online retail companies in the UK running a variety of websites including Zavvi.com, MyProtein.com and lookfantastic.com, The Hut Group saw a sales growth of 70% in 2011 totaling £143m across all sites.

The Hut Group Apprenticeship Program provides opportunities across all operations with successful apprentices going on to work in Customer Service, Online Marketing, Buying, Trading and many more roles at the forefront of the online retail market.

Ashley Ramrachia, Group Head of Talent said; “The apprenticeship program has been a tremendous success for both apprentices and The Hut Group alike, we are proud of our investment in the local, talented workforce and are committed to further expansion, creating many more exciting career opportunities in operations across the Group”.

Graham Evans MP for Northwich said; “The Hut Group Head Office (based in Northwich) is a very important local employer. During the current economic struggle, we’re very grateful to have such an enlightened employer to help our young community to thrive and develop key e-commerce skills that will prove invaluable in the future”.

For further information about The Hut Group’s Apprenticeship Program please contact recruitment@thehutgroup.com or visit The Hut Group at www.thehutgroup.com.

For all other enquiries please contact Clare Potts at clare.potts@thehutgroup.com.

About The Hut Group

The Hut is the UK’s leading multi-product, multi-website online retailer with rapidly growing international operations. Founded in 2004 by CEO Matthew Moulding, it is focused on selling fast moving consumer goods that are non-perishable with high levels of repeat purchase. Products span health and beauty, gifting, entertainment, fashion, bags and footwear.

The Hut has developed its own best in class end-to-end technology platform supporting its multiple websites including:

TheHut.com Myprotein.com lookfantastic.com zavvi.com zavvi.es zavvi.nl Mankind.co.uk Gifted.com Washbag.com SportDiscount.com IWantOneOfThose.com MyBag.com MyLabel.co.uk AllSole.com HQhair.com Beautyexpert.co.uk

Senior Creative Web Designer

rossboardman — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:05:24 +0000

The Hut Group has been named as the No1 fastest growing technology company in the North of England (Sunday Times Tech Track 100), winner of the Bank of Scotland Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 and one of Crains Manchester Business “Best Places to Work” within the North West.

The Hut Group retails consumer products such as games, films, electronics & a range of gifts through its own websites (TheHut.com, Zavvi.com, MyBag.co.uk and Gifted.com) as well as operating a large number of online shops for retailers including ASDA, Argos, Debenhams, LOVEFiLM, WHSmiths, Woolworths and many more.

Overall Purpose of Role

The successful Senior Web Designer will have at least four year’s commercial experience of online design preferably within an eCommerce environment and have an understanding of usability and accessibility issues.

The Senior Creative Creative Web Designer will report to the Creative Director and will be responsible for completing the design elements of projects according to an agreed brief.

The ideal candidate will need an impressive eCommerce-related portfolio and to be proficient on Mac platform and industry standard design tools.

Key responsibilities for the Senior Creative Web Designer will include:

Interpreting business requirements to deliver visually appealing designs and high quality design solutions.
Leading in the definition of style guidelines
Sub elements of the style guidelines, eg the implementation of the brand personality of each product, associated grid layouts, typography and assets.
Using industry standard prototyping tools to implement iterations of designs.
Take a proactive role in identifying and resolving design improvements across all sites
Knowledge of the opportunities and limitations of technology, such as CSS, JavaScript and Flash, when designing creative solutions.

Suitable candidates will demonstrate:

Significant commercial experience of web design and UI development in eCommerce business/projects
An in-depth understanding of IA, personas, grid design, implementation of branding/style guidelines.
Experience of producing requirements specification documentation/prototyping.
Understanding of browser behaviour
Be confident, imaginative and able to hold your own, with a superb eye for detail.
Industry Standard Design Packages
Adobe Flash, Graphic Design, Prototyping tools (eg Omnigraffle)

To Apply

Please send all CV’s to recruitment@thehutgroup.com

No Agencies please

Front-End Web Developer

rossboardman — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:02:52 +0000

The Hut Group retails consumer products such as games, films, electronics, clothing & a range of gifts through its own websites (TheHut.com, Zavvi.com, MyBag.com, MyLabel.co.uk, IWantOneOfThose.com and Gifted.com, amongst others).

Overall Purpose of Role

The Front-End Web Developer will be responsible for updating and improving the front-end of over 20 e-commerce web sites as well as the supporting web sites eg. Blogs and micro sites. The Front-End Web Developer will join a keen and enthusiastic team with a passion for the internet.

The Front-End Web Developer will produce bug free, production ready code and is expected to be multi-disciplined and capable of working through the complete design/development lifecycle.

Role Requirements

The skills and experience needed to fulfill the role, you must:

Be very proficient in JavaScript and jQuery and able to demonstrate advanced use of them both. Knowledge of any MVC libraries such as Backbone.js, Ember.js, or JavaScriptMVC and AMD libraries such as RequireJS or CommonJS would be an advantage. Knowledge of JavaScript templating using Handlebars.js or Mustache.js would also be beneficial.
Be very proficient in XHTML and CSS with at least 2 years proven commercial experience. HTML5 and CSS3 is an advantage.
Show good knowledge of web browser testing, web browser quirks and their work-arounds.
Have a good understanding of best practices and current technologies to help drive improvement in the code and the team.
Having experience of using version control systems such as SVN or Git is an advantage.
An understanding of server side technologies such as JSP or PHP is an advantage.
Any experience of building for mobile platforms is an advantage especially using libraries such as jQuery Mobile.

To Apply

Please send all CVs to recruitment@thehutgroup.com

No Agencies please

Senior Graphic Designer

rossboardman — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:38:46 +0000

The Hut Group retails consumer products such as games, films, electronics & a range of gifts through its own websites TheHut.com, Zavvi.com, IWantOneOfThose.com, Myprotein.com, LookFantastic.com, MyBag.co.uk and Gifted.com.

Overall Purpose of Role

The successful Senior Graphic Designer will have at least four year’s commercial experience.

The Senior Designer will report to the Creative Director and will be responsible for completing the design elements of projects according to an agreed brief.

Key responsibilities for the Senior Designer will include:

Interpreting business requirements to deliver visually appealing designs and high quality design solutions.
Working on campaigns from conception through to completion of final print-ready artwork.
Presenting ideas in a cohesive and professional manner directly to clients in a pitch situation.
Mentoring the more junior members of the creative team, sharing your skills and experience and providing guidance and support.

Suitable candidates will demonstrate:

Excellent skills with InDesign, Illustrator, Quark and Photoshop
You will be able to work well as part of a team and under your own initiative
Be confident, imaginative and able to hold your own, with a superb eye for detail.
The ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines

The ideal candidate will also have really strong Mac skills, as well as experience with illustration and art directing photo shoots. Fantastic client-facing skills are a must and experience with conceptual design would be a bonus!

You will be full of expertise, flair and ideas, offer fresh thinking, be personable and able to form excellent working relationships with internal and external contacts. Your portfolio and previous experience will demonstrate your creativity and your ability to apply design flair within the context of an individual client. Ideally you will have experience in the Branding, Direct Mail, Web and Digital, Corporate Brochures and Advertising/Campaign themes.

You will have a work hard, play hard attitude, and in return will work in a brilliantly relaxed and sociable environment with a down-to-earth team.

To Apply

Please send all CV’s to recruitment@thehutgroup.com

No Agencies please

Assistant Fashion Buyer

BeccyC — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:18:58 +0000

The Hut Group is the No1 fastest growing technology company England (Sunday Times Tech Track 100), winner of the Bank of Scotland Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 and one of Crains Manchester Business “Best Places to Work” within the Northwest.

The Hut Group retails consumer products such as games, films, electronics & a range of gifts through its own websites (TheHut.com & Zavvi.com) as well as operating a large number of online shops for other major retailers.

As a result of such growth The Group is looking for an Assistant Fashion Buyer to join the existing team with immediate effect. The role will be to:

Assist the retail buyer with the purchasing and procurement of goods
Create purchase orders, manage deliveries and photography of stock
Create report on sales trends and monitor the replenishment stock
Maintain inventory, creating promotions working closely with Marketing
Analyze the competitor’s pricing strategies and brands
Work closely with Trading, Merchandising, IT and Finance to meet deadline dates for promotions and payments
Identify opportunities to increase sales through promotional and affiliate activity

Outstanding product knowledge is essential for the role.

In return, you will receive a market leading salary and competitive benefits.

No agencies please

All applications to be sent to recruitment@thehutgroup.com

Games Buyer

rossboardman — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:25:56 +0000

As a result of such growth The Group is looking for a Games Buyer to join the existing team with immediate effect. The role will involve:

Sourcing and purchasing pre-order and chart stock.
Sourcing campaign stock from all suppliers both one off purchases and identifying opportunities for campaign from label, studio or publisher periodic price reductions.
Building and managing campaigns based on the above.
Sourcing and managing just in time orders.
Maintaining appropriate stock levels and pricing.
Merchandising products, charts and lists on websites.
Meeting suppliers.
Dealing with return of stock.

Reviewing and updating catalogue range on a regular basis.

The ideal candidate will have strong attention to detail, a “can do” attitude and will ideally have previous experience in the entertainment industry retail or previous buying experience. Outstanding product knowledge is essential for the role.

In return, you will receive a market leading salary and competitive benefits.

No agencies please

All applications to be sent to recruitment@thehutgroup.com

PPC Executive

rossboardman — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:00:49 +0000

We are looking for an experienced PPC Executive who is driven and motivated to achieve our ambitious growth targets over the coming years. This position requires strategic thinking along with hands-on campaign management.

Founded in 2004, The Hut Group is an online retailing platform focused on fast moving consumer goods including Entertainment (Games, DVDs, CDs, Books), Electricals, Health & Beauty, Footwear, Gifting, Accessories, Toys, Underwear & Sports. The Hut Group has grown turnover more than 150% each year since inception and is on course to deliver another strong performance again in 2010.

Key responsibilities:

* Day to day monitoring of our successful keyword campaign, including identifying and developing a keyword strategy, analysis of competitor activity, writing targeted advert copy and ongoing campaign management.
* Analysing campaigns and improving quality scores to meet ROI targets.
* Using bid management tools reduce PPC costs
* Assisting with international PPC campaigns
* Daily, weekly and monthly KPI reporting
* Keeping up to date with changes in search engine technology
* Planning for seasonal campaigns
* Suggesting new developments to increase sales or decrease PPC spend
* Achieving sales and spend targets
* Work with the buying team to drive new product development and adhere to our best price online policy

Candidate Requirements

REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

· Paid search experience (either client or agency side)

· Highly numerate/analytical and have an excellent attention to detail

· Advanced knowledge of Excel

· Web analytics knowledge (preferably Coremetrics and Google Analytics)

· Strong business writing skills: produces high quality documents

· Demonstrates a structured and methodical way of working

· Strong interpersonal skills

· Strong team player

We are looking for an enthusiastic individual who can demonstrate past success in the above responsibilities. You will need to come full of new ideas and be able to deliver to deadline. We are looking for an individual who will drive this area of the business for us and deliver the results we require.

To apply please send your CV to recruitment@thehutgroup.com

NO AGENCIES PLEASE

Commercial Apprenticeships

rossboardman — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:00:40 +0000

The Hut Group are currently recruiting for several apprenticeship opportunities across multiple divisions in the business.

These divisions may include:

Customer Service
Loss Prevention
Finance
Marketing
Trading
Buying

With an Apprenticeship you can earn while you’re learning and gain recognised qualifications as you work. For further information about Apprenticeships please look at www.apprenticeships.org.uk

Full in house training will be provided by The Hut Group, together with gaining NVQ Level 2 in Customer Service then to progress to NVQ Level 3.

Preferably applicants are to have GCSE in Maths and English at Grade A-C however this is not essential. Applicants should have a passion for ecommerce/website technology etc.

To apply please send your CV to: recruitment@thehutgroup.com

PLEASE MARK THE SUBJECT LINE WITH APPRENTICESHIP APPLICATION

Technical Lead – Agile and Java

rossboardman — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:00:06 +0000

Overall Purpose of Role

The technical lead is responsible for ensuring that the production of the software and supporting artifacts are to the appropriate level of quality, defined by standards, in a time scale agreed by the project team and stakeholders. This involves directing, motivating, planning and monitoring the development team’s work and the creation of the software and supporting products.

The technical lead role is responsible for the quality of the working software and requires a hands-on, in-depth involvement in the creation of the software.

This role leads the technical design of the system and has overall responsibility for facilitating the major technical decisions expressed as software design in line with the strategic Architectural constraints. This typically includes identifying and documenting the architecturally significant aspects of the system as views that describe requirements, design, implementation, and deployment. This role is also responsible for providing the rationale for these decisions, balancing the concerns of the various stakeholders, reducing technical risks, and ensuring that decisions are effectively communicated, validated, and followed.

The technical lead is an agile practitioner and an expert software designer, they will contribute to the project by guiding the team’s incremental design and architecture efforts by helping team members see ways of simplifying complex designs. The technical lead has a clear appreciation for design patterns.

Technologies

“You will be working on modern Java and open-source technologies, you will be passionate about great technology and delivering business value. Experience in any of the following technologies is beneficial but not essential: Eclipse, Apache Web Server, Tomcat, ActiveMQ, JSTL, J2EE, JPA (Hibernate), Spring (Core, MVC, Webflow, Security), JUnit, JDBC, RMI, Servlets, JAXP, SOA and ESB (Camel), Ruby RAILS, ANT, SVN, Cruise Control, Hudson, SQL Server, JQuery, JUnit”

Main Activities/Tasks

Develop Technical Vision
Simple Design – ensures the simplest design at the last appropriate time
Spiking Solutions – responsible for identifying and delivering spikes
Incremental Design and Architecture – produces design decisions just-in-time, whilst meeting architectural constraints/standards
Performance Optimization – improves performance of the product to meet requirements
Reporting – details the quality metrics and trends to the Iteration Manager
No Bugs – ensures working production quality code
Version Control – ensures team follow good practice
Build – The product builds (and deploys) all features at all times to production standards
Documentation – Directs and/or produces the required supporting documentation
Release Planning – assists the Iteration Manager in planning releases
Planning Game – Provides technical estimation and calibration of technical tasks
Test-Driven Development – ensures that the team do TDD
Refactoring – ensures that code gets better each day
Release Planning – assists the PM and technical lead in planning releases
Planning – Supports the production of technical estimation and calibration
Test-Driven Development – Works to the practice of TDD, produces automated unit, integration and acceptance tests, contributes to the development of test cases
Acceptance Tests – Runs automated acceptance tests to demonstrate production quality code
Refactoring – ensures that code gets better each day

Accountability/Responsibility

The quality of the Product with a zero defect rate
Producing the Architecture Notebook
The Quality of Build and Deployment scripts
Adherence to Coding Standards
Adherence to Development Standards
Adherence to Refactoring Standards
The Product Implementation
The Quality of Performance Test Scripts and Metrics
The Appropriateness of Performance Test Environment
The Production of Software Quality Metrics

Responsible for

Architecture Notebook

Special Requirements:
Prime Role Location:

Role Requirements

The skills and experience needed to fulfill the technical lead role depend upon the size and technical and management complexity of the development, but to play the role, to at least some degree you must

Be an expert in XP and Scrum
Be an expert in agile software development
Be an expert in agile practices
Be an expert in Agile requirements management
Have good negotiation skills and be able to work with the stakeholders to establish project scope and commitments
Have effective presentation and communication skills
Show leadership and team-building capabilities
Have good time management and triage skills with a history of making sound decisions quickly under stress
Be adaptable to change, especially being able to adapt to new events and recover from wrong decisions
Be objective in setting and assessing work, ensuring team buy-in
Be technical enough to understand the technical risks and architectural issues in order to understand which issues are most pressing and which can be relegated to later iterations
Share the architectural vision but be pragmatic in the scoping and implementation of plans and scrupulously honest in the assessment of outcomes
Be focused on the delivery of customer value in the form of executing software that meets (or exceeds) the customer’s needs

Success Measures

Delivery (or exceeding delivery) of business value in each iteration
Measuring technical productivity of the team for use in planning implementation tasks.
Improving (each day) code quality through refactoring
Improving product quality through demonstration of quality metrics
Sound design and architecture decisions, through demonstrations to peers and management
Reuse of sound ideas (not necessarily code) and the sharing of sound ideas and practices
Delivery meeting non functional requirements, and as such the most efficient means of testing and implementation (of NFR’s)
A negative trending defect rate, and zero-defect for iteration release
Product successfully version controlled with demonstrated successful stream strategies
Software successfully auto builds and deploys

To Apply

Please send all CV’s to recruitment@thehutgroup.com

No Agencies please