Chief Financial Officer

FWB Park Brown are delighted to be partnering with The Snappy Group, the company behind the exciting high growth retail platform and success story Snappy Shopper, to recruit their new Chief Financial Officer.

Snappy Shopper, the technology platform that connects consumers with their local businesses, in a way that is very different from delivery aggregators and dark store operators, has announced that it has raised £19.4 million in its Series A round, with a £6.6m strategic investment from PayPoint as well as investments from Highland Tech, Justin King, Maven Capital Partners, Kelvin Capital and Scottish Enterprise. Mercia Asset Management previously provided the Company with funds and remains an investor.

This is on the back of significant growth in the business to date and will enable the creation of 400 new jobs over the next 3 years as well as investment in people, technology, partner services and marketing.

Snappy, which has 90 employees currently will be looking for new recruits in all areas of the business, beginning with this CFO appointment.

In addition to these planned hires, Nick Wiles (PayPoint CEO), Lord Laidlaw (Highland Tech) and Frank Skivington (formerly Skyscanner) join the Board as NEDs with Justin King (former Sainsbury’s CEO) and Gordon Blair (former F1 team director) as Board advisers.

The CFO:

Finance is currently outsourced and a review of this, the potential for in-sourcing and building a team, but more importantly designing and delivering the correct controls, MI and data is an essential first step for the successful CFO.

In addition to tight financial controls and better reporting, real time FP&A, Cash Management, and Board/Investor insight being driven from finance to Sales, Operations and the Board will be a crucial element of the success of this finance team.

This is a CFO role that will involve everything from scaling up of a function and its value-add capabilities to the strategic growth and exit journey and therefore the successful candidate will be a hardworking and commercially focussed yet hands on Finance Director.

Role Description:

The Chief Financial Officer will be based flexibly from the Head Office in Dundee and is part of an overall Senior Leadership recruitment drive involving the hire of an Operations and HR Director as well.

The Chief Financial Officer will be responsible for:

• Preparing management and financial accounts
• Implementing robust financial and operational processes and procedures
• Leading the budgeting and forecasting process
• Producing useful and meaningful MI and preparing board materials for the monthly meetings
• Managing external banking relationships
• Supporting commercial decision making
• Managing foreign currency exposure and hedging arrangements, as appropriate with possible Internationalisation
• Effectively managing working capital and investor reporting in regards to cashflow and budgeting.
• Driving and being part of various strategic projects and initiatives within the business

The role also has a hugely important strategic and commercial focus to it. This will involve:

• Assisting in / leading future corporate finance (M&A) and fundraise activity
• Managing and negotiating relationships with suppliers and service providers
• Establishing a robust forecasting and planning model
• Developing models to deal with pricing policies and margin maintenance
• Analysing and making recommendations with regards to sales performance, margin and ROI re Marketing and Advertising
• Overseeing insurance and legal issues relating to operational aspects of the business
• Overseeing the IT infrastructure of the business and its suitability, especially in regards to finance systems and MI / KPI reporting

The successful candidate will be a driven and hardworking qualified accountant (ACA, CIMA, ACCA) with a very strong technical background, excellent communication skills and high business and commercial acumen. A positive can-do attitude is a must. In addition, diligence, attention to detail and tenacity are key attributes for a successful candidate.  Energy and a fast paced, entrepreneurial like, mindset will be two of the most important personal factors to fit with this leadership team.

More About Snappy Shopper:

The Snappy Shopper app provides a platform for consumers to order goods from shops located 30 minutes away. The app, already growing before Covid-19, has proven popular at a time when the pandemic and lockdowns have kept people in their houses and forced many brick-and-mortar shops to operate online.

Founded in 2017, the app had 220 shops signed up for its platform in 2019. This has grown to around 1,150 currently and in addition to local convenience has had major wins with larger operators, announcing partnerships with major convenience store operators like SPAR, Nisa, Costcutter and Co-Op.

Snappy’s tailor-made tech solutions present widespread application opportunities within the hospitality and convenience sectors and there remains a large number of convenience stores that currently do not offer a home delivery service which presents a further significant market opportunity.

As a tech platform, Snappy Shopper is attempting to level the playing field with supermarkets by giving smaller players the same opportunity they have to reach shoppers at home. An example of this is Snappy’s recently announced commercial partnership with PayPoint. This enables thousands of retailers to implement its home delivery and click and collect solutions that they were previously unable to offer.

Another of the Snappy USPs is that it works in partnership with existing local businesses embedded in their communities and that with the Snappy model, retailers retain control over their home delivery service. They are provided with a flexible tech solution which enables customer choice, in-store pricing and special offers, tailored to the needs of each individual neighbourhood. Retailers can increase revenue significantly with average basket spend more than trebling online compared to instore. Dark store operators compete with local neighbourhood retailers for space and customers whilst delivery aggregators charge significantly higher commission rates to cover infrastructure costs. Snappy’s model is much more in tune with the need for local businesses to maintain their value proposition whilst trading profitably online. These businesses are being empowered by Snappy to cater exactly for what their communities need.

A similar service for supermarkets is provided by Deliveroo while there are other start-ups in the sector such as Weezy, Dija, Zapp and Getir. However, Snappy covers much more of the UK, with most of its rivals currently confined to parts of London and selected other cities.

Justin King, previous Sainsbury’s CEO and who is also a non-executive director at Marks & Spencer, told The Grocer: “I have been hugely impressed by Snappy Group’s affordable solution, leadership team and rapid growth… This is an exciting and pivotal time for the business, and I believe that I will be able to add significant value. I look forward to working with the management team as the business continues its expansion and grows its market share further within the thriving UK convenience market and beyond.”

For more information or for a confidential discussion please contact Michael Dickson on michael@fwbparkbrown.com or alternatively, you can contact our Edinburgh office by phone on 0131 539 7087.