Card Factory Plc
CARD:LN
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Overview
Company Profile
Card Factory is a retailer of greetings cards and associated gift and party products. The company, which was founded by a Yorkshire entrepreneur as a back-of-the-van stall, was floated in London by private equity group Charterhouse with a valuation of �700m in May 2014. No-frills Card Factory had a total store estate of 865 at its January 2017 year end. It has an online presence offering personalised cards and gifts at gettingpersonal.co.uk.
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Financials
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Corporate
Board of Directors
Geoff Cooper
Chairman
Geoff joined the Board and became Chairman of the Group in April 2014. Geoff has over 20 years’ experience of serving on boards of UK public companies, in particular as Chief Executive of Travis Perkins plc from March 2005 until December 2013. Geoff is also a Director of Dunelm plc, where he has been nonexecutive Chairman since 2004. He is a chartered management accountant and had a career in management consultancy before joining Gateway (subsequently Somerfield plc) as Finance Director in 1990. In 1994, he became Finance Director of UniChem plc, subsequently Alliance UniChem plc (which later became part of Alliance Boots plc), where he was appointed Deputy Chief Executive in 2001.
Darren Bryant
Chief Financial Officer
Darren was appointed Group Finance Director in June 2009 (subsequently renamed Chief Financial Officer in 2010) having previously been a Partner at PwC LLP. Darren spent over 17 years at PwC, principally in the London Corporate Finance division, where he advised on a wide range of private company, private equity and public company transactions. He also spent two years on secondment at The Panel on Takeovers & Mergers in the late 1990’s where he regulated a large number of public company transactions. Darren is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and holds a First Class MEng degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering with Business Studies from Imperial College, London University.
Octavia Morley
Independent Non-Executive Director
Octavia joined the Board as Senior Independent Non-Executive Director in April 2014. Octavia is currently the Chief Executive of Oka Direct Limited and has eight years’ experience of serving on boards of UK public companies in the retail sector. She has served on the board of John Menzies plc as a Non-Executive Director since 2006. Octavia was previously the Managing Director of Crew Clothing Co. Limited. She also served on the board of LighterLife UK Limited in 2006 as Chief Executive Officer and later as Chairman until December 2009. She served as Commercial Director of Woolworths plc between 2003 and 2005 and has also held positions as Managing Director of e-commerce at Asda Stores Limited and as Buying and Merchandising Director at Laura Ashley plc.
Richard Hayes
Chief Executive Officer
Richard was appointed Managing Director in 2008 (subsequently renamed Chief Executive Officer in 2010), prior to which he held the positions of Finance Director and Commercial Director of the Group. During his time at the Company, Richard has been actively involved in, and since 2008 has overseen, the Group growing from a 40-store discount chain to a vertically integrated high margin value retailer with over 700 stores and two transactional websites. Richard led the 2010 MBO funded by Charterhouse and has overseen the continued growth under Charterhouse’s ownership. Before he joined the Group in 2003, Richard spent 19 years at RBS working mainly in the Corporate Division.
David Stead
Independent Non-Executive Director
David joined the board as an Independent Non-Executive Director in April 2014. He has over 15 years’ experience as a director of companies in the UK retail sector. David has held the role of Executive Finance Director of Dunelm Group plc since September 2003. Prior to this, David served as Finance Director for Boots The Chemists and Boots Healthcare International between 1991 and 2003. David is a chartered accountant, having spent the early part of his career with KPMG, and currently leads the Finance and HR departments for Dunelm Group plc.
Paul McCrudden
Independent Non-Executive Director
Paul joined the board as an Independent Non-Executive Director in December 2014. Paul is currently EMEA Head of Content Marketing at Twitter and prior to that was Head of Social Media at advertising agency AMV BBDO. In his earlier career Paul was Account Director at Imagination (a creative brand agency) and a Consultant in New Technologies at Accenture. He is also Chairman of the board of trustees of Hoipolloi, a film and theatre production company funded by the Arts Council England.