Building Marketing & CRM Capability at Whittard of Chelsea
Challenge
Whittard of Chelsea, the iconic British heritage brand founded in 1886, is renowned for its premium teas, coffees, and hot chocolate. With over 50 UK stores, a growing international presence in the US, South Korea, and Taiwan, and a clear focus on digital transformation and customer experience, Whittard of Chelsea is evolving into a truly global, customer-led retailer.
In 2025, as part of this transformation, Whittard recognised the need to build deeper expertise in CRM, loyalty, and customer retention within its marketing team, but lacked a specialist recruitment partner in this space. We were introduced to Whittard by Razia Aziz, based on our reputation as a niche search consultancy in this area and previous experience working with Razia earlier in her career.
Prior to our engagement, Whittard had struggled to fill key roles within the CRM and loyalty function. Searches stalled or failed to surface talent with the right mix of technical knowledge, commercial awareness, and cultural fit.
They needed:
- CRM Executive – hands-on, digitally capable, and insight-led.
- Retention Manager (12-month FTC) – able to hit the ground running, manage loyalty campaigns, and support a strategic revamp of the programme.
Both roles required specialists in customer engagement, lifecycle marketing, and CRM platforms who could operate within the agile, brand-led world of premium retail.
Solution
Partnering with Razia and the team, we clarified what “good” looked like – capability, commercial focus, and behaviours suited to Whittard’s pace and culture. We shaped each search with our domain expertise and insight-led process to fit the role’s technical needs.
CRM Executive
- Completed the search within two weeks.
- Submitted one candidate with an exact match on experience, skills, and cultural fit.
- Offer accepted immediately, enabling the team to move at speed.
Retention Manager (12-month FTC)
- Interim roles at this level are challenging, requiring both strategic loyalty thinking and tactical execution.
- Partnered closely with Whittard to refine the brief and appeal to candidates in our interim marketing network.
- Delivered a targeted shortlist with relevant loyalty and CRM experience.
Successfully filled the role with a candidate bringing retail loyalty programme experience and the agility to deliver immediate value on a fixed-term basis.
Results
- Two critical hires completed (permanent + FTC) to strengthen CRM, loyalty, and retention capability.
- Time-to-hire reduced via a focused, insight-led search process.
- Cultural fit achieved, supporting rapid impact and continuity across loyalty activity.
“Working with CVM People this year through my role at Head of Retention at Whittard’s has been a really smooth journey, the end to end process from truly understanding the brief to arranging interviews has been highly responsive and delivered a positive outcome for the business. We look forward to continuing to work with CVM people again in the future.”
Razia Aziz – Head of Retention
