A bloke from West Cumbria
who spent 25 years
with sharks.

Andy Lister. Marine biologist, then retail, then sales.

I am Andy Lister. I run LAUNCH!, and LAUNCH! is mostly just me.

I qualified as a marine biologist at the University of Hull and spent twenty-five years in that world. Sea Life Centres, aquariums across Europe, breeding seahorses, jellyfish and sharks. It is a job that teaches you two things very quickly. Preparation is everything, and nothing you are dealing with cares about your timeline.

Then retail. Three years in the fish house at Tropical Marine Centre, supplying aquatic shops, then running one: general manager of Northern Fishworld in Oldham, with the livestock, the staff and the suppliers all mine to look after.

Then sales. Technical sales across the South East for World Feeds and Red Sea. Sales Manager at Seneye, running all B2B sales at home and abroad, with sales up 72% in 2014/15 and 54% in 2015/16. A year co-running my own aquatics business, Gravity Aquatics, until the partner funding fell away. Back to Red Sea as National Sales Manager, around 400 UK accounts from independents to national chains, with growth of 25% and then 21% in consecutive years. European Sales Manager at Piscine Energetics, covering Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia. National Sales Manager at Natura Grow, launching new ranges, leading a rebrand and building a UK and Ireland distribution network.

Then food. At the British Frozen Food Federation I worked with more than 250 member businesses and sat across the table from C-suite leaders at food companies turning over more than £50bn between them. After a year on membership at BASIS Reg and a spell as Sales Director at Portable Cold Stores, I spent two years leading UK field and account sales for Praveen Kumar's frozen Indian meals, into grocery, garden centre and specialist retail, and built a team of four field and two office-based sales execs.

Along the way: Co-op, Morrisons, Center Parcs and House of Bruar.

Then a growing suspicion that the founders I liked most were the ones getting the least help.

The pattern was always the same. Someone had made something genuinely good, put everything into it, and then hit a wall made entirely of things nobody had told them. Margin structures. Category reviews. Range architecture. The sixteen ways a sell sheet can quietly tell a buyer you are not ready.

Hiring a Head of Sales fixes that. It also costs six figures before you have sold a thing, which is why most brands do not do it, and why most brands stay stuck.

So that is the gap I fill. Fractional Head of Sales on a fixed monthly fee, from £750, for brands anywhere between the kitchen table and £5m.

Why the category is broad

FMCG, and right now mostly food and drink. Frozen ready meals, pizza, oat bars, toddler food, cocktail rim salts. People sometimes want me to pick one aisle and own it, and I understand why, but it would be dishonest. The skill is retail and route to market. A frozen buyer and an ambient buyer are running the same process with different products in front of them.

The category changes. The job does not.

The whole journey, not a slice of it

Some founders come to me with a name and a rough idea and nothing else. That is fine. Branding, labelling and sourcing are part of the job, and Native Roots was built from exactly that starting point.

Others are already listed and need someone who can read the data, manage a key account properly, and be the person a major supermarket picks up the phone to. That is also the job.

I work across UK and European retail, so expansion beyond the UK is a conversation rather than a project.