Conviviality reshuffles leadership team

By Lisa Riley

Published: 15 January, 2018

Conviviality has reshuffled its leadership team following completion of key integration elements relating to recent acquisitions.

With immediate effect, the company has brought together all of its drinks buying teams under the leadership of Steve Jebson, who has been appointed buying and insights director.

The change had been introduced to ensure Conviviality “truly leveraged" its scale with suppliers as well as giving all of its supplier partners a clear route to maximise their business across the entire group, linking insight, buying, category and activation, said the company.

Since joined Conviviality in November 2015, Jebson had successfully delivered the buying synergies from the Matthew Clark and Bibendum integration, it added.

On the commercial side, Conviviality has brought together all of the selling and marketing functions within Conviviality Direct and Conviviality Trading under James Lousada, who has been with the business since June 2016.

Having successfully integrated both the agency businesses and festival businesses that existed within Matthew Clark, Bibendum and Peppermint Events, Lousada would in his new role as commercial director lead the Bibendum and Matthew Clark sales and marketing teams in a bid to “simplify the processes involved in supporting customers”.

In addition, Conviviality has appointed Mark Riley, who joined Bibendum in 2012 and joined the group when it acquired Bibendum PLB in May 2016, as operations director.

His new responsibilities include covering the Bristol customer contact centre, Bristol supply chain teams and the entire Conviviality logistics operation, including the relationship with its third party supplier - Trade Team.

With the integration nearing completion and specifically the implementation of JDE into Bibendum, Conviviality said it was now able to move closer to creating a single approach to its supply chain.

As a result of this, Nigel Bassey’s role as logistics and distribution director had “changed substantially” and he would be leaving the company at the end of the financial year after a period of handover, it said.

Currently headed by David Robinson, the organisational structure of Conviviality Retail remains unchanged with the exception of the drink’s buying capability which will now be handled by Steve Jebson’s new team.

Having fulfilled his objective of integrating Matthew Clark and Bibendum into Conviviality Direct, Mark Aylwin will step down from the board and his role as MD of Conviviality Direct on 31 January 2018.

The revised operational change to the business not only mirrored the company’s operating model but also enabled it to allow it to “lower the centre of gravity of the organisation”, bringing decision making closer to the customer, said CEO, Diana Hunter.

“As the market continues to be full of opportunities and challenges, we now have the best platform from which to gain benefit,” she said.

Conviviality, which is announcing its interim results on 29th January, said it continued to trade in line with the board’s expectations.

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