Richard Hurtley

I help consumer brand founders grow - as an operator, an advisor, and a mentor.

20+ years building and scaling consumer brands: founded five companies, advised 30+ brands, opened wholesale, retail, licensing and marketplace channels worth £100M+. Today I'm Commercial Director at Coral Eyewear, Retail Advisor at Panther8, and I mentor a small number of founders one to one.

  • Commercial Director · Coral Eyewear
  • Retail Advisor · Panther8
  • Founder Mentor · Catalyst Commerce

Brands I've worked with across 20+ years as a founder and operator

HOKA
Joules
UGG Australia
FatFace
Georg Jensen
Start-Rite
Ben Sherman
Seasalt Cornwall
GAP
Topps Tiles
Zoggs
LeMieux
Frugi
Polarn O. Pyret
Seraphine
LSA International
Coral Eyewear
N Brown Group

Ways I work

01

Founder Mentor

1:1 with consumer brand and retail founders. A monthly deep-dive, a weekly line to me on WhatsApp, and someone in your corner who has made the mistakes already.

How mentoring works →

02

Commercial Director, Coral Eyewear

Growing the eyewear house behind Umbro, Crayola, Paddington and more. I lead licensing, key accounts and commercial growth; sales have grown 4x in three years.

Visit Coral Eyewear

03

Retail Advisor, Panther8

Turning AI into commercial results for retail and consumer brands. I co-run leadership workshops and make sure what gets built solves real trading, channel and operational problems.

Visit Panther8

One-to-one founder mentoring

Mentoring for founders who are past the early stage and short on people to talk to.

Who it's for

Founder-led consumer brands and retailers, typically £1M–£20M, with traction and a growth or channel decision in front of them.

What a month looks like

One 90-minute deep-dive session. Voice-note Q&A on WhatsApp through the week. Up to an hour of ad-hoc help when something lands on your desk. A shared workspace where every session's actions and decisions are captured. Advisory, not execution: I don't run your channels, I help you run them better.

How it starts

A 30-minute conversation to see whether it's a fit, then a short questionnaire before the first session. I work with a small number of founders at a time, and we review together at three months.

What founders and CEOs say

“Richard joined the team in order to assess Coral's sales channels and identify new opportunities for growth. Within a few months Richard helped create an effective go to market plan, then he utilised his extensive contacts across retail to open entirely new, repeat-revenue, sales channels and built partnerships spanning sport, licensed brands and high-street retail.”
GB

George Bailey

Co-Founder, Coral Eyewear

“Richard is that rare blend: commercially fluent across brand, sales and finance, with a deep grasp of how the economics work across channels. As CEO at Joules I was his mentor when he was growing the brand Rampant Sporting as MD, and I saw first-hand how he steers a complex, multi-channel brand with clarity. If you need a steady, commercially minded hand to drive your B2B growth, you want Richard in the room.”
CP

Colin Porter

Former CEO, Joules

“Richard came in as fractional commercial support across two of our businesses - a health and beauty distribution company and a suncare e-commerce retailer. Both needed refocusing and fresh energy. He quickly identified the commercial priorities, restructured how we thought about our channels, and gave us a clear path forward. Practical, direct, and genuinely invested in the outcome.”
DR

David Ramirez

CEO & Co-Founder, Venture Blue

Richard Hurtley during his Rampant Sporting founder years

Built by a founder who's been there

I started my first brand at 21 - selling rugby socks from a university garage. Over the next decade, I scaled it into a nationally distributed casualwear brand stocked in House of Fraser, Next, John Lewis, and Fenwick, secured investment from Joules, and learned every hard lesson about margin, cash flow, and wholesale the painful way.

After that, I co-founded Rich Insight, a multi-channel consultancy that helped 30+ brands generate over £100M in new marketplace and channel revenue.

Today I split my time between running commercial growth at Coral Eyewear, advising Panther8 on retail, and mentoring founders - the part of the job I've always enjoyed most.

Let's talk

Book a call

or email richard@catalystcommerce.co.uk - I reply to every founder message.