Scotts finance chief gets MD job

Scotts finance chief gets MD jobScotts & Co, the catalogue and online retail firm behind brands such as Scotts of Stow, Bloom and the Original Gift Company, has promoted its group finance chief Andy Walsham to group managing director.
Walsham (pictured) joined the company in 2012 from the UK division of B2B manufacturer and IT business Brady Corporation. He has also worked at Wolseley, Bluebird Toys and Deloitte Haskins & Sells (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).
Set up in 1991 by Nigel Swabey, the company has over 4 million active customers across eight leading brands and is one of the largest independent direct retailers in the country.
The group distributes over 60 million catalogues each year while online it attracts 400,000 unique visitors each month and annual visitors to its stores in Stow-on-the-Wold exceed 80,000.
Chairman Swabey said: “Over the past 21 months, Andy has successfully managed a number of important structural changes within the group. He has also won the confidence of both his board colleagues and our staff with his consensual style of management and his level-headed, analytical approach to decision making.
“In an entrepreneurial group like Scotts, creativity needs to be tempered by sound financial analysis. The size of our company is now such that we can no longer afford to rely on the efforts of a few talented individuals and must build strength in depth. Andy established a reputation for himself as a builder of strong management teams during his time at Brady UK. For this and many other reasons, I am confident that he is the right man to take our company to the next level in its development.”