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you can trust me with your business

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You should

Harrison Ovens

2014 - 2024

Image courtesy of Elle Decor USA - full page feature

My husband made the ovens.

I made everything else.

Harrison Ovens was a British luxury charcoal oven company.

Handmade in Kent. Sold to Michelin-starred restaurants, five-star hotels and private clients across 15 countries. Featured in Vogue, Elle Decor, Wallpaper.

Two consecutive RHS five-star awards at Chelsea Flower Show. Walpole Brands of Tomorrow 2024. The Queen had one. So did Ottolenghi.

Operations + Finance

Every operational function, all in-house. Team building, supplier negotiation, new product development from brief to launch, logistics and supply chain, ecommerce.

Financial model built with an ex-KPMG forensic accountant. P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, month by month. £25k government startup loan. £50k Kent County Council grant - three rounds, final presentation to twelve people. Close to £500k raised in private equity.

One person holding everything together while the product got made in the workshop next door.

Premium luxury positioning. That single decision shaped everything else. The price point. The press targets. The clients we went after. The ones we said no to.

Market research across three sectors: outdoor cooking, professional kitchen equipment, British luxury brands. All three growing. We sat at the intersection.

Brand Strategy and Positioning

Marketing + PR

Instagram: 30,000 followers, every one the right person. The press came to us.

D2C came during lockdown. We built Harrison at Home, developed The Harrison Atom, launched at Chelsea Flower Show. Won the RHS five-star award in 2022. Won it again in 2023.

B2B sold itself. Ottolenghi. Corrigan. Atherton. We never discounted. We never made a cold sales call.

Walpole Group Brands of Tomorrow

Twelve brands accepted from hundreds. We were one of them. Application, website assessment, live presentation to a panel at Mishcon de Reya. Mentoring alongside Rolls Royce, Bentley, Burberry.

I bring that knowledge directly into my clients' businesses.

Every element designed to show natural, artisan, barefoot luxury.

Every detail of our brand and photography was considered and authenticity was the word that held it all together.

Food ingredients were often foraged or purchased from local farms and fishermen.

Our ethos was around nature and sustainability. We encouraged naturalistic gardens, where you don’t need to rip up nature to have an outdoor kitchen area.

Brand story, tone of voice, brand guidelines, every shoot directed, every prop hand picked and pre=used or re-usable.

Everything was designed and written by me. No creative agency. One person with decades of experience in them and some very talented friends.

Creative Direction

Global reach

Orders came in without a sales team. UK, Europe, USA, Asia, Australia. The Hamptons. The Bahamas. Mallorca. Singapore. Miami. Superyachts. Billionaires we'll never name.

No paid ads. No outbound. No distributor. Just a product people told each other about.

USA - Barcelona Wine Bars

Department for International Trade flew us to North Carolina. We ran a charcoal oven workshop for chefs from across America. Came home with a 20-oven deal across four cities.

The Superyacht.

Shahid Khan's Kismet II. The world's second largest, the first with a charcoal oven. In partnership with Lürssen Yachts.

Revenue had doubled for the eighth year running. We borrowed to fund Chelsea, R&D and our biggest product launch.

Then the Liz Truss mini-budget happened. Mortgage rates doubled. Consumer spending stopped. I was deep in investor conversations and took my eye off the cashflow.

Brexit. Covid. Suez. We'd bent and not broken every time. But we relied on consumer confidence, and that is what gave way.

I noticed too late. That's the thing about running everything alone - you can't see around the corner when you're also driving.

We made a clean break.

I set up FFS! so I can keep my eye on the ball. While you make the thing.