Rob Manning

Commercial leader with 26 years building and scaling consumer revenue from launch to £100M+. P&L owner at Reckitt (Europe DTC: £100M+, 14 stores, 8 markets, Reckitt Tech Board), Biotiful Gut Health (built the ecommerce business from zero against a £10M three-year plan) and Natures Menu (returning the D2C business to double-digit growth with +54% EBIT improvement). Charity trustee since 2019, serving through a financial turnaround and income-model transformation.

I combine board-level strategy with deep operator credibility across D2C, marketplaces, retail media and ecommerce. A player-coach who sets direction, builds high-performing teams and can still work at platform level when it counts. Behavioural economics practitioner and DMA lecturer of 16 years; international keynote and panel speaker.

Commercial Director – D2C at Natures Menu Ltd (an Affinity Petcare company) (2025-09 – Present)

P&L owner for D2C and third-party marketplaces; £3M+ marketing and technology budget. Hired to reverse a three-year revenue decline & re-integrate D2C with wider Natures Menu & Affinity business.

• Returned the business to growth on track for +12% YoY in 2026 after three consecutive years of decline.
• Restructured the team and operating model, improving EBIT by 54% vs Prior Year.
• Relaunched the DTC store and subscription proposition, lifting average orders per customer from 1.17 to 3.6 (targeting 6+).
• Rebuilt the performance marketing funnel away from deep discounting: CAC down 21% YoY while growing new-customer acquisition 98% YoY.
• Launched TikTok Shop (May 2026); deployed agentic AI across customer service, data and development.

Head of D2C & Ecommerce at Biotiful Gut Health (2023-09 – 2025-09)

Built the ecommerce commercial function from scratch, owned P&L for DTC, Amazon, retailer.com and online grocery; £1M+ marketing budget; full end-to-end operational ownership.

• Authored the £10M three-year commercial plan and delivered it in 18 months, taking ecommerce from a standing start to £11M, spanning operations, marketing and revenue.
• Built the full ecommerce infrastructure - platforms, logistics and operating model across Commercial, Marketing, Supply and Finance. UK live and EU-ready (DE/FR/NL).
• Cut CPA 37%, increased conversion rate 32% and lifted repeat rate 54% across ecommerce channels.
• Ran DTC, Amazon and TikTok Shop end to end; implemented Gen AI and ML for operational efficiency and customer service.

Founder & Director at Manning& (2023-03 – Present)

Fractional VP and CGO Roles for corporates, start-ups and scale ups. Fractional & advisory practice founded in response to inbound demand from former colleagues and clients. Engagements include Bayer (digital experience, mobile commerce and CRM across the Canesten portfolio), BAT (omnichannel, CRM and Digital Commerce training), P&O Cruises (CDP/CRM selection and implementation), and fractional commercial leadership for a US wellness brand (re-platformed DTC, +15% YoY) and a functional drinks launch.

Director – DTC Ecommerce Europe at Reckitt (2020-03 – 2023-09)

Durex | Finish | Veet | Dettol | Enfamil | Scholl. P&L owner for Europe DTC, 14 webstores, 6 brands, 8 markets. Built and led a cross-functional team of 28 (7 direct reports). Member of the eRB Leadership Team and Reckitt Tech Board.

• Scaled Europe DTC to £120M+, with revenue growth of 58% (2020), 68% (2021) and 89% (2022); 2-2.5x growth for Durex and Finish DTC over three years.
• Launched 10 new stores in 18 months and led the shift from central-EU to local-hub warehousing, cutting operational and delivery costs, shifting from loss making to delivering profitable growth.
• Transformed unit economics: CAC from ~£16 to ~£7 (building an internal design team that also cut design costs 56%); acquisition ROAS from below 1 to 2.1; site conversion from ~1% to ~4% average.
• Rebuilt CRM, loyalty and marketing automation, lifting repeat purchase rates to 15% and then 28% by 2023.
• Opened new revenue streams: social commerce, influencer and livestream selling; DTC-exclusive NPD with R&D teams in Hong Kong, the US and UK; Durex x Diesel merchandise; and the 'Smart Finish' connected auto-replenishment MVP for smart dishwashers.
• Rebuilt analytics and dashboards to improve data sharing with the SLT and in-market teams; championed AI content generation for SEO and efficiency.

Managing Partner at Jacob Bailey Group (2003 – 2020-02)

Independent agency group of 60+ people across London and New York. P&L owner for the Digital and US businesses; led all strategy, ecommerce and web development across five group agencies; team of 21 with 6 direct reports.

• Grew the Digital/US P&L 21% (2017-18) and delivered £14M in incremental client revenue in 2018/19.
• Greater Anglia (2004-17): launched and traded the ecommerce platform from £0 to £18M+ annual revenue; conversion from 1.5% to 6.8%; database grown organically to 1.3M contacts.
• Stansted Express (2013-17): grew direct online revenue from £4M to £11.25M, exceeding 25% YoY targets; conversion from 2.8% to 6.5%.
• Unilever Prestige (2018-19): CDP data audit across six brands identifying $500K+ in cross-sell; revamped paid social for Kate Somerville, +475% revenue.
• Scale-up track record including Kalixa Payments (positioning and marketing through to $29M sale) and Switlick Comfort ($0-$400K in 12 months); enterprise transformation for Otis, BT and Vodafone.

Post-Graduate Diploma in Direct & Digital Marketing (Masters equivalent) – IDM (2005 – 2005)

Professional Diploma in Behavioural Economics – IDM (2018 – 2020)

Certificate in Corporate Governance – In Touch Networks (2019 – 2019)

Certificate in Data Science & R Programming – DataCamp (2018 – 2018)

Practitioner in GDPR Practitioner – IDM (2017 – 2017)

Diploma in Marketing – CIM (2003 – 2003)

BA (Hons) in English – University of Teesside (2000 – 2000)