KatKin's Opportunity
Cats are undeniably champions of the Internet. They're cute, hilarious, and can be jerks, so honestly what's not to love? But, while they've been getting the recognition they deserve online, they've been left by the wayside in the pet food industry, with legacy FMCG companies opting to offer little innovation targeted specifically to the unique requirements of cats. Enter KatKin.
We’re Europe’s first fresh-cooked cat food and health company, a disruptor in the USD $185bn pet food market, and were founded to challenge the standards of care set by the cat food industry. Cat food is the fastest-growing sector in global pet food, currently worth around USD $50bn globally.
We’re building a new category of fresh food for Cats. Fresh is defined as using 100% human-grade meat, that’s gently steam cooked and then frozen fresh, featuring 0% fillers, grains or preservatives. The concept of fresh food is well established in the US, particularly in Dog, with the Farmers’ Dog at >$1B sales proving the scale of the opportunity.
Launched in 2019 by siblings Brett and Nikki O’Farrell, KatKin is vertically integrated across R&D, manufacturing, sales and marketing. To date, we've delivered around 35 million fresh meals to over 200,000 happy, healthy cats across the UK. We currently have a team of over 130 with headquarters in Clerkenwell, London, while our manufacturing facilities are in Haverhill, Suffolk, and customer service teams in both London and South Africa.
The business operates a direct-to-consumer (“D2C”) model alongside a first-class, dedicated consumer care team that allows us to build valuable consumer relationships and a passionate user community. Alongside our eCommerce channel, our products are distributed through an increasing number of select 3rd party channels (Ocado, Amazon, Pets at Home).
The business has delivered a robust financial performance with a rare combination of rapid sales growth and solid KPIs including a strong LTV/CAC. Given our unique characteristics and successful performance, KatKin has attracted venture capital and private equity investment and the business is currently in a strong financial position, ready to invest in its brand and marketing efforts to deliver on ambitious expansion plans. The board and leadership team expect revenues to grow significantly over the next 5 years.
We’re embarking on an exciting growth strategy leveraging operational, technical and commercial enhancements to drive online sales, continued product expansion, and strategic distribution growth. We’re now looking to strengthen the team with the addition of a talented, driven Creative Director to raise the bar of our creative execution for maximum impact.
What we do at KatKin
Simply put, we're putting cats and their people first. Giving cats the best possible Fresh cat food, treats, litter and with more to come. We’re allowing cat owners to provide the healthcare that their cats need and deserve. As well as leading the charge in an entirely new category of cat food, our personalised health and wellness initiatives and customer support are all helping cats live their best nine lives.
We aim to give cat people a seamless and engaging online experience, science backed content from our world-class in-house board certified vet nutritionist, nutrition scientists and vets, and turn it all into bite-sized, delightful content and value creating customer experiences/digital products that people can’t get enough of. We’re a relatively small team of cat enthusiasts that celebrates both wins and losses equally (we’re only human), a first class company culture, our open office allows for ease of communication and collaboration, and we can guarantee there will be a cat on your desk at some point. Genuinely, we love what we do.
We’re a challenger brand with disruption in our DNA, and you’ll thrive with the autonomy to turbo charge our creative execution to accelerate our growth and brand momentum, transforming KatKin into a well known and much loved consumer brand.
Key ownership areas
Own, define and deliver the KatKin brand and creative execution across all customer touch points, delivering against the ever expanding creative needs of our business.
Be the guardian of the KatKin brand, continually sense-checking, evaluating and improving the brand toolkit and overall quality of creative work.
Set the direction, oversee the creative execution from the team and when required take a hands on approach to ensuring a first class creative execution.
Work alongside senior stakeholders to problem solve in highly ambiguous situations where problems are not clearly defined, and keep on-top of business priorities to ensure that your creative team is working on what will drive the biggest impact.
You will set departmental objectives and work plans for the creative team in line with business ambitions, leading the team with limited support and guidance. Accountable for team budget and supporting the delivery of financial results.
Lead, manage and inspire the creative team with regular 1-2-1s, 360° reviews and bringing the best of the outside in, as well as the daily championing and mentoring of the team to develop their skills, talent and goals.
Lead creative planning based on business priorities to ensure internal resources are in line with needs - pulling in freelancers or agencies from your little black book, or expanding the creative team when required.
Constantly review the end to end creative processes, always seeking out efficiencies within the team. Teach all teams to review creative with our brand values, mission and growth objectives in mind.
Who we are looking for:
You are a seasoned Creative Director/Head of in a brand or agency and have successfully led world-class creative teams to deliver significant business growth through brand and creative strategies fusing storytelling, relevant insights, trends and culture.
You pride yourself on pushing boundaries, disrupting market expectations, thinking differently and tackling objectives from a challenger brand point of view. You can think on your feet, are open to changes of direction within a fast growing business.
You have a portfolio showcasing brilliantly bold, strategic, growth driving creative ideas, with a high bar of excellence across typography, layout and design skills. You’ll have excellent writing and presentation skills yourself.
You are strategic, creative and commercially minded; leading with the big ideas while making sure they are meeting the needs of your business stakeholders.
You have experience of defining and building loved consumer brands. From digital to physical, from acquiring to retaining customers, always creating experiences across customer touchpoints that drive business and customer value.
You have experience recruiting, managing and developing in-house and external talent across designers (2D and digital/motion), photographers, copywriters and content creators, to consistently deliver creative excellence.
You have a thorough understanding of all creative processes and have worked on 360-degree campaigns across multiple channels (Digital, Print, CRM, Performance Channels, TV, OOH, Radio, Outdoor, Brand activation, PR, Social)
You are highly organised and obsessed with efficient processes that lead to more impact from a creative team’s output against creative requests.
You thrive on collaboration across multi-functional teams and are able to drive positive energy & morale in the creative team.
You see yourself in KatKin’s core operating principles; customer first, think big, relentlessly high standards, one team and no egos.
You are embracing tech and AI advancements across the creative development process to measure and improve creative effectiveness.
Expert in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign). Expert in Figma and/or Adobe DX. Skilled in Adobe Premiere Pro or AE is a nice-to-have.
Nice to haves
International markets experience
Pet, DTC and Ecomm/Subscription industry experience
A thorough understanding of social media
What We Offer
Career defining opportunity in being instrumental to scaling our brand, fast
Competitive Package
No egos, great company culture and a small close-knit team
33 days holiday every year (inclusive of Bank holidays) plus your birthday off
Contemporary Clerkenwell based open place office, a stocked kitchen and lunch provided on a Monday. 3 days of your choice working from the office.
4 weeks a year working from anywhere
12 Weeks Maternity/Paternity Leave
Discount for KatKin fresh meals
AXA Health Insurance including optical and dental
Annual personal development budget
Company contributed pension
Access to discount portal
To Apply
Please add a brief description of what makes you passionate about the role and your relevant experience when applying. Submit your details below or send an email to terrie@katkin.com
About us
We aim to encourage a culture where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. At KatKin we celebrate differences, and everything that makes our colleagues unique, by upholding an inclusive environment in which we can all thrive.
We want to make our recruitment processes accessible to everyone, so if there is any way that we can support you to be the best you can be, please contact terrie@katkin.com
