portfolio
Creating Remarkable
We act as thinking partners, change agents and innovation catalysts, helping our portfolio companies activate pathways to growth through stronger brand-customer connectivity.
Our portfolio includes start-ups, scale-ups and grown-ups in FinTech, Consumer Goods, Retail, B2B SaaS, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Fashion, Health & Wellness, Communications & Media.
The common thread:
An insatiable desire to gain sustainable advantage by delivering remarkable brand experiences that captivate customers
Featured Clients
Driving growth by putting the customer first in transforming the business-to-business (Trade) sales approach
Defining customer segmentation, experience and digital strategy to elevate brand distinctiveness and improve customer acquisition and retention.
Driving growth by relaunching the business behind a new brand name, identity, website, and product marketing strategy
Defining and aligning the Board around a new brand strategy and architecture in lead-up to a successful IPO
Codifying ‘best practice’ for building a successful Virgin branded business, drawing on insights from across the Virgin Group portfolio
Providing outside-in, customer-led view of the brand & customer experience to help differentiate the proposition and pinpoint opportunities for growth
Clarifying brand positioning and relaunching B2B technology business behind a unified brand direction, narrative, and identity
Clarifying the strategic positioning of multiple fashion e-commerce brands to elevate the customer experience and strengthen brand-consumer connectivity
Defining brand strategy and creating new name and creative identity for early-stage B2B technology company
Our Consulting Portfolio
A selection of brands with whom we’ve partnered to build brand remarkability
Featured Ventures
Mentoring founder and providing guidance on creating and launching a new brand to disrupt the functional foods category
Mentoring founder and providing guidance on US market entry strategy
Mentoring co-founder and COO on building a brand experience that’s both distinctive and relevant to target customers
Mentoring founder and providing guidance on building brand-customer connectivity to fuel growth
Building brand awareness through strategic partnerships, and undertaking customer research to elevate the brand experience and improve subscriber retention.
Development of brand strategy, name and creative direction for VC-backed fertility venture.
Our Ventures Portfolio
A selection of brands with whom we’ve partnered to build brand remarkability
Sleek Ballet Fitness is an online ballet-based fitness method launched 8 years ago by co-founders, friends and former pro dancers Victoria Marr and Flik Swan. Sleek has grown year on year, with people now accessing Sleek content in over 75 countries across the globe.
As a digitally-native business, Sleek’s programme has from the outset been designed to enable a two-way interaction between participant and instructor–offering Sleekers the flexibility of both live-streamed and on-demand classes to suit their needs. With carefully crafted dance workouts that help women achieve a longer, leaner dancer-like physique, Sleek is a subscription business that has built a highly engaged community of Sleekers who enjoy the unique and effective combination of ballet and fitness techniques.
“
As former dancers, our expertise have always been in the creation of fantastic dance fitness content. How to get this out there and seen by people that engage with it is something we have needed help with.
Deborah's deep understanding of creating, refining and marketing a successful brand has been invaluable. With her guidance and strategic market research, we have been able to distill what it is our customers really want to improve their experience and therefore our subscriber retention. She has also at the same time helped us to find and engage with new like-minded clients and grow subscription numbers through creative collaborations with complementary brands.
From the visual look and feel of our site to the language we use to market and communicate, even the subtle changes she has suggested have helped enhance and elevate our brand. Always bringing her breadth of knowledge to the table with warmth and a clear passion for what she does, we have really enjoyed working with Deborah on both a personal and professional level.
— Victoria Marr, Director and co-founder of Sleek Ballet Fitness
Innovating the way shoes are made: sustainable, stylish, and personalised.
Lucy Rose Ltd was founded by entrepreneur Emily Jeffreys, who had an idea to bring together the very best of engineering, design, and sustainable manufacturing to build the ultimate ’shoe for life’: luxurious yet practical for modern daily life. The first product is a shoe that converts from a high heel to a flat in one simple, elegant movement, offering a practical solution to a real problem for heel-loving people everywhere. With a passion for perfection and high-performance materials, Lucy Rose fills a gap in the market for a product that is sustainable, luxurious, innovative, and practical in equal measure. Designed by former F1 Design Engineers focussing on detail, style and everything in between, Lucy Rose shoes have been engineered to perfection.
“
Debbie has been an excellent mentor and NED. Since we first met, she has provided me with both the practical hands-on support and the strategic sounding board I very much needed. She has extensive experience in both brand development and customer experience, and has helped me create clarity around the Lucy Rose brand proposition and adapt my thinking around the business model. She is a rare individual who seems to understand exactly what my principles and values are, and how to weave that into a strong brand strategy and narrative.
— Emily Jeffreys, Founder of Lucy Rose Ltd
Our Closet is a pre-revenue fashion-tech startup founded with the purpose of empowering women to consume fashion more consciously and sustainably, without compromising that special feeling of luxury one gets from buying something new.
The Our Closet platform will provide a peer to peer lending and resale solution for consumers, and a turn-key solution for fashion brands and retailers to monetise dead stock and extend the lifecycle and lifetime value of clothing–contributing to a more sustainable fashion future.
“
Debbie has been beyond valuable in guiding me through my start-up journey. She was instrumental in helping me build my brand, perfectly encapsulating the essence of what I wanted to portray but couldn't articulate myself. She is a brilliant strategic advisor and mentor and a great sounding board helping me see the long-term vision of the company.
I've found so much value in working with Debbie, along with the moral support she offers, she has helped shape and empower me as a female founder. I highly recommend Debbie to anyone looking to build and scale up their brand to go on to great things.”
— Rosie de Malmanche, Founder & CEO of Our Closet