Our vision is to be seen and respected as a leading customer focused consultancy that works in partnership with people and organisations to realise their potential in an ever-competitive market.
We work closely with you, to understand the uniqueness of your business, and your people, and ask the honest and forthright questions that others can’t – to bring together the vision for the business with the reality of performance. We bring global experience, across a range of industries and backgrounds, providing a wealth of knowledge that aids in accelerating your business.
Duncan Cawdell,
Founder and Managing Partner
Duncan Cawdell has a wealth of senior sales management experience both in the UK and abroad. Duncan has sat on both sides of the table, as buyer and as seller, which provides a rounded perspective on effective selling .
His career started in Asda, one of the UK’s largest grocery retailers, as a Business Unit Manager where he learnt the fundamentals, such as people management, inventory management, range and layout and retailer execution. He progressed to Product Group Manager at Somerfield, deepening his knowledge in the importance of commercial strategy and product and margin mix. During that time, he bought across multiple categories for supermarkets, convenience stores and discounters. These roles provided the depth and breadth needed to be successful in his move from buyer to seller, first at Gerber Foods as Commercial Operations Controller and then in his international role as Sales Director at Bon Bon Buddies Europe.
Duncan, is not only a commercial driven individual, he has always had a passion for working with and developing people. This led to him leveraging his sales expertise to work for Weben Consulting, leading the sales capability arm of the organisation, providing sales training programmes for major corporations across the globe, as well as some time back in retail with Pick N Pay (Southern Africa’s largest retailer). It was in this capacity that Kerry Foods asked Duncan to join them as Field Sales Director for the Van Sales Division, and then later as the Sales Capability Director GB&I at a Group level.
His career path, passion for people and drive has since led him to be the Founder and Managing Partner for Pure Blue Ocean. Duncan is able to draw on his experiences working with diverse companies and people to ensure that his clients are successful in their own space, moving from the red ocean and into the blue.
Jo Chapman,
Associate Partner
Jo Chapman is an effective business woman who has over 15 years of FMCG senior management experience in leading FMCGs PepsiCo and Diageo. Her fast track career path has helped her to build deep knowledge and experience in key functional areas such as Marketing, Innovation, Sales, Commercial and Channel Marketing and Procurement. Her successful career and wide-ranging experience has equipped her with a deep and diverse skillset that will add value to any business.
Regarded as someone who can make things happen, Jo has demonstrated outstanding ability to drive permanent change, tackling organisational and cultural barriers, and successfully embedding new ways of working.
It is this skill set and her ‘trouble shooting’ reputation that has led Jo to so many diverse and organisationally critical roles.
Whether the task at hand is building a brand, implementing a new process, or building a relationship with a customer, Jo is able to quickly get to the nub of the problem, identify a range of solutions and implement the change; providing end-to-end strategic change management and delivery.
Paul Townsend,
Associate Partner
Paul is an eLearning consultant with a background in sales and IT. Paul spent ten years in the IT industry, holding several roles including developer, reseller account manager, direct-sales account manager, and operations director.
In 2002, following an interim contract with a media company, he founded Lucid Communications. As Principal Consultant, Paul develops engaging, impactful learning resources. He focusses on engaging with both the learning content and the target audience.
Ann Marie McCabe,
Associate Partner
Ann Marie’s entire career has centered around turning data into actionable insights to drive results.
She spent 5 years as a VP at Nielsen and a few more as a VP at IRI (Circana) before starting her own business dedicated to working with all the top CPG companies in North America and around the globe on leveraging their vast disparate data resources to turn into insights and compelling stories that drive results.
Over the last 2-plus decades she has trained over 5,000 sales, category, and marketing professionals in North America and globally from the retailer and manufacturer community, including companies such as Unilever, Pepsi and P&G, to build expertise in Omni channel data and analytics, Shopper insights to action, and how to create insight base commercial arguments.
Nicky Stapleton,
Associate Partner
Nicky started her FMCG career in recruitment 30 years ago and 10 years ago became an accredited Insights Discovery Practitioner, as she recognised the need to aid the overall recruitment process through better communication and individuals needing a better understanding of themselves.
Nicky works with leaders to help them understand themselves, their teams and create a ‘start line’, beginning with the Insights Discovery® programme. With over 10 years experience working with organisations across the UK and Europe, and delivering results. Removing perception is key and the height of emotional intelligence, if you understand yourself you’ll be better equipped to understand others.
Paul Whittaker,
Associate Partner
Paul is an accomplished learning professional who brings experience of over 30 years in FMCG and Retail to facilitation and consultancy. Before joining Pure Blue Ocean he spent 8 years in Learning Development with Mars Wrigley, developing and facilitating the Sales Curriculum both locally and globally. Prior to joining the L&D Team he had roles in National Accounts, Customer Marketing and Category Management at a Senior Level.
Paul’s career spans all elements of customer management with previous roles in Supply Chain, Product Development and Account Management at one of the UK’s major Own Label manufacturers.
He also spent over 15 years in the Buying environment with key roles being held; Trading Director, The Co-op and Chilled Food Controller for Spar.
He brings all of this experience and the skills developed, to support Pure Blue Ocean Clients and delegates.
Sam Mead,
Associate Partner
Sam lives his purpose of ‘unlocking growth’ to ‘enrich lives’. He has more than 20 years’ experience across various industries and functions including Strategy, Brand & Shopper Marketing, Innovation, Sales, Strategy, People and Culture.
Sam leverages a depth of retail and FMCG industry experience from his time at Diageo, Woolworths & Human Synergistics. A collaborative, passionate and self-reflective leader with a natural and engaging style, yet direct and intuitive with an ability and willingness to engage in a robust debate. He is a divergent thinker who is quick to recognise opportunities to optimise performance.
Sam has a Bachelor of Communications from CSU and is also an LSI accredited practitioner, Neuro TREAD accredited facilitator and Extreme Thinking accredited practitioner.
Emer Brady,
Associate Partner
Emer has over 25 years of experience in the corporate world in both sales and HR. Starting out as a Sales Representative, Emer then went on to do many of the typical sales roles of Account Manager, Category Leader and Line Manager. She then discovered the world of Learning and Development and never looked back. Emer has experience of leading a global L&D function and understands the unique needs of emerging markets v developed markets. She has trained thousands of salespeople over her career but her true passion lies in developing the skills of sales line managers.
Emer has a unique profile of working many years in sales but an equal amount in HR and Talent and this blend of experience lends itself to having a holistic view when it comes to building capabilities in organisations.
If you`re not sure what to do, then checkout our post, which gives the latest status update on jailbreaking ios 7 and the comprehensive mobile number tracker list of ios 7 features.
Social media
Follow us:
