Head Of Innovation & Commercialisation

impactevolve; Prenton; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

Hawkstone seeks a strategic role to own the innovation portfolio end-to-end, from viability assessment to getting winners on shelf. You will work between commercial and operations, shaping how we decide, prioritise and execute launches while keeping complexity in check.

You will build the pipeline, align cross-functional teams including sales and packaging, and push for rapid, credible decisions without bureaucracy.

Qualifications

• Senior influence that changed how senior people want to work and made it stick.
• Commercial judgement to decide whether ideas were worth doing and to instruct leadership when the answer was no.
• Portfolio ownership across multiple launches with clear sequencing and prioritisation.
• Real packaging depth including packaging design, artwork development, tooling and multi-market compliance.

Responsibilities

• Decide which ideas are viable before development begins.
• Own the portfolio with clear sequencing, capacity and priorities.
• Oversee commercialisation: from brief to product on shelf and supplier engagement.
• Build lightweight structure that speeds decisions and scales with growth.

Skills

Senior influence

Commercial judgement

Portfolio ownership

Packaging depth

Co-packers network

Job description

Your mission

Hawkstone has plenty of ideas. What we don't have is anyone who decides which ones are worth doing, and then makes them happen.

You'll own our innovation portfolio end to end. That starts earlier than most roles of this kind. Before anything goes into development, you work out whether it's actually worth doing: what the commercial case looks like, whether retailers want it, what it will cost, what it will take to make, and whether we can realistically deliver it in the window we have.

Then you own getting the winners onto shelf. On time, in full and on cost.

About Hawkstone

Hawkstone is a premium British drinks brand, born on a Cotswolds farm and built on beer, cider and spirits made from grain we grow ourselves. Co-founded by Jeremy Clarkson, we have gone from a single lager to a full range in a few short years, and we are not slowing down.

We are based at College Farm in Bourton-on-the-Water, with our own brewery on site. The team is small, the pace is quick, and decisions get made in the room rather than in a committee. We are now scaling properly: new formats, new categories, new markets.

About the team

You will report to our Operations Director and your role will sit between commercial and operations without belonging to either, which means you will need to be credible enough to challenge both. You will bring structure to how we work, but the sort of structure that speeds us up rather than slowing us down. Anyone who arrives and wraps this business in process will not last.

There is no team to start with. You will build the plans yourself, and build the capability underneath you as the pipeline grows.

What you'll do

Decide what we do

• Take the pipeline of ideas and work out which are viable and which are not, before anyone starts building.
• Surface capacity constraints, supplier limits, tooling implications and lead times early enough to change the decision.
• Get the right people in the room at the start, including sales, so scope is agreed rather than assumed.
• Say no, or not by then, and come back with something that works.

Own the portfolio

• Treat everything as one portfolio rather than a pile of separate projects.
• Set what we are doing, why, in what order and against what capacity.
• Hold the stop, go and pause calls, and elevate the ones that need a wider decision.
• Give the leadership team one clear view of what is coming and where the pressure is.

Commercialise and deliver

• Own the critical path from approved brief to product on shelf.
• Supplier engagement: bottle, can and packaging partners through tooling changes, qualification and first production.
• Costing: build and hold the cost picture from concept through to launch.
• Operational validation: prove it can actually be made, at volume, to standard, by the people making it.
• Complexity evaluation: understand what a new format, market or partner really adds before we commit to it.
• Launch readiness: artwork and packaging critical path across design agencies, repro and print partners, through to on-shelf.
• Find and bring on new co-packers for the things we are not currently set up to make.
• Handle multi-market requirements including EU labelling, export packaging and market compliance.

Change how we work

• Introduce the lightest structure that does the job, and earn the right to do it by delivering first.
• Win round people who are sceptical that process helps. Some of them are very senior and very fast-moving.
• Build the capability, and in time the team, to support the next stage of growth.

What this role isn't

We would rather be clear now than waste your time.

• It isn't an ideation role. We are not asking you to run market research or dream up concepts.
• It isn't project management. If your experience is limited to taking a signed-off brief and tracking it to a date, this will not be a fit. Whilst that is required, the hard part happens before the brief is signed off.
• It isn't a technical role. Brewing, liquid and quality expertise already sit in the business.
• It isn't a governance project. We want structure, not bureaucracy. Bring a twelve-gate framework and it will be rejected, and so will you.

What you'll bring to the team

You will need to evidence all of this:

• Senior influence that changed something. You have changed how senior people want to work and made it stick, without damaging the relationship. This matters more than anything else on this list.
• Commercial judgement. You have decided whether ideas were worth doing, built the case, and told someone senior when the answer was no.
• Portfolio ownership. You have run multiple concurrent launches as a portfolio, owning sequencing and priority. Not just a tracker.
• Real packaging depth. Packaging and artwork development, design agencies, tooling, print, multi-market compliance.
• You have built structure where there wasn't any. And kept it light. We want to hear what you deliberately left out.
• Third-party manufacturing. You have held co-packers and external partners to a critical path without any contractual leverage.

Helpful, but not essential

• Drinks or alcohol experience. Food, FMCG and other consumer categories are all welcome if the packaging and commercial evidence is there.
• A network of co-packers and manufacturing partners you can bring with you.
• Experience scaling a business into new international markets.
• The instinct to spot a different route to the same commercial outcome.

What good looks like after a year

• Every live project has an owner, a plan and a visible position.
• Ideas get tested before work starts, so nothing goes into development that a retailer does not want.
• Launches land to plan rather than by firefighting.
• There is a lightweight process people actually use, because it makes their lives easier.
• The people who were most sceptical bring their ideas into the process early, rather than working around it.