I'm Dan Sullivan. I recruit commercial, technical and leadership talent for manufacturers, brands and suppliers across 24 market segments, from a first sales hire to a board-level appointment.
Huntr was the first recruitment business set up solely for this market. Retained search: one recruiter, engaged properly, accountable for the result.
One market. UK & Ireland. Full depth.
What I am hired for
Sales Director, Commercial Director, Country Manager, Managing Director and board-level appointments. Permanent, interim or fractional. Confidential search for the moments with the most riding on them: market entry, post-acquisition integration, private equity value-creation plans, succession.
How I work at this level →Regional Sales, BDM, National Account Manager, Sales Executive, Brand Ambassador, Account Manager. A regional sales hire decides which distributors trust the brand for the next five years, and the right profile depends on your position in the market. When the hire matters, the search should start with the best people, not the available ones. The three profiles below explain why most briefs miss.
The three profiles →Marketing, product management, category management, garment technology, quality and compliance. Sourced from inside the sector and from the adjacent industries where the discipline transfers.
Why these hires matter →Geography: UK and Ireland. I regularly work with European-parented manufacturers hiring for the UK market, where the decision sits abroad but the market knowledge needs to sit here.
The market
The PPE, workwear and safety sector covers more ground than it appears to from the outside. Single-category specialists and head-to-toe providers. National distributors and independent suppliers. Multinorm workwear manufacturers, technical fabric producers, blue light and defence, workplace safety equipment, wearable technology. Each part of this market has its own sales model, its own candidate profiles and its own hiring problems.
Some agencies run a safety desk alongside everything else they do. Huntr was built solely for this sector, the first of its kind, and nothing else has been on the desk since 2009.
I have mapped this market across 24 distinct segments: the Huntr Map™. That structure informs every search I run: how I identify candidates, how I assess whether experience genuinely transfers between segments, and how I advise clients on the profile they actually need rather than the one described in the brief.
The market also has a structural problem. The traditional route into it, five to ten years in distribution before moving to a manufacturer, is breaking down. The specialists who built their knowledge that way are retiring. The generation behind them is not entering in the same numbers, and those who do tend to leave within two years. The pool of experienced, sector-fluent commercial people is shrinking. This is structural, not cyclical, and it is why the strongest candidates in this market are almost never the ones responding to adverts.
The Huntr Map™ · 2026 edition
● Core manufacturer segments where most assignments sit. ● Segments where assignments regularly cross borders. The map covers the full supply chain from fibre to end-user.
This grid is the index. The Huntr Map behind it runs to company level: who operates in each segment, their brand tier, their ownership (private equity, family, network or listed) and how candidates move between them. That layer stays private. It is what you engage.
Sales hiring
There are three distinct sales profiles in this market, and most hiring briefs confuse them. The mismatch between the profile and the brand's position in its market is the single most common reason a commercial hire fails here, and it applies at every level, from a first regional sales hire to a Country Manager appointment. It is not lack of experience. It is a structural mismatch that stays invisible until month six.
Brands with established distribution need people who can manage and grow distributor relationships, protect positioning, and build share within accounts that already stock the product. These candidates are embedded in established businesses and rarely move unless the proposition is exceptional.
Challenger brands need people who work both sides of the channel at once: holding existing accounts while opening new ones, selling against better-known competitors, creating end-user demand the distributor then captures. The scarcest profile, and the hardest to identify from a CV alone.
New entrants need people who can build from nothing: creating demand at end-user level and pulling sales back through a channel that does not yet know or trust the brand. Comfortable with uncertainty. A fundamentally different person from the relationship manager, even when both CVs say territory sales.
The candidate who thrived at an established brand will often struggle at a new entrant. The person who built a territory from scratch may have no interest in managing one that already exists.
This applies across borders too. A brand that leads its home market is often an unknown new entrant in the UK, and the profile that works at home is not the profile that works here. The first UK hire is where that lesson is usually learned, at full price.
The brief review
Twenty minutes, no commitment, no fee. I will tell you three things: which profile your brief will attract, which profile the role actually needs, and whether the package is realistic for the candidate pool that exists.
Send a brief for reviewLeadership, private equity & M&A
When a manufacturer enters the UK, organically or through acquisition, the first senior hire sets the commercial trajectory for three years. Get it right and channel development compresses into eighteen months. Get it wrong and the distribution window closes while the successor search runs. The difference is rarely sector knowledge: it is whether the person has built something from scratch or only managed something that already existed.
Private equity sharpens all of this: a value-creation plan, an investment-led board, a hold-period clock that does not pause. When a client asks for "PE experience," the useful question is which element actually matters: board reporting discipline, speed of execution, cost discipline tied to the exit multiple, comfort with restructuring, or managing upward into that board. The candidate with all five barely exists. The realistic brief takes the two or three that matter. That conversation, before the search begins, is where most of the value sits.
I track ownership and deal activity across the sector as a matter of routine, because every acquisition starts the same clock.
The hold-period hiring rhythm. Every acquisition in this sector starts this clock.
Not every need inside a hold period is a permanent hire. Integration leadership, a commercial rebuild, cover while a permanent search runs: these are defined-duration problems. The retirement wave moving through this sector means some of its most experienced operators are now available on interim and fractional terms, and I know who they are. If the timeline needs a proven operator for eighteen months rather than a career hire, that conversation starts quickly.
Senior appointments in this market are usually confidential: a replacement still in post, a restructure not yet announced, a market entry not yet public. This level of search never involves an advert. If you are working with a board or an investor on an appointment like this, the conversation starts quietly and stays that way.
Product, marketing & technical
In a channel-led market these can be treated as support functions and hired with less scrutiny than a sales role. They are not support functions. The product manager decides the range the whole channel then lives with. The marketing manager decides whether end-user demand exists for the channel to capture. Quality and compliance is the licence to trade. Every sales hire on this page executes decisions these people make first.
A range decision is hard to reverse once distributors have listed it, and the pressure on product capability is rising from two directions: consumer brands entering the sector with sports-grade development discipline, and materials technology moving faster than most PPE ranges. Wearable tech, impact protection, sustainable fabrics. The product manager who can read both the standards and the market is now a competitive weapon, not an administrator.
Marketing in this sector reads differently: place means the distribution channel, and promotion means creating end-user demand the distributor then captures. For a challenger brand, marketing is not brand polish. It is the pull mechanism the salesforce depends on. Trade marketing, exhibitions, distributor support, specification work: traditional disciplines that decide whether demand pulls through the channel.
Certification is not paperwork. It is the product's permission to exist. And the scope is widening: ESG and supply-chain due diligence are now scored in tenders, sustainability claims are scrutinised, and a compliance failure travels through this close-knit market fast. The person who signs these things off carries more commercial weight than most org charts admit.
Where these candidates come from. The sector's own pool for these functions is small, and the right person is not always available at the moment you need them. That is when strong candidates from adjacent industries such as consumer durables, sports and apparel become a genuine option: the product discipline, marketing rigour and compliance culture transfer directly. Sector knowledge is trainable. Judgement is not.
How I work
Most businesses in this market have used recruiters before and been let down. That experience deserves to be taken seriously. It is usually the model that failed, not the idea.
✗I do not join contingency races.
✗I do not send speculative CVs.
✗I do not work for every business in the market at once.
✓What that leaves is one simple idea: you engage one recruiter, properly, and that recruiter is accountable for filling the role.
If the salary is wrong, the profile does not exist, or the brief will not survive the market, you hear it before the search begins, not at week twelve. Expectations set honestly at the start are why retained searches complete.
The search runs until the role is filled, because that is what accountable for the result means. Offers made through Huntr stick: nineteen of every twenty put to candidates are accepted. The market average sits at roughly half.
If the hire does not work out within the cover period, I run the search again at no additional cost. No conditions, no small print. The level of cover is your choice, agreed with the fee before the search begins.
Download the one-page guide to how I work, including fee structure →
There are no client logos on this site, deliberately. In a market where everyone knows everyone, discretion is part of the service. Named references are available in conversation, with permission.
The Huntr standard
Not a menu of options. Every retained assignment gets all of it, and the fee covers all of it.
Every search runs against the Huntr Map: advertising where the role warrants it, database, referrals and direct headhunt, simultaneously rather than sequentially. Nothing excluded, nobody missed.
The strongest people in this market are not looking. They are identified by name and approached with discretion.
Before the search starts, the brief is tested against your market position. If the profile described will not solve the problem, you hear it before it costs anything.
Your in-house assessment is welcome. It slots in after my work. I test whether a track record belongs to the candidate or the brand behind them, and whether the profile fits your position in this market.
Agreed upfront, paid in two stages, and a fraction of the cost of the alternative: an uncovered territory, a compromise hire who leaves at month nine.
Six months as standard. Extend to twelve, or reduce to three at a lower fee. Protection agreed upfront, priced honestly. No small print.
Your people are not candidates for my other searches. A contingency firm working the whole market cannot offer you that. I can, because I do not work for everyone.
A small number of assignments at a time. Every search gets full attention and a network built since 2009: who is where, and who actually owns their relationships.
Placed candidates receive structured support for the transition, including dedicated guides for the first 90 days and for moving from distribution to a manufacturer role. The search does not end at the offer letter.
In a market where everyone knows everyone, confidentiality is not an add-on. Client names stay private unless there is a reason and permission to share them.
Some of my regular work comes from in-house talent teams: the brief that needs more time than the week allows, or a lower profile than an advert can give. I work inside your systems and processes, not around them, and communication stays simple. Support when you need it, not a replacement for what you do.
Market insight
Why the candidate who succeeded at an established brand fails at a new entrant, and how to tell which one your brief actually needs.
Read on LinkedIn →Track records in this market often belong to the brand, not the person. The questions that separate the two.
Read on LinkedIn →Three sports brands, three different licensing models, one bet on how workers choose their footwear. What it means for the established players.
Read on LinkedIn →The distribution-to-manufacturer route that built a generation of specialists is disappearing, and nothing has replaced it yet.
Read on LinkedIn →For candidates
Retained searches in this market are rarely advertised: a replacement still in post, a restructure not yet announced, a market entry not yet public. Live roles never appear on this site, and the absence of a jobs page tells you how the work is done, not how little of it there is.
A straight read on where you sit in this market: what your experience genuinely transfers to, what it does not, and which parts of your track record belong to you rather than the brand behind you. After a proper conversation you get that in writing: a considered note, not a CV acknowledgement. Nobody else in this sector does that.
Nothing moves without your explicit consent. Your CV is never circulated speculatively, your name is never floated to see what comes back, and a conversation with me is not a signal to the market that you are looking. That is the same discretion clients get, and it is why the strongest people in this market take the call.
The reverse search
Most of my work starts with a vacancy. Once in a while it starts with a person: someone exceptional becomes available before any role is advertised, and I take them, with their consent, to a small number of businesses where the fit is obvious. One candidate. A handful of employers. Never a CV circulated to see what comes back.
Start a conversation
Most hiring decisions in this market are made with less certainty than they deserve. A conversation here changes that: where you sit in the market, what the candidate pool for your plan actually looks like, and what the next hire needs to deliver. Whether we work together afterwards is a separate question.
Candidates: everything above about discretion applies to you too. One conversation, in confidence, whenever the timing is right for you.