Mercer Move: Footasylum Lands Its Most Ambitious CEO Yet

With deep roots at Adidas and Gymshark, Hannah Mercer brings a rare blend of global brand discipline and community-led retail thinking to one of the UK's most distinctive youth fashion businesses.

When Footasylum confirmed the appointment of Hannah Mercer as its new chief executive in March 2026, it signalled something more than a routine leadership change. For a business that has spent the past three years proving it can grow profitably on its own terms — free of the shadow of JD Sports — the hire represents a deliberate step up in ambition.

Mercer, who joins from Gymshark where she served as global general manager for wholesale, retail and franchise, will take the helm in May. She succeeds David Pujolar, who departed in February after just under a year in post, with Aurelius Group's own Stephan Rahmede covering the role on an interim basis. The speed of the appointment, and the calibre of the candidate secured, suggests the Aurelius team moved with real conviction.

A CV Built for This Moment

On paper, Mercer's career reads like a masterclass in exactly the kind of omnichannel, brand-led retail that Footasylum is trying to scale. She spent more than six years at Adidas in senior global vice-president roles spanning retail operations, franchise and key cities — a period that gave her exposure to one of the most complex and commercially demanding multi-channel environments in global sportswear. Before that, she held leadership positions at Nike, Harrods, House of Fraser and Value Retail, accumulating experience across premium, mass-market and outlet formats.

In April 2024, she was recruited by Gymshark to head up a newly created general manager role for wholesale and retail — the first appointment of its kind at the Solihull-based brand. The hire was telling: Gymshark, then best known as a pure-play digital business built around social content and community, was making its first serious structural commitment to physical retail. Mercer was the person trusted to lead that transformation.

"Gymshark was making its first serious structural commitment to physical retail. Mercer was the person trusted to lead that transformation."

During her two years in the role, she oversaw the expansion of Gymshark's retail, franchise and wholesale operations across international markets — building the operational infrastructure and brand partnerships required to take a digitally native business into bricks-and-mortar without losing what made it culturally compelling in the first place. It is a skill set that translates directly to Footasylum's current strategic priorities.

The State of Play at Footasylum

Mercer arrives at a business in genuinely strong shape. Footasylum's most recent full-year results, for the year ended January 2025, showed revenue up 9.4% to £349.5m, with underlying EBITDA climbing 26% to £28.2m and profit before tax rising 188% to £17.2m. Comparable trading in the first 21 weeks of the current financial year was running 10.5% ahead of the prior year at the time of reporting — a trajectory that has continued into the spring.

The store estate is growing with purpose. Seven new or upsized locations opened in FY25, with a further six planned across the remainder of calendar 2025 and additional sites confirmed for 2026, including an expanded presence at Leeds Trinity. Online sales now represent 41% of total revenue, having grown 6% year-on-year to £143.1m — a meaningful contribution but one that underscores how important the physical channel remains to the brand's identity.

Perhaps most significantly, Footasylum's exclusive brand division more than doubled in the year, growing 101% to £33.7m and reaching 10% of total revenue. Juniorwear grew 42% and the nursery category 45% — categories that signal broadening household relevance beyond the core 16 to 24-year-old demographic that the brand has historically owned.

Internationally, Footasylum has begun moving. A distribution partnership with Mad Agency now covers Germany and Austria, and the business has entered the Gulf region — modest in scale, but directionally significant. The infrastructure for cross-border growth is being laid, even if the revenues remain heavily domestic for now.

Where Mercer Can Add Value

The challenge Mercer inherits is one of intelligent acceleration. Footasylum has demonstrated it can grow sales and profit simultaneously; the question now is how far and how fast it can extend that model without diluting what makes the brand genuinely different.

Her Gymshark experience is arguably the most directly applicable credential for this moment. Like Gymshark, Footasylum has built its identity on community, content and cultural authenticity — areas where it won Best Use of Social Media at the 2025 Drapers Footwear Awards. But like Gymshark, it now needs to translate that digital and cultural equity into a globally scalable physical retail proposition. Mercer has done precisely this, and in a format — athleticwear, youth culture, franchise and wholesale — that mirrors Footasylum's own growth vectors.

Her Adidas background gives her a different, equally valuable layer of capability: the ability to manage complex brand relationships at scale. As Footasylum's own exclusive brand ambitions grow — now representing one pound in every ten of revenue — understanding how to build brand equity rather than simply distribute it becomes a critical leadership competency. Mercer brings that fluency from both sides of the brand relationship.

"The question now is how far and how fast Footasylum can extend its model without diluting what makes the brand genuinely different."

On the international front, Footasylum's expansion into DACH and the Gulf is still in its early stages, and the business has publicly flagged medium-term international growth as a priority. Mercer's track record of scaling operations across global markets — built across Adidas and Gymshark — gives the business credibility and capability in this area that previous leadership arguably lacked.

There is also a franchise and wholesale dimension worth watching. The 101% growth in Footasylum's exclusive brand through wholesale channels is a striking datapoint, and suggests real appetite from retail partners for what Footasylum's own-brand offer represents. Structuring and scaling those partnerships — knowing how to protect brand integrity while driving commercial volume — is exactly the kind of work Mercer has spent a decade doing.

A Considered Appointment

Stephan Rahmede, Aurelius's senior representative, was clear in articulating what the business was looking for: someone who combines commercial discipline with a deep understanding of how category management, brand and community interact to drive engagement. It is a more sophisticated brief than the typical sportswear retail CEO spec, and Mercer's profile maps to it with unusual precision.

For Footasylum, which has spent recent years demonstrating it is something more than a JD Sports alternative, the appointment represents a meaningful statement of intent. This is not a safe hire or a steady-state appointment — it is a signal that Aurelius believes the business has a larger opportunity, and is backing a leader with the credentials to pursue it.

Mercer herself has spoken of seeing significant opportunity at Footasylum, both in the UK and internationally, and of the brand's powerful identity and highly engaged customer base. Given her vantage point — having watched both Gymshark and Adidas build and extend their own communities globally — that assessment carries weight.

The combination of a business with genuine commercial momentum, a shareholder with the appetite to invest, and a CEO with exactly the right blend of brand, community and operational experience is not one that comes together often in UK retail. As Mercer prepares to take the helm in May, Footasylum looks well positioned for the next chapter.

Hannah Mercer joins Footasylum as CEO in May 2026, succeeding David Pujolar. She joins from Gymshark, where she was global general manager for wholesale, retail and franchise. Prior to Gymshark, she held senior vice-president roles at Adidas across retail, franchise and key cities.