Breaking borders: How challenger brands get listings with international buyers

Gareth Roots 

Head of buying

Gareth has over 18 years’ experience in retail and has held numerous buying, insight, and commercial roles within Sainsbury’s.  In addition to working at Sainsbury’s Gareth has worked on the supplier side of retail as a head of commercial where he was responsible for account management across a number of large retailer customers. In that role he also worked with a number of brands to develop branded gifting products. 

Gareth joined Curatyx in 2023 as the head of buying where he is responsible for working with branded suppliers on developing propositions for Curatyx’s export customers.

Avi Moor

Founder and director

Avi is the founder and CEO of Distinctive, a B2B UK grocery distribution business and a founder and director of Curatyx, a retail solutions company connecting global food brands with international markets. Previously, Avi worked for Sainsbury’s for over 10 years in various senior commercial roles, including leading the UK bakery business, petrol & kiosk, mobile telecoms and heading Sainsbury’s new business development team.
Before Sainsbury’s, Avi worked for IBM Management Consulting Services and Tefen Management Consulting, specialising in supply chain and operations strategy. Avi holds an MBA from London Business School and an MSc in Industrial Engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. 

Mike Luck

Founder and CEO

Mike is a commercial, values-based, entrepreneurial leader, who is motivated by creating value through innovation and change. He offers broad retail experience across multiple sectors, including food, pharmacy and healthcare, fuel / forecourts, general merchandise, clothing, as well as B2B.

Mike has led businesses with sales of £7 billion, pharmacy with sales of £300 million, and fuel / forecourts with sales of £5 billion. He helped build a B2B food business from the ground up to over £150 million in sales, with over 100 franchise stores and international sales in 11 territories. He has also played leading roles in driving through strategic sourcing programmes, which resulted in delivering over £100 million in savings whilst improving product quality. His extensive category management experience in both chilled and ambient categories.

Rebecca Hardy

General manager, Middle East

Former head of technical across a wide variety of chilled, ambient and frozen product categories at Sainsbury’s. Rebecca has a Food Science MSC and 14 years of product quality and supplier management experience. Although British, Rebecca currently resides in Dubai which provides unique insight into the Middle East retail market.

Rebecca joined Curatyx in 2023 as the general manager for the Middle East where she supports our retail customers and works collaboratively to build unique category ranges and customer propositions. Using her technical experience Rebecca leads our product registration process, in collaboration with each retailer, for import within all territories. 

Founded in 2022, Curatyx is a global sourcing solution provider, working with British brand giants in international markets. The international demand for British retail products is high, and Curatyx is here to supply.

Spearheaded by a highly experienced team of professionals with backgrounds from Sainsbury’s, Curatyx supplies Sainsbury’s private label products and other leading brands, ambient, chilled and frozen to customers by road, sea and air. The company is expanding rapidly and is currently already supplying to customers in the Channel Islands, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Qatar, Singapore, Malaysia, Cayman Islands, Malta and Cyprus. It is also about to expand to new territories in the Far East and North America.