Tjarks & Tjarks has strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Alex Poulton as head of UK client services for Europe and Donna West as creative director. The senior hires continue the international retail and brand packaging design agency’s focus on scaling at pace, supported by AI-enabled efficiency and compliance.
Based in the company’s London office, Poulton joins the agency to lead its European client services function, bringing more than 20 years’ experience to her new role encompassing food retail, product development, commercial strategy and international partnerships. Fluent in German and English, she will support the agency’s long-standing relationships with major European retail clients while helping to drive operational excellence as the business continues to grow.
Throughout her career, Poulton has worked across complex international retail environments in the UK and Europe, including leading buying functions, and launching new products and categories for one of Europe’s biggest supermarket chains. She also spent eight years as Head of Food Product for a major brand, managing strategic partnerships from concept through to market.
Poulton’s experiece gives her a deep understanding of both the commercial and operational challenges facing brands and retailers, alongside a collaborative approach to building trusted, long-term client relationships.
Poulton comments: “Tjarks & Tjarks is growing at pace, delivering at scale, and investing in innovation. Building strong relationships has always been at the heart of how I work, and I’m excited to be joining a business that genuinely values partnership and delivers outstanding service.”
West’s new role as creative director at Tjarks & Tjarks builds on her distinguished career in brand and packaging design, which has seen her work at many of the world’s leading agencies over the past 27 years.
West brings extensive experience across branding, packaging and shopper engagement to the agency. In her new role, she will lead the Tjarks & Tjarks design team, nurturing creative talent while driving the next stage of the company’s creative evolution as it expands its work beyond traditional retail execution into broader brand and conceptual design.
Passionate about helping brands build meaningful emotional connections with consumers, West is experienced in integrating AI into creative workflows to enhance, rather than replace, human creativity. Her experience aligns with Tjarks & Tjarks’ use of AI to support ideation, streamline production and remove administrative tasks, allowing designers to focus more of their time on strategic thinking and creative development.
“This is an exciting moment to join Tjarks & Tjarks,” West comments, “because the business not only has a clear vision for where it wants to go creatively; it also has a voracious appetite to innovate and drive efficiency. Great design has always been about creating ideas that connect emotionally with people, and I believe that the way Tjarks & Tjarks is embedding AI into proven processes can complement human creativity while delivering huge commercial and speed to market benefits for our clients.”
Together, the appointments further strengthen Tjarks & Tjarks’ leadership team at a time of sustained momentum for the business. They also demonstrate the company’s ability to attract world class talent, which includes the recent appointment of influential packaging guru, Michael Draper, as Senior Vice President Client Engagement.
Nico Tjarks, director at Tjarks & Tjarks, adds: “Alex and Donna both bring exceptional experience to Tjarks & Tjarks, and, just as importantly they share our values, our ambition and our vision for doing things differently. As we continue to grow, investing in outstanding people is essential to delivering the next chapter of the business.
“We’re building a business that combines outstanding people, deep retail expertise and intelligent use of AI to deliver even greater value for our clients, and Alex and Donna will both play a central role in that future.”
