The Hut has vowed to become Europe’s No.1 online retailer, following a multi-million pound investment and a string of high profile new recruits.

The firm plans to extend its white label business globally, with a target of increasing its turnover by 800 per cent from £25 million to £200 million over the next 12 months.

The Cheshire-based company has recently hired Play.com veterans Gian Luzio and Richard Chapple, and has opened a new UK warehouse following the appointment of Simon Parker as operations director.

Parker joins The Hut from Centresoft, where he spent six years managing the distributor’s warehouse team.

“Simon has a huge amount of knowledge in operational efficiencies and warehouse management, and will bring ideas and practices that will improve our overall customer experience,” said The Hut Group CEO Matthew Moulding.

“Simon is a brilliant addition to the board of directors and will assist in delivering our ambition to be Europe’s number one online retailer.”

Parker added: “The Hut Group has recently become the great success story in online retail and I am really looking forward to joining the team and bringing my expertise to the table.

“The next few weeks and months will see some dramatic improvements to The Group’s operations which will help take the company from £25m turnover to £200m in the next year. I am hugely excited by the opportunity to work with the most experienced team in UK online retail.”

The Hut’s retail websites include Thehut.com and Zavvi.co.uk. The specialist also produces white label sites for the likes of Woolworths, WHSmith, Asda and Tesco, as well as handling the games offering for Chips and mobile specialist Phones4U.