Appointments: Head of film for Hut; intern for NJL

ONLINE entertainment retailer The Hut Group has appointed Markus Bhatia as Head of Film and TV to manage the growth of the DVD and Blu-ray categories, and push product strategy.

Mr Bhatia will work across TheHut.com and Zavvi to devise a robust product offering. He joins The Hut Group from Zavvi, where he spent two years as head of DVD and Blu-ray. Prior to this, he built up significant expertise in bricks and mortar retail, spending eight years managing the expansion of Virgin stores across the UK and Europe.

Gian Luzio, product director at The Hut Group, said:, “Markus has a huge amount of knowledge within the entertainment sector and brings ideas that will improve our overall customer experience. Markus is an excellent addition to the trading team and will assist in delivering our ambition to be Europe’s number one online retailer.”

Mr Bhatia said: “Initially, I aim to increase our box-set offering which alone will be worth £20m for us in the next year. I am delighted to see revenues have dramatically increased from the new Zavvi site, which demonstrates how important the internet is in entertainment retail.”

::

PROPERTY development consultancy NJL Consulting has expanded its team with an intern from The University of Manchester’s Graduate Internship Programme.

The programme offers paid short-term internship opportunities to the university’s recent graduates to bridge the gap from further education to full-time professional.

Jonathan Harper, who graduated this year with an MA in Town and Country Planning, is spending an initial four months with NJL, after which he will hope to become a permanent member of the team on the company’s graduate trainee programme.

Nick Lee, partner at NJL, said: “Jonathan will benefit from the extensive training on our graduate trainee programme and we’re delighted to be able to link up with the university on this excellent scheme. There are many talented graduates out there looking for jobs and this helps give them a foot in the door.

“Its disappointing that some of the larger planning teams across the country are announcing large scale redundancies, particularly in relation to junior roles, rather than adapting their businesses to take advantage of the opportunities that are out there.”