The deal has seen co-founders David Torr, Christopher Verster-Cohen and Katherine Barry, as well as the early-stage team which was responsible for the company’s phenomenal growth, exit the business and hand the executive reins to Silvertree’s Peter Allerstorfer and his team. Torr remains a board member of the company.
“Peter is a great executive with a keen eye for detail, I look forward to watching from the sidelines as UCook explores new avenues,” says Torr. “We’re immensely proud of what we built, but I felt it was time to exit the business to allow me to focus on other ventures”.
Verster-Cohen also felt the time was right to move on from UCook: “We built a phenomenal brand from nothing in a relatively short space of time and although we had plenty of ideas for the next steps in its evolution, it was time to step away and devote some time to other exciting projects which have been simmering in the background for a while”.
UCook was one of three projects Torr was working on as the brand took off – and he’s following a similar plan now, with an array of projects in varied fields, in the works. One of the first is premium skincare brand Lelive, where he’s the cofounder – focusing on strategy – alongside Amanda du-Pont. He’s working on capitalising the others and working through funding rounds to set the wheels in motion.
“It’s exciting to be working on building a few things from the ground up again,” he says. “There’s so much opportunity in South Africa and it’s a privilege to be working from a position of having learned the hard lessons from establishing UCook – and applying that knowledge to operating in some really innovative new spaces. I’m also bringing that underdog mentality we had when we started UCook to these new ventures, which I think will remain a key way of approaching business, for myself and my co-founders”.
