The company racked-up a pre-tax loss of £14.1m during the half-year to June 27 2015  and warned that full year results will be below market expectations.

HSS floated on the Stock Exchange in February at 210p per share. Its current share price at yesterday’s close was 58.5p.

Alan Peterson, Chairman of HSS, said: “John’s record and strong leadership skills have ensured that he has been a central part of the Board’s thinking on succession planning for some time.

“John has been closely involved in developing and implementing the Group’s distribution and logistics strategy and is ideally placed to lead the rebasing of our cost structure and make improvements to operating margin.

“I’m confident that he will make the step-up to the Chief Executive role quickly and effectively.

“Chris has made an outstanding contribution to the development of the business since 2006 when he led the Company through a change in strategy and steered it successfully through the financial crisis.

“He is an excellent leader of people with very strong sales and marketing skills and on behalf of the whole company I would like to thank him for his professionalism, hard work and leadership and for the clear strategic direction that he has set for the group.”