Leeds-based Sanctuary Bathrooms has expanded its in-house marketing team by 60% in 2026, appointing its first dedicated PR and social media roles as the family-run retailer invests in specialist in-house expertise following a record year for online revenue.
Rebecca Parvin-Graham (right) has joined as digital PR Manager and Halle Audsley (left) as social media manager, with the pair among three new appointments to Sanctuary Bathrooms’ marketing team this year. The hires take the team from five to eight people and mark the latest evolution of a marketing function that began with the company’s first in-house marketing appointment in 2020.
Parvin-Graham’s appointment establishes a dedicated PR function within Sanctuary Bathrooms for the first time, with media relations and digital PR now managed entirely in-house. Halle’s appointment similarly gives the retailer dedicated internal ownership of its social media strategy, while she also oversees its current relationships with external agencies as part of the wider marketing mix.
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Five new employees have joined the family-run retailer across its operations during 2026, taking overall headcount from 24 to 29. The 20% increase in company headcount comes alongside further investment in the retailer’s physical footprint, with Sanctuary Bathrooms more than doubling its warehouse capacity this year.
The appointments follow a double-digit year-on-year increase in both online revenue and transactions between 2024 and 2025, with 2025 setting a new record for online revenue. Digital engagement also increased significantly over the same period, with both website sessions and page views growing by more than 20%, according to GA4 data.
Born and raised in Leeds, Parvin-Graham brings experience spanning both agency and in-house media relations. Most recently, she led global PR and communications for SaaS companies BrightHR and TestGorilla. At TestGorilla, she was the company’s first in-house PR Manager and helped build its international media profile from the ground up.
At Sanctuary Bathrooms, she will build and lead the retailer’s PR function entirely in-house, with responsibility for raising its profile across regional, national, trade, and consumer media. Her remit also includes strengthening journalist relationships across the KBB sector and beyond, while using digital PR to support the company’s wider organic search and online growth ambitions.
The strategy will see her build brand authority through relevant, high-quality earned media and original expert-led content, helping to ensure Sanctuary Bathrooms has a strong and credible digital footprint for both human audiences and the AI-powered search platforms increasingly mediating online discovery.
Audsley joins from Buy It Direct Group, where she worked as a marketing executive, and brings experience across a range of social media, marketing, and commercial roles. At Sanctuary Bathrooms, she will lead social media strategy and take responsibility for email marketing, helping to create a more consistent and joined-up approach across the retailer’s owned digital channels.
Digital Marketing Manager Mark Fullilove, who joined Sanctuary Bathrooms in 2020 as the retailer’s first in-house marketing appointment, said: “Six years ago, when I joined Sanctuary Bathrooms, we set some ambitious internal growth targets, which we continue to meet and surpass. This has allowed us to bring in dedicated PR and social media specialists and operate these channels all year round, allowing us to be more flexible with campaigns and build upon our existing reputation as a family-run bathroom brand people can trust. Bringing PR and social media in-house will also help us be more proactive and build stronger media relationships, with the aim of strengthening our visibility across multi-channel touchpoints as well as modern ways of searching and engaging with brands, and further improving brand awareness across the UK.”
Parvin-Graham added: “Having grown up in Leeds, joining an ambitious family-run business in my home city at this point in its growth was a particularly exciting opportunity. Sanctuary Bathrooms has spent more than four decades building its reputation around family values and personal service, while developing a national online customer base. My focus now is on turning that expertise, heritage, and growth into stories that engage journalists and introduce the brand to wider audiences.
“As AI-powered search develops, credible earned media is becoming even more important to how brands are understood, discovered, and surfaced online, making a strong body of independent, authoritative coverage a valuable driver of long-term brand visibility. For me, that makes the fundamentals of good PR more valuable, not less: original stories, trusted expertise, and strong journalist relationships will remain essential, even as AI improves how efficiently we work.
“Bringing PR fully in-house means being much closer to the business, its people, and its expertise. That gives us the opportunity to identify stories earlier, respond quickly to the news agenda, and build stronger media relationships, while connecting earned media more closely with our wider brand, search, and commercial growth objectives.”
