CONSUMER BRANDSSECTOR · UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Finance leadership for consumer brands and e-commerce.

Gross margin looks healthy and the business still cannot make payroll. Shipping, payment fees, returns and advertising are never loaded into the margin, and platform-reported return on ad spend double-counts the same order across several channels, so revenue is scaled on a number that is not real. Inventory is bought before it is sold, which means every incremental dollar of growth consumes cash. It arrives as a sentence: we are growing sixty percent and we cannot make payroll.
THE MEASURE THAT FINDS ITContribution margin after everything, not gross margin
WHAT WE DO ABOUT IT, BELOWREMOTE-FIRST, ON SITE WHEN IT CHANGES THE OUTCOME
How We Run It Here
01 / 03
What a finance function in this sector actually needs.

We build stacked contribution margin — after shipping, after fees, after returns, after advertising — because that is the only margin that tells you whether an order was worth taking. Blended acquisition cost and blended marketing efficiency at the business level, not platform-attributed, so the same sale is counted once.

Profitability is rebuilt per item and per channel with marketplace commissions, fulfilment and storage penalties loaded in, and returns are run as a real line with a reserve against them rather than a surprise. Multi-channel settlement timing is reconciled properly, because each channel recognizes and pays differently.

Then the structural problem: inventory financing. Buying terms, turns, and the working capital facility modeled together, so growth is funded deliberately. Sales tax registration is mapped across every state and province where a threshold has been crossed — and Canada is heavier than most operators expect, because the provincial taxes are not all harmonized and each has its own rules.

WHO YOUR CFO DRAWS ON FOR THIS SECTOR

Costing and channel analysts, plus indirect tax specialists on both sides of the border

What Changes
02 / 03
What you can do afterwards that you cannot do now.
Know the contribution on an order before you spend to win it. Fund growth without the inventory cycle eating it. Register where you are actually obliged to, before a jurisdiction finds you.
Who Holds The Seat
03 / 03
Matched to the sector, not to the postcode.
We hire for what somebody has run rather than where they live, which is the only reason we can put a CFO in your seat who has already done this in a business like yours.
YOUR CFO, FOR THIS SECTORHas run a brand through an inventory-financed growth year

With a named controller alongside them, a named backup on every seat, and the specialist bench behind both — all inside one fixed monthly fee.

THE OTHER ELEVEN
The rest of the scope.
Nobody needs all of it at once. The diagnostic decides which two or three matter first in your business, and you keep that assessment either way.
What Happens Next

Your sector is one conversation away from a written answer. Start with what is actually going on.

One hour on your business, with the CFO who would hold the seat rather than a salesperson. Nothing to prepare and nothing to sign. A written note back within two working days saying what we heard and what we would look at first.
ONE HOUR · NO CHARGE · A WRITTEN NOTE BACK WITHIN TWO WORKING DAYS
THE HOURWhat the business does, how the cash moves through it, and what would have to be different in a year.
THE NOTEWhat we heard and what we would look at first, in writing, within two working days.
THE PODA CFO who has run finance in this sector before, with a named backup who already knows your file.
THE STANDARDClose by the seventh working day, pack on the eighth, and a published response standard in between.