Chief Operating Officer

• Quarterly profit share tied to company results with $100K+ upside at strong performance
• 401(k)
• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• Paid time off, holidays and parental leave

• South Carolina, on-site, five days a week in a manufacturing environment.
• Relocation is required for anyone outside the area
  , and the company will support the move.

Our client is a founder-owned manufacturer of consumer products. Production, supply chain and fulfillment all run in-house. The business sells primarily direct to consumers, with a growing wholesale and retail channel.

The company has never taken outside investment. There is no private equity sponsor, no board to manage and no exit clock. Decisions get made on what’s best for the business over a ten-year horizon.

Revenue is eight figures, profitable, and has grown every year since founding. Roughly 100 employees, about 80 of them in operations. The model is proven and the brand has real momentum, but the founders see this as the early stage of a much longer runway.

One thing to understand up front: the year has a pronounced peak. A large share of annual volume lands in a single spring-to-summer window, with a second bump around the holidays. Planning for that peak, and executing through it without running short or degrading service, is the defining rhythm of the operating year.

The COO owns operations, customer experience and human resources, and reports directly to a co-founder. The role sits on the executive team alongside the founders, the CFO and the CMO.

This is a hands-on operating seat, not a strategy seat. Manufacturing, fulfillment (DTC parcel and wholesale freight), supply chain, customer service and HR all roll up here. Experienced directors already lead each of those functions. What they need is a leader who has built the next stage of an operation before and can help each of them grow.

This is not a turnaround. It is a build and scale: taking a solid operation and making it excellent, while adding the capability to serve additional channels  COO owns everything required to deliver: capacity, fulfillment, freight and retail compliance.

• Own the function outright. Establish a clear operating cadence, a scorecard the executive team trusts, and reporting that gives ownership visibility without having to ask for it.
• Get through peak season without running out. Build a joint demand and production plan with the CMO, set a deliberate inventory position for peak, and make the cash impact explicit. Forecasting is a shared output, not a handoff.
• Get more out of the current facility. Drive measurable gains in units per labor hour, on-time delivery, and scrap and rework. Find margin across production, fulfillment, freight and procurement, and get full value out of the ERP.
• Build for the second channel. The company is piloting with a national retail partner and expects the channel to grow significantly. Retail demands things DTC does not: packaging and labeling standards, EDI, routing compliance, longer lead times, chargeback exposure and different inventory economics. Building that capability without compromising the DTC engine is the biggest operational project on the horizon.
• Develop the bench. Each of the directors in operations, supply chain, customer experience and HR should be measurably better a year from now, with a clear development path.
• Plan the next footprint. The company has outgrown buildings before and will again. Recommend the capacity path, whether more shifts, automation, outsourcing or a new facility, and define what the next building needs to do.

• Own production planning and execution, supporting the operations leadership team to deliver on time, on quality and on budget.
• Own end-to-end fulfillment for DTC and wholesale: accuracy, cycle time, cost per order, fill rate and customer outcome.
• Develop and manage the supply chain, procuring materials cost-effectively while holding inventory appropriate to a fast-growing, seasonal business.
• Negotiate directly with suppliers on cost, quantities and terms; manage carrier relationships and freight economics.

• Manage operational capital investment and operating expense against growth and profitability targets, in partnership with the CFO.
• Maintain constant awareness of how cash is allocated across operational inputs, especially inventory.
• Continuously identify and implement process…