About the Company
Our client is a D2C outdoor furniture company selling premium outdoor living products directly to American homeowners. We cut out the middlemen, manufacture to an exacting standard, and ship a physical, high-ticket product that has to arrive perfect. We’re a fast-scaling, direct-to-consumer physical-goods business with real inventory, real freight, real suppliers in China, and real customers who expect a flawless experience from checkout to delivery.
We’re now at the stage where the finance function needs to grow up. We’re looking for a CFO who has built one before - and who will roll up their sleeves to build ours.
The Role
This is not a CFO who sits above the work and waits for a deck to be handed up. This is a hands-on, operator-grade CFO who has personally lived through scaling a physical-goods business from eight figures toward nine - and out the other side through an exit.
You’ve done this before. You know where the bodies are buried in a D2C P&L, how inventory and cash actually move, what a Chinese supplier negotiation really hinges on, how to protect product IP, and what a buyer’s diligence team will pick apart on the way to a sale. You bring a calm, experienced head to a fast, sometimes chaotic environment - and you make order out of it.
You will own finance end-to-end: the model, the forecast, the cash, the controls, the compliance, the supplier and payment relationships, and the long-game work of building enterprise value toward a future exit.
What You’ll Own
- Forecasting & scaling models. Build and run the financial model that takes us from where we are to $100M+ - unit economics, contribution margin, cash-conversion cycle, inventory-financed growth, and scenario planning that holds up under pressure.
- Cash & working capital. Manage cash like it’s your own. Inventory, freight, supplier terms, and D2C payment timing all collide here - you keep us liquid while we scale.
- Inventory & physical-goods finance. Understand how product actually moves - landed cost, COGS, freight, duties, returns, dead stock - and turn that into clean numbers and better decisions.
- Supplier & China relationships. Support and strengthen negotiations with our Chinese manufacturing partners - terms, pricing, payment structures, and risk.
- Payments & customer money. Own the payment stack (Stripe and other processors), chargebacks, refunds, and the financial side of customer experience.
- Compliance, legal & IP - non-negotiable. Keep us clean and protected: financial and regulatory compliance, contracts, and the protection of our product IP, patents, and brand.
- Enterprise value & exit readiness. Understand valuation drivers cold. Build the business - and the books, data room, and story - so that we’re always one conversation away from a credible exit.
- The finance function itself. Stand up the systems, controls, reporting, and eventually the small team. Early on, you’re doing the work, not just directing it.
Who You Are - Must-Haves
- A veteran, hands-on CFO. 20+ years in finance leadership. You’ve operated without an army beneath you - you’ve been the head of FP&A, the head of accounting and the CFO, all at once, when the business needed it. You’re as comfortable in the model as in the boardroom.
- Heavy US experience. Deep command of the US operating, regulatory, banking, and tax environment.
- Scaled it and exited it. You have personally taken a business through scale-up and a successful exit. This is a requirement, not a bonus.
- Battle-tested. You’ve seen real adversity - restructurings, distressed situations, even bankruptcies - and come out sharper. You’ve made something out of chaos before, and you’re not rattled by it.
- Physical goods in your bones. You understand inventory, landed cost, freight, and how cash gets tied up in product. You are not a pure-SaaS CFO learning what a container is.
- Compliance, legal & IP fluency. Comfortable owning compliance, contracts, and IP/patent protection in a product-based business.
- Right scale. You’ve owned finance for businesses in the ~$20M-$150M+ revenue range or grown one across that range.
- Forecasting & valuation depth. You can build the model and explain to a board, a bank, or a buyer exactly what drives the enterprise value.
Nice-to-Haves
- D2C / eCommerce experience. A real plus - you understand the rhythms of online physical-goods selling, paid acquisition economics, and the D2C P&L.
- IP, patents & product protection. Hands-on experience protecting designs and IP in a product business.
- Chinese supplier relationships. Existing experience negotiating and managing China-based manufacturing partners.