VP of Finance

Overview

Aquent is partnering with a rapidly growing, founder-led consumer brand that's redefining its market within the premium product space. This innovative company is scaling its presence across direct-to-consumer channels and expanding into various retail partnerships, building on a foundation of profitability and strong growth. This is a unique opportunity to join a dynamic team and make a profound impact, transforming the financial landscape of a thriving business and becoming a pivotal leader in its continued success.

This isn't just a role; it's a chance to build, optimize, and strategically guide the financial future of a high-growth enterprise. You will step into a high-ownership seat, directly influencing key business decisions and establishing robust financial discipline. This position is for a hands-on operator who thrives in ambiguity, moves with agility, and can build strong credibility across operations, growth initiatives, and retail partnerships. Your contributions will be critical in shaping the company's aggressive growth trajectory, ensuring profitability, and preparing the business for future strategic opportunities.

**What You'll Lead & Own:**

• Build a Strategic Finance Function: Transition from outsourced accounting to a professional, in-house finance organization, establishing a disciplined close process, consistent reporting cadence, and clear financial definitions. You will design the hiring plan, starting with a key leadership role, and scale the team over time, implementing essential finance systems and operating rhythms without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Drive Omnichannel Profitability Insights: Develop decision-ready views of profitability across individual products, sales channels, and retail partners. Ensure wholesale financial statements accurately reflect the true cost-to-serve, including logistics, third-party warehousing, allowances, chargebacks, and returns. Provide clear, actionable insights to guide trade-off decisions between direct-to-consumer and retail strategies, identifying and driving significant margin improvement opportunities.
• Optimize Cash, Working Capital, and Inventory: Build and manage a rolling 13-week cash forecast and liquidity plan. Implement strategies to improve the cash conversion cycle and instill rigorous working capital discipline. Collaborate closely with planning leadership to prevent inventory overbuying, enhance forecasting accuracy, and proactively manage obsolescence risks, bringing precision to purchase commitments and inventory risk decisions.
• Strategic Business Partner: Collaborate with growth leadership to establish guardrails for acquisition spend and ensure a strong return on investment tied to contribution margin. Provide practical, growth-enabling financial guidance, supporting retail account strategies with robust deal modeling and negotiation support. Serve as the executive-level finance voice across all functions, offering clear, persuasive, and commercially minded insights.
• Prepare for Future Growth: Develop M&A-grade financial statements and supporting schedules, ensuring balance sheet integrity, consistent reporting, and defensible metrics. Coordinate external tax and audit support, and ensure data room readiness, bringing a high level of financial presentation rigor without hindering company speed.

**Must-Have Qualifications:**

• Proven senior finance leadership experience with a strong track record of building, transforming, or optimizing finance operations.
• Experience with rapid scaling!
• Extensive experience in omnichannel consumer businesses, including direct-to-consumer e-commerce and retail/wholesale environments.
• Deep expertise in inventory-heavy environments, encompassing landed cost analysis, working capital management, forecasting, and purchase order cadence.
• Demonstrated ownership of cash forecasting and liquidity management, with strong preference for experience with 13-week cash forecasting.
• Exceptional communication and executive presence, with the ability to influence, negotiate, and drive alignment across diverse stakeholders.
• Direct experience with M&A, diligence, or other transaction processes, understanding what stands up to scrutiny.
• Comfortable utilizing modern business intelligence and reporting tools to build actionable KPI dashboards.

**Nice-to-Have Qualifications:**

• Prior experience leading ERP system selection and implementation.
• A creative problem-solver who consistently finds solutions and paths forward despite roadblocks.
• An outstanding communicator capable of effective negotiation with vendors and partners.
• Ability to bring discipline and insight to a founder-led environment with high risk tolerance, challenging decisions constructively to build trust and momentum.

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