Summary
The Chief Financial Officer will be a crucial partner in navigating the next era of global growth. Operating across retail flagships, curated wholesale, and digital channels, this role drives the financial vision and operational foundation required for sustainable scaling. We are looking for a financially disciplined, operationally grounded leader with deep expertise in FP&A, inventory management, and capital allocation. The ideal candidate pairs a rigorous approach to margin preservation and cash flow with a keen understanding of luxury retail mechanics, providing the executive team with the data-driven clarity needed to make bold, calculated decisions.
Key Responsibilities
Financial Strategy, Planning & Analysis
- Budgeting & Accountability: Implement rigorous department-level budgeting processes and hold leadership accountable to those targets.
- Strategic Projections: Develop sophisticated financial models for new store build-outs, real estate expansions, and wholesale opportunities, ensuring every LOI and growth initiative is fully stress-tested.
- Commercial Guardrails & Investment ROI: Act as a strategic sparring partner to creative and operational leadership; rigorously evaluate growth initiatives against ROI, cash flow impact, and brand equity, providing constructive, solution-oriented paths to make creative ideas commercially viable.
- Retail CapEx & Omnichannel Unit Economics: Model and track four-wall profitability, lease structures, customer acquisition cost (CAC) offsets, and payback periods across direct retail flagships, e-commerce, and luxury wholesale channels.
- Executive Reporting: Provide clear, actionable insights to the executive team, offering confident, data-backed recommendations on strategic moves rather than raw reporting.
Accounting, Close & Reporting
- Oversee the accounting team's monthly and annual close, ensuring reporting is accurate, timely, and consistent as transaction volume grows.
- Own the integrity of the financial statements and management reporting, maintaining well-documented, GAAP-compliant records.
- Oversee external audit, tax filings, and statutory compliance across all entities, working with outside advisors where appropriate.
Cash Flow & Inventory Management
- Inventory Optimization: Develop strategies to balance the high capital requirements of inventory (particularly with jewelry costs) against wholesale growth and production flows.
- Precious Metal & Gemstone Working Capital: Manage the valuation, hedging, consignment/memo terms, and yield-loss recovery associated with gold, platinum, and gemstone inventory to minimize margin drift and cash lock-up.
- Cash Flow Leadership: Proactively manage cash flow in a high-growth environment, ensuring sufficient liquidity to support expansion while maintaining operational stability.
- Capital & Credit: Lead negotiations for lines of credit and other capital resources, ensuring the company is well-positioned to fund future growth.
International Finance & Multi-Currency Operations
- Manage finance across multiple currencies, including consolidation, foreign exchange exposure, and intercompany transactions.
- Global Trade & Treasury Logistics: Oversee international VAT/GST reclamation, duty/tariff optimization, and secure high-value international transit/vaulting logistics to protect margins during cross-border trade.
- Support entity structuring and cross-border tax efficiency as the business operates and grows across markets such as the UK/EU, Korea, and Japan.
- Partner with local advisors and in-market resources to ensure compliance and reliable reporting in each region.
Operational Leadership & Development
- Team Evolution: Assess and evolve the finance function to support the next phase of growth, building the structure and capabilities the business will need at scale.
- ERP & System Architecture: Lead the optimization or re-implementation of NetSuite and integrated retail/inventory stack (POS, e-commerce, custom BOM tools) to ensure real-time visibility into inventory locations, job-costing, and multi-channel sales.
- Mentorship: Lead and develop the finance team, fostering a culture of accuracy, high performance, and accountability.
Risk Management & Corporate Governance
- Internal Controls & Compliance: Establish and maintain comprehensive internal control frameworks to ensure data integrity, mitigate fraud risk, and support audit readiness as the company scales.
- Regulatory & Tax Strategy: Oversee tax strategy and corporate structuring, keeping the business efficient and compliant as it enters new global markets.
- High-Value Asset Protection & ERM: Develop enterprise risk management policies, including specialized insurance, vaulting protocols, transit security, and supply chain continuity to safeguard physical assets across all retail, wholesale, and production locations.
Requirements
- 10+ years of progressive financial leadership, including experience at the CFO, VP of Finance, or Head of Finance level within a high-growth consumer or luxury company.
- Deep FP&A expertise: sophisticated financial modeling, forecasting, and scenario planning, including models for new store build-outs, real estate expansion, and wholesale opportunities, with the ability to turn analysis into clear strategic recommendations.
- Direct experience in a high-growth startup or scale-up environment. This is essential; the financial and operational demands of rapid growth differ significantly from those of a mature or stable business.
- In-house financial leadership experience, not solely consulting or advisory work. Candidates must have owned finance inside an operating company.
- Experience overseeing an accounting team and function, including monthly and annual close, financial reporting, audit, and tax.
- Systems Architecture: Demonstrated experience leading or optimizing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform (NetSuite preferred, or SAP/Dynamics) to support multi-channel inventory, job costing, and global financial consolidation.
- International finance experience, including multi-currency operations and cross-border finance across markets such as the UK/EU, Korea, and Japan.
- Significant experience in retail or premium consumer-facing sectors, with a strong preference for fine jewelry, watches, or high-end craft manufacturing. Deep understanding of working capital dynamics tied to high-value raw materials (precious metals, gems), including consignment/memo management, yield loss, and inventory valuation.
- Proven track record across wholesale and DTC business models, including the cash flow demands of high-growth wholesale.
- Experience negotiating credit facilities and managing complex financial operations in a growth-oriented company.
- Founder & Executive Partnership: Proven track record of serving as a trusted strategic sparring partner to founders and creative executives; ability to balance creative vision with financial discipline, translating artistic goals into commercially viable business models.
- Experience leading business transformation is a significant plus.
