Ember Search has been retained on a confidential CFO search for a rapidly scaling, highly profitable consumer products manufacturing business based in Los Angeles.
The company has grown from roughly $10M to $30M+ in revenue in the last year, remains highly profitable, and has a clear path toward significantly greater scale over the next several years.
What makes the business genuinely unusual is the breadth of its model. Rather than operating as a traditional contract manufacturer, the company works with consumer brands across the full product lifecycle - from product development, formulation and packaging through regulatory, manufacturing, warehousing and fulfillment.
That integrated model has helped the business build exceptionally strong customer retention, expand relationships across multiple service lines, and become deeply embedded in the operations of the brands it supports.
The company is now entering a new phase of growth and is hiring its first true CFO to help build the financial infrastructure, operating discipline and strategic decision-making required for the next stage.
The Role
The CFO will become a true strategic partner to the founders and one of the senior voices helping shape the future of the business.
The company has scaled quickly, and the opportunity now is to build much greater visibility, discipline and sophistication around margins, forecasting, data, capital allocation and operational performance.
This is an unusual opportunity to join a business after product-market fit has been proven, but before the financial infrastructure required for the next stage has been fully built.
The company has already demonstrated substantial growth, strong profitability and very high customer retention.
It has also built an integrated operating model spanning product development, regulatory, manufacturing and fulfillment - creating multiple revenue streams and deep customer relationships rather than relying on a single product or channel.
The CFO will join early enough to have a genuine impact on how the company scales, how capital gets deployed and how the business is ultimately positioned over the next several years
You will:
- Partner directly with the founders on the highest-priority strategic and financial decisions in the business
- Build the financial infrastructure required to support the next stage of growth
- Improve visibility into gross margin, customer profitability, pricing, labor efficiency and operational performance
- Create stronger forecasting, KPI reporting and cross-functional P&L accountability
- Help centralize and improve financial and operating data across the business
- Partner closely with manufacturing, supply chain, operations and commercial leadership
- Support financing, lender relationships and broader capital planning as the business continues to scale
- Upgrade systems, reporting processes and financial models
- Build and develop the finance organization around you over time
- Help position the business for a potentially significant strategic transaction over the coming years
This is a highly hands-on role. The right person will be equally comfortable challenging the founders on strategy, building a model themselves in Excel and getting into the operational detail
Candidate Profile
Manufacturing experience is essential for this search.
We are looking for a finance leader who has genuinely operated inside a manufacturing environment and understands the financial and operational complexity that comes with producing physical products at scale.
The strongest candidates will likely have:
- 12 to 20+ years of progressive finance experience
- Current CFO experience or experience as a strong #2 finance leader ready to step into the CFO seat
- Significant finance leadership experience within a manufacturing business
- Demonstrated experience helping scale a company from approximately $10M-$30M in revenue toward $100M+
- Strong understanding of manufacturing economics, gross margin, inventory, working capital, labor, capacity and supply chain
- Experience building or materially improving a finance function, including systems, reporting, processes and team
- Strong FP&A and analytical capability alongside sufficient accounting depth to lead the full finance function
- A track record of partnering directly with founders, CEOs or owner-operators
- Experience operating in a fast-growth environment where processes and infrastructure need to be built while the business continues to scale
- The willingness to remain highly hands-on rather than relying on a large existing team
Experience specifically within beauty, personal care, CPG or consumer products would be helpful, but deep manufacturing experience matters more than sector alone.
