VP of Supply Chain

Three stockouts. $4M in lost retail revenue. One co-manufacturer doing all the damage.

A natural and organic food brand listed across Whole Foods, Target, and a growing set of regional natural retailers had grown fast - but their supply chain hadn't kept pace. A single co-manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest was producing the majority of their top-five SKUs. When that facility had a capacity crunch, so did they.

Three stockouts in twelve months cost the brand an estimated $4M in lost retail revenue. More damagingly, one major retailer placed them on informal probation - threatening delisting if service levels didn't improve within two product cycles.

Finding someone who'd built a co-manufacturing network, not just managed one

The VP of Supply Chain brief was specific in one dimension that ruled out most of the market: we needed someone who had built a co-manufacturing network for a growing CPG brand - including sourcing, qualifying, and integrating multiple facilities - not someone who had inherited a stable network and optimised it.

The candidate profile focused on three areas:

• Co-manufacturer qualification experience in natural/organic - understanding of organic certification continuity across a supply chain is non-trivial
• Direct experience managing retailer service-level compliance, ideally with Whole Foods or Target relationships
• The ability to operate in a lean environment - the supply chain team at this stage was two people, so this person needed to be hands-on, not just strategic

We targeted candidates at similar-stage CPG brands who had recently completed a supply chain build-out and were ready for a new challenge, as well as supply chain directors at larger natural brands who were constrained by corporate process and wanted to move faster.

Network diversified. Stockouts eliminated. Retailer relationships restored.

The new VP's first 90 days were spent qualifying two additional co-manufacturers - one in the Midwest, one in the Southeast - to reduce geographic concentration and provide redundancy for the top three SKUs. By month six, a fourth facility had been approved and onboarded for the brand's fastest-growing SKU line.

Year one closed with zero stockouts. The retailer that had placed them on informal probation extended the listing and added two new SKUs. The brand's service-level score across major retail accounts moved from 87% to 98.4%.