Portfolio — Fractional COO engagement Building the Operational Infrastructure for a Fast-Scaling DTC E-Commerce Brand End-to-end operations build for a direct-to-consumer lifestyle brand experiencing rapid order volume growth. Reducing fulfilment costs by 22%, cutting delivery times in half, and enabling the company to triple revenue without adding headcount proportionally.

The challenge

The brand had grown quickly on the back of strong product-market fit and social media traction, but its operations had never been properly built. Order fulfilment was managed manually, logistics partners were unvetted and underperforming, returns were handled ad hoc, and customer service was absorbing time that should have gone into growth. As order volumes increased, particularly around peak seasons, the cracks became costly: late deliveries, stockouts, and a customer experience that was damaging the brand's reputation.

Approach

I came in as fractional COO for a six-month engagement with a clear mandate: make the operation scalable before the next growth phase. I started with a full operational audit, mapping every process from order placement to delivery and return, identifying the highest-cost and highest-risk failure points. I then renegotiated logistics contracts, introduced a 3PL partnership for fulfilment, redesigned the inventory management process, and built a small but well-structured customer operations team.

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Key deliverables

• Operational audit and redesign — full process mapping from order to delivery, identifying waste, bottlenecks, and margin leakage across the fulfilment chain
• 3PL selection and onboarding — ran a structured selection process, negotiated SLAs, and managed the full transition from in-house fulfilment to third-party logistics
• Inventory management system — introduced demand forecasting, reorder triggers, and stock visibility tooling to eliminate stockouts and overstock situations
• Returns and customer operations process — designed a scalable returns flow and built a customer service playbook that reduced resolution time and support volume
• Unit economics dashboard — built a real-time view of contribution margin per order, fulfilment cost per SKU, and return rate by channel
• Peak season readiness plan — designed capacity planning, logistics buffers, and escalation protocols for high-volume periods

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Results

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Skills applied