What You Will Own :

Margin and Cost Structure :

- Hold the business to its Contribution Margin targets, and own the SC levers that move them.

- Build and defend the First Mile and Last Mile cost models used for new category and new SKU decisions.

Manufacturing Network:

- Manage production timelines with the India factory partner base across furniture, rugs, textiles, soft furnishings and new categories; selectively evaluate additional geographies for supply where India is not competitive.

- Run the supplier operating system end to end: partnership standards, onboarding, scorecards, capacity planning, quarterly business reviews, and exit where partners will not meet the standard.

- Move partners from transactional vendors to genuine extensions of the team: shared quality data, shared roadmaps.

- Enforce debits, penalties and chargebacks as required.

Logistics and Fulfilment:

- Production planning, inbound logistics, multi-factory consolidation and mixed containers, freight forwarding (sea and air), customs and UK receiving.

- UK warehouse performance: inbound accuracy, inventory integrity, pick-pack productivity, dispatch SLA, carrier mix, last-mile cost and returns processing.

- Negotiate and manage freight forwarder and carrier contracts on service, cost and ethical standards together.

Systems and Data:

- Own the supply chain technology stack and its roadmap: ERP, WMS, planning tooling, QC capture, supplier portal, EDD and tracking, and the integration layer between them.

- Replace spreadsheet-and-WhatsApp workflows with systems of record. Where a tool does not exist, specify it properly and get it built.

- Build the dashboards the leadership team runs the business on, and be the person who trusts the numbers most because you built them.

Customer Success and Service:

- Own the UK customer service function end to end: pre-purchase queries, order and delivery support, returns and replacements, damage resolution and complaint handling.

- Treat customer service as the closed loop of the supply chain, not a separate department: the ticket that comes in about a damaged rug is the same defect that started on a factory line, and you own both ends of that line. Route service data back into QC, packaging, carrier selection and supplier scorecards so the same problem does not recur.

- Set and hold service standards: response and resolution times, first-contact resolution, and the quality of the interaction - protecting the Trustpilot rating as a hard operating metric, not a marketing one.

- Own the tooling and workflows behind service (helpdesk, order lookup, returns portal) and the integration between service, WMS and carrier systems so an agent can see and act on the full order state.

- Build and lead the service team; design self-serve and automation (tracking, returns initiation, AI-assisted first response) so headcount scales far slower than order volume.

Team:

- Build and lead a supply chain organisation and a customer success team.

- Hire people who can operate autonomously; design the function so it does not require you in every decision.

Key KPIs:

- On-time Delivery, Order Cancellation %, Returns %, Logistics Cost as % of Revenue, Supplier OTD, Supplier Chargebacks, CSAT, Trustpilot Rating, First Resolution TAT.

Candidate Profile:

Experience:

- MBA from Tier 1 B School.

- 12+ years in supply chain, with meaningful time in leadership; consumer product, retail or D2C environments.

- Direct experience running a cross-border chain preferred, manufacturing in one geography, consumer demand in another. India-to-West experience is a strong advantage.

- Track record building supply chain in a multi-category business, including standing up categories that did not previously exist.

- Real depth in factory management, inbound logistics and freight, warehouse and fulfilment operations, planning and inventory.

- Has personally negotiated with factories, forwarders and 3PLs or vendors.

Orientation:

- Systems-first. You instinctively reach for a process and a data structure before you reach for a person to chase it.