🟥 EMPLOYERS: Separate from recruiting, I write investment‑grade recruiting briefs that walk A‑player ecommerce candidates through the real business case for your role – the market, channels, KPIs, tech stack, team, and AI issues – before they ever get on Zoom with you. I research / write it. YOU bless it. YOU own it.

RESULT: Your first‑round conversations are with 6-8 highly informed A-players who already understand where/how they can drive EBITDA. To have me write and send your posting out to this list, text Harry Joiner at (404) 281‑2025. Confidential briefs / application process are no problem. ⬇️ SEE EXAMPLE ⬇️

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HARRY’S TEARDOWN: In 1991, two guys named Jonathan King and Jim Stott started selling jam out of a basket at a local farmers’ market in York, Maine. That’s it. A basket. Some jam. A folding table. Fast forward to today and Stonewall Kitchen is a $96+ million specialty food and home goods platform with more than 1,500 SKUs across seven-plus brands, 10 retail stores in New England, 6,000 wholesale accounts in 42 countries, and products on shelves in more than 19,000 stores.

They’ve won over 30 sofi™ Awards — that’s the specialty food industry’s equivalent of an Oscar — and they’ve been backed by three consecutive private equity firms, with TA Associates (a top-tier PE firm with $50+ billion under management) acquiring the company in March 2022. Fun fact: TA’s William Christ is on Stonewall’s Board.

Today, Stonewall Kitchen doesn’t just sell jam. They sell the feeling of being the person who gives a $65 gift basket instead of a $25 Amazon gift card. They sell the experience of cooking Saturday morning pancakes with Wild Maine Blueberry Syrup instead of whatever Aunt Jemima has become this year. They are the Williams-Sonoma of condiments — premium, beautifully packaged, and built for people who think food is a lifestyle choice, not just fuel.

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And the market behind this category is much bigger than you’d think.

The U.S. Seasoning, Sauce & Condiment Production industry (NAICS 31194) is a $33.4 billion market. The top four companies — Kraft Heinz, McCormick, and Ajinomoto — hold only about 34% of market share. The other 66.6% belongs to thousands of smaller, specialty producers. That’s where Stonewall Kitchen lives. And that fragmented “long tail” is exactly where all the brand-building, margin expansion, and M&A exit value creation is happening right now.

Here’s a number that tells you why: Kraft Heinz’s market share has actually declined from 19.3% to 16.9% in the last five years. Specialty brands are eating their lunch — literally. McCormick’s response has been to buy premium brands outright: Frank’s RedHot, French’s, Cholula, FONA International. Kraft Heinz acquired Primal Kitchen, Just Spices, and Hemmer. The playbook is explicit. Large incumbents are acquiring premium specialty brands because organic growth in mature condiments is structurally limited.

Stonewall Kitchen — with its multi-brand portfolio, owned manufacturing, company stores, decades-old email list, and a DTC business doing $100–$125 average order values with a 7.5–8% website conversion rate — fits the acquisition profile precisely.

Stonewall Kitchen’s core buyer is a woman, age 35–60, household income $75,000+, who shops at Whole Foods and Fresh Market, collects cookbooks, has opinions about olive oil, and values authenticity and craft. She buys a $12 jar of Wild Maine Blueberry Jam instead of Smucker’s because it communicates something — about her taste, her values, and the care she puts into what she serves.

The second — and arguably more valuable — customer is the gift giver: Someone buying for Christmas, Mother’s Day, a dinner party, or a corporate gift. That gift-buying behavior is what drives the $100+ AOV on stonewallkitchen.com — people are buying curated gift sets, not single jars.

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Why should an A-player ecommerce leader want this job? Three reasons:

First, the DTC margin opportunity is enormous. Wholesale drives about half the revenue but at 30–40% gross margins. DTC drives 50–60% gross margins — nearly 2x the per-unit profit. Every customer the new Head converts from buying at Whole Foods to buying at stonewallkitchen.com is worth 2–3x more to the company. TA Associates knows this, and the entire PE growth thesis is aimed squarely at accelerating DTC penetration.

Second, the subscription program is on fire. Stonewall Kitchen’s Ordergroove-powered subscription program delivered 122% growth in order volume, 99% higher customer lifetime value, and 91% total revenue growth year-over-year within the subscription segment. This is the single highest-leverage growth lever in the business, and the new Head of Ecommerce gets to scale it.

Third, you’d be running the full digital P&L — revenue, gross margin, contribution margin, and EBITDA impact across Amazon (1P & 3P), DTC, and paid digital media. This is not a “manage a channel and report to a committee” role. This is P&L ownership with Board-level KPI visibility at a company where your work directly builds enterprise value for a PE exit.

The company self-manufactures a significant portion of its products in York and Wells, Maine — which gives them control over quality, traceability, and packaging innovation that most specialty food brands can’t match.

The brand portfolio includes Stonewall Kitchen (flagship), Village Candle, Vermont Coffee Company, Urban Accents, Napa Valley Naturals, Tillen Farms, Montebello, and Legal Sea Foods. Each brand was acquired to extend the platform’s reach across the premium food and home goods lifestyle category.

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About the Role

The company’s Head of Ecommerce will serve as the executive owner of the digital P&L, accountable for accelerating profitable growth and expanding EBITDA contribution across Amazon (1P & 3P), Direct-to-Consumer (DTC), and paid digital media.

In this role, your mission will be to:

• Build a scalable, performance-driven ecommerce engine that enhances enterprise value and improves cash flow conversion;
• Architect a profitable hybrid Amazon 1P/3P strategy while accelerating the DTC subscription and retention model; and
• Establish scalable reporting infrastructure and operating processes aligned to Board-level KPIs — including processes suitable for bolt-on brand acquisitions. This role leads a team of 4–6 and reports into the executive team at a PE-backed company where your work directly supports the investment thesis.

🟥 JOB SEARCH GOT YOU STUCK? Book an hour with VP/CMO ecommerce recruiter, Harry Joiner, who prepared this analysis. Includes a 3-month membership to NEXTgig™

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Areas of Oversight

Digital Channel P&L Ownership

• Own revenue, gross margin, contribution margin, and EBITDA impact across all digital channels — including DTC (stonewallkitchen.com), Amazon (1P & 3P), and Walmart Marketplace — with full accountability for the annual operating plan and multi-year growth roadmap.
• Drive forecast accuracy, inventory alignment, and demand planning in coordination with Operations; at Stonewall Kitchen’s December peak volume (41,000+ transactions, $4.5M+ in a single month), a stockout of a top-10 SKU during the holiday window is a six-figure revenue loss event.
• Implement financial guardrails around promotional strategy and media investment, including gross-to-net discipline and trade inefficiency reduction within Amazon 1P — where chargebacks, co-op investments, and pricing architecture complexity can silently erode contribution margin.

Amazon (1P & 3P) Strategy & Optimization

• Architect a profitable hybrid 1P/3P strategy, including SKU rationalization and channel mix optimization across Vendor Central and Seller Central — determining which products belong in each program based on margin profile, velocity, and strategic value.
• Manage pricing architecture, trade spending, chargebacks, and co-op investments with a contribution margin lens; improve retail readiness scores, content conversion, and search visibility across Amazon’s algorithm.
• Oversee Amazon Advertising — Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and DSP — with strict performance accountability tied to incremental, profitable growth (not vanity ROAS that inflates top-line numbers without moving contribution margin).
• Lead negotiation and relationship management with Amazon retail teams, ensuring Stonewall Kitchen’s premium positioning translates into favorable terms and category placement.

Direct-to-Consumer Acceleration

• Optimize the DTC site experience on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, including bundling strategy, subscription program growth (via Ordergroove), merchandising, and the seasonal promotional calendar that drives the company’s highest-margin transactions.
• Build a performance marketing engine across paid search, paid social, affiliate, and lifecycle marketing — with disciplined CAC management and a testing roadmap (CRO, creative, offer strategy) that compounds conversion improvements over time.
• Audit and resolve the mobile conversion gap — current data suggests near-zero mobile purchase completion, which is either a massive untapped revenue opportunity or a data attribution crisis; either finding demands immediate action.
• Improve CAC, AOV, repeat rate, and customer lifetime value through structured experimentation: A/B testing subscription upsell timing, exit-intent offers, guest checkout vs. account creation, and cross-brand bundling across the seven-brand portfolio.

Email, Lifecycle & Retention Marketing

• Own the email and lifecycle marketing engine — Stonewall Kitchen’s most valuable DTC asset after the brand itself — built on decades of catalog-heritage subscriber relationships with high-intent specialty food buyers.
• Architect a welcome flow that converts new subscribers into first-time buyers within the 60–90 day pre-holiday acquisition window: deliver the offer, establish brand USPs, spotlight best sellers, surface founder story credibility, and deploy social proof systematically across a 5–7 email sequence.
• Build post-purchase flows that convert one-time gift buyers ($109 AOV, buys once) into subscribers ($300–$500+ LTV): Day 3 recipe email → Day 10 “never run out” subscription nudge → Day 21 product pairing with subscribe CTA.
• Deploy cart abandonment recovery (1-hour / 24-hour / 72-hour cadence) — at Stonewall Kitchen’s AOV, every 1% reduction in cart abandonment is worth an estimated $250–$500K in annual recovered revenue.

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Digital Media & Growth Marketing

• Allocate budget dynamically across retail media (Amazon SP/SB/DSP) and off-platform channels (Google Shopping, Meta, Pinterest, TikTok) based on channel-level ROAS, not blended metrics — with particular attention to Pinterest, where Stonewall Kitchen’s visual product imagery and recipe content are native to the platform’s 35–60 female discovery-to-purchase funnel.
• Implement incrementality testing and attribution frameworks that give the PE board confidence in marketing’s contribution to enterprise value — including holdout tests, media mix modeling, and contribution margin impact by channel.
• Drive efficiency improvements through structured experimentation; manage agency and platform partnerships with strict performance accountability.
• Execute a pre-holiday paid acquisition ramp (November budget increase of 2–3x) to capture early holiday gift shoppers — the highest-intent, highest-AOV traffic cohort of the year.

Team & Infrastructure Build

• Lead and develop a lean, high-performance team of 4–6 direct reports; recruit selectively to close capability gaps in areas like Amazon operations, CRO/analytics, or lifecycle marketing.
• Implement standardized KPI dashboards and executive reporting cadence aligned to Board-level KPIs — subscriber count, LTV by cohort, contribution margin by channel, EBITDA bridge — that support the PE exit thesis.
• Create process discipline and scalable operating models suitable for bolt-on acquisitions; as TA Associates continues the buy-and-build strategy, the ecommerce operating model must be able to absorb new brands without bespoke rebuilds for each.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with internal teams — wholesale, supply chain, finance, retail, and marketing — to ensure seamless execution of ecommerce initiatives, with particular attention to inventory availability and demand planning coordination with the VP of Manufacturing/Operations (Stonewall Kitchen self-manufactures in York and Wells, Maine).
• Navigate the brand marketing / ecommerce channel relationship with maturity: the company has a strong heritage brand culture, and the new Head must earn trust before pushing urgency messaging, promotional cadences, and conversion-focused creative that DTC ecommerce requires.
• Align ecommerce promotions with broader brand campaigns and seasonal strategies, including the critical Q4 holiday window (mid-November through Christmas Eve) that represents an estimated 40–60% of annual DTC revenue.

🟥 JOB SEARCH GOT YOU STUCK? Book an hour with VP/CMO ecommerce recruiter, Harry Joiner, who prepared this analysis. Includes a 3-month membership to NEXTgig™

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Qualifications

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATION

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field; MBA or equivalent experience valued but not required.

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES — SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

• 15+ years of experience in ecommerce and/or marketplace management, with a proven track record of driving revenue growth and profitability on both Amazon and owned DTC sites — preferably in the CPG, specialty food, or premium consumer goods space.
• Demonstrated P&L ownership — not channel management, not “supporting” a P&L, but owning revenue, margin, and EBITDA outcomes for a digital business doing $15M+ in annual ecommerce revenue.
• Deep Amazon fluency across both Vendor Central (1P) and Seller Central (3P), including pricing architecture, trade spending, chargeback management, co-op investment negotiation, retail readiness optimization, and Amazon Advertising (SP, SB, DSP) management with a contribution margin orientation.
• Hands-on experience with Salesforce Commerce Cloud (or comparable enterprise ecommerce platform); candidates from Shopify-native backgrounds should understand the iteration velocity difference — SFCC is more powerful but significantly slower to customize.
• Experience building or scaling subscription/replenishment programs (Ordergroove, Recharge, Bold, or comparable platforms) with measurable impact on LTV and repeat purchase rate.
• Strong analytical skills with experience using GA4, advertising platform dashboards (Amazon Ads, Meta Business Suite, Google Ads), and executive reporting tools — ability to build the dashboards, not just read them.
• Experience with incrementality testing, attribution modeling, and media mix analysis — the kind of analytical rigor that gives a PE board confidence in marketing investment decisions.
• Track record of managing paid media budgets ($1M+ annually across search, social, marketplace, and affiliate) with strict ROAS and contribution margin accountability.
• Email/lifecycle marketing fluency — understanding of welcome flows, post-purchase sequences, cart abandonment, and subscriber conversion tactics; experience with Klaviyo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or comparable ESP.

Nice-to-haves that will differentiate your candidacy:

• Experience in specialty food, gourmet/premium CPG, or gifting-occasion ecommerce (brands where AOV exceeds $75 and purchase behavior is seasonal/gift-driven)
• Experience working in or reporting to a PE-backed portfolio company, with an understanding of how marketing investments translate to EBITDA improvement and exit multiples
• Familiarity with demand forecasting and inventory planning for seasonal businesses with hard holiday peaks
• Experience with Walmart Marketplace as a growth channel

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES

• Proven ability to lead a team of 4–6 direct reports while managing agency and vendor relationships with performance accountability — this is a player-coach role where the Head must be both strategic and hands-on.
• Cross-functional collaboration instincts: the ability to partner effectively with wholesale, supply chain, finance, retail, brand marketing, and manufacturing teams without formal authority over any of them.
• Comfortable navigating the tension between brand-building (long-term equity) and performance marketing (short-term conversion) in a company where both cultures coexist.
• Experience presenting to C-suite and/or PE board audiences — translating ecommerce metrics into enterprise value language that investors understand.

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PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

• High integrity and intellectual honesty — the kind of leader who reports real numbers, flags problems early, and doesn’t inflate metrics for a quarterly review.
• Self-directed and comfortable operating with minimal infrastructure — this is a mid-market company, not a Fortune 500 with endless support staff. You build the systems yourself, then hire people to run them.
• Strong communicator who can translate between the brand storytelling world and the performance marketing world without alienating either camp.
• Entrepreneurial orientation and resilience — PE-backed companies move fast, change priorities, and expect leaders who can adapt without losing focus on what matters.
• Genuine curiosity about the specialty food category and the customers who love it — the candidate who shows up talking only about ROAS and LTV without understanding why someone pays $12 for jam will not succeed here.
• Comfort with seasonal intensity — the holiday peak (mid-November through Christmas Eve) is the defining performance window, and the Head of Ecommerce must be energized by that pressure, not paralyzed by it.
• Data-driven decision maker who defaults to evidence over intuition, but has enough taste and judgment to know when the data is lagging the opportunity.

🟥 EMPLOYERS: Separate from recruiting, I write investment‑grade recruiting briefs that walk A‑player ecommerce candidates through the real business case for your role – the market, channels, KPIs, tech stack, team, and AI issues – before they ever get on Zoom with you. I research / write it. YOU bless it. YOU own it.

RESULT: Your first‑round conversations are with 6-8 highly informed A-players who already understand where/how they can drive EBITDA. To have me write and send your posting out to this list, text Harry Joiner at (404) 281‑2025. Confidential briefs / application process are no problem.