🟥 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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TODAY’S BRIEF: SwissWatchExpo is a bootstrapped ecommerce operation based in Atlanta’s Buckhead district that has grown from roughly $9 million to approximately $94 million in revenue in about eight years — with 29 employees. Let me say that again: 29 people are running a near-nine-figure luxury goods operation. That works out to roughly $3.2 million in revenue per employee, which puts them in the same operational efficiency neighborhood as some of the most admired tech companies in the world.

The company was founded in 2009 by the Rokhlin family and transformed starting in 2016 when Eugene Tutunikov — a former Wall Street professional — joined as CEO. Tutunikov brought a financial operator’s discipline to what had been a traditional watch business, and the results speak for themselves: 10x revenue growth, fully bootstrapped, no outside investors, no PE money, no debt-fueled growth. Just operational excellence and category expertise.

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Here’s how the business works. SwissWatchExpo buys pre-owned luxury watches — Rolex, Patek Philippe, Omega, Cartier, Breitling, TAG Heuer, and dozens of other brands — authenticates them, services them in an 11-person in-house watchmaking department, professionally photographs each piece, and sells them through their ecommerce platform at swisswatchexpo.com. They carry roughly 3,000 SKUs at any given time, ship 30 to 50 watches per day, and operate at an average order value between $7,500 and $10,000.

The global pre-owned luxury watch market is currently valued at $26.8 billion and is projected to reach $43.7 billion by 2031, growing at a compound annual rate of 7.2 percent. And that growth is being fueled by structural forces that aren’t going away anytime soon.

Younger consumers are buying pre-owned luxury as both a style statement and a value play. Certified pre-owned programs from the brands themselves (Rolex launched its own CPO program in 2022) are legitimizing the secondary market. And here’s a kicker most people don’t know about: recent tariff changes on Swiss watch imports — dropping the effective rate from 39 percent to 15 percent — have already produced a 25 percent sales increase for SwissWatchExpo. That’s not a projection. That already happened.

The customer buying a $7,500 pre-owned Rolex Submariner from SwissWatchExpo is not a casual shopper. This is an informed, research-intensive buyer who has already spent hours on Chrono24, WatchBox, and Crown & Caliber comparing prices, conditions, and seller reputations.

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They’re choosing SwissWatchExpo because the company has earned a reputation for authentication rigor, in-house servicing (not farmed out to a third party), and fast fulfillment. These buyers are predominantly affluent men aged 30 to 60, often purchasing a watch as a milestone marker — a promotion, a wedding, a personal achievement. Some are collectors adding to a rotation. Some are first-time luxury watch buyers stretching for something meaningful. All of them expect perfection.

So why should a talented operations leader want this job? Three reasons …

First, this is not a “manage the warehouse” role. This is the engine room of a vertically integrated luxury goods operation where you’ll own everything from inventory management and authentication workflow to fulfillment speed, asset protection for $20 to $30 million in physical inventory, facilities management, supply chain optimization, and team development. The operational complexity per square foot here is extraordinary — you’re managing the equivalent of a jewelry vault, a watch repair shop, a photography studio, and a high-velocity ecommerce fulfillment center all under one roof in about 7,000 square feet.

Second, the company is still growing and still bootstrapped. That means the Director of Operations is not inheriting a bureaucracy — you’re building the operational infrastructure that will carry this company from $94 million to $150 million and beyond. You will have genuine influence over how this operation scales. You won’t be filling someone else’s shoes. You’ll be designing the shoes.

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Third, the leadership here is real. Eugene Tutunikov is a financial operator who understands unit economics, capital velocity, and inventory turns at a level most ecommerce CEOs don’t. He turned inventory 4 to 6 times per year in a category where the industry average is 1.3 to 1.6 times. If you’re an operations professional who’s tired of explaining to your CEO why inventory velocity matters, you won’t have that problem here.

🟥 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™

ABOUT THE ROLE

As SwissWatchExpo’s Director of Operations, you will serve as the operational backbone of a near-nine-figure luxury ecommerce business processing 30 to 50 high-value watches per day through a vertically integrated authentication, servicing, photography, and fulfillment pipeline. Your mission will be to …

1. Build and optimize the systems, processes, and team infrastructure that will carry this operation from its current scale to $150M+.
2. Implement zero-error inventory management and asset protection protocols for $20–30 million in physical luxury goods inventory.
3. Drive continuous improvement through Six Sigma/Lean methodology while maintaining the artisanal quality standards that differentiate SwissWatchExpo from every other player in the pre-owned luxury watch market.

Areas of Oversight

Inventory Management & Capital Velocity

• Own the end-to-end inventory lifecycle from acquisition intake through authentication, servicing, photography, listing, storage, and fulfillment — treating every watch as a depreciating asset where days-on-hand directly erodes margin.
• Build and maintain real-time inventory dashboards segmented by brand, model, price tier, and aging — with automated escalation triggers when any SKU exceeds target hold periods, prompting repricing, remarketing, or channel reallocation before depreciation compounds.
• Drive inventory turn rates that sustain the company’s 4-6x annual velocity (versus the 1.3-1.6x industry average) by compressing cycle time at every handoff point in the authentication-to-fulfillment pipeline.
• Partner with the buying team to ensure acquisition costs track real-time secondary market pricing — particularly as Rolex and Patek Philippe resale premiums continue to normalize — so the company never overpays for inventory that the market has already repriced.

Fulfillment Operations & Quality Control

• Design and optimize a fulfillment operation capable of processing 30-50+ high-value watches per day with zero-error accuracy — where a single mislabeled reference number, a scratch during packing, or a shipping delay can cost thousands in returns, insurance claims, and reputation damage.
• Map every handoff point in the fulfillment chain (watchmaker bench → QC inspection → photography studio → listing team → vault storage → packing station → carrier pickup) and implement process controls that eliminate dead time and error propagation between stations.
• Establish quality checkpoints at each stage that balance inspection thoroughness with throughput speed — recognizing that at $7,500-$10,000 AOV, the cost of a quality escape far exceeds the cost of a few extra minutes of verification.
• Build fulfillment systems with headroom for 2x current volume, anticipating that continued growth and tariff tailwinds will push daily processing volumes toward 60-80+ units within 2-3 years.

🟥 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™

Asset Protection & Security

• Design and implement chain-of-custody protocols for $20-30 million in physical luxury watch inventory — from receiving dock to vault to workbench to shipping, with documented accountability at every transfer point.
• Manage vault procedures, access controls, surveillance systems, and insurance optimization for a facility handling some of the most liquid portable assets in consumer goods.
• Develop shipping security protocols that minimize loss and damage risk across carriers while maintaining the fulfillment speed that customers expect from ecommerce — including signature requirements, declared value management, and carrier insurance coordination.
• Build a loss-prevention program that’s proportional to the risk profile: this is a jewelry-store-level security problem operating at ecommerce speed, and the systems must serve both imperatives simultaneously.

Watchmaking Department Operations

• Coordinate scheduling, workload balancing, and throughput tracking for the 11-person in-house watchmaking department — the crown jewel that differentiates SwissWatchExpo from gray-market resellers and marketplace competitors.
• Create workflow systems that respect the artisanal nature of watch servicing (each piece is unique, each repair is different) while maintaining the throughput discipline required to keep 30-50 watches per day moving through the pipeline without bottlenecks.
• Implement quality documentation and service history tracking that feeds both customer-facing transparency (buyers want to know exactly what was done to their watch) and internal process improvement.
• Build redundancy and cross-training plans for specialized watchmaking skills — because at 29 employees total, the loss of a single skilled watchmaker can cascade through the entire operation within days.

Facilities Management & Capacity Planning

• Manage the current 7,000-square-foot facility in Buckhead, Atlanta — optimizing layout and workflow design for maximum throughput per square foot in an operation that combines watch servicing, photography, inventory storage, and fulfillment under one roof.
• Lead capacity planning analysis and facility expansion recommendations as volume growth pushes the current footprint toward its physical limits — including cost-benefit analysis of renovation versus relocation, and phased build-out options that don’t disrupt live operations during transition.
• Ensure all facility systems (HVAC, lighting, security, fire suppression) meet the specialized requirements of a luxury goods operation — climate control for watch movements and materials, lighting for professional photography, and physical security infrastructure appropriate for high-value portable inventory.

Supply Chain & Vendor Management

• Manage relationships with shipping carriers, insurance providers, packaging suppliers, and any third-party service providers that touch the fulfillment chain — negotiating terms that reflect the company’s volume and the unique handling requirements of luxury timepieces.
• Monitor and respond to supply chain risk factors including tariff changes (the recent drop from 39% to 15% on Swiss imports has already produced a 25% sales spike), currency fluctuations (the USD/CHF exchange rate directly affects acquisition costs), and competitive dynamics as brands like Rolex, Omega, and Cartier expand their own certified pre-owned programs.
• Evaluate and implement technology solutions — WMS, ERP, and automation tools — that integrate with the company’s existing ASP.NET/Cart.com tech stack, recognizing that the platform choice may constrain certain off-the-shelf integrations and require creative solutions.

Team Development & Continuous Improvement

• Recruit, train, and develop an operations team that can sustain world-class efficiency ($3.2M revenue per employee) while building the bench depth and redundancy that a 29-person organization currently lacks.
• Implement Kaizen and DMAIC-based continuous improvement programs that are calibrated for a fast-moving, small-team environment — rigorous enough to drive measurable process gains, lightweight enough to avoid bureaucratizing a company that moves fast because it’s lean.
• Build a measurement culture where operational improvements are framed in financial terms — not “we improved our packing process” but “we reduced fulfillment cycle time by X%, freeing $Y in working capital per quarter” — because the CEO thinks in capital velocity and margin impact, and the operations team must speak that language.

Qualifications

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATION

• Bachelor’s degree in operations management, supply chain, business administration, industrial engineering, or a related field.
• Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt certification strongly preferred.
• Lean methodology certification a plus.

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES — SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

• 7-10+ years of progressive operations leadership experience in ecommerce, luxury retail, high-value goods logistics, or a comparable environment where inventory accuracy, asset security, and fulfillment speed are all mission-critical simultaneously.
• Demonstrated experience managing high-value physical inventory (jewelry, luxury goods, electronics, medical devices, or similar) where the cost of a single error — a misidentified item, a security breach, a shipping damage claim — is measured in thousands of dollars, not pennies.
• Deep working knowledge of warehouse management systems (WMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, and fulfillment automation tools — with the ability to evaluate, select, and implement technology solutions within an existing tech stack that may not be the one you’d choose from scratch.
• Proven track record of applying Six Sigma, Lean, or DMAIC methodology to drive measurable process improvements — not as an academic exercise, but as a practical tool for compressing cycle times, reducing errors, and freeing working capital in a live operation.
• Experience building and scaling operations teams in a high-growth environment — including hiring, training, cross-training, and creating redundancy in organizations where everyone is already stretched.
• Strong financial acumen: you understand how inventory velocity, fulfillment cost per unit, carrying costs, and shrinkage translate into gross margin impact and working capital efficiency. You can present operational improvements in terms a financially sophisticated CEO will immediately value.
• Familiarity with luxury goods authentication, condition grading, or quality control processes is a significant plus — or demonstrated ability to rapidly learn a domain-specific quality framework and embed it into scalable operational workflows.
• Experience with facility management, capacity planning, and physical security systems is strongly preferred, given the unique requirements of managing high-value portable inventory in a combined warehouse/workshop environment.

🟥 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™

LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES

• Ability to lead and develop a lean operations team in a founder-led, bootstrapped environment where authority is earned through competence and results, not title or hierarchy.
• Skilled at navigating the founder-CEO dynamic — you know how to earn trust, push back constructively, and present recommendations in a way that aligns with the founder’s vision while advancing operational excellence.
• Cross-functional collaboration with buying, watchmaking, photography, customer service, and technology teams — recognizing that in a 29-person company, every operational decision ripples across the entire business within hours.
• Comfortable operating with high autonomy and minimal bureaucracy — you don’t need a committee to make a decision, but you know when a decision requires stakeholder alignment before execution.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

• High integrity and meticulous attention to detail — you’re managing a vault full of Rolexes, not a warehouse full of t-shirts.
• Self-directed problem solver who sees issues before they become crises and builds systems that prevent recurrence rather than just fighting fires.
• Physically present and hands-on — this is an in-office, in-warehouse, on-the-floor leadership role in Buckhead, Atlanta. Not remote. Not hybrid. You are in the building.
• Calm under pressure with the ability to manage competing priorities when a $15,000 watch is late, a watchmaker is out sick, and the CEO needs a facility expansion analysis by end of week — all on the same Tuesday.
• Genuine intellectual curiosity about the luxury watch market and the craftsmanship involved in mechanical watchmaking. You don’t need to be a collector, but you need to respect the product and understand why your customers care so deeply about what you’re shipping them.
• Entrepreneurial mindset — you think like an owner, not a manager. Every dollar saved in operational efficiency, every hour compressed in fulfillment cycle time, every error prevented in inventory management flows directly to the bottom line of a bootstrapped company with no margin cushion to absorb waste.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate operational complexity into clear, actionable language for leadership, team members, and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Resilient and adaptable — comfortable building systems in an environment that is simultaneously highly successful and still evolving its operational infrastructure.

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🟥 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.