Fractional COO · E-commerce Operations
Operating leadership for e-commerce brands stuck in founder-run chaos
We embed as your part-time COO to document how the business actually runs, build the dashboards that show you inventory, fulfillment, and margin in one place, and install the weekly cadence that keeps a growing DTC brand from breaking. Your team ends the engagement running the system without us.
The Outcome
What embedded operating leadership does for you
Not another advisor — a senior operator inside your business, installing systems and running them with your team.
The founder stops being the operations department
Order flow, returns, and supplier follow-ups run on documented SOPs your team owns, not on the founder answering the same questions every day.
One view of inventory, fulfillment, and margin
A KPI dashboard pulls from your store, 3PL, and finance so stockouts, backorders, and margin leaks are visible before they cost you a weekend.
A predictable weekly operating rhythm
A standing cadence turns firefighting into a review of the numbers that matter, with clear owners for every open issue.
How we work
Here’s what we’d install — and run with your team
We won’t hand you an org-chart deck and disappear. What follows is exactly what we’d build inside a business like yours — SOPs, dashboards, and an operating cadence — and how we’d prove it’s working. We set an operational baseline first, install the systems on the tools you already run, and measure against that baseline, so you know what each fix is worth before we build it.
Who it’s for: DTC and e-commerce brands past their first spike of traction, typically running on Shopify or a similar platform with a 3PL or in-house fulfillment, where the founder is still the operational glue holding order flow, inventory, and customer issues together.
The Core Systems
What we install and run with you
Four operating systems, built around how a product business actually moves inventory and orders. We build each one with your team in the room so they can run it after we step back.
SOPs
Documented order-to-delivery playbook
The problem: The steps for processing orders, handling exchanges, and escalating a stuck shipment live in the founder's head and a few Slack threads, so quality drops the moment they are unavailable.
What we’d build: We would document the full order-to-delivery and returns workflow as plain SOPs, including exceptions like backorders, damaged goods, and chargebacks, then train the team and hand them the source files to maintain.
Dashboards
Inventory & fulfillment visibility
The problem: Stock levels, incoming POs, and fulfillment SLAs live in separate tools, so you learn about a stockout or a fulfillment backlog from an angry customer, not from a report.
What we’d build: We would stand up a KPI dashboard that consolidates on-hand and inbound inventory, sell-through, fulfillment turnaround, and return rate against your own historical baseline so problems surface early.
Cadence
Weekly operating review
The problem: Decisions about reorders, promotions, and staffing happen reactively, with no standing forum to catch a trend before it becomes a fire.
What we’d build: We would install a weekly operations review with a fixed agenda tied to the dashboard, a live issues list with owners and due dates, and a monthly deeper look at inventory planning and supplier performance.
Implementation
Fixing the biggest fulfillment or inventory leak
The problem: One structural problem, usually chronic stockouts, a slow 3PL, or a returns process that bleeds margin, quietly caps growth and eats founder time.
What we’d build: We would diagnose the single largest operational leak against your baseline, then work hands-on with your team and vendors to redesign that process, from reorder points to 3PL SLAs, and prove the improvement in the numbers.
More We Install
Other operational work we take on
Beyond the core four, these are the recurring operational problems we roll up our sleeves on for e-commerce and DTC brands.
Demand & reorder planning
We build a simple, defensible reorder model tied to lead times and sell-through so you stop oscillating between stockouts and dead inventory sitting in the warehouse.
3PL & fulfillment vendor management
We put SLAs, scorecards, and a regular review in place so your fulfillment partner is held to measurable standards instead of managed by complaint.
Returns & reverse-logistics process
We redesign the returns workflow to cut processing time and recover more margin, with clear rules for restock, refurbish, and write-off.
Customer-service operations
We document response playbooks and set up ticket triage and SLA tracking so support scales without the founder reading every message.
Peak-season readiness
We build a run-up plan for BFCM or your seasonal peak covering inventory, staffing, and fulfillment capacity so the busiest weeks are planned, not survived.
Systems & tooling cleanup
We audit the stack of apps and integrations, kill the redundant ones, and make sure data flows cleanly between store, 3PL, and finance.
Hiring & onboarding for ops roles
We define the ops roles you actually need next, write the SOPs a new hire trains on, and build an onboarding path so people ramp in days, not months.
The Numbers We Move
The numbers we move
Operations isn’t the goal; moving these is. We set a starting number in the audit and measure against it.
Founder hours reclaimed
Documented SOPs and a trained team that no longer routes every operational decision through the founder.
Stockout & backorder rate
An inventory dashboard plus a reorder model that flags reorder points before you run dry.
Fulfillment turnaround time
3PL SLAs and a fulfillment KPI review that hold turnaround to a standard and expose slippage early.
Gross margin leakage
A returns and reverse-logistics process redesign that recovers product instead of writing it off.
Order throughput per person
Streamlined order-to-delivery workflows that remove manual steps and rework from daily operations.
Team accountability
A weekly operating cadence with a live issues list where every open item has an owner and a date.
In the first weeks we measure your current state from your own systems: stockout frequency, fulfillment turnaround, return rate, order throughput per person, and the founder's hours spent on operations. That baseline becomes the scoreboard. Every improvement is reported as movement against your own starting numbers, never against invented benchmarks or other clients' results.
The Engagement
Embedded in your operation, run by your team
A fractional engagement scoped to your business — a senior operator embedded part-time to document your processes, install dashboards and an operating cadence, and implement the fixes hands-on. Not a report; real operating systems put to work.
You end more capable, not more dependent. We build the systems with your team and hand them off running, so the operation keeps working when the engagement flexes down. Priced from an hourly rate, scaling to a scoped retainer.
Every operation is different. The audit is where we find your highest-return fix.
How It Works
From operational audit to systems that run themselves
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Operational audit
We map your workflows, inventory the tools you run, and set baseline numbers so every later result has a starting line to beat.
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Systemize (SOPs)
We document your core processes into clear SOPs, so the business runs on a system instead of in your head.
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Dashboards & visibility
KPI dashboards wired to the tools you already use, so the numbers that run the business sit in one place.
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Operating cadence
A weekly accountability rhythm — the meetings, metrics, and owners that keep execution on track.
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Implement & hand off
We implement the highest-return fixes hands-on, then hand the systems off running so your team owns them.
FAQ
E-commerce & DTC — fractional-COO & operations questions
How is this different from hiring an operations manager?
You get senior operating leadership on a part-time basis for a fraction of a full-time executive salary. We install the systems and build the muscle in your existing team, so you may not need to hire a senior ops leader at all, or you hire a more junior one to run what we built.
Will this create dependence on you?
The opposite is the goal. Every SOP, dashboard, and cadence is built with your team and handed over in files they own. Success is your people running the system confidently without us.
We are on Shopify with a 3PL. Do you work in our tools?
Yes. We work inside your existing stack, store platform, 3PL portal, inventory app, and finance tools. We reduce and connect tooling rather than pushing a new platform on you.
How quickly will we see something change?
The first documented SOPs and an initial dashboard typically land within the first few weeks. The pace of deeper operational fixes depends on your baseline and how much time your team can commit alongside us.
Do you guarantee specific results?
No honest advisor can promise a number sight unseen. We commit to setting a clear baseline from your data and moving the operational metrics we agree on, reported transparently against that baseline.
What does it cost?
Engagements start from an hourly rate for a focused scope and scale to a monthly retainer as the work broadens. We size it to the problem so you are not paying for a full-time seat you do not need.
How much of our team's time does this require?
This is human-in-the-loop work. We need regular access to the people who run operations today, because the systems are built with them, not handed down. Expect a few hours a week from key team members.
What if our biggest problem turns out to be something else?
The baseline diagnosis tells us where the real leak is. If it is not where you assumed, we re-point the hands-on work at whatever is actually capping the business, with your sign-off.
The Full Practice