Luxury DTC Margin-Recovery Authority — Omnichannel Maison

The mandate

The maison requires an interim authority to address contribution margin pressure, manage cross-border returns, prevent full-price client migration toward promotion-led marketplaces, and resolve inventory-promise splits across boutiques and e-commerce ahead of holiday trading and the next permanent appointment.

The interim must enter the Milan office within three weeks and hold the executive DTC decision seat for nine months. Four days each week are expected in Milan, with planned operating reviews in Florence, Paris and London; a permanent global digital-leadership search starts after the first twelve-week margin reset, and a six-week overlap is reserved inside the fixed term.

Handover is complete when country-and-channel contribution is reconciled to Finance, return cost per kept order has fallen by at least 20%, ninety-five percent of sellable stock is available to a governed promise, and two seasonal launches have met agreed full-price sell-through and service thresholds. The successor must chair a trading council unaided and accept the client, inventory and remediation ledgers.

The interim may reset paid-media allocation, suspend loss-making delivery propositions, change return-control rules, reassign temporary leaders and approve DTC operating spend within a €6 million envelope. Brand repositioning, permanent director appointments, boutique closures, marketplace exits and commitments above that amount require chief executive or board approval; the interim cannot alter atelier capacity or wholesale allocations unilaterally.

Creative direction, wholesale partner economics and long-term retail-estate strategy sit outside the assignment. The remit will diagnose where those choices damage DTC economics, but it does not redesign collections, renegotiate department-store concessions or select the maison’s future commerce platform beyond stabilising the current stack.

Why this seat is open

The board lost confidence when headline growth and agency reporting could not be reconciled to cash contribution by market. Dismissing the previous leader immediately before peak trading created a decision vacuum that the e-commerce and retail teams cannot jointly fill. A permanent search needs clean economics and clearer accountabilities before candidates can judge the true seat.

What you will own

• Rebuild the market-level contribution bridge from gross demand through cancellations, duties, fulfilment, returns, media and markdown, and sign the weekly commercial truth with Finance.
• Decide which acquisition audiences, delivery promises and promotion mechanics continue, pause or migrate after measuring retained-client value rather than platform-attributed revenue.
• Establish one inventory-promise rule across boutiques, distribution centres and pre-order stock, with explicit exceptions for clienteling and scarce-product allocation.
• Reset returns governance by isolating fit, fraud, delivery damage, serial purchasing and cross-border duty behaviour, then sponsor targeted controls that protect legitimate luxury service.
• Direct two launch control rooms linking editorial traffic, appointment demand, stock depth, fulfilment capacity and full-price sell-through to named interventions.
• Reconstitute the DTC leadership spine, appointing interim workstream leads where necessary and documenting permanent capability gaps without making permanent hires.
• Transfer a reconciled economics model, channel guardrails, client-cohort evidence, trading calendar and unresolved technology decisions through a successor-led operating cycle.

Candidate qualifications

• Held enterprise digital-commerce or omnichannel authority for a luxury, prestige beauty or scarcity-led brand with meaningful boutique and cross-border fulfilment complexity.
• Personally reversed a DTC growth plan after discovering negative contribution economics and can evidence which costs or cohorts changed the investment case.
• Governed returns, fraud, duties and inventory promise across several markets without eroding high-value client experience or full-price brand position.
• Led peak-season trading while repairing an order-management, allocation or fulfilment failure under board scrutiny.
• Can reconcile marketing attribution, merchandise margin and cash contribution with Finance rather than depending on agency dashboards.
• Completed a fixed-duration turnaround and transferred decision routines to a permanent executive through at least one live seasonal launch.