EVP – Operations Transformation — Beauty And Personal-Care Business

The mandate

Growth has changed the operating problem. A portfolio that was built around a limited number of high-volume personal-care lines now earns a material share of its margin from premium skincare, hair treatments and fragrance-led formats. Those categories have shorter launch windows, more volatile demand and a much larger population of specialist ingredients, decorated components and outsourced production steps. The commercial organisation has continued to introduce products at the pace expected by retailers and digital channels, but the supply system has not been redesigned around that complexity. Launches are being expedited, formulation changes are entering factories late, and inventory is accumulating in the wrong combinations of component and finished-goods stock.

The incoming EVP will create an operations model capable of supporting premium innovation without compromising consumer safety, service or cash discipline. This is not a conventional factory-efficiency appointment. The executive will have authority across integrated business planning, procurement, internal and external manufacturing, quality, logistics, engineering and operational excellence. Product development remains accountable for formulation and claims; commercial teams continue to own demand creation. The EVP must establish the decision rights, readiness gates and economic facts that connect those functions before a launch is committed.

Owned plants, regional fillers and specialist contract manufacturers form a network assembled through category additions rather than deliberate architecture. The board wants a fact-based strategy, not predetermined consolidation: scarce partner capability and lengthy qualification cycles must be weighed against duplication and unattractive total cost.

Scope and operating context

The role is based in Singapore and carries an operating perimeter of approximately 600 employees, alongside a sizeable population of contract manufacturers, packaging converters, ingredient suppliers and logistics providers. The mandate covers Singapore and the wider international region, with frequent work in manufacturing and supplier locations. Several important commercial markets sit at a distance from the physical supply base, making allocation rules, regulatory release timing and inventory positioning central to service performance.

Product architecture has proliferated across shades, packs, claims and local artwork, while critical components carry long lead times despite short life cycles. External producers also provide uneven planning, deviation and capacity visibility. Control must improve without pretending those partners are owned sites.

The EVP will inherit capable functional leaders, but their operating rhythms have become localised. Procurement measures purchase-price movement, plants measure efficiency, innovation teams measure launch dates, and markets measure availability. Those views do not yet reconcile into one portfolio-level account of margin, risk and cash. A central purpose of this appointment is to make trade-offs visible early enough for leaders to act, while keeping decisions close to the expertise needed to make them well.

First-year agenda

During the opening quarter, the EVP will establish a dependable baseline of service loss, write-offs, quality deviations, launch slippage, premium freight, supplier concentration and working capital. The diagnosis must follow product families and launch cohorts rather than relying only on aggregated functional reports. It should expose where demand volatility is unavoidable, where internal choices create instability, and which apparent savings are displaced into expediting, obsolescence or commercial concessions.

By the end of the first six months, the executive is expected to present an endorsed operating architecture. It will define which capabilities should remain inside the group, which specialist processes can be partnered, how external sites are segmented and governed, and where secondary sources are economically justified. It must also identify the handful of component and ingredient families for which standardisation can release meaningful scale without flattening brand differentiation. Capital requests will need explicit links to capacity, quality, resilience or labour-productivity outcomes.

In parallel, the EVP will rebuild the innovation-to-supply interface. Product concepts will move through clearly owned feasibility, cost, regulatory, stability, artwork and industrialisation gates. Late changes will carry visible consequences rather than disappearing into operational recovery activity. The aim is not to slow creative work; it is to protect the launches that matter by stopping marginal complexity from consuming scarce technical and supplier capacity.

Before year-end, one planning cadence, an agreed constraint view and explicit allocation principles should be operating. Early interventions must show fewer launch expedites, healthier components and faster closure of material quality events. Benefits created by pushing stock or risk elsewhere will not count.

Leadership responsibilities

The executive will chair the operating forum that converts demand, innovation and supply information into decisions. They will ensure unresolved choices are elevated with alternatives, financial consequences and accountable owners. They must be equally prepared to challenge an optimistic launch assumption, an operations request for unnecessary buffers or a procurement saving that weakens assurance.

Quality has independent authority and must never be subordinated to output pressure. The EVP will strengthen investigation quality, supplier corrective action, batch-release discipline and escalation of emerging consumer-safety signals. They will work closely with regulatory and product stewardship leaders on change controls across countries, particularly where a formulation, claim or pack alteration creates different approval requirements.

The role also sponsors the operating-data roadmap. Investment should focus on decisions that currently fail because information arrives late or cannot be reconciled: partner capacity, material availability, batch status, launch readiness and inventory exposure. The board is not seeking a technology programme detached from operational ownership. Process definitions, data accountability and front-line adoption must precede or accompany system deployment.

Measures of success

The board will monitor service by category and channel, forecast-value-add, launch adherence, first-pass quality, significant-deviation closure, conversion loss, premium freight and inventory health. Cash released from working capital must be separated from reductions that merely postpone purchases or create later service exposure. Network decisions will be tested against total landed economics and qualification risk rather than simple unit cost.

Management behaviour matters as much as the scorecard. Innovation debates must occur before commitments become irreversible, partner reviews must combine commercial, quality and capacity evidence, and the chief executive must gain a reliable view of which growth promises the network can support.

Candidate profile

Candidates are likely to have spent 22–28 years leading complex consumer-product operations, with meaningful exposure to beauty, personal care, cosmetics, speciality formulations, premium packaging or another regulated, innovation-intensive category. Experience must extend beyond owned manufacturing. The successful executive will have governed contract producers and technically constrained suppliers across countries, including situations where leverage depended more on expertise and relationship design than on purchasing scale.

Evidence of integrating planning, procurement, quality and manufacturing around portfolio economics is essential. The board will favour leaders who can show how they reduced structural complexity while preserving commercially valuable variation. They should have personally led a network or operating-model decision with material capital, people and continuity consequences, and be candid about the assumptions that proved wrong.

This role requires a calm, exacting communicator. The EVP must translate technical and operational facts for brand, finance and board audiences without stripping away the uncertainty. They will need the cultural range to set firm non-negotiables across diverse partners while adapting implementation to local capability. A record of developing strong functional successors is more important than arriving with a large transformation entourage.

Compensation and appointment terms

Indicative base compensation is SGD 420,000–570,000, supplemented by an annual incentive and long-term participation calibrated to sustained value creation. Final positioning will reflect the appointee's operating scale, international record and present remuneration structure. Any relocation, mobility or buyout arrangement will be considered individually and documented as part of the appointment process.

Confidentiality

The search is being conducted without disclosing the client organisation. Shortlisted executives will receive progressively deeper operational context after identity, conflict and confidentiality checks. Applicants should avoid including proprietary formulas, supplier terms or identifiable quality incidents from current or former employers; examples can be described through scale, choices and verified outcomes.