How to Identify Leadership Gaps in a Growing Consumer Brand

A growing consumer brand doesn't always need more employees. Sometimes, it needs different leadership. As a CPG company moves from founder-led to a more established organization, the leadership structure that worked at one stage can quickly become a constraint. Founders become overloaded, teams lack clear ownership, important decisions fall between departments, and growth starts exposing gaps in expertise.

So how do you know when a consumer brand has a leadership gap — and when is it actually time to hire an executive? At Fairfield Partners, we help high-growth consumer brands answer exactly that question. The strongest executive searches don't begin with a job description. They begin by identifying what the business needs its leadership team to accomplish next.

What Is a Leadership Gap?

A leadership gap exists when a company's current leadership team does not have the experience, capacity, or functional expertise needed to achieve its next stage of growth.

That gap can take several forms:

Functional: No senior leader owns an important function such as sales, finance, marketing, or operations.

Capacity: A founder or executive is responsible for too many functions.

Experience: The team lacks someone who has solved the problems the company is about to encounter.

Strategic: The company has strong functional leaders but lacks leadership capable of connecting functions to a broader growth strategy.

Organizational: Teams exist, but reporting lines, accountability, and decision-making are unclear.

Not every gap requires a new executive. Sometimes the solution is restructuring responsibilities, promoting an existing leader, adding a VP or Director, or bringing in fractional expertise. The key is identifying the actual problem before deciding on the hire.

7 Signs Your Consumer Brand Has a Leadership Gap

1. The Founder Is Still the Decision-Maker for Everything

If every major sales, marketing, financial, operational, or hiring decision still comes back to the founder, the organization may have outgrown its leadership structure. A founder should remain deeply involved in the company's vision and strategy. But if they're acting as the de facto CEO, CMO, CFO, and COO, it's difficult to scale effectively.

Ask: What decisions could be made without the founder if the right leader were in place? That answer often points directly to the next leadership hire.

2. Growth Is Outpacing the Team's Expertise

A brand may have an excellent team and still have a leadership gap. For example, a company that has grown primarily through DTC may suddenly be entering national retail. The existing team may be talented but lack experience managing major retailers, distributors, trade spend, or wholesale economics.

The question Fairfield Partners often encourages companies to ask is: What does the business need to know how to do next that it doesn't know how to do today?

That capability may determine the next executive hire.

3. One Executive Is Wearing Too Many Hats

A common pattern in scaling CPG companies is combining functions that eventually become too large or complex for one person. A founder may initially oversee both sales and marketing. An operations leader may manage supply chain, manufacturing, and customer service. A finance leader may oversee accounting while also handling forecasting, fundraising, and investor reporting.

When the scope becomes too broad, performance can suffer across multiple functions. This is often a sign that the company needs to separate responsibilities and add leadership depth.

4. Important Functions Don't Have Clear Ownership

If two departments believe the other owns a decision — or nobody knows who owns it — there's an organizational problem.

Common examples include:

• Who owns revenue forecasting?

• Who owns pricing?

• Who owns inventory planning?

• Who owns retail strategy?

• Who owns product launches?

• Who owns customer acquisition?

• Who owns the P&L?

A leadership team should have clear accountability for the company's most important outcomes.

5. The Business Is Growing but Profitability Isn't

Revenue growth can hide leadership gaps.

If sales are increasing but margins, cash flow, or profitability aren't keeping pace, the company may need stronger financial or operational leadership.

A CFO can help address forecasting, working capital, capital allocation, and financial strategy.

A COO may be needed when operational inefficiencies, inventory, supply chain, or execution are limiting profitable growth.

The right answer depends on what's actually causing the problem.

6. The Company Is Entering a New Stage of Complexity

Leadership needs change as a CPG company scales. A brand expanding from DTC into retail has different leadership requirements than a brand managing a national retail footprint. A company preparing for fundraising or M&A has different financial needs than an early-stage business.

This is why Fairfield Partners approaches executive search around business stage and future needs, rather than simply matching a company to a generic job description.

A useful question is: What will be harder to manage six to twelve months from now if we don't add this capability today?

7. The Current Team Is Constantly Fighting Fires

When senior leaders spend most of their time reacting to problems, there may be a missing layer of leadership. Constant firefighting can indicate that the organization lacks:

• Clear ownership

• Strategic planning

• Scalable processes

• Functional expertise

• Cross-functional leadership

• Appropriate delegation

Hiring an executive shouldn't simply add another person to the firefighting effort. The goal should be to create better systems, clearer accountability, and stronger decision-making.

How to Determine Which Executive You Actually Need

Identifying a leadership gap doesn't automatically tell you which title to hire.

Start with the business problem.

If the problem is financial complexity:
Consider a Controller, VP Finance, fractional CFO, or CFO depending on the company's stage.

If the problem is retail growth:
A VP of Sales or senior commercial leader may be the right answer.

If the problem is operational complexity:
Consider an operations leader or COO.

If the problem is brand and demand generation:
A senior marketing leader or CMO may be appropriate.

If the problem is founder dependency:
Look at which functions still require founder involvement and why.

The title should follow the need — not the other way around.

Leadership Gap or Hiring Gap?

This distinction matters. A hiring gap means you need additional capacity. A leadership gap means you need someone with the authority and experience to make decisions, set strategy, build a team, and own an important business function.

A company may have ten people working in marketing and still have a marketing leadership gap. Likewise, a brand may have an accounting team and still need a CFO. Adding more employees won't solve a leadership problem if nobody is accountable for the function.

When Should a Growing CPG Brand Hire an Executive?

There's no universal revenue threshold for hiring a CPG executive. Instead, consider four factors:

1. Complexity: Has the business become significantly harder to manage?

2. Scale: Is the current leadership structure struggling to keep up with growth?

3. Capability: Does the team have experience solving the company's next set of challenges?

4. Founder capacity: Is the founder spending time on functions that should be owned by another executive?

When several of these are true, it's worth evaluating whether an executive hire is needed. For a broader framework on how leadership teams should evolve, see How to Build a Leadership Team for a Scaling CPG Brand.

Build the Team Around the Next Stage

The goal of leadership planning isn't to build the biggest executive team possible. It's to build the right leadership team for the company's next stage of growth.

At Fairfield Partners, we work with high-growth consumer brands to identify these gaps and find the executives who can close them. Since 2005, our team has specialized in executive search across food, beverage, supplements, personal care, pet care, and other consumer categories.

That industry specialization matters. The right leader for a scaling CPG brand needs more than functional expertise. They need to understand the pace, economics, channels, and organizational challenges of consumer businesses.

If your company is growing faster than your leadership structure, Fairfield Partners can help you identify the gap — and find the leader to fill it.