Super Natural Snacks: Hiring a Director of Growth & Marketplaces to Launch in the U.S.
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Why a senior operator who would still do the work was hard to find
Super Natural Snacks already had a proven business model in Europe. Translating that into the U.S. meant standing up Amazon and TikTok Shop from zero, in a market where the brand had no sales history, no review volume, and no channel infrastructure.
The requirement set was narrow: five to eight years scaling marketplace channels inside a CPG brand, proven Amazon performance, direct TikTok Shop ownership rather than oversight, and enough command of CPG economics to make pricing, promotion, and margin calls against inventory constraints. The clients also requested the candidates to have a deep food & CPG experience combined with Amazon marketplace expertise and hands-on TikTok Shop knowledge.
Food CPG punishes marketplace operators who only know traffic. Every promotion moves against margin, discounts compound on case-pack costs that already carry freight, and a listing that outsells the forecast turns into a stockout with a shelf-life clock behind it.
TikTok Shop was still an emerging channel, making proven 0→1 experience particularly valuable. The candidate needed to be senior enough to know how to build the strategy, but scrappy enough to actually execute it.
Three profiles were ruled out early: candidates who wanted to direct a team instead of running the channel, candidates whose TikTok Shop exposure came through an agency rather than their own account, and candidates from outside food and CPG who had never priced against margin and shelf-life constraints.
How we ran the search
Targeting multi-channel owners instead of marketplace specialists
Constant Hire focused on operators who had experience owning multiple growth channels rather than candidates with expertise in only one marketplace.
The final candidates had four signals in the profile:
- Been promoted five times in their previous role
- Owned multiple channels, including affiliate and marketplaces
- Scaled a previous company from $0 to $50M+
- Experience that aligned with the demands of building a new U.S. growth operation
What we changed about the role before sourcing
Calibrating the profile around a channel with no established talent pool
Because there was no established benchmark for the role, we walked the client through what the strongest TikTok Shop operators in our pipeline were actually running: creator affiliate program, live selling cadence, in-house versus agency content volume, typical GMV run rate at 12 months... That reset the profile from an executive hire to a senior individual contributor who would own the account directly
The practical effect was a shorter shortlist. Once the bar moved from marketplace experience to direct TikTok Shop ownership, the pool narrowed to 15 submittable candidates out of 31 interviewed.
Search snapshot
- 31 candidates interviewed
- 15 candidates submitted
- 4 interview rounds
- 3 client stakeholders
- 70 days to offer
- Reference checks completed
Three finalists reached the final round. One received an offer.
The placement
What the hire owns going into the U.S. launch
The hire came in owning Amazon and TikTok Shop end to end: campaign setup and optimization, budget, listings and merchandising, and the performance inputs that feed forecasting alongside finance and operations.
The mandate is to build the U.S. marketplace channel to the level the brand already reached at home, without adding a management layer to do it. Performance data will sit with the client.
What this search says about scoping a U.S. launch hire
Brands that have already proven a model somewhere else tend to hire for leadership when they enter the U.S. They write a director title, sketch a team plan, and then discover that nobody on the org chart is actually running the Amazon account. Channel ownership comes first. Leadership comes later, once there is enough volume to lead.
For Super Natural Snacks that meant one senior operator with the account in their name, and the pricing, promotion, and forecasting calls sitting with the same person doing the work.
If you are scoping a similar hire, the thing to settle before you post the role is whether you need someone to build the channel or manage people who already do. That answer changes the title, the comp band, and the size of the pool you are fishing in. Getting it wrong costs a search cycle.
