The C-suite is the group of chief-level executives, led by the CEO, that helps a brand's founder and board set strategy and run each major function without the founder making every call. At a consumer brand, the C-suite positions that matter first are the CEO, COO, CFO and CMO. Commercial and growth chiefs usually come next, between $50M and $150M depending on the sales model, and product, supply chain and people chiefs after that.
Most C-suite guides describe Fortune 500 companies. At a DTC or CPG brand the same titles mean something different. A CPO at a software company runs the app roadmap, while a CPO at a supplement brand decides what goes into the next formula. Several seats also look different at a consumer brand, such as a Chief Retail Officer running a store fleet, a Chief Supply Chain Officer managing a co-manufacturer network, or a Chief Growth Officer who replaces the CMO altogether.
The title is also a poor guide to the job. Two brands can both post a "CMO" role and be hiring for different scopes, one a brand builder and the other a performance operator who owns contribution margin.
Each seat below comes with the team that reports to it, a named executive where one could be verified, and the revenue stage and trigger that justify creating it. BLS salary benchmarks follow the role list.
These are the C-suite titles you will find at DTC and CPG brands, starting with the four seats most brands fill first.
Two acronyms collide in that list. CCO can mean chief creative officer, chief commercial officer or, at CPG brands, chief customer officer, and CPO can mean chief product officer or chief people officer, which is why most brands spell the titles out on the org chart and in job posts.
You will also see chief digital, data, AI, information, customer, sustainability and legal officers at larger consumer companies. Those C-suite roles tend to arrive later or sit inside one of the roles above, and they get their own section further down.
The "C" stands for chief. C-suite, C-level and chief-level all describe the same group of people, the executives who own a whole function and answer to the CEO. When someone talks about C-level executives at a brand, they mean this group, not the VPs below it.
Officers and executives are not quite the same thing. The board of directors appoints corporate officers, and officers carry legal authority to sign for the company. The CEO and CFO are almost always officers, and the COO and general counsel or chief legal officer often are. The other chief titles are executive roles a company creates as it grows. A Chief Growth Officer can sit in every leadership meeting without being a legal officer of the company.
D-level means director-level, the layer below VP. Directors run a team inside a function. The FAQ at the end covers the difference in more detail.
At a consumer brand, the size of the C-suite tracks revenue more than anything else. A $5M brand may have one C-level title, the founder CEO. A $200M brand may have ten. The titles match what you see at a public company, but the scope behind them is much narrower, and the team under each chief is smaller.
The other difference is depth. At a public company each chief runs a large executive leadership team of SVPs and VPs. At a $75M brand, most C-suite roles are player-coach jobs, with the chief writing the plan on Monday and reviewing the agency's work on Thursday. Candidates who have only led from the top of a large org often struggle in that version of the job, and it is the most common mismatch we see in executive positions at consumer brands.
The CEO sits at the top of the C-suite and reports to the board. Most other chiefs report to the CEO, and there is no fixed ranking among them. Rank comes from scope and decision rights, not the title.
In consumer brands, the first circle often includes a commercial chief, either a Chief Commercial Officer or a CGO, because revenue is the bottleneck. Reporting lines also bend at scale. At many $150M+ brands the Chief Supply Chain Officer and Chief Retail Officer report to the COO rather than the CEO, and a Chief Logistics Officer usually sits under one of those two.
Whatever the title, every chief carries two responsibilities the VPs below them do not. They own a number in front of the board, and they decide how their function is built, including which seats exist, who fills them and what each one answers for. A chief who has only one of those is a VP with a bigger title.
Across the consumer brand executives in our candidate network, fused titles are common: Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, COO and General Manager, CMO and Chief Digital Officer. Brands combine seats first and split them as scope grows. The functional teams under each of these executives are covered in our guide to ecommerce team structure.
Each entry below follows the same structure. It covers what the seat is, what it owns at a consumer brand, who reports to it at a $50M+ brand, what a smaller brand does instead, and, where one could be verified, a real executive in the role.
The CEO is the executive who owns the whole business, answers to the board, and hires the rest of the C-suite.
At a consumer brand, the chief executive officer sets strategy and capital allocation, owns the investor and board relationship, and decides which other seats exist and when they get created. That last part is the one founders underrate. Every other role in this article starts as a decision the CEO makes about which calls they are willing to stop making.
In a founder-led DTC brand, the CEO is often still the de facto CMO or product chief, approving creative and signing off on every launch. In PE-backed CPG, the pattern often runs the other way. The board hires an operator CEO and the founder moves into a brand or product role.
The CEO also owns the operating rhythm of the executive leadership team until a COO or chief of staff takes it on. At most founder-led brands that means the weekly leadership meeting, the quarterly plan and the board deck.
Under $15M, a founder CEO with a head of growth, a head of operations, a controller and an agency bench.
Who holds this seat: Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa, co-founders and co-CEOs of Warby Parker.
A CEO executive search for a consumer brand starts with deciding what the founder keeps.
The COO is the executive who owns the operating P&L, designs the operations org chart, and runs the teams that get product to customers.
At a consumer brand the COO owns sourcing, the 3PL and fulfillment network, inventory and cash conversion, returns, customer experience, and the operating KPIs for every lead underneath. The job is gross margin on a physical product, not just process. A COO who has never watched duty costs, returns and inventory spread across three nodes all hit in the same quarter is still learning the job.
What separates a COO from a VP of operations is the P&L and the org design. A VP of operations runs the function. A COO decides how the function should be built for the next revenue stage, then hires into that structure.
Tariff changes have also turned the COO into a pricing voice. When duty rates move, the COO is the one who knows which SKUs still clear margin and which need a new supplier or a new price. Warby Parker showed how fast duty swings reach the P&L. Its Q2 2026 adjusted EBITDA included an $11.8 million benefit from IEEPA tariff refunds.
Under $15M, a head of operations runs fulfillment and inventory directly with a 3PL and a freight broker.
Who holds this seat: Zach Rasmuson, chief operating officer of The Duckhorn Portfolio since 2012. In September 2026 the wine company promoted P.J. Alviso to succeed him from February 1, 2027, with a remit covering vineyards, winemaking, winery operations, supply strategy, supply chain, engineering and grower relations.
Our COO executive search page breaks down the operations tiers below the seat.
The CFO is the executive who owns cash, forecasting, capital raising and financial reporting.
At a consumer brand the chief financial officer lives in contribution margin, landed cost, inventory carrying cost and cash conversion. Inventory is cash sitting in a warehouse, and the CFO is the person who decides how much of it the business can afford to hold before the next raise or the next credit line.
The CFO also runs the lender and investor relationship, the audit, and the forecast the COO and CMO plan against. The CFO hire that fails is usually the one where the founder still runs the cash forecast on their own spreadsheet.
Under $15M, a controller plus a fractional CFO.
Who holds this seat: Adrian Mitchell, chief financial officer of Warby Parker, effective February 10, 2026, who joined from Macy's, where he served as chief operating officer and CFO.
Our CFO executive search page lays out the finance leadership ladder below the seat.
The CMO is the executive who owns demand creation, the marketing budget and the marketing team.
At a consumer brand the chief marketing officer owns paid and owned channels, brand marketing, creative, lifecycle, influencer and PR. The DTC tension is how the role gets judged. A DTC CMO answers for blended CAC and contribution margin after marketing, not reach or awareness scores.
The boundary lines matter here because three seats overlap. A CMO owns marketing. A CGO owns growth across marketing, product and channel. A CBO owns the brand itself. Brands that blur these end up with a CMO who has the title and none of the decisions.
Under $50M, a VP of marketing. Under $15M, a head of marketing or head of growth working with agencies for paid media and creative.
Who holds this seat: Oshiya Savur, chief marketing officer of e.l.f. Brands at e.l.f. Beauty, reported in April 2026.
Our CMO executive search page compares the CMO with the VP and head of marketing tiers.
The CBO is the executive who owns how the brand is positioned, looks and sounds across every touchpoint.
The chief brand officer owns positioning, identity, packaging, collaborations, communications and the brand standards the marketing team executes against. In practice the seat shows up for one of two reasons. Either the CMO role has drifted into performance marketing and brand equity has no owner, or a founder is stepping back from being the face and voice of the brand.
The CBO is the right first C-level marketing hire at brand-led businesses, where organic social, creators and word of mouth bring in most new customers. Fashion, jewelry, beauty and lifestyle brands fit that model more often than supplement or subscription brands do.
Under $50M, a VP of brand. Under $15M, a head of brand or a fractional brand lead.
Who holds this seat: Avery Baker, Arc'teryx's first chief brand officer, appointed in January 2026 to lead global brand strategy, marketing, communications and a new consumer experience team, reporting to CEO Stuart Haselden.
Our chief brand officer executive search page maps the brand leadership tiers.
The Chief Creative Officer is the executive who owns creative output across design, photo, video and copy, plus the creative team that makes it.
This seat sets the creative standard across product, packaging, site, paid social and retail. In DTC the creative team is also a performance function, because creative volume and testing velocity drive paid results as much as targeting does. A Chief Creative Officer who only thinks in campaigns will starve the paid team of the dozens of concepts it burns through each month.
The boundary with the CBO is simple to state and hard to hold. The CBO decides what the brand stands for. The Chief Creative Officer decides how it looks and ships.
Under $150M, a creative director with freelancers and a production partner.
Who holds this seat: Hailey Bieber, Rhode's chief creative officer and head of innovation after the brand's sale to e.l.f. Beauty, alongside a strategic adviser role at the parent company. Rhode also shows the CBO split in practice. Co-founder Lauren Ratner holds the president and chief brand officer title, per the brand's April 2026 Sephora Europe announcement.
A chief creative officer search usually starts by deciding whether the seat sits under the CBO or beside it.
The CGO is the executive who owns revenue growth across acquisition, retention, channels and the digital storefront.
The chief growth officer has a broader remit than a CMO. Performance marketing, retention, conversion work on the site, partnerships and new channel launches such as TikTok Shop or Amazon all roll up into one number. Brands usually create the seat when marketing, ecommerce and product all claim credit for growth and nobody owns it. CPG companies more broadly have moved the same way, and BCG's 2026 study of CPG marketing organizations found some companies had rebranded the CMO role as chief growth officer.
The CGO seat works only when real levers come with it. If pricing stays with finance and new markets stay with the CEO, the brand has hired a CMO under another name.
The other split is between two kinds of growth. Some brands need a CGO who keeps a working acquisition engine compounding by raising LTV, fixing payback on paid and tightening pricing. Others need one who can open a new category, channel or market without starving the core business. A CGO who has only done one of these tends to misread the other in the first two quarters.
Under $100M, a VP of growth. Under $40M, a head of growth.
Who holds this seat: Anthony Potgieter, Birdy Grey's first chief growth officer, named in April 2026 after serving as senior director of ecommerce at Stanley 1913, with a remit across brand, marketing, digital product, partnerships and customer experience.
Our chief growth officer executive search page covers the CGO, CMO and VP of growth split.
The Chief Commercial Officer is the executive who owns every channel to market (DTC, wholesale, retail and marketplaces) and the commercial P&L across them.
This seat owns channel strategy, pricing, trade spend, account relationships and channel conflict. It appears when a brand sells meaningful volume through both its own site and retail partners, and someone has to arbitrate price and inventory between them. Without that owner, Amazon promotions start a price fight with a grocery buyer, and trade spend gets approved one account at a time until finance sees the total a quarter later.
The boundary with the CRO is about what gets measured. A CRO owns the revenue target. A Chief Commercial Officer owns the channel model behind it.
Which direction revenue is moving changes the hire. A DTC-first brand moving into retail needs a Chief Commercial Officer who has sat across from buyers at a category review and can fund slotting, free fills and trade promotions without wrecking margin. A retail-first brand building DTC and Amazon needs the opposite profile, someone who has owned a paid media budget and a marketplace P&L and can grow online without undercutting retail partners. Very few candidates have done both well, so the brief should say which one you need.
Under $75M, a VP of sales and a head of ecommerce, both reporting to the CEO.
Who holds this seat: Brian Bousley, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Zevia, appointed May 26, 2026 to lead sales, distribution and category management, reporting to the CEO.
Zevia expects $170 million to $175 million in 2026 net sales, well past the $75M mark where the commercial seat usually appears.
Our chief commercial officer executive search page breaks out the commercial leadership tiers.
The CRO is the executive who owns the company revenue target and the teams that sell against it.
The CRO title comes from software. At consumer brands it usually shows up in subscription and membership models, in DTC brands with a B2B or wholesale program, and in CPG brands that want one person over every revenue-generating function. The CRO owns forecasting accuracy, sales, partnerships and revenue operations.
The three revenue seats get confused constantly. The CRO is measured on the number, the Chief Commercial Officer on the channel model, and the CGO on the growth inputs.
Under $50M, a head of sales or VP of sales.
Who holds this seat: John Murphy, chief revenue officer at Tractor Beverage Company, appointed in February 2026 to lead sales, business development and channel strategy as the foodservice-first brand moves into retail.
A chief revenue officer search at a consumer brand should define the revenue the CRO does not own as clearly as the revenue they do.
The Chief Sales Officer is the executive who owns retail and wholesale sales, including national accounts, distributors, brokers and the retail calendar.
This is a core CPG seat, built for grocery, mass, club and convenience. The CSO owns account plans, distributor and broker management, category reviews and trade promotion. A good CSO also builds direct buyer relationships, so the brand is never one broker away from losing an account. At some brands, CSO means chief strategy officer, who owns corporate strategy, M&A and planning.
Before the seat exists, a VP of sales working with a broker network. Retail-first CPG brands create it well below $150M, while DTC-first brands usually wait until retail is a large share of revenue.
Who holds this seat: Sarah Kennedy, chief sales officer at NextFoods, the parent of GoodBelly and Cheribundi, appointed in February 2026 to lead retail sales strategy across the portfolio.
The Chief Retail Officer is the executive who owns the store fleet, store operations and the in-store customer experience.
The seat applies to DTC brands with their own stores. It owns store P&L, new store openings, real estate partners, visual merchandising, store staffing and clienteling. Most DTC brands that open stores run them under a VP of retail for a long time first, because a handful of showrooms does not need its own executive.
Retail and customer experience often merge at this level. A brand with hundreds of stores tends to treat in-store service, support and the online experience as one problem.
Under 10 to 15 stores, a VP or head of retail.
Who holds this seat: Sandy Gilsenan, chief retail and customer experience officer at Warby Parker, who oversees retail operations, customer service, and eye care and vision services. Warby Parker ended the second quarter of 2026 with 352 stores, per its August 2026 earnings release.
The Chief Product Officer is the executive who owns what the brand sells, meaning product development, innovation and the assortment.
At a consumer brand, product means physical product. That covers formulation, design, R&D, contract manufacturer briefs and the launch calendar. Do not import the software meaning, where a CPO runs app features and a roadmap. Some larger CPG companies split innovation into its own seat, a chief innovation officer, but most brands keep it inside the product role.
The boundary with supply chain is the one to write down. The CPO decides what gets made. The CSCO decides how it gets made and delivered.
Under $150M, a head of product development working directly with the contract manufacturer.
Who holds this seat: Heather Archibald, Vuori's first chief product officer, in a newly created role from April 20, 2026, leading the brand's end-to-end product organization. Vuori made the hire while planning about 25 store openings for 2026, 15 of them international, per the same release, which puts one assortment in front of far more markets at once.
A chief product officer executive search starts with which category calls move to the new hire.
The CTO is the executive who owns the tech stack, engineering, data and systems.
At a DTC brand the chief technology officer owns the storefront (Shopify Plus or headless), the ERP and OMS, the data warehouse, integrations, and security. The seat is justified when the stack is either a competitive asset or a growing liability. Orders and inventory that never quite match across Shopify, the ERP and the 3PL are the usual sign of the second.
Many brands open a CTO search a quarter before a replatform. That timing is common and risky, because the leader who runs a strong cutover can be the wrong operator for the three years after go-live.
A CIO is not the same thing. A CIO runs internal systems, and the FAQ at the end covers the difference.
Under $100M, a VP or head of engineering. Under $25M, a lead ecommerce engineer and a Shopify agency, with a fractional CTO for platform decisions.
Who holds this seat: Ekta Chopra, chief technology and AI officer at e.l.f. Beauty, a newly created role reported in April 2026.
Our CTO executive search page covers the technology leadership tiers.
The CSCO is the executive who owns sourcing, manufacturing, planning and logistics end to end.
This seat matters most for CPG and DTC brands with owned or co-manufactured production. It covers the supplier and co-man network, demand and supply planning, quality, freight and duty exposure. A planning error at this level shows up as cash tied up in the wrong SKUs or a stockout during the brand's biggest promotion.
At mid-size brands the CSCO usually reports to the COO. The boundary is that the COO owns the operating P&L, and the CSCO owns the physical supply network inside it. At very large CPG companies the seat often reports straight to the CEO.
Under $150M, a VP of supply chain reporting to the COO. Under $50M, a head of supply chain reporting to the COO or VP of operations.
Who holds this seat: Cassandra Green, appointed chief supply chain officer at The Campbell's Company on March 3, 2026, reporting to the CEO and leading customer logistics and planning, procurement, manufacturing, and food safety and quality.
A supply chain executive search should settle the reporting line before the brief goes out.
The Chief People Officer is the executive who owns hiring, compensation, performance and culture.
The seat covers talent acquisition, leveling and compensation bands, performance cycles, benefits, and store or warehouse HR for brands with hourly teams. Some brands use the older chief human resources officer title, or CHRO, for the same job. The role becomes real when people decisions cross functions and the founder can no longer hold them, such as a leveling framework that has to work for engineers, store managers and brand marketers at once.
Under $150M, a director of people. Under $50M, a people operations manager plus a PEO.
Who holds this seat: Alana Kwarta, appointed in March 2026 as Supergoop's first chief human resources officer, a new C-suite seat at the sun care brand.
A chief people officer search goes faster when the brand already knows whether the seat owns recruiting.
The Chief Logistics Officer is the executive who owns how product moves, covering inbound freight, distribution centers, 3PL partners, parcel carriers and retailer delivery compliance.
At a consumer brand this seat covers customs brokerage, the DC network, 3PL contracts, parcel rate negotiation, retailer routing guides and the chargebacks that come with missed delivery windows, plus returns logistics. It appears when freight and fulfillment become one of the largest cost lines on the P&L, usually at brands running several fulfillment nodes while also shipping to retail.
The title is rare at brands. Most fold logistics under the CSCO or the COO, and the boundary is clean when they do. The CSCO owns making and planning product. The Chief Logistics Officer owns moving it. At some brands CLO stands for chief legal officer instead, which is covered with the other positions below.
Under $150M, a director of logistics or director of fulfillment and 3PL reporting to the COO.
The Chief of Staff is the executive who extends the CEO, running the operating cadence, tracking company KPIs and preparing board materials, usually with few or no direct reports.
The seat carries no officer title and no P&L. A chief of staff runs the founder's operating cadence, while a COO owns the operating P&L, designs the org chart and manages the leaders who hit the KPIs. Many brands hire a chief of staff first and a COO later, and the mistake is treating one as a cheaper version of the other. In practice the chief of staff often runs the projects nobody else owns yet, such as a first ERP selection, and the best ones leave a cleaner org chart behind.
Often the first senior hire after a founder's first functional leads, sometimes below $15M.
These seats show up at consumer companies too, usually later, and often folded into one of the roles above until the work gets big enough to stand alone. Several share acronyms with the core list, so read the full title on any job post.
The chief digital officer owns digital commerce at a brand where digital is not yet the core business. At a retail-first CPG brand, the CDO typically owns the DTC site, Amazon, retail media and the digital shelf at retailer sites. DTC-native brands rarely create the seat, because digital is the business and the CGO or CTO already covers it. The acronym also collides with chief data officer.
As digital becomes the core business, the seat tends to fold into technology. In April 2026, e.l.f. Beauty promoted Ekta Chopra from chief digital officer to a newly created chief technology and AI officer role. Across our candidate network the same thing shows up in fused titles such as CMO and Chief Digital Officer. Below the C-suite, a head of ecommerce or VP of digital does this work.
A CIO runs internal information technology, such as devices, access, back-office software and often the ERP. A CISO owns cybersecurity, from payment page security and PCI scope to access control and incident response. At most consumer brands under $250M in revenue, one leader covers both CIO and CTO work, usually under the CTO title, and a separate CISO is rare below $500M. Until then, security sits with a lead under the CTO. At a DTC brand the cybersecurity exposure that matters most is the checkout, since every third-party script on the payment page sits inside PCI scope.
A chief data officer owns data governance, the data warehouse, data quality and who gets access to what. A chief analytics officer owns what the business does with that data, including attribution, forecasting models, customer analytics and the reporting the C-suite reads every week. Consumer brands rarely create either seat. A head of data and analytics under the CTO or CFO usually covers data analytics and data governance until the brand runs several businesses on one data platform.
A chief AI officer owns the AI roadmap, model and vendor choices, and the risk management rules around customer data and automated decisions. At consumer brands the CAIO seat usually merges into technology, as e.l.f. Beauty did with its chief technology and AI officer, a role that now sits inside the CFO's organization. Product data quality is the practical part of the job, since catalog data decides whether products surface in AI shopping tools. Most brands give this work to the CTO and a product data lead before they consider a standalone CAIO.
In CPG, chief customer officer usually means the retail customer, so the seat owns retailer partnerships and joint business plans. Horizon Family Brands promoted Scott Wallace to chief customer officer in September 2026 to lead customer strategy and partnerships across its retail and commercial networks. In DTC, a chief experience officer, or CXO, owns the consumer experience, including support, loyalty and everything after checkout. CXO is also used loosely to mean any C-level executive, so check which meaning a job post intends.
A chief sustainability officer owns sustainability reporting, packaging standards, sourcing commitments and emissions targets. The seat is common at large CPG companies and national retailers that report to investors on these numbers. At DTC brands, the work usually sits with a director under the COO or CSCO, because packaging and sourcing decisions already live there.
The legal chief owns legal, regulatory and compliance risk and is usually also the general counsel. For consumer brands that covers claims substantiation, FTC advertising rules, FDA or state regulation in food, supplements and beauty, IP and trademarks, retailer and co-man contracts, and the corporate secretary role for the board. A chief compliance officer owns the compliance program itself and appears mostly in heavily regulated categories. Regulated categories need senior legal coverage earlier than other brands. Below the C-suite, outside counsel plus a contracts manager covers the work.
Who holds this seat: Adam Copley, appointed executive vice president, chief legal officer and general counsel at The Duckhorn Portfolio, effective February 2, 2026. His remit covers M&A, alcohol trade practice and regulatory compliance, intellectual property and risk management.
Most consumer brands should not hire a full set of C-suite roles until $50M or more in revenue. Below that, VP-level, head-of and fractional executives cover the same work at a fraction of the cost. The trigger is never the revenue number alone. It is the moment the founder becomes the bottleneck for a function.
Fractional leaders work well for strategy and structure a few days a month, while a VP or head-of runs the work day to day. They fail when the job needs a daily owner, such as a live ERP migration, peak season or a retail line review. Our role pages put the fractional range at $10M to $50M for a CGO and $5M to $40M for a CTO.
In our placements, the first 3 to 6 months of a fractional engagement show whether the brand needs the seat at all. Conversion to a full-time hire usually comes between months 6 and 12, once the workload stops looking temporary. Revenue is the other signal. Somewhere between $10M and $50M, the day-to-day demands of most functions outgrow what a part-time leader can cover.
Source: Constant Hire role pages for the CMO,COO, CFO, CBO, Chief Commercial Officer, CGO and CTO. Rows for seats without a role page reflect Constant Hire placement experience.
Hire a CFO when the business hits a raise, a lender relationship, an audit, an acquisition, or a forecast the board no longer trusts. Below $15M, a controller plus a fractional CFO covers it, and below $50M a VP of finance usually does. The choice between fractional vs full-time finance hires turns on whether the work needs a daily owner, and the CFO executive search page covers the full-time seat.
Hire a COO when the founder still arbitrates between supply chain, CX and finance every week. Below $50M, a VP of operations is the better hire, and below $15M a head of operations or fractional COO is, the same tiers our COO executive search page uses.
Hire a CSCO when the brand runs a multi-supplier or co-man network where planning errors hit cash and margin, or when tariff exposure starts changing sourcing decisions. The seat usually sits under the COO first.
Hire a Chief Logistics Officer when freight and fulfillment become a top cost line, the brand runs several fulfillment nodes, or retailer chargebacks for late and short deliveries start eating margin. Most brands get years out of a director of logistics under the COO or CSCO first.
Hire a Chief People Officer when the brand is hiring across several functions at once, or when it carries hourly store and warehouse teams. Below that, a people operations manager plus a PEO covers it.
Hire a chief legal officer when claims substantiation, a major retailer or co-man contract set, or an acquisition puts legal risk in front of the board. Brands in supplements, food, beauty and alcohol usually need the seat before other categories do.
The CMO vs CGO decision comes down to where the gap is. Hire a CGO when growth spans marketing, site and channels and nobody owns the full number. Hire a CMO when marketing itself is the gap. Birdy Grey shows the CGO case. The DTC bridal brand reported $100 million in revenue for 2024 and created its first CGO role in April 2026.
Hire a CBO or a Chief Creative Officer when the CMO has become a performance role, when the founder is stepping back from the brand, or when retail and DTC no longer look like the same brand.
The three revenue seats each have a different trigger. Hire a Chief Commercial Officer when DTC and retail both carry real volume and price or inventory conflict between channels needs one owner. Hire a CSO in CPG when national accounts and brokers outgrow a VP of sales, which at retail-first brands happens well below $150M. NextFoods, the parent of GoodBelly and Cheribundi, named a chief sales officer in February 2026 to lead retail sales strategy across its portfolio. Hire a CRO for subscription, membership or B2B revenue models.
Hire a Chief Retail Officer when the store fleet is large enough that store P&L and new openings need their own executive.
Hire a Chief Product Officer when the launch calendar outgrows what the founder can run, or when the brand moves into new categories.
Hire a CTO when the brand runs a custom or headless stack, faces a replatform or an ERP or OMS rollout, or has data it cannot get out of its tools. Below that, an agency plus a fractional CTO is the cheaper and usually better answer. The CIO, CISO, CDO and CAIO seats almost always start inside the CTO's team at consumer brands.
An external CEO hire usually follows a PE or growth investment, a founder choosing to move into a brand or product role, or a stage the founder has not run before. Olipop followed that path in 2026. Founder Ben Goodwin moved to executive chairman and head of innovation, and the brand hired Electrolit's CEO to run the business after passing half a billion dollars in sales.
Hire a chief of staff when the founder spends most of the week on coordination rather than decisions. The chief of staff often comes before a COO, but it does not replace one.
The most expensive C-suite mistake at a consumer brand is hiring the title before handing over the decision rights. If the founder will still approve the POs, the pricing or the creative, hire the VP. A CMO who cannot change the channel mix, or a COO who cannot sign a 3PL contract, will leave, and the brand will run the search again with a more skeptical board watching.
Most published C-suite salary data describes public companies. BLS data gives a better baseline for consumer brands, as long as you read it correctly.
The median annual wage for chief executives was $213,990 in May 2025. That median includes chief executives of small businesses and public-sector bodies, so it is a poor benchmark for a brand-side hire. Metro data tells you more.
Chicago and Dallas pay more than New York at the median, but New York has the highest 90th percentile in the set at $709,670. For a C-level hire the top of the band is the number to budget against. Los Angeles has the lowest median of these seven metros at $234,290, and its 90th percentile still clears $500,000.
BLS reports straight-time wages. OEWS estimates exclude nonproduction bonuses, and BLS tells survey respondents to leave out stock bonuses, so equity never shows up in these numbers. In our searches, scope is almost always what decides whether a C-level candidate moves, followed closely by how the equity is structured and how much upside it carries.
BLS has no separate code for CMO, CFO or CTO. The closest proxy is the functional manager occupation for each seat, which works as a floor rather than a target.
Our view is that a C-level seat with real P&L scope belongs at or above the 90th percentile of these bands, not the median, which mostly describes directors and VPs. The logistics occupation is a weak proxy, since it covers warehouse and transport managers, and it understates what a CSCO earns at a manufacturing CPG brand.
The C-suite at a consumer brand gets built in sequence. Each seat earns its place when a specific decision outgrows the founder, whether that is the cash forecast, the channel mix, the store fleet or the supplier network. Hire the seat when you are ready to hand over its decisions, and hire the VP when you are not.
Constant Hire recruits only for DTC, ecommerce and CPG brands, and runs executive searches on a retained model. We scope each role before sourcing, so the tier and decision rights are settled before we contact a candidate. First interviews land within 10 business days, drawn from a network of senior operators who have run consumer brands at your stage. Generalist firms that fill consumer searches between healthcare and SaaS mandates rarely screen for landed cost, trade spend or contribution margin, which is where these hires succeed or fail.
C-level executives hold chief titles, such as CEO, CFO, COO and CMO, and set strategy for the whole company. D-level means director-level, the managers who run a team inside a function and usually report to a VP. Some companies use "D-suite" informally for directors. In consumer brands, directors often own a single channel, such as Amazon or retention.
BLS puts the national median for chief executives at $213,990 for May 2025, but that includes small businesses and public bodies. Across the seven large metros in our salary table, the median runs from $234,290 in Los Angeles to $370,000 in Seattle. BLS counts wages, not equity, and at consumer brands scope and equity usually decide whether a candidate moves.
The CEO ranks first and reports to the board. The COO and CFO usually form the first circle beneath the CEO. Functional chiefs such as the CMO, CTO, product chief and people chief follow, and their order depends on the company. At consumer brands, the commercial or growth chief often sits in that first circle too.
The board hires the CEO, most chiefs report to the CEO, and VPs and directors report to the chiefs. At larger consumer brands some chiefs report to the COO instead, most often the Chief Supply Chain Officer and Chief Retail Officer. A Chief of Staff sits beside the CEO without a functional team.
Yes. A C-suite executive owns a function and its results and usually has VPs reporting to them. A VP owns execution inside that function. Large companies blur this with titles like EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, but the reporting line, not the title, shows who sits higher. Founders weighing a VP against a chief should start there.
Not quite. A CIO typically runs internal systems and IT for the business. A CTO owns the technology the company builds or sells through, such as the storefront and data platform. DTC brands that hire a technology chief usually pick one of the two titles, and CTO is more common because the storefront is the product experience.
The CEO owns the whole business, the board relationship and capital decisions. The COO owns the operating P&L and the teams that run operations day to day. At consumer brands, the COO is usually the executive who turns the CEO's plan into supplier, inventory and fulfillment decisions, and the one who answers for gross margin.
A CFO owns cash, forecasting, capital raising and financial reporting. At a DTC or CPG brand that means contribution margin, landed cost, inventory carrying cost and the cash forecast the rest of the team plans against. Below about $15M in revenue, a controller paired with a fractional CFO usually covers the financial planning work.
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