Find and hire a senior
Our ecommerce recruiters place senior leaders who own online revenue. Senior ecommerce leadership search for DTC, retail, consumer brands, and marketplaces. We place leaders who own the online P&L, merchandising, conversion, site experience, and operations, not just traffic. Short list in 30-45 days.
Our ecommerce recruiters place senior leaders who own online revenue
Ecommerce leadership is a distinct discipline: merchandising, conversion, site experience, marketplace, and an online P&L, not just paid traffic. Our search practice includes recruiters whose specialty is ecommerce and retail, so we assess for operators who can run the whole store, not a single channel into it.
The strongest ecommerce leaders own revenue and margin, not vanity sessions. We assess each short-list candidate on the online P&L they actually ran, how they balance acquisition against conversion and merchandising, and how they make the trade-offs between growth and profitability the role lives in.
Our search is led by an operator who ran ecommerce organizations at scale, inside a collective deep in DTC, retail, and marketplace operations. That bench gives us real intel on who can run a modern ecommerce business versus who has only managed a slice of one.
We run retained executive search for senior ecommerce leaders. Director of Ecommerce, Head of Ecommerce, Director of Ecommerce Marketing, and the VP-level variants of the seat. These searches open when online revenue becomes the priority: a retail brand is scaling DTC and needs a leader to own the channel end to end; a consumer brand is professionalizing ecommerce beyond a Shopify admin and a paid budget; a marketplace needs someone who can run both merchandising and conversion against a P&L.
Every retained search starts with a 60-minute working session that ends in a written scope. The scope names what the role actually owns, merchandising, conversion and CRO, site and platform, fulfillment and ops, marketplace, and the scale of the online P&L. It names the platform reality (Shopify, headless, marketplace, B2B commerce) and whether this is a build-the-channel or scale-the-channel mandate. We calibrate to the real store, not a generic ecommerce profile.
Ecommerce search turns on commercial ownership a resume understates. We assess each short-list candidate on the online revenue and margin they actually owned, their command of merchandising and conversion as well as acquisition, and their platform and operations fluency. The written candidate document maps each candidate's channel scope and P&L scale to your business.
Searches surface candidates from our direct-placement network first, deep in DTC, retail, and marketplace ecommerce, then expand via targeted outbound. Short list lands at roughly 6-8 named candidates with a written assessment per name.
Our retained agreements carry a no-fee replacement if the placement leaves or is asked to leave within 12 months. We invest heavily in channel and P&L calibration so we rarely have to use it.
Most retained searches bundle these workstreams.
| Feature | Chameleon Collective | Traditional retained search firm | Contingency recruiter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to short list | 14-21 days | 30-45 days | Variable, volume-driven |
| Online-P&L assessment per candidate | Yes, written per short-list candidate | Variable, often a polite glance | Rarely, resume-keyword driven |
| Channel and P&L calibration depth | Written scope + P&L mandate | Job-description-driven | Job-description-driven |
| Dedicated ecommerce / retail recruiting depth | Yes, ecommerce recruiters on the team | Generalist | Generalist |
| Engagement fee structure | Retained, fixed cap | Retained, % of comp (typically 25-30%) | Contingency, % of comp on placement |
| Replacement guarantee | 12 months, no fee | 6-12 months variable | 30-90 days typical |
| Interim ecommerce bridge | Yes, from internal collective | No | No |
| Onboarding support | 90-day post-placement bridge | Limited to start date | None |
Common questions from founders, GMs, and CMOs evaluating an ecommerce leadership search.
Our ecommerce recruiters advise: Digital marketing search centers on acquisition channels. Ecommerce leadership search centers on owning online revenue end to end, merchandising, conversion, site experience, operations, and the P&L. We assess ecommerce candidates on commercial ownership of the store, not channel skill alone, because that is what the seat actually requires.
Our ecommerce recruiters advise: Yes. Our search practice includes recruiters whose specialty is ecommerce and retail, and it is led by an operator who ran ecommerce organizations at scale. We assess for operators who can run the whole store, not a single channel into it.
Our ecommerce recruiters advise: Most retained searches close in 45-60 days from kickoff to signed offer, with the short list in 14-21 days. Searches run longer when the platform or marketplace situation is unusual, which we flag during calibration.
Most Chameleon retained searches at this level run $35K-$75K with a fixed cap, depending on seniority and the scope of the online P&L. We quote a fixed number after calibration, not a percentage of comp.
Both. We screen against the channel-and-P&L mandate first, then you review every short-list candidate yourself with our written online-P&L assessment as a reading aid.
Yes. Our collective includes Fractional and Interim ecommerce operators who can run the store while the search closes, then hand off cleanly to the permanent hire.
Our retained agreements carry a 12-month no-fee replacement guarantee. If the placement leaves or is asked to leave within 12 months, we run the search again at no fee.
Directly. The engagement partner runs your search end to end, with no junior researcher layer between you and the recruiter.
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Work with senior ecommerce recruiters. Tell us what this role owns and the platform reality. We'll tell you what kind of search fits, how long it should take, and what the fixed cap will be.
Ecommerce leadership placements across DTC and consumer brands, retail, and marketplaces, where the role owns online revenue end to end: merchandising, conversion, site experience, fulfillment, and the ecommerce P&L.
Tell us what this role owns and the platform reality. Merchandising, conversion, site, ops, marketplace, and the P&L scale. We'll tell you what kind of ecommerce search fits.
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A deeper read on a few of the operators above: who they are and what they bring.
Featured Case Study
Mansur Gavriel
Retail & eCommerce
Luxury retail brand Mansur Gavriel was transitioning into a direct-to-consumer business model and needed to rebuild their marketing team to align with this new direction. The challenge was not just about hiring top talent but also ensuring that the new hires seamlessly integrate with Mansur Gavriel's brand values and the new business model.
Chameleon Collective's Dan Clifford stepped in as Mansur Gavriel's Interim CMO. He collaborated with the Mansur Gavriel team to create a marketing and hiring plan that aimed to fill 12 critical roles in brand, eCommerce, and creative fields. The approach involved extensive candidate identification and hiring, with a keen focus on the candidates' alignment with Mansur Gavriel's business transformation.
Under the interim leadership of Dan, Mansur Gavriel successfully hired for crucial roles including Creative Director, Social Media Manager, Growth Marketing Manager, Retention Marketing Manager, PR Coordinator, and eCommerce Manager. In addition, they also successfully replaced their former Director of eCommerce. The transition led to the creation of a strong and culture-aligned marketing team. Chameleon Collective continues to maintain a robust relationship with Mansur Gavriel's leadership, further aiding their growth plans. The placement of their full-time CMO in 2022 marked a significant milestone in the transformation journey.
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