A fractional COO or commercial executive inside your business, with real authority.

When a founder-led business needs fractional executive leadership

• The founder is still the COO, the head of sales, and the final approval on everything, and the business has grown past what one person can run well.
• A function has no leader. Operations, planning, inventory, and fulfillment run on habit, or the commercial side has nobody who owns pricing, channels, key accounts, and the forecast.
• An executive has left, or is about to, and the business needs senior cover now rather than in the six months a search takes.
• A sale, recapitalization, or succession is within a few years, and a buyer will want to see a management layer that does not depend on the owner.
• Growth has pulled the company into channels, systems, and headcount the current team has never run, and the gap is leadership rather than effort.

If the gap is a single project with a date rather than a seat, Rothwell’s embedded engagements are usually the better fit; see below.

The seats Rothwell runs

• Fractional COO. Owns how the business runs: the operating cadence, planning and inventory, fulfillment and supply chain, systems, the metrics that tell the owner the truth, and the people who make it work. Reports to the owner or the board on what the numbers say and what is being done about it.
• Fractional Chief Commercial Officer or VP of Sales. Owns the commercial engine and is accountable for the revenue it produces: sales leadership and the team’s structure and cadence; distribution development and market entry; channel strategy and channel economics across dealer, distributor, retail, marketplace, and direct; pricing strategy and policy; key-account management; and the forecast the rest of the business plans against.
• VP of Operations. The same operating ownership as the COO seat, scoped to a plant, a warehouse, a distribution operation, or a business unit, where the owner keeps the broader executive role.
• Cross-functional by design. In a founder-led business the problems do not respect the org chart. A pricing problem turns out to be an inventory problem; a fulfillment problem turns out to be a forecasting problem. Rothwell scopes the seat to the function the business needs led, and the authority to reach across functions when the work requires it is written into the scope rather than assumed.

What Rothwell owns in the seat

• A defined executive role with written decision rights.
• Membership of the leadership team and the cross-functional coordination that comes with it.
• Operating budget and KPI ownership as authorized in the scope.
• Owner or board reporting on a fixed cadence.
• Team design, hiring, and development within the function.
• Transition support, including onboarding a permanent successor or providing interim coverage, where it is specifically agreed in the scope and Rothwell’s delivery capacity supports it.

What this is not

Authority is only what the scope grants. Rothwell manages employees only where the role documents it, and does not imply executive authority it has not been given. A fractional seat is also not a staffing placement: Rothwell fills it under its principal-led engagement model, with the senior operating relationship owned by the firm and specialist capacity added when the scope calls for it.

Fractional leadership or an operating-partner engagement?

The two overlap, and Rothwell runs both. The useful distinction is what is being owned. A fractional seat owns a function on an ongoing basis: the COO’s or CCO’s job, done part time, for as long as the business needs it. An embedded operating-partner engagement owns a defined outcome with a date, across whatever functions it touches: a channel rebuilt by next season, a business made ready for a buyer, an operating model stood up and handed over. Many engagements start as one and become the other; a readiness assessment often shows that what looked like a project is really an empty seat, or the reverse. The scope says which it is, and it can change by agreement.

Where we work

Rothwell’s fractional seats draw on firm-level experience in three industries. In outdoor recreation, that means dealer and distributor channels, Amazon and direct alongside the dealer network, seasonal planning, and landed cost under the current tariff regime. In off-road and overland, it means dealer and installer programs, direct and marketplace sales that do not undercut dealers, landed cost and margin on steel- and aluminum-heavy product, and capacity against the spring peak. In steel, metals, and recycling, it means pricing policy and exposure limits, inventory valued the way the business is measured, yard and ERP systems and the records behind them, and a commercial process that does not route through the owner. The seat is scoped the same way in each industry; the industry experience shortens the time to useful decisions.

How an engagement is structured

It starts with a conversation about which seat is empty and what the business needs from it in the next twelve months. Rothwell then proposes a written scope: the role, the decision rights, the expected availability, the reporting cadence, the metrics the seat is accountable for, and a defined term with review points. Fees and engagement terms are agreed in writing based on the responsibilities, scope, expected commitment, and duration. The engagement ends at an agreed review point, usually when the business can carry the full-time hire or when the seat is no longer needed; where it is agreed in the scope, Rothwell supports the transition to a permanent successor.

Questions owners ask

What does a fractional COO actually do day to day?

Runs the operating cadence, owns the plan and the numbers, makes the decisions the scope assigns, manages the people in the function, and reports to the owner on what is working and what is not. The days are spent inside the business, not writing about it.

How much time does the seat get?

Whatever the responsibilities require, agreed in the scope. Availability, decision rights, and duration are set together, because a seat with authority and no time is advice, and a seat with time and no authority is a cost. The scope can change with the work.

Will my team report to the fractional executive?

Where the scope says so, yes, in the same way they would report to a full-time executive in that seat. Where it does not, Rothwell works through the owner, and the scope says that too.

How is this different from an interim executive?

An interim executive typically fills a leadership vacancy for a defined period, often while a permanent replacement is identified. Fractional leadership provides executive capacity at an agreed level of commitment, which may continue for a longer period. The two models can overlap. Rothwell considers interim coverage where the scope and available delivery capacity support it.

How does it end?

With a plan. Either the business hires the full-time executive and the seat is handed over with documentation, or the need passes and the scope closes at an agreed review point. Support for onboarding the successor is part of the scope where it is agreed.

What does it cost?

Fees and engagement terms are agreed in writing based on the responsibilities, scope, expected commitment, and duration. Rothwell does not publish rates because no two seats are the same; the terms are on the table in the first conversation.

Related thinking

• Most founders don’t have a growth problem. They have a readiness problem.
• Strategy isn’t finished until the business can execute it.