Almost half of the senior leaders who replaced someone on their team say they made the correct call too late. Not that they made the wrong call. That they waited longer than they should have.
That finding comes from the ForceBrands 2025 State of the High-Growth Consumer Brands Industry Report,and it tracks with what I hear from beauty founders. The hesitation is rarely about whether a change is needed. It is about not being ready to move when the moment arrives.
Here is what that costs in practice. A major Ulta launch lands without the commercial leader needed to maximize it. A DTC scale-up stalls because the person driving it was built for an earlier stage of the business. A strong VP of Marketing joins under one leader, loses confidence when that person transitions out, and moves on before the brand gets the full benefit of bringing her in.
None of those situations required a better search. They required an earlier conversation.
They plan their organization the way they plan their product roadmap. Deliberately, with a view of where the business needs to be 18 to 24 months from now.
A founder building toward a Sephora launch knows that conversation is 12 months out. The smartest ones are asking, six months before that, what kind of commercial leadership does this organization need to capitalize on that moment and sustain it afterward. Not who left and who steps in. What does the next chapter of this business require, and who is built for that.
That question is harder to answer alone. It requires someone who knows what leadership looks like at each stage of beauty brand growth, who has seen which leaders thrive in which environments, and who can pressure-test an org structure against a real growth plan.
What tends to catch founders off guard is how quickly the business shifts from driving sell-in to sustaining sell-through. Suddenly, getting on shelf becomes less important than managing velocity, in-store execution, inventory flow, and constant retailer communication, all at once. Bringing in leadership with prior retailer experience helps uncover the in-store success nuances quicker. The commercial leader ends up owning the full feedback loop between retailer, field, supply chain, and marketing in real time, which is rarely spelled out, but becomes the difference between a strong launch and a stalled one.
Because the work has already been done. They know what the incoming leader needs to own, what decisions are theirs to make, what the team looks like that they are walking into, and what success looks like at 90 days, six months, and a year. It changes everything about who you find and how quickly they can contribute.
The organizations that skip that front-end work open a search with a job description built around the person who just left. They screen against criteria that reflect the last chapter, not the next one. Fit for stage matters as much as credentials. A search that starts without that clarity rarely ends with both.
What this work actually looks like: two or three conversations with the CEO or founder, sometimes the board. We are asking where the business will be in 18 months. Who on the current team is already being stretched past their actual scope. What the incoming leader is walking into on day one, not the version in the job description. The org chart with the friction in it.
From there, the work identifies what the organization needs to be able to do that it cannot do today. Which functions need a genuine leader versus a stronger process. Where a fractional or advisory leader makes more sense than a permanent hire right now, because the business isn't ready, or because the role isn't ready to exist yet.
The output is a brief, but one that answers questions a rushed search never gets to. What does the board want to see from this person in year one? What decisions are theirs alone to make? What does this team need from a leader right now that it is not getting? A search built on that foundation moves differently. The candidates are different. The conversations are different. The timeline is tighter because the criteria are sharper.
Before you feel the need to. That is the consistent answer from founders who have navigated leadership transitions well.
According to the ForceBrands 2025 State of the High-Growth Consumer Brands Industry Report, only 13% of leaders have a succession plan in place for their top three strategic positions. Half have none at all. That means most transitions happen under pressure, with a compressed timeline, against a candidate pool that gets evaluated too quickly.
When a gap opens and the business is moving fast, a well-known name from a large company starts to feel like the answer. It is also where stage fit gets deprioritized in favor of pedigree, and where a mismatch costs the most, in time, in team disruption, and at the expense of starting over.
The difference is not luck. It is timing.
ForceBrands partners with CEOs and founders before a search opens, helping map the organization's future state, define what each leader needs to own and deliver, and build the conditions for the best people to do their most meaningful work. We have been doing this in beauty, wellness, and personal care for over 20 years.
Start a search or a conversation: forcebrands.com/start-a-search