Fractional marketing, operations and AI
Operating leadership for consumer brands that have outgrown how they have been run.
Twenty years inside consumer businesses, running marketing, merchandising and operations. Now available to a small number of companies at a time, without the cost or commitment of another executive hire. I also build the websites and put AI to work inside the business, using tools like Claude and ChatGPT, so the store and the back office finally match how the company actually runs.
The gap is usually not strategy.
Most founder-led consumer businesses know what they want to be. What breaks is the distance between the promise and what the operation can actually deliver: the assortment nobody rationalized, the buying cadence that fills the warehouse with the wrong things, the vendor terms that were set years ago and never revisited, the site that converts worse than it should.
That work is unglamorous and it is where the margin lives. It also rarely justifies a full-time hire at the level it needs. That is the seat I fill.
What I do
Six places I am usually most useful
Commercial and merchandising
Assortment and category strategy, pricing and promotional architecture, private label and exclusive brand programs, vendor terms and rebate structures. The levers that move gross margin without touching the top line.
Operations and inventory
Demand planning, buying cadence, inventory projection, procurement and supplier negotiation, freight and fulfillment cost. Usually the fastest route to freed-up working capital.
E-commerce and DTC
Digital merchandising, site experience and conversion, lifecycle and win-back programs, customer segmentation. The work that decides whether traffic turns into repeat customers.
Regulated consumer categories
Where FDA rules, state licensing, excise tax and importation decide what is commercially possible. Twenty years in tobacco and nicotine, which transfers directly to supplements, hemp, kratom and alcohol.
AI in the business
Practical AI work built on Claude and ChatGPT: taking the reporting, document work and back-office tasks that eat your team's week and handing them to AI, assistants that answer from your own material, and the training so your people actually use them. Scoped and measured like any other operating project.
Websites and storefronts
DTC stores, B2B ordering portals and sites for service businesses, designed and built in-house using AI-assisted development at a fraction of agency time and cost. Built by someone who has run the P&L behind an online store, so the site is designed around how you actually sell.
How I build websites →Track record
Results from inside the business, not alongside it
Every figure below came from a role where I owned the outcome rather than advised on it.
sales growth over my tenure running purchasing, merchandising and operations at an 82-year-old retailer, including its best year on record.
P&L owned, with a $50M marketing budget across a 300-person organization.
of commercial margin recovered at two different companies, by two different routes: vendor strategy at one, ending sitewide discounting at the other.
in annual sales from a private-label luxury line I launched under a heritage national cigar brand, sold only direct to consumer, and grew into its own family of lines.
e-commerce as a share of total sales at a historically paper-and-phone wholesaler, after building the function from nothing.
lapsed retail accounts brought back to active buying through segmented win-back programs and lifecycle email.
Sites I build
Click through one before you hire me to build yours
Three working demo sites, each built for a fictional business to show what a real engagement produces. Add to cart, place a wholesale reorder, check a service area. Everything works except the part where money changes hands.
Saltmarsh Pantry
A small-batch pantry brand with bundles, subscribe-and-save and a cart built to lift order value.
Open the demo
Ridgeback Supply
A distributor's customer portal with account pricing, case packs, quick order by SKU and one-click reorder.
Open the demo
Copperline Plumbing
A local trade site that answers the three questions every caller has, then books the job.
Open the demoHow it works
Three ways to work together
Fractional
An ongoing seat on your leadership team, one or two days a week. For companies that need the function run, not advised on.
Monthly retainer, three-month minimum
Project
A defined piece of work with a start and an end: a site rebuild, an assortment reset, a planning system, a brand launch.
Fixed fee against a written scope
Advisory
Standing access for a founder or operator who mostly needs a second read on decisions before making them.
Smaller monthly retainer
Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute call, so we both find out whether this is a fit before either of us commits to anything.
Free tools
Two things you can use right now
Is your store due for a refresh?
Twelve quick questions about your site's speed, checkout, mobile experience and data. You get a score and the three fixes most likely to pay back first.
What does that discount really cost?
Enter your margin and a promotion. See how much extra volume you need just to break even, and what the promotion does to gross profit per order.
Who you would be working with
Jim Charnley
I have spent twenty years running marketing, merchandising and operations inside consumer businesses, most recently as COO of a DTC-led consumer products company. Before that I owned a $350M P&L and a 300-person organization, built an e-commerce and marketing function from nothing at a wholesale distributor, and ran purchasing and operations through the best year in an 82-year-old retailer's history.
I started Bushkill Consulting because the work I am best at is the work most companies need in doses, not full time. I take on a small number of clients so each one gets an operator rather than a calendar slot.
Lafayette College, Economics and Business. Based in Easton, Pennsylvania, where the Bushkill Creek meets the Delaware. I work remotely and travel when the job needs it.
Tell me what is not working.
A first conversation costs nothing and takes half an hour. If I am not the right person for it, I will usually know by the end of that call and will say so.