Fractional COO in Naples
For Naples businesses where the ticket is high and the customer is here for the season. Jewelers, galleries, luxury retail, private client services, and the firms that serve them.
Naples revenue arrives on a calendar. Season is roughly November through April, and a business that treats the other six months as dead time has already lost the year.
- Collier County
- About forty minutes south of my office on I-75. I am in Naples most weeks.
- Twelve companies operated, six of them mine
- One engagement covering operations, software and demand
The off-season is when the business gets built
I have run operations for a Naples jeweler for years, and the rhythm is the same across the high-ticket trades here. The customer is a seasonal resident with money and little patience. In season there is no time to change anything. Out of season there is time and no urgency. So nothing changes, and every November the same problems come back.
The engagement that works in Naples is scoped to the calendar. Diagnose in late spring, build through the summer, be ready by the first cold snap up north. Inventory, staffing, follow-up and the books all get treated as one plan with a deadline, because in this town they are one plan with a deadline.
In Naples the operating plan is a calendar, and the deadline is the first cold week in Ohio.
What it looks like in Naples
Inventory and cash before season
High-ticket stock bought in August is sold in February. Getting the buy right, and knowing what is actually on hand, is the difference between a good season and a stressful one.
Private client follow-up
A seasonal customer who bought in March needs to hear from you in October, personally and correctly. That is a system with a human on the end of it, not a newsletter.
Staff you keep through summer
The best people leave when the hours drop. Building a summer worth staying for, projects, training, the systems work, is an operations decision with a clear payback.
Straight answers
I do not do retail floor staffing, buying, or design. I hold operations, build the systems that carry the season, and run the demand side. I am also not a Naples resident, and I say so.
- Have you worked in Naples before?
- Yes. My longest outside client is a Naples jeweler, and my industries, precious metals, luxury retail, legal and real estate, are Naples industries.
- When should a Naples business start?
- May or June. That gives a diagnostic and a build the whole summer, which is the only time anyone here has to change anything.
- Do you understand seasonal residents as customers?
- That is the whole business here. The customer leaves for six months and expects to be remembered when they get back. The systems I build are for exactly that.