Flerish: Head of Sales / VP Sales / CRO

Location: Remote (US), about 30% travel | Reports to: Meghan Caiazzo, CEO | Title: Head of Sales, VP Sales, or CRO, depending on experience

About Flerish

Flerish Hydration (drinkflerish.com) is an emerging functional hydration brand that is changing what people reach for when they want to feel their best. We already have distribution through KeHE, UNFI, and Empire, and you'll find us on shelves at Kroger, Central Market (Dallas), 7-Eleven, Costco, and Kowalski's. The brand is working and the doors are opening. Now we need the leader who turns that momentum into a national business.

The Role

This is not a desk job managing other people's numbers. You carry a personal number. About 70% of your time goes to selling and closing: in the buyer's office, at category reviews, and in distributor HQs. The other 30% goes to building the team and the systems that let Flerish scale. You'll work directly with the CEO, have real influence over strategy, and own outcomes that move the company.

What You'll Own in Year 1

• Revenue: Deliver $3M in gross revenue in F’27
• Distribution: Add 2000new doors across grocery, natural, c-store, and club, including new national or regional accounts.
• Velocity: Grow to 4 units/store/week in core accounts so new doors stick and expand.
• Trade efficiency: Keep trade spend at or below 30% of gross revenue, with clear ROI on every program
• Team: Build and lead a high-performing team of 2-4 reps and brokers.
• Distributor discipline: Run quarterly QBRs with KeHE, UNFI, Stagnaro and Empire, publish an annual promo calendar for each, and keep deductions under control.
• Category wins: Win 8 category and line reviews, securing new items, better shelf placement, or expanded sets.

What You'll Do

• Close the big accounts yourself: national and regional grocery, natural, c-store, and club.
• Run KeHE, UNFI, Stagnaro and Empire as growth engines, not just order-takers: build and manage MCB, OI, and TPR programs, and own chargebacks and deductions from start to finish.
• Lead category and line reviews with sharp, data-backed stories that win shelf space and keep it.
• Hire, coach, and hold accountable a team of reps and brokers who sell with urgency.
• Build an AI-enabled sales engine: CRM, pipeline management, and weekly depletion reporting that the whole company trusts.
• Partner with the CEO on trade strategy, channel priorities, and where to place our next bets.

Must-Haves

• A track record of closing named accounts yourself. Be ready to tell us which ones and how you won them.
• Hands-on KeHE and UNFI experience, including programs, promo calendars, chargebacks, and deductions.
• You have grown an emerging beverage brand through the stage where scrappiness has to turn into scale.
• You have managed a sales team of 5+ (reps and/or brokers) and hit your number while doing it.
• You're fluent in AI and data tools. You use SPINS and/or Circana to find opportunities, and AI tools to move faster and sell smarter.
• You can travel about 30% to accounts, distributors, trade shows, and team time.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience managing DSD distributors and/or brokers
• Background in functional beverage or hydration
• Club channel experience (Costco, Sam's, BJ's)

How You Work

• Decisive: You make the call with 80% of the information and adjust as you go.
• Fast-moving: You go from meeting to proposal to PO in days, not weeks.
• Competitive: You want to win the account, the shelf, and the review, and you hate losing more than you love winning.
• Results-first: You judge your week by what closed, not by how busy it was.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: Startup life doesn't bother you. You bring structure where it's missing.
• Honest about the forecast: You move fast, but your numbers are real. Good news or bad, you call it straight and early.

Compensation

• Competitive base salary
• Significant, uncapped variable incentive, paid quarterly, with accelerators for overperformance
• Meaningful, performance-based equity: you share in the value you help create
• Benefits

Ready to build a category leader? If you're a true rainmaker who wants a personal number and the chance to shape a brand from the ground up, we want to talk to you.