Traditional Medicinals® (TM) is a growing 43-year-old herbal wellness company based in Sebastopol, CA. TM manufactures fifty-seven varieties of herbal and medicinal teas in its solar powered facility. Traditional Medicinals is proud to be the number one medicinal, organic, and fair trade herbal tea company in North America. In 1974, TM pioneered the herbal medicinal tea category, and over the years it has grown to become the fourth largest bagged tea company in the U.S. Its products are distributed nationally across 70,000 retail outlets in North America in all channels from health and natural foods stores, to every major grocery chain, to mass market retailers, and drug stores.
Traditional Medicinals identified the need for a Chief Supply Chain Officer to join the fastest growing tea company in the U.S. The role required a candidate with at least 15 years’ experience in various supply chain functions and a minimum of 5+ years of senior leadership experience at a mid-to-large-sized company. The right individual would possess extensive experience in supply chain planning, cost analysis, business forecasting, and inventory optimizations in consumer-packaged goods.
Impressed with Ropella’s ability to source best-in-class leadership talent for their Vice President of Quality position, Traditional Medicinals asked us to place their next Chief Supply Chain Officer. Ropella leveraged its ideal leadership hiring model, the SMART Search System®, to leverage a pipeline of specialized candidates. Within a few short months, Ropella placed a candidate to lead the Operations Department.
Custom-created for Traditional Medicinals, the Opportunity Marketing Piece attracted passive (employed and not looking) candidates from a select group of highly-targeted companies. The Opportunity Marketing Piece enabled Ropella’s Executive Search Consultants to present a world-class overview of Traditional Medicinals, the unique challenges facing the new Chief Supply Chain Officer, and the incredible opportunity to join a company founded on quality, innovation, collaboration, humility, respect, and sustainability.
This custom-created Skill Survey equipped Ropella’s Executive Search Consultants to effectively gather information from a large pool of candidates. This step was critical to identify and select the most qualified A-players for final submission.
Ropella thoughtfully scored all candidates during the screening and interview process, using a custom-created Scorecard. These scores determined each candidate’s skills and experience, cultural dynamic, management style, compensation, relocation fit, and other attributes.
Ropella’s proprietary Compensation Comparison Calculator compiles a variety of complex compensation factors into a concise Offer Strategy Summary, thereby ensuring that clients don’t lose the perfect candidate to ineffective “negotiations” and/or a current employer counteroffer or other “competing” offers.
Our supporting Offer & Acceptance tools help transformational leaders determine (without the risk of overpaying) what it takes to get to parity “a wash,” versus an acceptable total offer package that will result in a prompt and firm “yes!”
Ropella identified and engaged with 188 prospects on behalf of Traditional Medicinals. From there, Ropella submitted 8 candidates, with the top 3 making it to final interviews.
After assessing each of the final candidates, Traditional Medicinals chose an expertly-matched executive for their Chief Supply Chain Officer position. The company utilized Ropella’s Compensation Comparison Calculator and supporting Offer Strategy Summary to create an appealing executive compensation package, which the candidate accepted. Reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer, this Chief Supply Chain Officer has been overseeing all purchasing activities, agricultural inputs, packaging, and all other manufacturing inputs, logistics, planning functions, product development enhancements, and anti-counterfeit security features.
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