The uptick in CFO transitions this year continues. After five years as the first finance chief of the unicorn Faire, Lauren Cooks Levitan was promoted to president, and Jason Lee, currently VP of finance, will take on the CFO role in August.
San Francisco-based Faire, is a wholesale marketplace that connects hundreds of thousands of independent, local retailers with global brands. Some of the product categories include food and beverages, apparel, home, and jewelry. Since its launch in 2017, the startup has raised over $1 billion from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Faire reported a $12.4 billion valuation in 2021. Chef David Chang’s popular specialty food brand Momofuku Goods is among the 100,000 brands available on Faire. It is also a recommended wholesale marketplace partner to Shopify. Faire has over 900 employees.
Levitan talked with Fortune on June 27, the same day she told her team about the transition. “I know they always thought of me as Faire’s CFO, but I never really thought of myself as that, exclusively,” she explained. “I've always seen my role as being a partner to the business, to the CEO, to the rest of the leadership team. I think of myself as a business leader first, and then the financial expert on the leadership team, second.”
As president, Levitan is expected to focus on driving new business development opportunities, globally, to impact customers and the company’s future. She’s already identified a few opportunities which the board has given a green light to pursue, she said. And Levitan's new job as president will tap into her prior experiences.
She began her career on Wall Street as an equity capital markets analyst at Goldman Sachs. Levitan has more than 30 years of experience in retail. She joined Faire from a CFO role at Fanatics, a leader in licensed sports merchandise. Earlier in her career, she cofounded Moxie Capital LLC, a private equity firm, and built the consumer retail franchise of Cowen & Co., where she served as managing director and senior research analyst.
Being strategic, Levitan understood that succession planning is a key responsibility for every leader. (However, as CFO turnover continues this year, succession planning has remained a struggle at some of the largest companies.)
“I hired Jason with the expectation that he had the potential to be the future CFO of Faire; he has perfect experience,” Levitan said. Lee potentially becoming CFO was something that was discussed during his recruitment, and “part of the way we were even able to persuade him to join Faire in the first place,” Levitan added.
Lee joined the company after spending over a decade leading finance for Square and investor relations for Block. And thanks to growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, with his parents starting an independent grocery business, he knows “firsthand the value local retail provides a community,” Lee said in a statement.
In the first half of the year, Faire added Dan Hockenmaier as chief strategy officer and Thuan Pham as chief technology officer, and introduced the new chief architect role for Marcelo Cortes. Levitan says that the company has no plans for an IPO at this time. “But if at some point in the future, accessing the public markets is the right step for us to continue doing what's best for our customers, we would do that," she added.
