Stuart McKinlay

Hands on Senior Operations Consultant with 15+ years' experience building and scaling business across FMCG, retail, and international markets. Founder of a multi-million-pound consumer brand, operating across the UK, NZ, and Australia, with deep expertise in innovation, operations strategy, leadership, market expansion, and growth. Adept at both hands on operations management and leading teams with multiple and complex outsourced functions.

Operations Consultant at Freelance (2024-06 – Present)

• Board and senior management consulting around integrations of sales, marketing, and operations within the FMCG sector.

Founder and Operations Director at Yeastie Boys Ltd (2008-07 – 2024-06)

• Led end-to-end operations strategy, taking the business from conception to national and then international distribution, before finally outsourcing everything to manufacturing and distribution agreements
• Built and scaled outsourced production and distribution models in three countries
• Designed and executed go-to-market strategies across very different markets in UK, NZ, and Australia and continued to evolve and improve these are the market changed and our business grew
• Helped secure major national and international retail listings by ensuring the business was always a step ahead in regards to compliance
• Developed and led an operations team of five team members, managing complex relationships with a very diverse customer and supplier base across multiple international timezones
• Oversaw P&L, operations budgets, and supplier relationships for my entire time within the business, growing from two people and tens of thousands of dollars to a dozen people across three countries and hundreds of thousands of pound budgets
• Successfully marketed the business for private investment three times before taking on a cornerstone acquisition from a competitor in mid 2021 and integrating full operations into their team by early 2024
• Called a 'marketing genius' after raising $500k in 30 minutes, through audience-led storytelling and PR, during 2015 equity crowdfunding campaign.

Senior Commercial Analyst, Special Projects at Z Energy (formerly Shell New Zealand) (2012-08 – 2014-08)

• Developed and implemented an improved pricing model saving the business tens of millions of dollars per year.
• Developed and rolled out new national Health and Safety processes which improved staff wellbeing by making compliance simpler and reducing risk incidents by over 30%.

Senior Data Analyst, Public Health at Ministry of Health, New Zealand (2000-05 – 2012-08)

Secondary Stunts / Extra, Lord of the Rings Trilogy at Three Foot Six (2000-01 – 2000-05)

Team Leader - Data Cleanse, Operations Support at ANZ Banking Group (1995-12 – 1999-11)

Team Member - Account Maintenance, Operations Support at ANZ Banking Group (1995-12 – 1999-11)

Bachelor of Commerce & Administration in Decision Analysis and Philosophy – Victoria University of Wellington (1994-02 – 1997-11)