Growth · Turnaround · Transformation
I build, turn around and transform consumer businesses by getting close to the facts, making clear commercial choices and bringing people with me through execution.
MD · CEO · COO · Country Manager · Interim & Transformation
“A company is its people and its people are the company.”
The technology changes. The fundamentals of good business and good leadership remain remarkably consistent.
About
I have spent my career building businesses, fixing businesses and leading through periods of growth and change. I am at my best when a situation is commercially important, imperfectly understood and requires both judgement and execution.
I am naturally analytical. I look for patterns, anomalies and underlying causes, challenge assumptions and develop credible options. But analysis only matters if it improves a decision and leads to action.
Curiosity and discovery are part of how I work. I like looking closely enough to see what others may have stopped noticing — whether that is an emerging problem, an overlooked opportunity, or the complexity behind something that works exceptionally well. Understanding why something works matters as much as understanding why it does not.
I believe in dealing with the world as it is, not as we wish it were: understand the constraints, decide what can be changed and take responsibility for acting on it.
Background
My background combines blue-chip commercial rigour with founder experience, private equity-backed transformation and the pragmatism required to run real operating businesses.
30 years · Full P&L · Founder & MD · PE-backed transformation · Consumer / FMCG / Retail · Australia · UK · Europe · Asia
Thirty years of experience across privately owned, private equity-backed and multinational environments, combining full P&L accountability with commercial strategy, international market development and hands-on execution. Most effective where a business needs rigorous diagnosis, clear choices and an operator who will stay close enough to the detail to know whether the strategy is actually working.
Built an early career across Sara Lee, Cargill and Walmart / Asda, progressing through brand, marketing and category leadership. At Walmart / Asda, held full commercial responsibility for major food categories, including a $500M+ soft fruit category, delivering $40M revenue growth through a department turnaround and developing new international sourcing relationships in Thailand and Brazil.
Co-founded and built consumer businesses in the UK, including Manchester Drinks Company to $18M revenue and Halfadd / SKM to $26M in revenue growth. Combined product innovation, private label development, manufacturing partnerships and major retail relationships, including launching the first fine fragrance range into UK supermarket retail at Asda.
Established and led Australian and New Zealand operations for international consumer businesses. Built Star Perfumes Australia from zero to $22M annual revenue within three years and Jigsaw ANZ to approximately $15M, securing national retail distribution and managing brand, sourcing and manufacturing relationships across the UK, Europe and China. Appointed to the international group management board.
As Joint Managing Director of Scent Global UK, led the restructuring of Star Perfumes UK while retaining full P&L accountability for the Australian business. Stabilised liquidity, reduced overheads by 50%, retained key people, customers and vendors, removed unprofitable complexity and redirected investment toward e-commerce growth.
Appointed by UK private equity investors to acquire, integrate and turn around a multi-brand Health and Beauty business. Delivered sustained double-digit growth to more than $25M revenue while expanding retail, B2B and e-commerce channels, modernising systems and data, strengthening operations and leading the organisational and cultural transformation of the acquired business.
How I think
My approach is deliberately simple: diagnose the current position, test the assumptions, define the destination, create options, make the choices, involve the people, execute and adapt.
Use data, direct observation and customer feedback to understand what is actually happening, not what the organisation hopes is happening.
Understand what customers value, what competitors are changing and where the external evidence challenges internal assumptions.
Develop credible alternatives, test the trade-offs and commit when the evidence is sufficient. Strategy is as much about what not to do as what to pursue.
Create a clear destination that people can understand even when every turn in the road cannot be predicted in advance.
Explain why the direction matters and each person's role in reaching it. People differ in experience, motivation and working style, so adapt the way the message is communicated without diluting the message itself.
Translate strategy into action, monitor outcomes, learn quickly and change course when evidence says the plan needs to move.
Leadership
I am hands-on, but I am equally a strong believer in decentralised command. The people closest to a problem often understand it better than the CEO does. I expect ideas, including my own, to withstand constructive challenge; the objective is a better decision, not winning the argument.
People need to know where we are, where we are going, why it matters and what is expected of them.
Once intent and boundaries are clear, place authority as close as practical to the expertise and information required to make the decision.
Delegation is not abdication. Give people room to exercise judgement, monitor outcomes and remain accountable for the result.
A leader's job is to provide clarity, resources and support, remove obstacles and create the conditions in which capable people can perform.
Trust requires both. People need confidence that a leader will do the right thing and has the judgement to deliver.
Make decisions when they are needed, question weak logic directly and remain open to the possibility that somebody else has information or expertise that changes the answer.
Insights
I write about business transformation, leadership, people, AI and technology. The common thread is practical: what changes, what does not, and what senior leaders need to do differently.
Transformation should create a stronger business, not change for its own sake. Why leaders need to understand what already works and know when to protect, improve, change or experiment.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Why cash and commercial discipline buy time, but people determine what gets accomplished with that time.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Why AI strategy should address value creation and operating-model redesign, not simply cost reduction.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Why successful transformation depends on clarity, trust, participation and helping people understand where they fit in what comes next.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Why trust, judgement and relationships remain commercially important inside organisations and across customers, suppliers and business partners.
Read on LinkedIn ↗A guide for executives separating AI experimentation from strategic implementation and genuine organisational capability.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Why data quality increasingly affects decision quality, AI performance, governance and enterprise risk.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Exploring a period in which human judgement and rapidly improving AI can complement one another rather than compete.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Why a culture where people can speak up, challenge ideas and learn from mistakes can become a competitive advantage.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Why communication, judgement, empathy and trust become more valuable as technology handles more routine cognitive work.
Read on LinkedIn ↗Reading & Ideas
I read broadly because judgement is built from more than management theory. History, economics, psychology, literature, China and Asia, science and sport all offer different ways of understanding people, institutions and decisions.
I read to test assumptions, encounter competing explanations and build context before forming a view.
A foundational introduction to systems thinking: feedback loops, stocks and flows, delays, unintended consequences and leverage points. I am particularly interested in how these ideas apply to organisational transformation and why apparently rational local decisions can produce poor outcomes across an entire system.
37 selected titles across the physical and audiobook collections
A leadership text associated with the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, centred on service, responsibility, character and the obligations of command.
A compact distillation of Drucker’s thinking on management: purpose, customers, effectiveness, responsibility, people and results.
Uses aviation, medicine and other fields to argue that progress depends on learning systematically from mistakes rather than concealing or rationalising them.
53 selected titles across the physical and audiobook collections
A broad history of Homo sapiens emphasising cognitive, agricultural and scientific revolutions and the shared stories that enable mass cooperation.
Interprets the violent twentieth century through ethnic conflict, economic volatility and the decline of empires rather than treating the world wars in isolation.
A foundational work of political economy on specialisation, markets, prices, incentives, competition, capital and the role of institutions.
7 selected titles across the physical and audiobook collections
Accounts of Chinese women’s lives drawn from stories encountered through Xinran’s broadcasting work, revealing experiences often hidden from public discussion.
Follows young migrant women working in China’s factory economy, connecting individual ambition and hardship with rapid industrialisation and social change.
The classic Japanese court novel follows Prince Genji and later generations through love, status, aesthetics and the impermanence of relationships.
47 selected titles across the physical and audiobook collections
A coming-of-age novel about racial injustice, empathy and moral courage in the American South.
A novella about a successful official confronting terminal illness, exposing social superficiality and asking what makes a life authentic.
Frankl combines his experience in Nazi concentration camps with an introduction to logotherapy, arguing that meaning can sustain people through profound suffering.
19 selected titles across the physical and audiobook collections
A comic account of amateur cricket and the eccentricities, friendships and rituals that surround the recreational game.
A funny and personal memoir of football, family and growing up as a Manchester City supporter in the shadow of Manchester United.
A longevity-focused framework emphasising prevention, exercise, metabolic health, sleep and long-term risk management rather than reactive medicine.
What I Listen To & Read
I follow a broad mix of business, technology, geopolitics, history, economics, politics and sport, selecting episodes for the subject, guest or question being explored.
Geopolitics, demographics, trade and the structural forces shaping countries and markets.
Long-form conversations on AI, science, technology, economics and the future.
History explored through accessible, wide-ranging conversations and competing interpretations.
Long-form discussions on public policy, economics, history and international affairs.
Business, technology, markets and contemporary economic issues.
Australian business, companies, markets and major economic stories.
The collection reflects a habit of looking beyond the immediate problem, seeking context and bringing useful ideas back to the practical work of leading a business.
International
My career has taken me across Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. For more than two decades I have worked with Chinese manufacturing and sourcing partners, and I studied Mandarin because I believed making the effort to understand the language of the people I worked with was a form of respect.
What others say
Selected comments from people who have worked with me, with the wider recommendation history available on LinkedIn.
“Simon is a superb entrepreneurial business leader. Highly intelligent and strategic with a firm pragmatic understanding of the practical and possible. He does what he says he’s going to do and is a first rate business partner to have in Australia. Simon’s knowledge of supply chain from factory to shelf as well as marketing, finance and distribution is extensive.”
“Simon is a great brand builder and strategic thinker. I enjoyed working with Simon as he was a very dynamic character with real entrepreneurial flair whilst at the same time being highly commercial. He’s the kind of guy you just want to work with again. A great person to lead a business into rapid growth.”
More recommendations and professional history are available on LinkedIn.
View LinkedIn profile ↗Contact
My experience is particularly relevant to businesses navigating growth, turnaround or transformation, where commercial judgement, people leadership and hands-on execution can make a material difference.
Email: simondimascio@gmail.com