Most management teams can tell you last month's revenue. Far fewer can tell you which product actually paid for it. That is the gap I work in, and I work inside the business rather than from the sidelines.
Working with Miia we completed a successful exit in an extremely difficult market.Karita Sainio - Moi Forest Oy
We look at the whole business and agree what deserves attention next.
Nothing else matters if the cash runs out. So we start here. Unit economics, margins, working capital, and where the money actually goes, which is usually into stock you paid for three to six months before it sells.
Profitability before volumeI had bought advice from several places before. Somehow most of it stayed up in the clouds. With Miia the whole picture came together fast, and at a far more concrete level.Johanna Rosnell-Varjo - Parolan Rottinki Oy
Which products and customers deserve your focus, and what to drop. Most ranges have a few products carrying the rest. The ones being carried are rarely the ones anyone suspects.
Focus over spreadWhere the next growth comes from. Home market, export, Amazon, your own site, partners. And the order, because the right move in the wrong order is still expensive.
The right move at the right timeHow you are resourced, what is working, what is not, and what to hand to a machine. That part comes after the numbers are right. Automating a broken process only gets you the wrong answer faster.
Lean team, sharp processesThe rest of the team was absorbed in the creative work, and we needed more room to do ours.Karita Sainio - Moi Forest Oy
Embedded. A seat inside the business, alongside the CEO and the commercial, finance and ecommerce teams. Not a monthly review. The same person in the same meetings, week after week, with the numbers already open. Usually while something is changing. A new market, a channel that stopped paying, a gap in the team that is not ready to be a permanent hire.
A focused piece of work. One question, answered properly, and a model your team keeps. Some companies start here and stop. Some start here and then want someone in the room.
"Miia works calmly, quickly, efficiently and intelligently. She got our finances in order by teaching us to pay attention to the things that actually matter."
We needed a professional finance lead in a hard market, and the rest of the team was absorbed in the creative work. With Miia we completed a successful exit, and the collaboration could not have gone better. I learned a great deal along the way: I run the business more strategically myself now, seeing both where we are today and where we are heading long term.
Karita Sainio - Moi Forest Oy"I came away certain that I am not hopeless with numbers after all, and a weekly routine of looking at them stuck."
I moved from consulting to majority shareholder in a business that sells physical products, and I wanted to understand stock turn and cash properly. The concrete part is the tools: tables that make it easier to analyse the finances, the buying and the selling, the costs and the income. Working with Miia has clarified a great deal and given me faith in the future, even though the view ahead is still foggy.
Johanna Rosnell-Varjo - Parolan Rottinki Oy"Miia made the market situation, the competition and the realistic opportunities clear in a way that saved us a huge amount of money and unrealistic expectations. It also shaped the rest of our marketing, sales and product development."Anniina Kopperoinen - LovePaws Oy
"Miia found us the right product category and suggestions for three new products. The process felt natural and results-focused. I'd recommend her to companies with a good product but no clear direction yet."Liisa Lindroth - Deliverde Oy
"A calm, analytical and empathetic approach worked well for me. After 25 years in pharma and medical devices, I've seen a lot. Miia stood out."Mikko Laiho - Sabora Oy
Best fit: established consumer product businesses, typically EUR 10m to 60m in revenue, with more than one product line, channel or market. When I asked clients who they would send my way, they described much the same company three different ways.
You are trading through a downturn, a squeeze, or a category that has stopped growing, and you need to know which numbers decide whether you come through it. Companies heading for an exit count too.
Your team's best work is product, brand or commercial. The financial side gets done in the gaps between everything else, usually late, usually by whoever has least time. The point is to give the other work its space back.
You do not want a report nobody can interrogate. You want the tools, the routine, and someone plain spoken next to the team until cause and effect is obvious. Then you do not need me.
I am a Finnish entrepreneur with a British business. I founded Wren Ventures, and I am an owner and shareholder of Rutherford Wren, a multi-brand consumer goods business I have built over more than ten years. No investors, no loans, not once.
Rutherford Wren runs three brands across the UK and US: Hemswell Crystal, Wrenbury and Muldale. Most of it sells through Amazon and our own ecommerce sites.
Before this, I led a fifty-person team at Idean during a period of fast international growth, and worked on online banking platforms at Nordea. That is the level I work at now, sitting with a management team rather than reporting to one.
I have done a lot of mistakes over the years and too many to count with one hand. I have bought the wrong stock. Researched a gap in the market, built a product with every feature I could think of, ordered every variation at once before testing any of it, and watched the whole thing fail to convert. I have grown business too fast, without fully understanding the impact. Mistakes are inevitable, the point is to maximise mistakes you have afford and learn from them.
Another entrepreneur who has genuinely run a business selling products to consumers advises in a completely different way than consultants or an accounting firm do.Johanna Rosnell-Varjo - Parolan Rottinki Oy
Tell me roughly where you are and what is bothering you. I read these myself.
miia@wrenventures.fi