John Pindred

Possessing the mind of an engineer and the heart of a teacher, in combination with financial and business acumen, have enabled delivery of tangible impacts throughout my career.

As the current CFO of Self Esteem Brands, I was challenged to re-engineer the finance function to support two rapidly growing franchise systems and a variety of supporting companies. Over the last 3 years, we have been effective in driving recurring revenue streams, improving financial and operational reporting, creating distribution capacity improvements, and implementing cost savings supporting double-digit EBITDA growth rates. We also took an overworked and struggling finance department and established it as an organizational strength in a company where culture is a key performance driver.

During my 10 years as Chief Financial Officer with Family Christian, we transformed a “mom & pop Bible store” chain into a nationally branded specialty retailer with a strong financial and operating foundation. During those years, we faced two significant challenges: recession-induced weakness in sales that threatened future liquidity and the desire of the owners to sell the company. We successfully overcame both challenges, and the company was acquired by a high net worth Christian group in 2012, realizing the long-desired ownership objective.

The challenge on day 1 at ShopKo Stores, Inc. was resolving a liquidity crisis that forecasted the company would be out of cash and borrowing capacity within weeks. After tactically avoiding the covenant violation and cash dominion triggers, we consolidated two chains to gain economies of scale and generated over $100 million in working capital improvements to create liquidity and pay down debt.

“You’ve been spending more time working on the business vs. in the business and it’s paying dividends, empowering the team to make better decisions, and instilling a needed dose of financial discipline and accountability.” CEO of Self Esteem Brands