A boutique with one principal, and no interest in pretending otherwise.

Fifteen years inside the ERP, not adjacent to it.

Steve has spent his career in operations finance at manufacturers and contract manufacturers — cost accounting transformation, inventory and BOM systems, FP&A, audit-ready reporting, and the unglamorous work of making a chart of accounts tell the truth. Most of that work has been done under private equity ownership, on the sponsor's timeline, with a board that wants the number this week.

What separates the work from conventional advisory is that he builds. Not decks describing a system — the system. A governed cost-intelligence repository on Sage X3, with a scenario-based schema for base, low, high, tariff, and supplier-specific cases, version control, and live joins to standard cost, last price paid, and receipt history. A unit-economics and executive pricing platform that turned a static cost card into something leadership actually opened before a deal. A strategic pricing platform with configurable EBITDA, contribution, and added-value targets, adopted as the replicable framework for subsequent deals.

That is why an engagement leaves infrastructure behind rather than recommendations. A consultant who cannot build will describe the system; you will then discover, nine months and one integrator's fee later, that the description was wrong about your cost centers.

Why this firm exists

Cedar Faire was founded in January 2025 on a fairly narrow observation: the mid-market manufacturers most exposed to margin compression — $50M to $500M, PE-backed, ERP in place but misconfigured for commercial decisions — are too small to interest the large strategy firms and too complex for a generalist fractional CFO.

That gap has widened. The decade in which financial engineering could mask operational mediocrity is over. Cost of capital has repriced, hold periods have compressed, and LPs are asking about DPI rather than MOIC. Margin improvement now has to come from inside the business, and most sponsors are equipped to model operations rather than fix them.

Financial models do not build controls. Excel does not fix a broken cost structure.

Background

• Senior consultant, operations finance strategy — currently engaged with a PE-backed industrial manufacturer on cost accounting transformation, BOM and inventory systems, and board-level financial defense
• Pricing framework build for a $650M PE-backed global CDMO across seven countries — see the case study
• ERP environments: Sage X3, Epicor, NetSuite, Infor, Microsoft D365
• B.S. Economics, CUNY John Jay · B.S. Health & Wellbeing Sciences, University of Minnesota · graduate coursework in economics and data analytics
• Based in Minneapolis. Works across North America; on-site where the engagement requires it.

How Cedar Faire works

• Fixed fees where scope permits. Hourly billing on a build engagement misaligns the incentive and you know it.
• Fees quoted after scope, not before. A number given before anyone has looked at your cost data is a guess dressed as a quote. Scope first, then a written fee that holds.
• The principal takes every call. Diagnostic conversations are never delegated, never templated, never handled by an associate. The judgment is the product.
• Proposals within 24 hours of the call. Speed is a signal, and it is one of the few a small firm can send credibly.
• Engagements structured to end. A retainer that never builds internal capability is a billing arrangement.