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

Fifteen years in operations and commercial finance, building and repairing the systems behind cost, inventory, pricing, and margin.

Steve has spent his career in operations and commercial 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. Much 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 distinguishes the work is that he builds the system itself. 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 working infrastructure behind. You get something operable in your environment, documented well enough to defend to a board, an auditor, or a lender.

As for why manufacturing: it is the last place where a number has to survive contact with the physical world. A margin claim either reconciles to what came off the line, what the supplier billed, and what the customer paid, or it does not. Steve likes businesses where you can walk the floor and watch the cost structure move, and where getting the number right changes what people build, buy, and charge.

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, in the $50M to $1B range, PE-backed, with an 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 limited partners are asking about distributions to paid-in capital rather than multiple on invested capital. 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 pricing and finance consultant to a $650M PE-backed global CDMO, covering strategic pricing, cost architecture, and quote transformation. See the case study.
• Cost architecture, reserve defense, and board-level reporting across a $200M seven-plant industrial manufacturer. See the case study.
• Rebuilt work center costing from the ground up at a multi-plant manufacturer, separating costing from pricing. See the case study.
• Director of business planning and analysis at a $200M consumer goods brand in national retail distribution; recognized company-wide for the first customer-level P&L. See the case study.
• Cost accounting and inventory transformation at a public proteomics biotech. See the case study.
• SOX and audit-readiness implementation across subsidiaries of a public global industrial services group; controllership at a public IoT manufacturer; supply chain and revenue accounting at a consumer hardware company.
• ERP environments: Sage X3, NetSuite, Infor SyteLine, Sage Intacct, JD Edwards, SAP NetWeaver, Epicor, Microsoft D365, BrightPearl. Power BI and SQL against ERP transaction data throughout.
• B.S. Economics, City University of New York, John Jay · B.S. Intercollege Program in Biophysical Sciences with a Chemistry minor, University of Minnesota · Graduate studies in economics and data analytics
• Based in Minneapolis. Works globally; 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. 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, and does the work. One senior principal, supported by specialist resources where a build requires them. No junior team behind the curtain. 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.