Hi, I'm Les.
I've done it for a $16M construction company, for a skincare brand I co‑founded on a $40 a week ad budget, and for four growing businesses I advise today. Supply chain, operations, and strategy, based in San Diego.
Countries where I've sourced, audited, and negotiated with suppliers (politely, but firmly)
The short version: I buy smart, move things fast, and get teams to actually adopt the change.
Finding the right suppliers, negotiating like it's my own money, and keeping inventory lean without ever running out of the good stuff.
Mapping the process, fixing the bottleneck, writing the SOP, and coaching the team until the new way becomes the normal way. I've led teams of up to 39.
Spotting where a business can grow, building the case for it, then rolling up my sleeves to make it happen. Like launching a whole new kitchen and bath department.
Anyone can say they "improved efficiency." Here's what actually changed.
A new process is just a document until a team believes in it. Here's how I get them there.
When I rolled out new processes at Coles, Kevin wasn't having it. He was underperforming and pushed back on the changes. I could have worked around him. Instead, I sat down with him and explained the why: what we were changing, and why it needed him.
Then we met one on one every week for three months. Kevin became one of our top performers, and I recommended him for a promotion to supervisor.
At Coles, I made it clear who owned each step of an order and wrote SOPs to back it up. Team efficiency went up 12%.
At Target, I set daily priorities, balanced workloads, covered schedules, and coached people one by one, without letting safety or accuracy slip.
When a new process rolls out across locations, I standardize it so every team works the same way from day one.
For two cafés, I redesigned staffing so labor matched when customers actually showed up.
Short on time? The headline and numbers tell you most of it. Tap any story for the full version.
Four people, a tiny budget, and more hats than I could count. We made it work anyway.
In my MBA program, we were assigned to invent a fictional business. I'd already been digging into skincare and kept seeing the same gap: good products cost too much, and cheap ones aren't good. So we stopped pretending and made it real.
I led a team of four. We had people covering finance, marketing, and operations, but I had my hands in all of it. Did I mention I was also working full time at Coles and finishing my MBA?
Developed 8 products and launched the first 2, a Vitamin C Serum and a Hyaluronic Acid, taking them from formulation to packaging to pricing. With no lab team, I built my own custom GPT, BioDermaTech, to speed up formulation research.
Found and vetted three co‑manufacturers in the U.S. and abroad, kept everything FDA, MoCRA, and GMP compliant, and set up packaging, freight, and Amazon FBA.
Unit costs 15 to 20% lower
Ran Instagram, TikTok, content, Amazon, and influencers myself, and modeled for the brand. Amazon ads ran as low as $40 a week. Everything else was free.
Repeat orders up 15% month over month
Built partnerships with 6 aestheticians and 2 gyms around San Diego, and turned them into a wholesale channel that reorders every month.
8 wholesale partners
Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. You risk a lot, and most days we were asking the same question: where is the next dollar coming from? Our answer was simple. Go sell. Sales doubled in month two and kept climbing.
Orders were slow, the warehouse was overstocked, and deliveries depended on outside freight. I fixed all three.
A San Diego construction company best known for selling and installing flooring, plus area rugs, floor care, vacuums, and appliances. Multiple locations, dozens of vendors here and overseas.
Buying. Renegotiated pricing, tightened purchasing, and held vendors to their contracts, with corrective action when they slipped.
Process. Mapped the whole order flow with Six Sigma, cut out the waiting, wrote clear SOPs, and built a live dashboard in RFMS.
Inventory. Helped bring in floors.ai, an AI visualization tool, so we could see what we had and stop overbuying.
Delivery. Made the business case to buy two company trucks, then planned the routes to keep them busy.
A flooring company decided to start selling, designing, and installing kitchens and bathrooms. I helped build it from zero.
A brand new category meant brand new everything: suppliers, tools, and ways of working.
As part of the expansion team, I onboarded 23 kitchen and bath vendors and helped set up the department's operations in QuickBooks and 2020 Design.
Coffee roasters, cafés, and an environmental services startup, all growing faster than their systems could keep up.
Three Arrows Coffee. Their overseas coffee took six weeks to arrive and the roaster was stuck waiting. I found the bottlenecks in their supplier timeline and production. Now it's four weeks, and they roast 25% more. I also set them up with inFlow Inventory and ABC analysis so their best sellers stop running out.
Pinnacle Environmental Services. They needed to launch without spending on expensive software. I set up an online storefront, a simple fulfillment routine, and a local shipping partner with good rates.
Black Letter Café and Good Ground Coffee. I reworked staffing, shift responsibilities, and vendor ordering so each location matched its real demand, which lowered operating costs at both.
Eleven years, from leading a Target logistics team to co‑founding my own brand.
Helping four growing businesses fix their supply chains, inventory, and fulfillment.
Turned an MBA class project into a real skincare brand, and wore every hat along the way.
Rebuilt operations and logistics for a $16M flooring and construction company, and helped launch its kitchen and bath department. Excellence in Operations and Strategy Award, 2023. Top Performer in Business Growth and Customer Service, 2022.
Led a 24 person team, improved stock accuracy by over 20%, and made peak season stockouts disappear.
I was born and raised in the Philippines, studied information technology there, and moved to the U.S. shortly after college. That IT background explains a lot. I can't fix a process until I've mapped it, and I don't trust a fix until I've measured it.
Then came an MBA at Point Loma Nazarene University, where I was named Student of the Year, and where You C & Skin started as a class project.
Hiring for supply chain, operations, or strategy? I'd love to hear what you're building. San Diego or remote.