Howard Meitiner

Howard P. Meitiner is a veteran retail and consumer-industry executive with more than 40 years of experience as a President, CEO, COO, and restructuring officer. He is best known for launching and scaling Sephora USA, where as President and CEO he introduced the French beauty retailer to the U.S. and Japanese markets in the late 1990s, debuted Sephora.com, and helped build the business into an approximately $3 billion specialty beauty retailer. Earlier in his career he spent roughly 19 years with DFS Group (the Pacific-region travel-retail company later acquired by LVMH), holding regional president roles and serving as worldwide head of marketing and non-fashion merchandising.

His operating résumé also includes serving as President and CEO of The Museum Company, a 105-store national specialty chain that he helped guide through a Chapter 11 filing and sale, and as Chief Operating Officer of Fortunoff, the third-generation family-owned department store. This mix of high-growth building and distressed-situation leadership shaped the turnaround specialty he practices today.

Meitiner is currently a Managing Director in the Turnaround & Restructuring practice at The CMA Group (formerly Carl Marks Advisors), a New York–headquartered middle-market investment bank serving family-owned and closely held businesses. There he focuses on crisis management, business-model redesign in response to sector disruption, growth strategy, executive coaching, and interim C-suite/Chief Restructuring Officer engagements. He has served as lead financial advisor to omni-channel retailers and provided interim leadership through bankruptcy and sale processes, including the well-documented restructuring and $82.5M sale of the Bar Louie restaurant chain.

He earned a Certificate in Distribution Management Principles from the College of Distributive Trades (London, UK) and a National Retail Certificate from Eastbourne College (UK).

• Invests and mentors at the seed / early stage, concentrated in retail, consumer goods, and hospitality, plus technology that modernizes those industries.
• Serves as a business mentor and investor at XRC Labs / XRC Ventures, the retail-and-consumer-focused accelerator that backs "entrepreneurs in the retail and consumer goods industries leveraging emerging technologies" — a good proxy for the kinds of companies he says yes to.
• Brings operator capital, not just money: his value-add is decades of hands-on retail P&L leadership, turnaround discipline, and executive coaching rather than pure financial backing.
• Publicly bullish on retailers "with the courage to embrace out-of-the-box thinking and innovation," and on AI and supply-chain evolution as the next competitive frontier for consumer businesses.
• Personal operating philosophy he cites: *"Be respectfully courageous, opinionated, and transparent. It works,"* and a belief that collaboration means *"1 + 1 = 3 if thoroughly researched."*