When Steve Fox joined Every Man Jack in 2021, the men’s personal care brand had a new private equity owner and an ambitious growth agenda. Carlyle Group saw an opportunity: a widely distributed brand that had never invested heavily in marketing. The challenge was finding the operating leverage to fund that investment.
For Fox, the answer increasingly lies in technology.
At Every Man Jack, a company known for its outdoor-inspired grooming products, the finance team has remained at five employees even as transaction volume has tripled. Fox credits investments in technology and a growing emphasis on automation.
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The initiative even has a name: “Nix the Clicks by 26.”
The goal is to eliminate manual transactions and replace traditional workflows with functional command centers where employees supervise automated processes, investigate exceptions, and monitor business performance.
The transformation gathered momentum after Every Man Jack implemented NetSuite in September 2025. A month later, at SuiteWorld, the company’s IT manager connected the new ERP platform to emerging AI capabilities.
Still, Fox recognizes that easier access to technology brings its own complications. With roughly 70 employees suddenly capable of creating software-driven solutions, the company established an AI oversight committee to prevent duplication and keep experimentation aligned with strategy.
It’s a distinctly operational approach from a CFO whose career began in public accounting before taking him into retail management and high-growth businesses.
And while Fox is enthusiastic about what technology makes possible, his guiding principle remains decidedly human: successful adoption begins with investing in people.
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CFOTL: Tell us about Every Man Jack. What does it do today?
Fox: Every Man Jack is a 20-year-old company. It started with Rich, who was a semi-pro triathlete and had worked very early on at Method. He saw an opportunity in the men’s space to bring in a product that could compete against some of the legacy brands—natural products, a little more performance-based, specifically made for men. We operate out of Marin County, California, at the base of Mount Tam. The brand’s genesis was really outdoor-inspired, with natural products and beautiful, woodsy scents like sandalwood and cedarwood.
CFOTL: Since joining in 2021, how have the company’s investment priorities changed?
Fox: We have a parent investor, Carlyle Group. Their thesis was that there’s this great brand that’s widely distributed but isn’t really that well known. If we can invest marketing dollars, we can drive brand awareness, and the brand will thrive. My role is really how do we continue to drive margin growth and leverage our operating expense so that we can have more marketing dollars.
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CFOTL: What operating signals tell you how the business is performing?
Fox: We focus on EBITDA. We have to be a healthy business first and foremost. Margins are a key component. Are we effective with our product and driving the contribution margin that we need? And revenue per employee is a really key metric. I think that’s a measure of how successful we are with investing in technology and leveraging the business.
CFOTL: Where do you see the greatest opportunity for AI and automation in finance?
Fox: The limits right now are your curiosity and your creativity. We had a team of five people when I started in 2021. We now have a team of five people doing triple the volume of transactions. Our vision is to create functional area command centers that allow employees to manage by exception, pulling people away from transacting and into managing exceptions. We have an initiative called “Nix the Clicks by 26,” with the goal of getting rid of all manual transacting by the end of 2026.
CFOTL: What’s proven harder to manage as these capabilities expand?
Fox: I would say it’s sprawl. Overnight, we created 70 software engineers who can create things they could never do before. That opens the door to possibilities, but also distractions. We formed an AI oversight committee. If you’re working on something from an AI perspective and can’t explain how it furthers the strategy, you need to rethink why you’re doing it.