Accessories. Bags. Clothes. Money.
Feels like play all day.
I’m Trice Pruitt, fractional CFO and strategic thinking partner for Shopify and DTC founders in accessories, apparel, skincare, wellness, and beauty. If you’re doing $2M to $15M in ecommerce and you’re ready to scale but the cash flow, the strategy, or the next move isn’t
clicking. You’re in the right place.
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
Albert Einstein
How this started
I moved to New York City as a fashion designer. But it didn’t take long before I found myself on the finance side of the table. And honestly, I never looked back.
A close friend’s business was collapsing. He was deep in debt, proud as hell, and when I offered to help he looked at me and said: “I don’t take charity.”
So I said: “then pay me.”
I helped him. And I loved it. Not just the numbers. I loved watching the change happen. Seeing someone go from panicked and stuck to clear and moving. I went back to school, got my credentials, and started advising others.
At first it was individuals. But most of them had small businesses, and their personal finances were completely tangled up in how those businesses were performing. So I started advising on the business. Then only the business. Then I picked a niche, Shopify and DTC founders in the categories I already loved, so I could go deeper, see more patterns, and give better insight.
After almost two decades doing this work, I’ve seen enough Shopify founders in accessories, apparel, skincare, wellness, and beauty to know the repeating patterns. What breaks at $2M. What stalls at $5M. What creates chaos at $10M. And exactly what it takes to move through each of those ceilings.
Talking about accessories, bags, clothes, and money every day? That’s not work. That’s the dream.
"The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams."
- Oprah Winfrey
What I Actually Do
I think about your whole business, not just the numbers. I take your vision, your dreams, and
what you’ve already built, and I critically think: how do we actually get you there?
Some founders come to me because the cash is always tight no matter how many millions
are coming in and they just can’t figure out why. Others come to me as exceptional operators. Great brand, great at money, tried everything. And something still isn’t working and they have no idea what it is. That’s usually because they’re too close to the problem.
You’ve been looking at this problem from inside it. I come in from the outside. Same business, completely different view. And usually that’s all it takes.
My clients call it Money Magic. And it shows up all the time. We’re looking at what seems like a red flag, sometimes full on financial doomsday, and we turn it into gold. Into an advantage. Even my most data-driven, hardcore numbers founders start using the words Money Magic because that’s what it feels like. The money stops feeling like it’s holding the business back and starts feeling like it’s fueling the scale.
I have the spreadsheets and all that jazz. But I deliver everything in stories, because stories are more memorable, they click faster in a founder’s mind, and they make it easy to take action. Numbers inform. Stories move people.
And listen. You cannot talk about your real financial problems with your team. It frightens people. People get scared, people get weird. What you need is a trusted thinking partner where you can bring the ugly, the messy, the scary. No judgment. No shame. Nothing. Just someone who’s seen this problem before and knows exactly how to solve it.
For founders building toward an exit, I help you scale to the number that matters and negotiate the deal that reflects what you actually built.
That’s this room.
"If it doesn't scare you, you're not dreaming big enough"
Tory Burch
Money Magic in Action
A Shopify brand 60 days from bankruptcy. The pandemic had quietly shifted their customer and they hadn’t noticed. Same playbook, wrong audience, mounting debt. I identified who was actually buying, rebuilt the offer around that customer, and raised prices
10x. The market absorbed it. The business stabilized, scaled, and sold two years later. I led the negotiation. My creative thinking is what closed the deal, a win for everyone at the table.
A DTC founder spending 37% of revenue on marketing, going nowhere. Her ads manager said it was working. The internal models were wrong. She had 80% customer retention and was paying to acquire people she already had. We turned off every ad. She lost zero clients. Saved $10,000 a month and rebuilt her entire acquisition system from
scratch.
An ecommerce brand stuck at 40% retention. They were marketing to everyone and
sticking with no one. Once we identified what the customer actually needed, newness tied to the moments that matter in her life, and rebuilt the product drops around that, retention went to 85%. Same products. Different story. And for the first time, a foundation strong enough to
actually scale.
What We Work On Together
Credentials
- Accredited Behavioral Finance Professional™ (ABFP™), trained in turning financial
data into stories that make founders say aha, not ugh - Almost two decades · 8,160+ tracked hours of one-on-one financial advising helping
founders fix cash flow and scale - B.F.A., Savannah College of Art and Design, the eye for product and brand is built in
- Based in New York City
No cash? Stop suffering.
The "show me the money" audit finds $50K in trapped cash - or it's free!