Lulu's is a family-owned gift retail boutique with a loyal local customer base and, despite being a mature business, has real growth potential. When I came in, the business was running on instinct: no clean inventory data, no financial visibility, and back-office processes that were consuming owner time that should have been spent on the business itself.
Five months in, I have built the operational and financial infrastructure from the ground up: a custom inventory categorization system, a purpose-built purchase order automation application, an integrated reporting stack connected to the POS, and a cash flow model that identified a critical funding gap two months before it would have become a crisis. The result: owners avoided having to choose between injecting $100,000 of personal capital or taking on debt at $15,000 in interest, 40 hours returned to the team every month, and a business that can now see itself clearly for the first time.
5 Months In · Ongoing
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Cash flow crisis identified 2 months early
Finance
Finance
Before
None
No financial visibility. No bookkeeping tools integrated with POS.
After
Integrated Reporting
POS-connected. 13-week cash flow model. Budget. Live forecast.
Result
2 mo.
Early warning. Mitigation executed. Owners avoided injecting personal capital or taking on debt.
Owner cash injection avoided
$100,000
personal capital injection · or $15,000 in debt interest
Budget discipline and a real-time forecast model meant owners never had to open their own wallets or take on debt.
Pricing matrix implemented: gross margin on the rise
Finance
Before
50%
Unstructured pricing. No matrix. Margins inconsistent across product lines.
Current
53%
Standardized pricing matrix in place. Data clarity and competitor analysis gave ownership the foundation to act.
Year-end target
57%
Gross margin target as pricing discipline compounds across the full product mix.
Inventory management: from invisible to measurable
Operations
Operations
Before
50%
Missing COGS. No categorization. No profitability or trend tracking possible.
After
95%
Categorized sales. Full schema and SOPs built. Data is now clean and usable.
Net result
-25 days
Inventory days on hand: 190 to 165.
Back-office automation: 40 hours returned monthly
Operations
Before
Manual
No SOPs. Purchase orders handled ad hoc. High owner burden.
After
Custom PO app
Built personally from scratch. Automates full purchase order intake end to end.
Back-office SOPs developed alongside the tool.
Result
40 hrs
Saved monthly. 50% reduction in PO processing time.
Long-term strategy and succession framework
Strategy
Strategy
Initiative
Long-term strategy
Business succession plan in active development.
Initiative
Hiring priorities
Team structure redesigned for growth capacity and resilience.
Engagement status
Month 4
Ongoing. Strategic work expanding as operations stabilize.
Five months of work, sequenced by priority
Full diagnostic of operations, inventory, finances, and team. Building the map before touching anything.
Categorization schema and SOPs introduced. Started cleaning years of unstructured inventory data.
First real look at the financial picture. 13-week cash flow model built. Critical gap identified two months before it would have hit.
Custom purchase order application built and deployed. Clean COGS data enabled ownership to implement a standardized pricing matrix, moving gross margin from 50% to 53%.
Operational chaos under control. Focus shifting to succession planning, team structure, and where the business goes next.
Implement modern bookkeeping infrastructure and reporting controls that give ownership real-time visibility into the business.
Build a more capable, driven team. Reduce the operational burden on owners so they can focus on the business, not just running it.
With operational chaos behind us, work with ownership to develop and execute a strategy for meaningful revenue growth.