How do you scale a manufacturer without adding headcount?
How do you scale a manufacturer without adding headcount?

Client Overview

  • Industry:
  • Sports Equipment Manufacturing
  • Client: $40M sports equipment manufacturer scaling toward $80M
  • Engagement: Execution Sprint, Jane Gentry & Company
  • Results: quote turnaround 10 to 4 days, 50% more volume with the same team, win rate +6 points, 3 points of margin recovered
  • How: fixed the process instead of hiring; twelve planned hires avoided

The plan was to hire twelve people. They hired none, and the company added the capacity of a much bigger team anyway.

Here’s what was happening. A $40M sports equipment manufacturer wanted to reach $80M, but design and estimating had become a wall. Quotes took ten days to get out. Estimators rebuilt the same numbers from scratch every time. Everyone was slammed, and the CEO did what most CEOs do when the team is slammed. He reached for headcount.

More people inside a process that doesn’t work doesn’t buy you more output. It buys you more payroll and the same wall.

I thought I had a staffing problem. I had a process problem.
President

So Jane Gentry ran an Execution Sprint and fixed the process first. Clear ownership of each step. The redundant handoffs, gone. Standard inputs, so estimating stopped starting from a blank page every time.

Quote turnaround dropped from ten days to four. The same team took on 50% more volume. Faster quotes lifted the win rate by six points, because in their market the first credible bid usually wins. Three points of margin came back from the overtime and expediting the bottleneck had been quietly running up.

Twelve people not hired. A clear path to $80M on the team already in the building.

If your team is working harder every quarter and still falling behind, an Execution Sprint starts by finding where your throughput actually breaks.

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Gross margin from 34% to 38% and $2.4M in cash freed in twelve months

We had data everywhere and answers nowhere. The team didn't just give us better reports. They gave us a decision system. For the first time, we could see exactly where we were bleeding cash, which products were worth fighting for, and which marketing dollars were actually working. We stopped guessing and started managing.

CEO, $50M home goods manufacturer
One operating model instead of three, then a sale at 8x EBITDA

Three companies, one letterhead. Nobody could get a decision made. Every call of any size landed on my desk, and we'd been through four CEOs in five years trying to fix it. Jane treated it as a design problem instead of a people problem. One P&L, decision rights written down and handed to the division leaders, and one operating rhythm for everyone. Within eighteen months our margin was up four points, nobody on the leadership team left, and when we went to market, buyers saw one clean company instead of three.

CEO, $150M air pollution control manufacturer
Quote turnaround from ten days to four, with no new hires

I thought I had a staffing problem. I had a process problem. We were growing toward $80M and quotes were taking ten days because my estimators rebuilt everything from scratch. I was ready to hire twelve people. Jane fixed the process first: clear ownership, fewer handoffs, standard inputs. Quotes now go out in four days, the same team handles half again as much work, and we never made those hires.

President, $40M sports equipment manufacturer
Back on track in six months, not out of business in twelve

When my dad died unexpectedly, I stepped in to run the company and found out it ran on what was in his head. Estimating, process, how work actually got done. None of it was written down. I gave us twelve months before we were out of business. Jane had us back on track in six, and she paced the changes so my team wasn't buried and my leaders weren't carrying more than they could handle.

CEO, $20M media company

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