A data-driven diagnosis of the company as it exists today inside NetSuite — followed by a complete, department-by-department operating system: cadences, KPIs, playbooks, automation, and a scaling roadmap.
This is a healthy, growing consumer-products business with a strong balance sheet — being quietly undermined by four broken back-office processes. Fix support, quotes, collections, and dead inventory, and the growth already happening compounds instead of leaking.
| # | Move | Why | Est. Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stand up a real support triage system — SLA tiers, daily escalation review, owner per case | 20 of 34 open cases escalated, avg 91 days old. This is churn being manufactured daily. | Retention |
| 2 | Rebuild quote follow-up — 48-hour follow-up rule, weekly stale-quote report, expiry dates on every estimate | 36 estimates, 0 conversions. Whatever demand the sales team is capturing is dying in the funnel. | +Revenue |
| 3 | Collections cadence — dunning at 7/30/45 days, weekly AR review | $64.9K (59% of overdue AR) already in the 61–90 bucket; recovery odds drop ~1%/day past 60. | +Cash |
| 4 | Margin program — reprice bottom-quartile SKUs, renegotiate top-5 vendors, liquidate 23 dead SKUs | Every point of gross margin ≈ $149K/year at current volume. 32% → 36% is a realistic 12-month target. | +$600K/yr |
| 5 | Instrument the pipeline — real opportunity values, stage discipline, weekly forecast | Only 8 open opportunities (~$1.9K nominal value) against a $16M+ run-rate. The company is flying blind on forward revenue. | Visibility |
Reconstructed from the item catalog, transaction flows, locations, and org structure in the live account.
Q2 2025 dip (−8.7% QoQ) recovered strongly; growth has re-accelerated since — Q2 2026 was the best quarter on record.
Trailing-12-month P&L shape, balance-sheet snapshot, and where the money is leaking.
| Cash (all accounts) | $3.17M |
| Trade Receivables | $1.58M |
| Inventory in Stock | $1.68M |
| Open SO backlog (unbilled) | $22.6K (229 orders) |
| Overdue AR >60 days | $64.9K |
Inventory ≈ 61 days of COGS on hand — reasonable headline, but 15% of SKUs haven't sold in 2026, meaning turn on live SKUs is masked by dead stock.
Ranked by severity. Every finding below comes from live account data, not conjecture.
| Rank | Finding | Evidence | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Support escalation pile-up. Escalation is functioning as a parking lot, not a resolution path. | 20 of 34 open cases (59%) in "Escalated" status; average age 91 days; oldest from March 2026. | CRITICAL |
| 2 | Zero quote conversion. No estimate issued since the quoting program began (July) has become an order. | 36 estimates → 0 linked sales orders in nexttransactionlink. | CRITICAL |
| 3 | Aging receivables. Collections activity stops after invoicing. | $64.9K of $82.0K overdue AR (79%) is past 60 days. | HIGH |
| 4 | Thin gross margin. 32.3% is below the 40–50% typical for owned-brand consumer products. | T12M COGS $10.07M vs revenue $14.87M. | HIGH |
| 5 | Empty forward pipeline. No credible view of next quarter's revenue. | 8 open opportunities, nominal value ~$1.9K; win-rate history 94% (33W/2L) suggests opps are only logged when already won. | HIGH |
| 6 | Dead & slow inventory. Cash frozen in non-moving SKUs. | 23 of 153 inventory SKUs (15%) with zero 2026 sales; $1.68M total inventory. | MEDIUM |
| 7 | Vendor concentration. Supply shock exposure in top suppliers. | Top 5 vendors (Generation N, Bedline, Apparel Co, Broyhill, Hestra) = $1.16M of T12M spend. | MEDIUM |
| 8 | Single-node fulfillment. Chicago DC carries virtually all volume; Denver DC is idle. | Chicago: 80,867 lines. Denver: 9. One weather event or labor issue halts national fulfillment. | MEDIUM |
| 9 | Order-to-cash data lineage. Journal-posted revenue blocks SKU-level analytics. | $12.8M of T12M revenue posted via Journal type. | MEDIUM |
| 10 | 229 stale open sales orders. Backlog hygiene — many partially fulfilled or pending billing for months. | 191 "Pending Billing/Partially Fulfilled" + 38 "Pending Billing" totaling $22.6K. | LOW |
For each function: current grade, what to run, the KPIs to watch, and the one thing to fix first. This is the operating manual — cadences and numbers, not platitudes.
Revenue is growing, so something is working — but with 88% of billings coming through anonymous cash sales, marketing is flying without customer-level attribution. 324 identified customers against ~$15M of revenue means the vast majority of buyers are invisible to remarketing.
Identity capture at the two stores. It costs almost nothing and unlocks every downstream lifecycle program.
The B2B/wholesale motion is embryonic and broken where it exists: 36 quotes with zero conversions, 8 open opportunities worth almost nothing, and a 94% "win rate" that proves opportunities are logged after the fact. Retail carries the company; wholesale is the untapped growth lane.
Work the 36 dead quotes this week — call every one, convert or close. Then install the 48-hour follow-up rule.
Fundamentals are solid — profitable, liquid, growing. The gaps are process gaps: no collections motion, journal-heavy revenue posting, and no evidence of a rolling forecast or margin program.
Collections. It is the fastest cash win in the building — the process below can be automated inside NetSuite this month.
The single worst-run function in the company. 59% of open cases are escalated and the average escalated case is 91 days old — customers who escalate are the ones who cared enough to push, and they are being trained to churn. Returns are modest (22 RMAs, $5.2K T12M), so the product isn't the problem; the process is.
The amnesty. Nothing else in support matters until the 91-day backlog is zero and the customers affected have been made whole.
Fulfillment throughput is real (3,187 shipments) and the manufacturing capability (work orders, assemblies, CMs) is a strategic asset. But everything runs through one DC, dead stock is accumulating, and 229 open sales orders need hygiene.
The dead-stock kill list — it funds itself and creates the discipline the rest of the inventory program needs.
39 people generating ~$381K revenue per head — respectable for consumer products. But the failure pattern in support and sales says capacity and ownership, not effort, are the gaps. Hire against the diagnosis, not against wish lists.
Open the Support Lead requisition this week — every week of delay is another cohort of escalated customers.
The failure signature across support, quotes, and collections is identical: work starts, then dies without a defined next step. That is a documentation problem — nobody can be accountable to a process that exists only in someone's head.
Write the case-triage playbook during the escalation amnesty — you'll be doing the work anyway; capture it as you go.
Three altitude levels, all buildable natively in NetSuite (saved searches + dashboard portlets + standard reports). No new software required.
One page. If it doesn't fit on one page, it isn't a flash report.
Owned by the department lead; reviewed in the weekly L10 (Section 08).
45-page decks are theater. 10 pages, 5 decisions.
nexttransactionlink, SKU-level sales, vendor spend). I can build these as saved searches and dashboard portlets on request, one department at a time.Automate the cadences so they survive busy weeks. Sequenced by payback speed; everything in Wave 1 is native NetSuite functionality plus this agent.
| Wave | Automation | Mechanism | Payback |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wave 1 0–30 days | Dunning emails at +7/+30/+45 days past due | NetSuite Dunning module or scheduled workflow on open invoices | Immediate — attacks the $64.9K aged bucket and prevents refill |
| Wave 1 | Stale-quote alerts: task auto-created at +48h; weekly digest of quotes >7 days untouched | Workflow on Estimate + saved-search email digest | First converted quote pays for the setup |
| Wave 1 | Case SLA escalation: auto-escalate to manager at 75% of SLA; daily open-case digest | Case escalation rules + saved-search schedule | Stops the 91-day parking-lot pattern structurally |
| Wave 2 30–90 days | Reorder-point alerts per SKU/location; low-stock digest to the planner | Item reorder points + saved search; later, demand-based planning | Fewer stockouts on A items, less over-buying on C items |
| Wave 2 | Order-level channel sync: POS/e-commerce orders flow as transactions, not summary journals | Complete the Celigo integration already installed | Unlocks SKU-margin analytics + all downstream AI |
| Wave 2 | Weekly flash report auto-generation | This agent: scheduled SuiteQL → formatted email/HTML | Zero-effort visibility, every Monday 7am |
| Wave 3 90–180 days | AI case triage: classify, prioritize, and draft first responses for support cases | LLM on case intake; human approves | First-response time collapses; team works resolutions, not routing |
| Wave 3 | Demand forecasting per SKU/location feeding purchase planning | Statistical baseline on 25 months of history, ML later | Inventory 61 → 50 days on hand ≈ $300K cash released |
| Wave 3 | Churn-risk scoring: flag customers with declining frequency for win-back | Purchase-interval model on customer history (needs Wave-2 identity capture) | Retention compounding on the growing customer file |
The operating system's heartbeat. One leadership meeting, 90 minutes, same time every week, non-negotiable attendance.
| 0:00–0:05 | Wins & headlines (fast, energizing) |
| 0:05–0:25 | Scorecard review — every department KPI, red/yellow/green. Reds get 1 sentence of context, then go to the issues list. No storytelling. |
| 0:25–0:35 | Customer & employee pulse — top escalation, CSAT trend, team flags |
| 0:35–0:45 | Rock check — quarterly priorities on/off track |
| 0:45–1:20 | Issues: identify → discuss → solve. Top 3 only. Every solved issue exits as an owned action with a date. |
| 1:20–1:30 | Action recap + cascade messages to teams |
| Daily | Support standup (15 min) · cash position glance |
| Weekly | Leadership L10 (above) · sales forecast call · AR review · flash report |
| Monthly | Business review vs budget · SKU margin ranking · SO backlog sweep · playbook audit |
| Quarterly | Rocks reset · talent review · vendor scorecards · pricing review · risk register refresh |
| Annually | Strategy offsite · budget · insurance/compliance audit · succession check |
First 4 weekly meetings will run long and feel awkward. By week 6 it becomes the fastest meeting in the company. Do not skip week 3.
The live risk register, scored on likelihood × impact, each with a named mitigation.
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Churn from support failure — escalated customers quietly defecting | High | High | Escalation amnesty now; SLA system + Support Lead hire; CSAT monitoring |
| Chicago DC single point of failure — fire, weather, labor action halts fulfillment | Medium | High | Activate Denver DC / formalize 3PL to 25% of volume; document DC failover runbook |
| Vendor concentration — top 5 = $1.16M spend; Generation N alone $364K | Medium | Medium | Dual-source top 5; safety stock on A items; contract terms with supply commitments |
| Margin compression — 32% GM leaves little shock absorber for freight/input inflation | Medium | Medium | Margin program (Section 03); shift mix to owned-make assemblies; quarterly pricing review |
| Working-capital squeeze — growth funds inventory + AR simultaneously | Medium | Medium | 13-week cash forecast; DSO <35; days-on-hand 50; pre-arrange a credit line while you don't need it |
| Data integrity — journal-posted revenue undermines analytics & audit trail | Certain (present) | Medium | Complete Celigo order-level sync (Wave 2); freeze new summary-journal patterns |
| Key-person dependency — undocumented processes concentrated in few heads | Medium | Medium | The First Ten playbooks; cross-training matrix; succession notes for top 5 roles |
| Retail foot-traffic dependency — 2 stores + POS = most of revenue | Low | High | Grow e-commerce and wholesale lanes (Sections 05/10) to diversify channel mix |
From $16M run-rate to $30M+ without breaking the machine. Each horizon has an admission price — the operational capability you must have before entering it.
$16M → $20M · "Fix & Fund"
Admission price paid: the operating cadences of Sections 5–8 running without you pushing them.
$20M → $26M · "Expand Channels"
Admission price: clean order-level data, a planner in seat, GM ≥36%.
$26M → $30M+ · "Compound"
Admission price: Horizon-2 unit economics proven per channel; leadership bench in place.
Sequenced for momentum: cash and customers first, systems second, intelligence third.
| Window | Actions | Exit criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1–14 Stop the bleeding |
Escalation amnesty on all 20 cases · call all 36 open quotes · collection calls on every invoice >45 days · open Support Lead req · start daily support standup | Escalated cases <5 · every quote converted or closed · ≥50% of 61–90 AR collected or on payment plan |
| Days 15–45 Install the system |
Wave-1 automations live (dunning, quote alerts, case SLAs) · weekly L10 running · executive flash report automated · dead-stock kill list executed · first 5 playbooks written · department scorecards drafted | All Wave-1 automation firing · 2 consecutive L10s held · dead-stock $ down 50% |
| Days 46–90 Build the engine |
Support Lead onboarded · wholesale target list + first 20 outreaches · vendor renegotiations opened (top 3) · Celigo order-sync project scoped · 13-week cash forecast live · POS identity capture launched · playbooks 6–10 · Q4 budget by department | SLA hit rate ≥90% · first wholesale orders quoted · identity capture ≥20% and climbing · margin program targets set per SKU |