Everything we keep off the main pages for the sake of brevity lives here — how the assessment works, how we're paid, and the category detail. Email us if your question isn't here.
The short version, in plain English. The deeper detail is all below.
We're an independent business assessment. We evaluate the operational areas most teams never have time to review — HR, IT, employee benefits, supply chain, automation, and operations — identify where you're overpaying or exposed, and connect you with vetted providers when there's something worth fixing. Evaluate, identify, connect. That's the whole idea.
Exactly like one — think of it as an annual physical for your operation. We look across the categories that quietly drift — subscriptions that auto-renew, contracts that roll over, vendors whose terms changed — and tell you where money is leaking. Most operators are too busy running the business to track all of it. That's the gap we fill.
One area, a few, or the whole business — entirely your call. Start with a single challenge, like your software spend or your PEO, or run a full review across categories. We meet you where you are.
No. The assessment hands you the opportunities in plain numbers; you decide what, if anything, to do about them. Implement one recommendation, several, or none. No obligation, no pressure.
No. We're not a permanent layer above your business, and there's no retainer to get started. The assessment is the product; help with implementation is optional, and only happens if you want it. You can engage us for a single issue and be done — or come back when something else comes up.
Nothing. Discovery and the assessment are free. When you choose to act on a recommendation, the provider you go with funds our fee — disclosed on the contract before you sign. If there's nothing worth doing, you owe nothing.
Because no operator can stay expert across every category at once. The pace of change has outrun even good teams — subscriptions auto-renew, vendors change terms, compliance keeps moving — faster than anyone running the actual business can track. We watch that big picture so your people don't have to.
How we get paid, what discovery looks like, what you commit to.
Vendor-funded. Discovery and the audit are free — no retainer, no upfront cost. When we place or renegotiate a vendor, the vendor pays our commission, and it goes on the contract in writing, so you see exactly what we make before you sign.
Where vendor-funded doesn't fit — pure compliance work, single-issue audits, interim CFO-style scopes — we'll quote a flat or capped engagement fee on the discovery call.
Vendors build sales commissions into their pricing whether an advisor is involved or not — that money moves either way. When we place a vendor, the commission comes to us instead of their salesperson, and it's disclosed on the contract before you sign.
Translation: if we re-source your packaging and save you $500K/year, you keep the savings — the vendor pays us out of a contract you've already seen priced. If we don't find anything worth placing, nothing moves and you owe nothing. The disclosure removes our incentive to recommend work that doesn't pay back.
4–6 months total. Discovery 2–3 weeks, audit 3–4 weeks, implementation 8–16 weeks. Multi-state and three-pillar engagements run longer.
Monitoring is opt-in and ongoing — quarterly review cadence, capped fractional retainer, cancel anytime.
Yes — that's the model, and you see every dollar of it. There's a commission in every vendor deal whether it's visible or not; most firms hide theirs. Ours goes on the contract before you sign. We stay neutral because the bench is wide and the disclosure is total: recommendations are made on fit, across PEO, broker, ERP, POS, packaging, promo, and every other category — and you can check the math.
We tell you that. Discovery costs nothing. If you're running clean, or the recoverable margin doesn't justify the engagement, we say so and walk away.
You keep the savings — all of them, for as long as they run. Our commission rides with the vendor contracts we placed, already disclosed and already priced in. Monitoring (optional) is a capped fractional retainer — not a share of new findings.
What we audit, how we audit it, what you get.
Everything that touches your people-cost line:
The full operating tech stack:
Four category tracks plus the cross-category playbook:
Packaging: primary (bottle, can, jar, pouch), closures and dispensers, label and print, secondary (carton, tray), tertiary (master, pallet). Factory-direct vs. agency markup analysis. MOQ, lead time, freight, duty.
Promo & sampling: premium and gift programs, sampling kits, branded merch, VIP gifting, custom collateral, promo agency benchmarking, group-buy and consolidated runs.
Apparel: staff uniforms, retail apparel, branded merch, decoration (embroidery, screen, sublimation), inventory program design, on-demand vs. bulk, domestic vs. import.
Displays & POP: retail floor and counter displays, permanent vs. temporary POP, trade-show booths, end-cap programs, custom fixture sourcing.
Across all four: factory-direct vs. agency markup mapping, freight and landed-cost analysis, MOQ negotiation, vendor consolidation strategy.
HR, IT, and Supply Chain share an operating substrate. Most consultants pick a pillar; we built the practice on the seams between them — because that's where the leakage actually compounds:
A consolidated read of every recoverable dollar, organized by pillar (HR / IT / SC + the seams), prioritized by ROI and complexity. Each finding ties to a method, quantification, and recommended path. We co-present to leadership; you decide what to action.
It's typically 20–40 pages, not 200. We optimize for usable, not impressive.
We run it. The value isn't in the plan — it's in the execution. We RFP vendors, sit on migration calls, draft policy rewrites, walk the warehouse. Done = savings tied back to PO and contract.
The buy-side IP behind the practice: what's in it, where it came from, why it works.
Years on the buying side — signing PEO contracts, picking ERPs, approving packaging, choosing display vendors across CPG, beverage, hospitality, lifestyle, and cannabis. Built from receipts we paid wrong, then paid right.
Six core IP assets, applied across every engagement:
Sourcing from the factory making the SKU instead of through an agency. Direct relationships across packaging, promo, apparel, and displays.
Sometimes the agency genuinely earns its markup — design, project management, complex multi-vendor coordination, on-press supervision. Often it doesn't. The playbook tells you which is which.
Built for consumer-facing brands — CPG, beverage, hospitality, lifestyle, cannabis — with multi-state operations or scaling toward them. Transfers cleanly because the buy side, people stack, and tech stack share an operating shape.
It doesn't transfer as cleanly to pure B2B / enterprise software, regulated financial services, or industrial manufacturing. We'll tell you on the discovery call if your operating model is outside our wheelhouse.
Both. Most engagements surface 2–4 quick wins in the first six weeks — a benchmarking gap, a WC misclassification, a retired SaaS tenant still billing. Often 10–20% of total engagement value early.
The deeper work — ERP migrations, PEO swaps, factory-direct sourcing programs — takes longer to land but compounds over the term.
The playbook is living. Every engagement updates it — new benchmarks, tariffs, factory relationships, category dynamics. The data refresh happens organically.
Where we've got specific gaps, we say so. Some categories (electronics, technical components) we don't have deep enough buy-side history to claim coverage on. Most of what consumer brands actually spend on, we do.
Sizing, geography, NDAs, references.
The model works best at ~$5M+ revenue, where vendor spend is large enough for placements to fund the work. Below that, we recommend a flat-fee scoped engagement or refer you to someone more appropriate.
That's the default. We coordinate with your CPA, counsel, brokers, and existing consultants. We're not replacing anyone — we're pulling the threads together and giving the operator a single point of accountability.
No. We're advisory. We don't sign as officer, run payroll, approve invoices, or negotiate on behalf of the entity. Where those needs arise, we coordinate with your team or refer.
Yes. Mutual NDAs before any discovery work. Reference engagements shared only with explicit operator consent — the case studies here are anonymized composites.
Yes, on request and after the discovery call. We don't post a logo wall because most of our operator clients prefer not to publicize the engagement. Reference calls are standard once we're in serious discussion.
That's a good place to start. A lot of our work begins as a second opinion on a vendor selection, a PEO migration, an ERP RFP, or a packaging RFP. We'll review what's on the table and tell you whether to proceed, renegotiate, or walk away.
Book a 20-minute discovery call. We'll ask questions about your operating footprint, surface the obvious places to dig, and tell you whether a full discovery is worth the time. If it is, we propose scope. If it isn't, we say so.
The specific questions, silo by silo — the detail we keep off the sales pages on purpose.
PEO and benefits benchmarking, workers' comp — NAICS codes and the experience mod — multi-state classification, tipped-labor compliance, and HRIS rationalization. We work from a payroll summary and your invoices; most audits run 3–4 weeks without touching your team's day-to-day.
Yes. The benchmark runs off invoices and a census — nothing changes until you approve it. If a move makes sense, it's timed to your renewal so payroll never hiccups.
No — it's a complement, or a standalone where nothing's in place. ACA-compliant MEC coverage, $0 virtual care for your team, and payroll-tax savings that typically net ~$682 per employee per year. It's one of several benefits options on our bench — featured because the math wins.
The whole operating stack: ERP, e-commerce, POS, telecom, cloud, security, and the SaaS license list nobody reads. We map what you have, flag what's redundant or still billing after retirement, and price the keepers against market.
Almost never. Consolidation and renegotiation come first; we rebuild the integrations that matter and only recommend replacement when the math demands it — and you see that math before anything moves.
Volume visibility. Our bench spans the major carriers and providers — enterprise to independent — and they compete for the work knowing every commission is disclosed on the contract.
Agency markups on packaging, merch, and displays typically run 30–60% over factory-direct. We hold the factory relationships; you keep the difference. Where an agency genuinely earns its margin, we'll say so.
Parcel and LTL audit, carrier contract re-bids, customs and HTS classification, duty and landed-cost engineering, and 3PL placement. It's the one supply chain category that pays back monthly, not once.
No. The bench runs enterprise to independent, and group buys and consolidated runs get smaller brands factory-direct economics.
Human-first and right-sized. No GPT wrappers, no platform rebuilds — automation aimed at the admin work that steals hours, so your team does more of the work that matters. If it doesn't pay back, we don't propose it.
The boring places: workflow automation, system-to-system glue, and operating visibility. We start where the hours are bleeding, not where the demo looks best.
Twenty minutes, no pitch. We'll tell you what we'd look at first, and whether there's anything worth chasing.
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