When an Overhaul makes sense
Most businesses don't have one operational problem. They have three, intertwined, where fixing any one in isolation makes the other two worse before they get better. An Overhaul is for that situation.
Common patterns we see:
- Inventory drift, plus a post-purchase gap, plus a reporting layer that's lying to leadership — all three feeding each other
- A 3PL change is on the horizon, the existing integrations were never properly maintained, and the team has accumulated a year of manual workarounds that need to be unwound
- Wholesale, retail, and DTC channels are being managed as three separate operational stacks, and unification is overdue
- A platform migration is coming (Shopify Plus, headless, ERP integration) and the existing ops infrastructure won't survive it without a redesign
If any of these sound familiar, an Overhaul is probably the shape of what you need. If you're not sure, the right starting point is a 30-minute call.
How an Overhaul is structured
An Overhaul has three phases:
Phase 1: The diagnostic
A deeper version of the standalone Audit. We map your full stack, but we also build a dependency graph between the problems we find — which fixes have to come before which others, what can run in parallel, and what's actually two problems being solved by one piece of infrastructure. This phase ends with a phased build plan and a fixed quote for the entire engagement.
Phase 2: The builds
Two to four scoped builds, sequenced according to the dependency plan. Each build follows the same model as a standalone Build engagement: weekly demos, written change orders for any scope adjustments, working software shipped at the end of each.
Phase 3: The handoff
A coordinated rollout to your team. We don't just deliver software and leave. We train your operators on the new workflows, document the new systems comprehensively, and run a structured 60-day stabilization period where we're available for the questions that only emerge once a team is using something in anger.
What you receive
- The full diagnostic report from Phase 1, separately useful as a strategic document
- Multiple working systems, deployed and operational
- Complete source code in repositories you own
- End-to-end documentation: technical, operational, and "why we did it this way"
- Runbooks for every system, written for your team's actual on-call structure
- Training sessions for whoever needs them — operators, CS, finance, leadership
- A 60-day stabilization period after the final build ships
What it's not
It's not a transformation engagement. We're not here to redesign your entire business. We're here to fix specific operational problems across multiple surfaces in a way that respects the dependencies between them.
It's not open-ended. The scope is fixed before Phase 2 begins. New requirements that emerge during the build phase get the same change-order treatment as in a standalone Build — written up, priced, and decided on explicitly.
It's not a six-month engagement disguised as a three-month one. We're honest about timeline. If the work genuinely needs five months, we say so. We've never seen a project shipped on a timeline that was wrong on day one.
Who this is for
$10M+ businesses with multiple intertwined operational problems and the budget to address them properly. Often the trigger is a forcing event: a peak season approaching, a planned migration, an executive change, or a moment of "we tried to fix this in pieces and it didn't work."
Sometimes the trigger is more diffuse: the team has been carrying so much manual operational debt for so long that the founder finally accepts it has to be addressed structurally rather than through more headcount.