Stabilising Operations for a Rapidly Scaling VC-Backed Business
Client
Scaling VC-Backed Gym Equipment Supplier | D2C and B2B | Asia-Direct Sourcing
The Situation
Despite moving into a larger warehouse operation, fulfilment performance continued to deteriorate. Orders were slipping, customer service teams were overwhelmed, stock was overflowing into expensive off-site storage, and leadership lacked visibility into the root causes.
The board needed an honest, evidence-based assessment before committing further capital investment.
What We Did
Conducted a six-week operational diagnostic across inbound flow, warehousing, customer service, capacity and back-order management
Analysed a full trading week alongside three months of historical back-order data
Built an operational KPI framework from scratch covering daily and weekly warehouse performance
Prioritised operational risks and actions into a phased scaling roadmap
Results
The diagnostic identified significant operational instability, including:
£4.5m of orders awaiting payment resolution across 418 cases
92% of in-stock orders taking more than six days to despatch
28% of orders missing system promise dates
Individual customer orders delayed by more than 100 day
More than 80 prioritised operational actions structured into a phased scaling plan
Beyond the Numbers
The work reframed the operational challenge from “a warehouse problem” into a wider systems and process issue involving inbound visibility, stock control, operational ownership and knowledge concentration.
It also established a core operational principle that shaped the wider engagement: manual process discipline must work properly before automation is introduced.
