Case Study
BrainGain is a DTC e-commerce brand selling home fitness equipment across the UK and EU. Four years into their journey, the business was operating at approximately £5m revenue and struggling to make consistent and sustainable profit.
The co-founder relationship was under significant strain. Friction around roles, responsibilities, and strategic direction was constant. Both founders were deeply embedded in the operational detail with no time or space to lead strategically, and neither had clear sight of where the business was going.
The pain points were significant, and yet the founders weren't fully aware of the extent of them. They were too busy running at pace to see clearly.
I started by running a structured diagnostic workshop, bringing both founders into the same room to surface their pain points and categorise them into two buckets: Operating Model issues covering people, roles, governance and tools, and Business Process issues. I designed a structured plan of attack for each.
Over the following months, I worked across the business to uncover the root causes, mapping them to the pain points surfaced through the diagnostic workshop, and working through them systematically in order of impact.
I developed a process and tool to reduce stock-outs, creating revenue stability and a platform for growth.
I restructured the business so that the right responsibilities landed with the right functions and team members. This included reorganising the way the business worked with third-party contractors and suppliers to optimise for business impact and the right level of founder involvement.
I built forums for cross-functional collaboration so work could flow effectively between functions without founder involvement, alongside a decision-making cadence that allowed founders to provide direction where needed without receiving excessive ad hoc communications daily.
I raised the capability of the team through one-to-one coaching and a staggered approach to increased responsibility, transitioning work that had previously sat with the founders to the team at a sustainable pace so it could land permanently.
I led business strategy sessions and guided the founders towards decisions that led to better capital allocation and increased profitability: rationalising the SKU portfolio to focus on what was profitable and selling well, and optimising pricing and channel mix to increase both sales revenue and margin.
I held space for the co-founder relationship, providing both founders with an independent, trusted environment to share their frustrations and perspectives, and helping to stabilise the dynamic at a moment when it had reached breaking point.