Retail

Retail looks simple from the outside. Buy low, sell high, repeat.

You know better. You live in the space between shrinking margins and rising expectations. Between inventory that won't move and customers who won't wait.

Consumer behavior shifts overnight. A trend that drove last quarter's numbers becomes this quarter's markdown. The landlord wants rent. The vendor wants payment. The bank wants a plan. And somewhere in the middle of all that wanting, you're supposed to run a business.

When a retail company hits trouble, everyone has an opinion. Consultants want to study the problem for six months. Banks want their money yesterday. Your people want answers you don't have yet. And the clock keeps running.

Here's what most advisors miss: retail turnarounds happen in relationships. With vendors who need to keep shipping or your shelves go bare. With big-box partners who can pull your product overnight and never look back. With employees who watch every move you make and decide whether to stay or start looking.

Spreadsheets matter. Cash flow models matter. But the person negotiating with your largest supplier at 7 a.m. needs to understand what's actually at stake. The person talking to your lender needs to have sat in that chair before.

Our professionals come from the business world. We've run companies. We've made payroll when the account was short. We've walked the floor, counted inventory, and made the hard calls that keep the lights on while everyone else was still scheduling meetings.

When a leading cosmetics brand faced collapse, their private equity backers walked away. The lender wanted a sale. The CEO was focused on top-line growth while margins bled out. Debtor's counsel knew the executive team couldn't lead the company into Chapter 11 while maintaining impartial governance.

We stepped in as Chief Restructuring Officer. Displaced the CEO from daily management. Took control of operations, finance, and every vendor conversation that mattered. We gained the lender's confidence, secured cash collateral to fund operations, and prepared the entire organization for what came next.

Ninety days from petition to successful sale. Every major retailer relationship preserved. Company value maintained. The lender credit-bid its debt to acquire the assets because we'd protected something worth buying.

That's what happens when the people managing your crisis have managed crises before.

Convenience stores operate on razor-thin margins where a single bad month can spiral. Furniture retailers carry inventory that ties up capital for quarters at a time. Specialty shops depend on relationships that took years to build and can disappear in a single phone call. Bulk fuel distributors navigate commodity swings that would break most balance sheets.

The products change. The pattern holds. Cash gets tight. Decisions get delayed. Leadership hesitates because the wrong move feels worse than no move at all. And every day of paralysis costs more than the day before.

We understand that retail moves fast. Crisis moves faster.

Middle-market retail companies don't need advisors who bill by the hour while the building burns. They need people who can step into leadership today, stabilize operations this week, and build a path forward that stakeholders actually believe in.

The companies that survive are the ones who find leadership willing to move at the speed the moment demands.

We've been putting out business fires since 1993. Yours won't be our first.

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