The Founding Position
— Marcus Okafor
Founding Partner, Reframe Consulting
We walk into retail operations where the gap between what the technology promises and what the business needs has become expensive silence. Then we close it.
See What's Costing You →avg. margin recovery in year 1
median POS migration timeline
avg. cost-of-inaction per year
average client stack age at intake
Client Voices
The problems they described
before we arrived.
Every engagement begins with a diagnostic. These are the sentences that came back most often.
“We were running three separate inventory systems that had never spoken to each other. Every morning started with a spreadsheet reconciliation that took two people four hours.”
Diane Kowalczyk
VP Retail Operations · Hartwell & Sons
“Opening physical stores exposed every assumption we had built into our digital-only stack. The POS we chose because it was "good enough" was costing us $40K a month in phantom shrink.”
Priya Nair
CTO · Vestry DTC
DTC → Physical · 6 doors“Our ERP was installed in 2009. The vendor had sunset the version we were running. We discovered this when a routine update bricked our entire markdown automation.”
James Whitfield
SVP Technology · Caldwell Department Group
Legacy Dept. Store · 31 locations“Buy online, pick up in store was live for two years before anyone realized the inventory promise rate was 61%. Customers were showing up to empty shelves.”
Tomás Reyes
Head of Omnichannel · Solano Living
Home Goods · 19 locations“Reorder triggers were set by a vendor consultant in 2017 and never touched. We were over-ordering winter SKUs in our Florida stores every single cycle.”
Keiko Tanaka
VP Merchandising · Northgate Outdoor
Sporting Goods · 52 locations“The gap between what our loyalty platform knew and what our POS knew was wide enough that we had a customer who bought from us 400 times and was still tagged as a new visitor.”
Brendan Farrell
COO · Lakeshore Pharmacy Group
Health & Beauty · 140 locations“The diagnosis is always faster than the client expects. The cost of delay never is.”
— Marcus Okafor, Founding Partner
Stack Analysis · Table 1 of 3
What you're running now
versus what your operation needs.
Each row is sourced to a named engagement. The technology choices here are not hypothetical.
| Layer | Current Stack | Recommended Stack | Measured Impact | Client Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Point of SaleCritical | ✕Epicor Retail 8.x (EOL 2021) | ✓NewStore Unified Commerce | Eliminates split-tender reconciliation. Saves 3.2 hrs/store/day. | Hartwell & Sons |
Inventory EngineCritical | ✕Custom Access DB + Excel exports | ✓Brightpearl + RFID layer | Real-time accuracy from 71% → 97.4%. Phantom shrink drops 68%. | Northgate Outdoor |
OMS / Order RoutingCritical | ✕Manual store allocation (email-based) | ✓Kibo Commerce OMS | BOPIS promise rate 61% → 94%. Customer no-shows drop 74%. | Solano Living |
Loyalty & CRMElevated | ✕Standalone Paytronix (unconnected) | ✓Salesforce Commerce Cloud + Loyalty | Customer identity resolution: 23% → 89% match rate. | Lakeshore Pharmacy Group |
ERP / Back OfficeCritical | ✕SAP AFS 6.0 (unsupported) | ✓Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce | Markdown automation restored. Eliminates 14-day reporting lag. | Caldwell Department Group |
DTC ↔ Physical BridgeElevated | ✕Shopify + Square (no sync) | ✓Shopify POS Pro + Inventory Planner | $40K/mo phantom shrink eliminated. Unified stock view achieved. | Vestry DTC |
Analytics LayerModerate | ✕Vendor-provided dashboards (siloed) | ✓dbt + Looker unified data model | Single source of truth across 140 locations. Decision lag: 14 days → same day. | Lakeshore Pharmacy Group |
Stack recommendations are engagement-specific. Platforms listed represent outcomes achieved, not vendor partnerships.
Outcomes · Table 2 of 3
The numbers that changed.
Sourced to the client who lived them.
These are post-engagement measurements, not projections. Timelines reflect days from engagement start.
“Every one of these numbers had a human being behind it who had been explaining the problem internally for eighteen months before we walked in.”
— Marcus Okafor, Founding Partner
The Real Calculus · Table 3 of 3
The cost of doing nothing
is not zero.
Cost-of-inaction figures are calculated from client-reported data at intake. Engagement costs are fixed-fee.
| Cost Category | Cost of Inaction | Inaction Detail | Engagement Cost | Engagement Scope | Return | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inventory Shrink | $480K / year | Ongoing phantom shrink at current accuracy rate | $85K one-time | RFID + Brightpearl implementation | 5.6× ROI in year 1 | Northgate Outdoor |
| BOPIS Abandonment | $1.2M / year | 39% of BOPIS orders fail; avg. basket $68 × 140 locations | $110K one-time | Kibo OMS + promise engine | 10.9× ROI in year 1 | Solano Living |
| Reconciliation Labor | $624K / year | 4 hrs × 2 staff × 84 stores × 261 days × $35/hr | $60K one-time | NewStore POS migration + automated close | 10.4× ROI in year 1 | Hartwell & Sons |
| Markdown Mismanagement | $2.1M / year | Estimated margin leakage from manual markdown timing | $180K one-time | Dynamics 365 + markdown automation rules | 11.7× ROI in year 1 | Caldwell Department Group |
| Loyalty Revenue Gap | $890K / year | 77% of loyalty members unrecognized across channels | $140K one-time | Salesforce CRM unification + identity graph | 6.4× ROI in year 1 | Lakeshore Pharmacy Group |
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