The Client — Fieldstone Home is a specialty home goods retailer with 28 stores across the US Southeast. With strong brand loyalty and solid unit economics, they had secured funding to expand to 60 stores over three years. Six months into the plan, they'd opened two.

The Situation — Every expansion decision — new store approval, lease negotiation authority, local marketing budgets, store manager hiring — was bottlenecked at the VP level or above. The organization had been built for 12 stores. At 28, it was straining. At 60, it would collapse.

Average time from site identification to lease signing was 74 days. Industry benchmark for comparable retailers was 28 days.

The Challenge — The leadership team was hardworking and committed — but they were involved in decisions that shouldn't have required them. The real estate team had no autonomous authority. Store managers had no discretionary budget. Regional leads had accountability without power.

The result was a capable business that moved at the speed of its most cautious executive.

What We Did — We spent the first two weeks mapping every decision made in the expansion process — who was involved, who needed to be, and where delays were created. We found 14 decision types that were escalating unnecessarily and designed a new authority matrix that pushed 11 of them down to regional and store level.

We redesigned the regional leadership structure, created a dedicated real estate decision unit with clear autonomous authority, and introduced a weekly expansion rhythm with standardized reporting. Training and handover took three weeks. The entire restructure was complete in five.

The Results — Decision cycle time dropped by 73% in the first 60 days. Time from site ID to lease signing went from 74 days to 21. Fieldstone opened 9 new stores in the following 6 months — compared to 2 in the preceding 6. They are now on track to hit their 60-store target ahead of schedule.