Hartwell Distribution is a regional distribution business based in the midwest with approximately 95 employees and $30M in revenue at the time of the engagement. With a strong pipeline of new contracts and favorable market conditions, the business had a clear path to significant growth — but leadership recognized that their existing operational model couldn't support the volume increase without either a major investment in headcount or a fundamental rethink of how the business ran.
Challenge
Hartwell Distribution had reached $30M in revenue with a lean team of 95 people. The business had real growth ahead of it — new contracts were in the pipeline and market conditions were favorable. But leadership knew their current operational model couldn't support the volume they were about to take on without significant investment in headcount or infrastructure.
The question Hartwell brought to Meridian wasn't how to grow — it was how to grow without the cost base expanding at the same rate as the revenue.
Approach
Meridian's audit identified three areas where operational inefficiency was creating unnecessary cost and capacity constraints: order processing, warehouse coordination and carrier management. In each area, manual steps and informal workarounds were consuming time that could be reclaimed through better process design and systems integration.
Over the following 60 days, Meridian redesigned the order processing workflow, built a warehouse coordination protocol that reduced pick errors and resequencing time and implemented a carrier management process that improved route efficiency and reduced last-minute changes. Each improvement was documented in The Growth Playbook alongside a 12-month implementation roadmap.
Results
Over the 18 months following the engagement, Hartwell scaled from $30M to $80M in revenue without adding net headcount. Cost per order processed fell by 34%. The operations team, rather than being overwhelmed by volume growth, absorbed it within existing capacity — a result that would not have been possible without the systems Meridian put in place.
