Helping design studios run as wonderfully as the spaces they create.
Most design studios win on talent and taste, yet the back office rarely gets the same attention. The work between concept and install is where margin can slip, teams feel stretched, and growth slows.
Design revisions and client changes that don't always make it onto an invoice.
Coordinating orders, replacements, and delivery windows across dozens of vendors.
Design files, spreadsheets, and email threads that each hold part of the picture.
The principal is personally involved in every decision, approval, and detail.
A structured look at your studio through six lenses comprising your people, your clients, your numbers, and your ways of working. Ends with a full findings and recommendations presentation, including some quick wins. Priced up front as a fixed fee, with no surprises.
Lean Street delivers the prioritized improvements with you: process redesign, automation and AI deployment, and capability transfer so the gains stick. Priced by the scope you approve, with no obligation to proceed.
Confidential interviews with designers, project managers, and studio staff: the day-to-day experience from the inside.
Client interviews and journey feedback, from first consultation through final installation.
Utilization, timeline adherence, and project KPIs: what the numbers reveal.
Profitability by project type, pricing model, procurement markups, and cost structure. A check for revenue leakage, plus an accounting process deep dive.
Concept-to-install mapping that shows where hand-offs and workflows can run more smoothly. Identify process bottlenecks and low-value tasks.
Design, project, and procurement tools, and where automation and AI will pay back. Hardware, cloud, file storage, Wi-Fi, bandwidth, and cybersecurity constraints that add risk and slow productivity.
Interviews, data & financials
Metrics, finance, process & tech
Recommendations & roadmap
Full presentation to leadership
A clear, evidence-based readout of what's working, where margin can improve, and exactly what to change, grounded in all six lenses.
Improvements you can capture immediately: pricing fixes, process shortcuts, and simple automations, many within days of the presentation.
A value-ranked improvement plan that sequences the bigger moves and defines the scope for an optional Phase Two.
Phase One identifies the priorities and why they matter. In Phase Two, Lean Street works alongside your team to deliver the improvements, so the roadmap becomes lasting results.
Scope, timeline, and investment are defined together at the end of Phase One. You commit only to what the roadmap justifies.
Streamlined concept-to-install workflows with clear ownership and hand-offs.
Practical tools for proposals, procurement tracking, client updates, and reporting.
A simple set of metrics so you can see margin, utilization, and progress at a glance.
Your team trained to run, own, and keep improving the new ways of working.
Answer six questions, one for each diagnostic lens. You'll get an instant readout and the two areas most worth a closer look. Nothing is stored or sent.
This snapshot is a small piece of custom automation, built the same way Lean Street builds tools for clients: modern web craft plus AI in the workflow. It runs entirely in your browser.
Principal Consultant · Lean Street Consulting
David is a management consultant to the interior design industry, with more than 30 years helping businesses run smoother and more profitably while effectively managing complex change. He works where strategy meets execution: setting clear priorities, simplifying how the studio runs, and building the teams and systems that keep improving after the engagement ends.
leading enterprise transformation
large-scale transformation run-rate profitability delivered
NPV at 158% IRR, cost-savings program
David was engaged to evaluate our interior design consulting business and recommend improvements. We agreed with every one, then asked him to step in as interim CEO to make them happen. He pairs strategic thinking with hands-on execution, and it showed in the great results.
added to bottom-line profit by renegotiating key contracts
reset assumptions about contract scope and additional work
led the procurement platform migration and a complete overhaul of hardware, software, and IT support, eliminating bottlenecks
Six weeks from now, you could have a complete picture of your studio, and the quick wins already paying for the engagement.