SpaceOf.
Case study
Turing five fragmented markets into one high-performing region
€6M saved
17% fewer models.
3%
Sales lift. Driven by clarity, not complexity.
1
Operating system. Build for all five markets.
Turing five fragmented markets into one high-performing region.
Overview
A global sports apparel leader had a scale problem hiding inside an alignment problem. Across Europe, each major market had built its own product development process, its own calendar, and its own decision checkpoints. On paper, it was one region. In practice, it was five separate businesses — with barely 3% product overlap to show for it.
The Challenge
The issue wasn't ambition. It was fragmentation. Different processes, different approval loops, different definitions of success. Every market was optimising locally while the region bled efficiency at scale. Duplicate work piled up. Briefing cycles slowed down. Brand execution became inconsistent across borders. The ask was straightforward. Build one way of working that still respected local reality. Executing it was anything but.
The problem wasn't that people didn't want to collaborate. It was that the system made collaboration almost impossible. Once we redesigned how work began, flowed, and got approved everything changed.
Solutions
Europe wasn't suffering from misalignment. It was suffering from the absence of a designed operating system. SpaceOf built one, from the top down and the front line up.
A European Leadership Council was established with clear decision rights and unified commercial priorities, explicitly defining what stays consistent across markets and what flexes locally. One standardized product development and briefing workflow replaced a tangle of legacy tools and duplicate approval routes. Design, markets, and operations were brought together earlier in the process. Seasonal calendars were harmonized. A cross-functional SWAT team was put in place to prevent regression.
Work stopped being "my market." It became "our region."
Results
The transformation cut the product portfolio by 17%, simplifying a sprawling ~10,000 SKU operation and generating €6M in cost savings. A 3% sales lift followed, driven by greater clarity and consistency across markets. But the most significant change wasn't on a spreadsheet. Teams that had spent years defending boundaries started building Europe together, with stronger trust, better cross-functional relationships, and a model now being replicated across other categories.
