Scaling Retail and Creative Operations at Rust-Oleum

Rust-Oleum is a global leader in protective paints and coatings, supporting complex retail, marketing, and creative initiatives across a broad footprint. As the organization continued to scale its retail execution and brand initiatives, the team needed clearer systems to manage growing complexity without slowing momentum.

The Challenge

Rust-Oleum teams were navigating increasingly complex workflows tied to retail execution and creative delivery.

"A lot of our work is very complex. Our processes are complex, our relationships between departments are complex, and we needed a system we could truly build into something that made sense for us."

Courtney Porter, Senior Manager of Creative Strategy, Rust-Oleum

Key challenges included:

• Managing high volumes of work across multiple retail initiatives
• Coordinating cross-functional teams with different priorities and timelines
• Maintaining visibility into project status, ownership, and dependencies
• Reducing reliance on manual updates and tribal knowledge

Without a centralized, scalable system, teams were spending too much time managing the work instead of moving it forward.

"We quickly realized we could not do this on our own. We needed help connecting our processes, building things the right way, and having someone guide us through what actually works."

The Polished Geek Approach

Polished Geek partnered directly with Rust-Oleum to design systems that brought clarity, structure, and scalability to day-to-day operations.

Our approach focused on:

• Workflow mapping: Documenting how work moved through the organization
• Process standardization: Creating repeatable workflows without sacrificing flexibility
• monday.com implementation: Translating real-world processes into an intuitive, usable system
• Change adoption: Ensuring teams could confidently use and maintain the system day to day

Polished Geek aligned people, process, and tools to create operational transformation.

The Solution

Polished Geek implemented a centralized operational framework in monday.com that gave Rust-Oleum full visibility into retail and creative workflows.

The solution provided:

• A single source of truth for initiatives, timelines, and ownership
• Clear handoffs between teams and stages of work
• Real-time visibility into progress and blockers
• A system that supported both long-term planning and fast-turn execution

The result was a system that scaled with the team rather than slowing it down.

The Impact

With clearer workflows and better visibility, Rust-Oleum was able to:

• Reduce time spent on manual coordination and status updates
• Improve alignment across cross-functional teams
• Execute retail and creative initiatives more consistently
• Shift focus from managing work to driving strategy and results

"We wanted a tool we could build into something that made the most sense for us, not something we had to force our process into."

The system created space for better decision-making, stronger collaboration, and more predictable execution.

As organizations scale, operational complexity often grows faster than headcount. By partnering with Polished Geek, Rust-Oleum transformed its operational foundation, enabling teams to move faster, stay aligned, and scale with confidence.

Polished Geek helps growing teams build systems that scale without losing the human side of work.

Ready to get started with your retail operational transformation? Schedule a strategy session.