National Speed, an automotive performance company specializing in high-end vehicle modification and performance optimization, from precision horsepower upgrades to fully custom builds. The founders' ambition was to create a standardized, franchise-ready chain of performance shops, beginning with a flagship location in Wilmington, North Carolina.
National Speed was not a traditional automotive repair business. Their work was project-based, highly customized, and operationally complex. Each job involved unique configurations, specialized mechanics, custom parts sourcing, multi-bay coordination, and detailed quoting that had to remain both accurate and profitable. The business model also blended service delivery with an experiential retail environment. Customers could see the work being done. Quotes needed to be visually compelling. Execution had to be disciplined. And every location had to operate the same way if the company was going to expand beyond a single shop. Existing automotive software wasn't built for this. Traditional repair platforms assumed standardized jobs, fixed pricing, and limited variation. None could support the level of customization, task-level labor tracking, or operational rigor National Speed required.
Boulder approached National Speed the way it approaches all complex businesses: by first helping the founders understand what their vision meant in operational terms. The team documented workflows, pressure-tested assumptions, and translated the desired experience into concrete system requirements. From there, Boulder designed and built a fully custom platform to run the business end to end. The system supported complex, configurable service quoting; multi-bay service coordination; task-level time tracking for specialized mechanics; inventory and supplier integration; retail point-of-sale operations; customer-facing deliverables and project visibility; and real-time operational and financial metrics across locations. It was built for high availability. In this environment, downtime meant no quoting, no service execution, no transactions. Boulder ran the system with 24/7 support and near-perfect uptime, evolving it alongside the business as offerings and processes matured.
Once the system was in place, National Speed could operate the business it had envisioned. Quotes were consistent and disciplined. Service execution was coordinated rather than improvised. Performance data was visible in real time. Processes could be replicated reliably as the company expanded from one location to two.
The technology worked exactly as designed. National Speed achieved a functioning proof of concept and built the operational backbone required for expansion. The company later encountered internal investor conflict and funding constraints that stalled its planned nationwide rollout. Those challenges were unrelated to the technology itself. The system Boulder built remained stable, reliable, and capable of supporting the business model it was designed for. Technology does not guarantee business success. But for complex, differentiated business models, it is often a prerequisite for even getting off the ground. This case demonstrates Boulder's role at its clearest: helping leaders translate ambition into operational reality, building systems that make execution possible, and doing so with the discipline and honesty required in real businesses, not hypothetical ones.