Cover Sports, a family-owned manufacturer with more than 150 years of history in field protection and custom-manufactured products for sports and facilities, partnered with ProCFO Partners to bring forward-looking financial leadership to a fast-growing, multi-generational business. With ProCFO Pat Balestrieri leading the engagement, the company moved from instinct-driven, historical reporting toward structured budgeting, clearer profitability visibility, and proactive planning.

At Cover Sports, we have built our reputation over more than a century and a half as a family business that knows its craft and its customers. But as we grew, it became clear that running our finances on instinct and history was no longer enough. We had a capable controller who kept our books in good shape, yet we lacked the forward-looking financial leadership a business our size needs to plan and make confident decisions.

We had never used a fractional CFO before, but we knew what we wanted: a finance function that could help us write the news rather than read it. To get there, we partnered with ProCFO Partners and brought on Pat as our fractional CFO, someone who understood manufacturing and could bring structure and strategy without slowing us down.

From the start, Pat worked closely with our leadership and finance team to understand the business and set priorities. Together we focused on a few areas where we could make the biggest difference:

Building a Real Budgeting and Planning Process: We had never had a formal budget, which made it hard to align resources with our goals or see what growth would require.

Seeing Profitability by Division and Product: We needed to understand which parts of the business were actually making money, especially after a high-revenue year with tightening margins.

Forecasting Cash in a Seasonal Business: With overseas vendor deposits, long lead times, and seasonal demand, we needed real visibility into cash flow and working capital.

Developing the Finance Team: We wanted to strengthen our internal team and help finance become a strategic partner to the business.

Pat’s work was guided by the ProCFO Financial Flywheel™, a framework that connects six domains: Goals & Strategy, Revenue Model, Systems & Processes, Financial Reporting, Cash Management, and Profit Improvement. That structure helped us move from scattered financial questions to a systematic approach, building momentum with each step.

Our First Company-Wide Budget: For the first time, we built a formal budget, including divisional profit-and-loss budgets, and secured buy-in from the leaders responsible for each area, giving us clearer goals and accountability.

Clearer Manufacturing Economics: Pat helped us calculate our burden rates and understand true product costs, so we could finally see profitability by division and product line.

A Capital and Expense Plan: We completed capital and expense budgets with team buy-in, giving us a plan to work from rather than reacting month to month.

Forward-Looking Cash and Reporting: We built cash flow visibility and shifted our reporting from historical summaries toward proactive, decision-focused insight.

Measurable Financial Improvement: Our gross profit margin increased from 27% to 36%, driven largely by a significant reduction in cost of goods sold even as sales grew.

Perhaps the most important change was in how we think. Pat helped us pair the judgment and instinct that built this company with systemized planning and data, so finance now has a seat at the leadership table rather than sitting in the back office. The budgeting process has also brought real alignment across our leadership team. Decisions that used to rest with one person are now shaped by a management team that understands the numbers, asks sharper questions, and is actively engaged in finding ways to improve the business, a foundation we built together. What began as a search for better numbers became a shift in mindset, from reacting to what already happened to planning for what comes next, without losing the entrepreneurial culture that makes us who we are.

As we move forward, we are focused on improving margins, making confident reinvestment decisions, strengthening our balance sheet to give us daily visibility into our cash position, integrating our recent acquisition, and continuing to evolve as a family business and leadership team. With stronger financial tools and a clearer view of the business, we are better positioned to navigate seasonality, market shifts, and the opportunities ahead.

Pat has been more than a fractional CFO. He has helped us think differently about our business and brought structure and direction to decisions we used to make on instinct alone. Our story shows that even a company with a long and proud history can modernize its financial foundation and grow with greater confidence.