Ed Mehlman established Ed Mehlman and Associates — the original name under which our firm operated for more than three decades. He was a trailblazer in retail recovery audit, among the first to treat the practice as a true craft rather than a commodity — helping to define what a serious recovery engagement should look like in an industry still finding its shape.
Ed built the firm on a set of principles that never wavered: small teams, deep work, long partnerships, no offshoring, and the conviction that the client's interest always came first. He ran the firm personally for thirty-two years, handled relationships with the same retailers decade after decade, and became widely respected across the industry for his integrity, his generosity, and the craftsmanship he brought to every engagement. Everything that followed is built on what he started.
Tim Mehlman — Ed's son — grew up inside the firm long before he ever worked there. As a kid, he would sit outside his father's office listening to business calls, steeped in the language of recovery audit before he could define it. The fascination never wore off. He acquired the firm from his father in 2016. A Rice-educated mathematician and former J.P. Morgan analyst, Tim is also a seasoned software engineer with an exceptionally strong computer science background — a rare combination in the recovery audit industry, and the foundation for everything that would follow. The transition preserved every principle of the original practice. It also began a decade of technical renewal. The craft passed to the second generation.
Under Tim's leadership, the firm undertook a complete redesign of its technical stack — new data ingestion, new analytical models, new claim-type detection across categories that had previously been out of reach. The investment paid off. Client recoveries compounded year after year as the new tooling matured, and by 2021 the firm was delivering groundbreaking results for its clients — all while preserving the boutique principles Ed had built the firm on. The same craft. A new set of tools.
In 2021, with the firm at its strongest, Tim made a difficult personal decision. His mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. His children were young. And the success of the rebuild had given him the financial freedom to choose where his attention belonged. He sold a majority stake to a private-equity firm — the first time in the firm's history that ownership extended beyond the family — and stepped back from day-to-day operations to be present for his family. The firm was renamed Enduring Retail Audit during this chapter, the name under which many of our long-standing clients still know us today.
What followed revealed a more fundamental truth: this kind of craft is not well served by outside ownership. Decisions that had always been weighed on what was right for clients across the long run — the instinct for patient partnership that had built the firm's forty-year record — began to be weighed on finances first. Focus fragmented. Discipline softened. Tim remained deeply engaged throughout — consulting, advising, protecting the work that mattered most — but over time the path forward became clear. The firm needed its original form restored.
By 2025, circumstances had shifted. Tim's children were both settled into elementary school — the youngest starting kindergarten — and his attention was free to return. Beyond the timing: Tim simply missed the work. The auditing. The tool-building. And the moment to build had never been better — the technology available today is unlike anything the industry has ever had to work with. He reacquired the firm in full that year, returning it to complete family ownership and re-establishing its founding DNA: small teams, American experts, deep work, long partnerships. The reset was deliberate and complete. 2025 and 2026 have been spent building what the firm was always meant to be at this stage of its life — a senior team at full depth, an analytics suite advanced beyond anything else in the industry, and a discipline that matches the craft. The firm, restored to itself.
Forty-two years after Ed opened his doors, the firm rebranded as Mehlman & Co. The choice was deliberate: a name that honors what Ed built, a brand that reflects what the firm has always been at its core, and a mark that signals the return to our roots. The team is the deepest the firm has ever carried. The analytics stack is the most advanced in recovery audit. To take one example of many: recoveries for a major department-store client now run ten-fold what they did before the ground-up redesign of the firm's technical stack. The craft is set. The practice is focused. The strongest chapter yet is under way.
