The manufacturing basis of the soft goods sector had been steadily migrating out of the United States to lower labor cost location, both in South America and in the Asia-Pacific.

KSA's U.S.-based practice in the operations and manufacturing sectors increasingly lost relevance as this trend continued, and the firm shifted emphasis to retail, logistics and sourcing services to compensate, and also opened an office in Hong Kong.

The 70s proved a time of strategic exploration as the new leadership team of Stig Kry, CEO, and Jack Ullman, president, sought to diversify KSA's offering into new industry sectors.

[citation needed] While KSA had made the transition from a single-offering engineering specialist to a top line management advisory practice, the internal financing of the firm did not advance at a comparable pace.

The capital available from the Principals to finance global growth was limited and this resource base was further stressed by several costly expansion initiatives in the information technology implementation market.

To compound matters, the KSA board voted to revalue the book stock of the company in 1999 and established a new formula value, further stressing the internal financing capability of the principals.

Although the firm would continue to be privately owned under the new formula for several more years, it became clear the structure was not sustainable and the principals voted unanimously to sell KSA's equity to Management Consulting Group or MCG in 2007.

Kurt Salmon's European business, as well as its entire financial services practice (excluding retail and consumer goods consulting), was sold by MCG to Solucom and was rebranded as Wavestone in July 2016.