Maybe this story would be better framed as "how to convince people that your $2K redesign is really worth $25K." I mean, if the guy is the CEO and this took two weeks, $22K "savings" over two weeks works out to about $500K/yr, which is probably near the value an average CxO sees in themselves.
Instead of saving $22K what he actually did was waste time running an ego-stoking circus for two weeks.