services
We help brands and retailers prosper at the intersection of physical and digital commerce
glue
partnership development
Traditional retailer and vendor collaboration is dead. The standard of merchants and sales teams building a product selection and trade calendar, supported occasionally by “dedicated” marketing resources, is a path to nowhere. It’s no wonder most partnerships remain tactical, anchored in the annual discount negotiation.
What’s required is true integration: end-to-end planning and operational rigor with mutual accountability, digital shelf strategies and KPIs, and product lifecycle alignment, all underpinned by insights and technology. Without the right people at the design table, and tension held in both organizations at the critical planning junctures, partnerships are destined to be mediocre. The urgent need to upgrade, unfortunately, comes at the same moment the industry is faced with headcount reduction and talent migration on both sides of the partnership table.
Further, partnerships cannot waste time debating metrics and baselines. Data and information sharing on agreed platforms elevates every conversation from tactical to strategic. Partnerships must capitalize on shared technology to enable breakthrough commercial results.
We help retailers, brands and technology firms build integrated, mutually beneficial partnerships. We enable each partner to leverage their strengths and keep up their end of the bargain – bridging the ever-widening chasm between disparate commercial, operational, IT and logistics teams.
conductor
channel management
The art and science of distribution planning has never been as crucial or as complicated. The shift to digital has disrupted traditional retailers of all sizes and exacerbated the need for new skills within organizations, while the allure of marketplaces has generated an entire industry of opportunity and issues to deal with. It has never been easier to lose control of your brand equity through the choices you make in distribution.
Gone are the days when market penetration was about acquiring new doors.
Gone are the days when you could apply product segmentation rules for big customers while maintaining a free-for-all with independents and get away with it.
Gone are the days when you could bury product discretely to hit your number while avoiding the eyes of your most fervent consumers.
Channel management these days requires a nuanced understanding of all the components of a distribution landscape and how each part fits the whole. It requires a full customer-by-customer profitability analysis to ensure resources and strategic intent are in sync. And it requires a well-oiled go-to-market that is consistent from sell-in to sell-through, supported by precise and thoughtful terms and conditions of trade, and managed methodically across every SKU.
We help brands shape their go-to-market in today's complicated commercial ecosystem. We analyze the vast range of financial, operational and commercial inputs to create and maintain a holistic strategy output that keeps brands prospering and consistent wherever the consumer shops.
gumshoe
marketplace control
Among the most important activities for any consumer goods company today is optimizing the digital shelf. This goes beyond maintaining a beautiful owned ecommerce platform that attracts and converts; its about making sure wherever a consumer shops online, the experience is consistent and brand accretive.
Brands must understand how and by whom their items are sold and presented online and must enforce comprehensive distribution and MAPP policies in order to protect margin. Often this specific work can be mysterious to the wider organization, under-resourced and seemingly ineffectual. But firms that tolerate inattention will suffer corroded margins, putting increasingly greater pressure on product innovation to offset progressively abbreviated product lifecycles.
We help you root out bad distribution and keep your brand equity strong. We help identify and harness the power of the best investigative technology products on the market today. We craft trading policies, terms and conditions that are enforceable and effective, discover and stop unauthorized sellers, and, most importantly, weave this function of the business into the larger fabric of the organization, ensuring the entire firm do their part to maintain brand integrity.
orchestra
optimized org design
Digital commerce explosion has obscured the lines between traditionally siloed (yet functional) org structures, where direct-to-consumer and outside sales teams operated in parallel, held together by semi-specialized marketing, finance and supply chain functions. Today, those partitions are antiquated and block breakthrough thinking, yet remain in many companies. Further, an onslaught of new nimble technologies compete to hook onto the bloated IT systems that power many companies.
Both altering an organization’s structure and having the discernment to select the right technology partners at the same time is a near impossible act. But this urgency to change on a large scale is widely understood in consumer goods and has been aptly labeled “Transformation” in the latest consultant grift.
The reality is, often breakthrough does not need to be terribly complicated nor transformative.
We help you build an effective, efficient, data-led organization aided by the right technology. We help you build high performing cross-functional teams that operate clearly in the blurriness of today’s commercial boundaries. We help distill the tech or data options down to what will get the best results for the smallest spend. And, having years of real-world experience in consumer goods leading complex, multi-national teams, we know the crux of this is always about people, leadership, capabilities, and collaboration.
