Specialty food wholesale · an illustrative composite
The importer with one customer and no sleep
Eleven people, a warehouse and a van
Every case study on this site is a composite. Every case study on this site is an illustrative composite assembled from several businesses. No client is named, no logo appears, and there is not a single testimonial on this website attributed to a person — a fabricated one would be the one genuinely dishonest thing a consulting site can do.
What was happening
Forty-three per cent of revenue came from one supermarket group on ninety-day terms, and the owner had been meaning to do something about it for three years.
What we did
Revenue taken apart by customer and by margin, then a direction review with the owner and the two people who would have to execute anything. Nine days over six weeks.
What is different now
A written twelve-month plan with two things on it and eleven things explicitly not on it. The concentration figure is now produced every month rather than being a thing the owner estimates when asked.
What this cost, and how that number was arrived at
The engagement was a where the revenue comes from: six to ten days at the blended day, over four to six weeks, ending in a written breakdown, a concentration picture you can show a bank, and a short list of what to do about it in order.
How that fee is arrived at
- Blended day× six$10,800
- The same rate, at the long end× ten$18,000
- Travel, materials and anything bought for youat cost—
- What you would be quotedsix to ten days$10,800 to $18,000
The day rate is $1,800 and it is on the fees page. That multiplication is the whole of the pricing model: there is no retainer hidden inside it, no percentage of anything and no success fee.
What is deliberately not on this page
- A company name. This is several businesses combined and none of them would be recognisable in it.
- A percentage. There is no version of their year without us in it to compare against, so any figure would be an estimate presented as a measurement.
- A quotation from anybody. There is not one testimonial attributed to a person anywhere on this website.
- A claim that we caused what happened next. What can honestly be said is what was decided, what was built, and what is now measured that was not measured before.
The practice area
Strategy and planning
Where the business is going, what it will stop doing to get there, and which three things happen first.
$2,200 a partner day · ninety minutes free · about one in four we talk out of it
Start with the assessment, or just telephone
The assessment takes about four minutes and gives you a written summary of what your answers suggest and which engagement addresses each thing. It is indicative and not professional advice, and it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works and the first meeting is ninety minutes and free.