This is what we would actually do, in what order, and what it costs.
No discovery call is required to see the number.
What we would go looking for
These are patterns that recur in retail and e-commerce, written as things to
look for. They are not findings from a named engagement.
Returns cost — processing, refurbishment, disposal — carried centrally and never allocated to the category generating it.
Marketplace and platform fees, including advertising, taking a share that is not in the product margin calculation.
Markdown applied to clear stock that was over-bought, with no feedback into the next buying decision.
Shrinkage concentrated in a small number of sites or SKUs and reported as a company percentage.
Supplier funding and rebates agreed and not fully claimed.
The sequence
Five weeks for one operating unit. More units run in parallel rather than in
series, so a group does not take five times as long.
Week 1
Intake and reconciliation8 requests written for retail and e-commerce, alongside the 107 covering the operating spine. We tell you which findings the gaps will limit before any fieldwork starts.
Weeks 2–3
Full pass, not a sampleEvery order in scope is read rather than sampled.
Week 4
Quantification and challengeEach finding sized, and put to whoever owns it before it is written down.
Week 5
Report and walkthroughThe written report, ranked by annual value and by how hard each finding is to act on.
3 core requests written for retail and e-commerce, inside the full intake.
Anything you do not have can be skipped with a reason — skipping narrows what the
review can conclude, and we tell you where before the work starts rather than after.
Sales by channel, category and month
Gross margin by SKU and category — After discount, markdown and returns. Reported margin and realized margin rarely match.
Inventory by age and location — Including obsolete and aged stock.
If any of this is already happening
The review is always worth doing and rarely urgent. It becomes urgent when
something else is happening — and if one of these is, the sequence above compresses
to fit it.
A shipping or fulfillment rate increase that nobody has modeled through to margin
A tariff change on a sourced category
A returns rate that moved and nobody can attribute it
A funding round or sale, where contribution margin by SKU is requested
A state sales tax notice
Who needs to be in the room
Signs it: Founder, CEO or CFO
Will resist it: Merchandising and marketing, whose discounting and spend become attributable — worth telling them what the
review is for before they hear it from somewhere else.
Has been asking for it: Operations and finance, who suspect which SKUs lose money
What it costs
Priced by operating unit — an entity, a location, or a business the accounts are
kept separately for. The second unit costs less than the first because by then the
intake is built, the chart of accounts is understood and the patterns are known.
Purchase order is the primary route — most
buyers this size raise a PO and pay against an invoice on terms. Card and bank
transfer exist for those who prefer them.