Pricing conundrums in Spain

Who was our client?
Based in the US, our client has 85 leading
brands, many of which are the biggest in
their category across the world.

Why did they get in touch?
The business was losing money on three key brands in Spain due to low and inconsistent pricing. This was the result of:

Prices being set by local and regional account managers, leading to huge variations between customers.
The profit pool was skewed in favour of the retailers who were sometimes making the majority of the margin.
There were too many price files to maintain due to the number of direct customers.
With the Spanish market in recession, increasing prices wasn’t an option. We needed to find other ways to make the business more profitable. The Acumen answer
Seeing clearly
Our consultants used our app, Acumen Radar™, to paint a clear picture of the retail/list price relationships, trade terms structures and SKU profitability, identifying where they were exposed.

With this information, we could set about defining the right solution.

Thinking differently
We simplified pricing by:

Adopting clear pricing principles
Introducing common discount buckets
Re-establishing the relationship between RSP and list price
Rebalancing margin levels across SKUs, while taking care not to damage the relationship with their customers.
Working smarter
We simplified the whole pricing process:

Introducing a minimum order quantity for direct customers.
Introducing standardised logistics terms to reward efficient practices.