Home / What we do / Retail strategy & pricing
Landed cost, margin through every step of the U.S. chain, shelf-price benchmarking and trade spend — modelled before the first buyer meeting rather than reverse-engineered after it.
The problem
A brand sets its U.S. price by converting the home price at the going rate. Then the deductions start. Freight and duty. Warehousing and fulfillment. Distributor margin. Retailer margin. Promotional allowances the category expects as a matter of course. By the time the chain has taken its share, the brand is contributing product at a loss and calling it a launch.
The opposite failure is quieter. The price is set high enough to protect margin, and it sits two dollars above everything else in the shelf set. The buyer doesn't argue. They just don't take it, and nobody ever tells you that price was the reason.
Then there is the channel problem. Marketplace pricing drifts below shelf price, a buyer notices, and the retail conversation ends — not because the product failed, but because nobody set a policy that said what the price was.
What we do
Cost of goods, freight, duty, insurance, warehousing and fulfillment built into a single landed figure per unit, so every number downstream is standing on something real.
Margin modelled at each step of the chain — brand, distributor, retailer — for each route to market you are considering, so you can see which routes actually work before choosing one.
Where your price would sit in the actual shelf set a buyer is looking at, against the products it would sit beside, at the pack size it would sit in.
Promotional calendar, allowances, new-item support and the deductions that come with them — budgeted in advance, because they arrive whether or not you planned for them.
A written minimum advertised price policy, enforced consistently, so the shelf price you asked a buyer to protect isn't undercut by your own channels.
Which pack sizes and formats go to which channel, at which price point, so specialty, grocery, drug and marketplace aren't competing against each other on the same item.
How it works
Pricing is set once, deliberately, and then defended. Repricing after launch is possible and it is never cheap.
Landed cost built from your actual manufacturing and freight numbers, not estimates, then margin modelled through each candidate route to market.
Your price positioned against the category shelf set, by channel, at the pack size you intend to sell.
Price list, trade terms, promotional calendar and MAP policy written down and agreed before any buyer sees a number.
Marketplace pricing monitored, MAP enforced, and the promotional calendar run to plan rather than improvised under pressure.
Who this is for
You know your true cost of goods, you have room in it, and you are prepared to set a U.S. price that reflects the U.S. chain rather than your home one.
Your margin is already thin at home and there is no room in the structure for a distributor, a retailer and a promotional calendar. Modelling will show that quickly, which is a useful answer even though it isn't the one anybody wants.
Go deeper
The sequence from first decision to first purchase order, and what it costs at each stage.
Read the guide →How distribution actually works here, and how margin moves through it.
Read the guide →Twenty questions across product, regulatory status, markets, supply and commercial readiness.
Start the assessment →In their words
“They are constantly exceeding my own in-house team of sales individuals that have been with us for years. There is no better team we could have hired to represent our brand to top national accounts.”George DorseyCEO, Gen-X Muscle
Questions
U.S. Market Assessment
Send us your product and your numbers. We'll come back with a written assessment of what entering U.S. retail would require and what it would realistically return.
