Retail & Consumer Products

What products resonate with consumers and where? How do you price and when do you go on sale? How do you optimise your margins? How do you know if your promotions are effective? These are some of the challenges we tackle in tandem with our clients. We use your data and our well-honed approach to develop tailored trading reports, product lifecycle recommendations, and suggest enhancements to pricing architecture.

Supply chains have become increasingly complex, with goods and products sourced from an ever-expanding array of locations. These supply chains can prove to be fragile, and subject to risk. This can impact your stock, forecasts, and cost management ability.

Importing products can be just as complicated as getting products out – particularly with shifting trade partnerships, deals and varying transfer pricing and customs duties considerations. So, understanding the connections between you and your suppliers – your transport networks, warehouse management and borders and customs – is key to help you to reduce friction in your logistics.

Bricks-and-mortar retail spaces remain an essential channel to the consumer experience and are changing beyond points of sale. Store blueprints are pushing the envelope on being engaging, entertaining and community centric and transforming into acquisition, logistics, service and experience hubs. The challenge is to give consumers a reason to put their devices down and not only come in store, but to stay.

This starts with the space –many retailers are moving away from the typical 'warehouse'-style shop front to create curated experiences, ever-evolving and showcasing the latest trends and products. This is complemented by your people, with many retailers investing in creating authentic brand ambassadors and reducing friction points in customer service. A sign of the times, your back-of-store and in-store fulfilment of online orders needs to be as seamless as your front-of-store to keep consumers coming back time and time again.

Challenging market conditions can place pressure on management and boards to reduce costs, while growing revenue and executing new initiatives. We work closely with you to navigate these complex and contradictory pressures; using our own methodology to help articulate and develop your strategic plans, focusing tightly on commercial outcomes in the context of your goals and core competencies. We don’t just advise and leave – and the same applies to designing the strategy. We work as a team to solve your complex issues and implement solutions together.

The retail sector may never have been faced with a more challenging marketplace than now. This invariably leads to internal change and people movements – the temptation may be to 'plug' the hole as quickly as possible. Alternatively, it can be an opportunity to benefit from the experience, objectivity, planning and accountability of an interim leader. Our senior team members can perform short-term interim leadership roles at General Manager or C-suite level across finance, merchandise, supply chain, online, store operations and information technology. In addition, we can support and coach existing leaders within your business.

We’re experienced in managing large change programs across multiple functions. Using our own project management methodology, we advocate an ‘activist’ PMO and project management approach to ensure risks, issues and dependencies are uncovered as early as possible in the implementation timeline. Our breadth of functional experience across sourcing, buying, planning, logistics, supply chain, IT and store operations provides for robust discussion, debate and delivery.

Almost every organisational change program includes an information technology workstream or project, so we integrate IT into our core service offering. We review existing technology environments, your cyber resilience, provide project teams that solve problems and help when specific resources are needed. When used right, technology becomes the ultimate enabler – providing transparent and real-time insights across your whole business, from the bottom line through to demand, inventory and workforce requirements.

To remain competitive in today’s market, most retailers are investing in their online offering. The fundamental challenge of online retail is developing an efficient fulfilment model. It’s not something you can ignore, with omnichannel retailing becoming the norm, as customers seek a seamless shopping experience, efficiency, and convenience. We have experience in delivering and optimising online fulfilment and model rollout, as well as the essential integration of online into merchandise and store operations. It’s worth the effort to not only integrate digital into your current operations, but also review and use the data to continually improve your processes. The online experience – from being able to view products through to painless payment, speedy delivery, and competitive returns policies – will be deciding factors in where consumers choose to spend their dollar.

For decades, cash, savings or credit were the typical methods of paying for products. However, new purchase methods including Buy Now, Pay Later have exploded as an alternative to credit – and transformed retail. In addition, Cryptocurrency is increasingly becoming a commodity not just to mine and trade, but also to transact with. If you’re looking to diversify your transaction options, it’s important to understand the risks as well as the opportunities in what is an exciting and, as yet, largely unregulated sub-sector.

Australia's transition to real-time, instant payments is reshaping the financial landscape by phasing out traditional methods like cheques and direct debits. Businesses must update their systems to support instant transfers using mobile numbers or emails, affecting operational efficiency, security, and compliance. Although implementing new payment infrastructure requires an initial investment, moving away from legacy systems will enhance cash flow, reduce operational costs, and help maintain a competitive edge.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) remain an important way for you to reach your organisation’s strategic ambitions for growth, increase market share, expand your footprint, products and services. As part of the process, you need to consider not only the direction of the M&A itself, but also impacts on your value proposition, capabilities, consumers, operating models, logistics and more. To help you throughout the process, our team can provide impartial, hands-on strategy and transaction execution advice to ensure efficiency and optimal outcomes are achieved. We design and execute process and transaction management and ensure timely progress of the various pieces of the strategy – as well as ensure you maximise value during the integration process.

The retail & consumer products sector is beholden to their supply chains and regulation to improve the quality and transparency of how the sector operates. Modern Slavery Reporting is one example of a vital piece of regulation that has added complexity for the retail sector simply by the complexity of their inventories. Then there are issues around wage theft and payroll assurance, as well as the ever-increasing risk of cybercrime impacting not just your business, but also your customers. We also know environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are high on the agenda with stakeholders including investors, customers and employees, demanding the adoption of sustainability practices. Whether it’s tax, audit or risk advisory, we cut through the compliance and complexity.

Rely on our global network of experts that can support your business growth. Being part of a network of 61,700 professionals across 147 countries, we can share insights on the Retail landscape and finding operational efficiencies in the USA, UK, Asia Pacific and more.