P&C guided this global property owner to step outside of their box and creatively think of its assets as more than shopping malls, and instead, gathering spots to physically connect with others in an increasingly isolated world. We helped transform this company’s properties into community assets with highly sought-out entertainment venues and digital consumer experiences. By bringing together innovative technologies, infrastructure & safety systems, and carefully cultivated partners who could provide entertainment and a connected customer experience, stores and restaurants are now extending their hours to support increased foot traffic, and the company is benefitting from a significant increase in revenues and profits.
Global Apparel Retailer Turns Losses into Profits By Updating Branding & Merchandising Strategies
Plummeting profits jeopardized a high-end apparel retailer’s ambitious growth strategy. P&C helped its client develop an aggressive turnaround plan that aligned branding and merchandising strategies across its retail channels, streamlined and improved inventory management and ensured that it designed and stocked popular products with high margins.
P&C Helps This Retailer Accelerate Growth by Focusing on High Profitability Products & Upgrading Its Fast Fashion Brand Image
The new leaders of this multi-brand clothing and accessory retailer, known for its legendary brands and global footprint, hoped to accelerate growth by expanding into adjacent areas and extending its retail network. But with profits plummeting by 90 percent, they recognized the need to strengthen branding and inventory management while reducing costs to achieve its ambitious growth strategy.
Working with the firm’s CEO, P&C developed a comprehensive turnaround plan that included short-term profit gains and long-term initiatives for sustained growth. We aligned branding and merchandising strategies, focused product development on items with high profitability for both its retail and catalog outlets and ensured organizational support. We also redesigned their inventory forecasting models, supply chain, and inventory management systems to improve efficiency and better meet customer demand.
To achieve over $400 million in annual profit improvements, P&C helped this company launch initiatives to increase overhead savings, boost its brand image, eliminate less profitable brands and products, and introduce a new “look” for its highest margin, fast fashion brand.
With improved inventory controls and product development, this retailer can stay ahead of trends, fueling faster growth. Our turnaround plan successfully reversed return on equity from a loss to a 6X increase.
*We take our clients’ confidentiality seriously. While we’ve changed their names, the results are real.
Appliance Retailer Boosts Shareholder Value By Focusing on Execution, Simplification, and Strategy
Our high growth retail client experienced a significant share price decline after missing earnings expectations. We identified the company’s core strengths and performance improvement options. The resulting broad-based performance improvement program created $2.5 billion in shareholder value.
P&C Helps Its Client Take a Step Back to Realign Product & Pricing With Customer Strategy
Our retail client had enjoyed high growth and was planning to double its store count within 2-3 years, as well as increase diversification into new channels, products, and geographies. Unfortunately, they had failed to meet earnings expectations for the first time, causing a significant share price decline. Investors blamed a variety of factors including concept saturation and over-diversification.
P&C Worked With the Client to Address the Following Questions
How do we identify, prioritize, and resolve execution limitations that are blocking our ability to rapidly grow?
How can complexity be reduced to lower costs and grow the top line?
What changes should we make to our product and pricing strategies to align with our customer strategy?
P&C Identified the Client’s Core Strengths Before Articulating Its Performance Improvement Options
P&C Launched a Broad Performance Improvement Program for this Retail Client
Revenue
Marketing/Product Development
Consolidated and refocused marketing spend
Targeted programs by segment to grow share of wallet and number of customers
Reprioritized R&D pipeline
Organization and Staffing
Restructured field front line management
Created performance management and incentive system
Optimized store level staffing by store type
Key driver of company store sales out-performance (~10% higher than retail industry average over multi-year horizon)
Product Costs
Sourcing
Centralized procurement function
Consolidated vendors
Re-negotiated contracts
Developed strategic supplier relationships
Drove $30M+ of annual savings after year one
Product Line Profitability
Assessed true profitability of all store level SKUs
Eliminated or re-priced 1000+ problem SKUs
Rationalized R&D Spending
Drove $11M of annual savings
Store Operations
Labor
Implemented store best practices
Enhanced store labor productivity by eliminating admin work
Increased store level automation
Saved $40M in annual labor staffing costs
Real Estate
Redefined store “full potential”
Assessed store portfolio and optimal real estate economics
Improved efficiency in leasing, construction and repair and maintenance
20% annual R&M savings and a 5% increase in new store ROI
P&C’s performance improvement initiatives created $2.5 billion in shareholder value since the beginning of the relationship.
*We take our clients’ confidentiality seriously. While we’ve changed their names, the results are real.
We and our clients value diversity, and invest in mechanisms to achieve it; here, a Diversity Board provides employees a direct voice in driving towards a more inclusive culture.
To maximize long-term success, P&C works with clients to build their pipeline of talent, instituting learning and development programs with significant benefits for growth and retention.
Especially for luxury brands, their positioning, image, and relationships are crucial considerations. This campaign showcases their portfolio of companies which mutually reinforce each other and the legacied icons of the umbrella brand.
In light of pandemic restrictions upon in-person runway events, this client innovated with a virtual presentation of their collection, deeply integrated with e-commerce capabilities for fashion buyers.
We are always on the lookout to forge new relationships which deliver innovative opportunities for our clients and their customers. This design partnership represents a marriage of legendary, impeccable brands.
This client is a leading fashion house we have partnered with across multiple initiatives in technology, digital transformation, and strategy — developing rapidly over the past two decades to become a preeminent couture brand.
Nous pensons que les marques doivent être authentiques et refléter activement leurs valeurs fondamentales. Ici, nous nous sommes associés aux Galeries Lafayette pour intégrer leur éthique de responsabilité sociale dans leurs fonctions de merchandising et d’achat, et communiquer cet engagement aux consommateurs via le programme «Go For Good».
We believe that brands must be authentic and actively reflect their core values. Here, we partnered with Galeries Lafayette to integrate their ethos of social responsibility into their merchandising and buying functions, and communicate that commitment to consumers via the “Go For Good” program.
The fashion runway is an essential opportunity for couture brands to present their designs to key buyers and consumers. Here, P&C helped one client achieve their vision with a signature presentation and collection launch approach backed by an industry best-of-class ecommerce and supply chain platforms.
Luxury retail is another sector severely impacted by the pandemic. In tandem with efforts to resume normal retail operations, we never forget the enormous dedication and contributions of client employees.
Geographic expansion in retail requires integrated execution across a variety of functions including real estate, store design, merchandising, human capital, and marketing. P&C helped drive each of these efforts in preparation for one of the world’s top luxury department stores, Galeries Lafayette, new store launch in Doha, Qatar.
In an era of ubiquitous brick and mortar and e-commerce competition, we believe it is crucial for retailers–and particularly luxury retailers–to differentiate themselves based upon overarching customer experiences; here, we combine a cocktail bar, restaurant, and a digital content studio into a unique venue.
The goal with this campaign was to reinforce the client’s brand as a fashion leader among targeted demographic segments, thereby optimizing their customer lifecycle value.
Successful brands resonate with their customers, not just by serving immediate needs and reflecting trends, but by actively shaping expectations. Our clients affirmatively define elegance.
Engaging experts to connect the brand to the customer is one of many avenues we employ for clients to drive positive consumer perceptions and increased loyalty.
This marketing campaign utilized a fashion concept as the core driving force to position our client as the standard-bearers for style while building customer loyalty.
P&C has deep experience in the luxury retail sector, with a keen understanding of affluent consumers. Here, we partnered with our client to showcase their flagship location, Paris Haussmann, highlighting an environment with a rich legacy that will resonate and build long term brand loyalty globally.
P&C helps position our clients as the standard-bearers for style and sophistication. The “Elegant Guide to Life” content series delivers value-added content for key customer groups.
Via a newly designed monthly video series, our client engaged its top stylists to show their customers how to create new looks for every occasion on their social calendar. By selecting a wide range of stylist advisors and developing an effective campaign to reach target audiences, the client re-engaged with customers while illustrating apparel options and reinforcing its prominence as a fashion and style leader to a broad audience mix.
Luxury brands have a unique opportunity to establish enduring trusted relationships with their customers, particularly during major life transitions; this video, for example, our client provides advice on how to make the most of a wedding registry.
Luxury brands have a unique opportunity to establish enduring trusted relationships with their customers, particularly during major life transitions; this video, for example, our client provides advice on how to make the most of a wedding registry.
Illustrating product usage in the context of meaningful experiences can be a powerful merchandising approach — lifting sales while creating enduring memories for customers and developing loyalty.
Reflecting its vibrant innovation history, this luxury retail client worked with P&C to showcase creative talent from the Middle East, storymakers who in their own right were disrupting their respective fields of modeling, acting, journalism, and music.
We work carefully with our luxury retail clients to plan categories and product assortments to maximize pull-through demand; here, our client showcases high quality, handmade goods from one of the prestigious brands it carries.
We help brands become truly dynamic, expanding their reach across new geographies, customer segments, locations and channels. This social media video illustrates one such launch for a storied retailer and their new location on the Champs Elysees.
Our work with clients typically spans multiple domains. With this client, for example, our efforts broadly encompass brand development, marketing, merchandising, digital reinvention, omnichannel retail, customer experience, social responsibility, and international expansion.
P&C designs and implements integrated public relations and marketing campaigns in tandem with major launches. This media dinner in Doha generated immediate awareness and positive press for a luxury retail client entering a new market.
CoutureCo*, a legendary European couture house, recognized its competitors were gaining tremendous market share from a new generation of buyers who were evaluating and ordering using mobile platforms. Merchandise assortment, availability, and logistics challenges hindered performance at a growing network of branded stores, further impacting customer perception and sales. The company sought P&C’s guidance to develop an effective omnichannel strategy and to optimize its logistics processes. With P&C’s expertise and support, the company developed and launched an integrated strategy which delivered a seven-fold increase in mobile revenue in one year.
At a Glance
The Situation
An effective omnichannel strategy presents retailers with a significant opportunity: The marriage of digital and physical worlds creates a whole new value equation and CoutureCo realized it needed the right strategy and a solid implementation effort to succeed. In today’s omnichannel world, the journey has more stages than ever, with the customer deciding not only where, when, and what to buy, but which channels to use and the role each will play. The linear route through the classic purchasing funnel has morphed into a fluid and dynamic process as boundaries between marketing and selling online and offline blur—and often disappear entirely.
CourtureCo’s historic success was due in large part to sales from their company branded stores as well as a carefully curated selection of luxury department stores. The company maintained disintegrated e-commerce channels (its own digital presence plus the digital presence of the luxury department stores), but its internal e-commerce and branded stores were not integrated.
E-commerce channel sales accounted for only 9% of its total revenue (compared to 30%+ enjoyed by its top-performing competitors) and often offered more discounted, off-season products or products for upcoming season not yet available for sale. Further, the company was hindered by inefficient logistics which led to unavailability of in-demand products and poor execution of direct-to-customer and direct-to-store orders which negatively impacted customer perceptions and satisfaction.
Our Approach
P&C worked closely with CoutureCo’s key project stakeholders–C-level leaders and stakeholders from across the company as well as their global logistics partner–to address key questions related to the company’s omnichannel opportunity:
How should pricing and assortment of the company’s online channel compare to its other channels including branded stores as well as omnichannel platforms of its other merchants?
What is the company open to do to realize the full potential of its omnichannel efforts?
What is the company open to do to in order to optimize assortment and logistics?
P&C led the key stakeholder team through a process to create a shared vision for the future state–a high-level roadmap, grounded in industry best practices and differentiating but attainable outcomes, which would represent the best outcomes from their omnichannel and logistics optimization efforts.
We established a targeted set of outcomes to define success. The targets included: mobile and online revenue increase of 2-3x and mobile users increase of 4-5x in one year from launch.
In addition, we created three cross-functional teams–led by P&C–to tackle the omnichannel strategy, development of the mobile platform, and logistics optimization workstreams.
Our Recommendations
The Results
With P&C’s expertise and implementation, CoutureCo’s omnichannel strategy, optimized global logistics solution, and investment in mobile delivered: 7x increase in mobile revenues and 10x increase in mobile engagement.
*We take our clients’ confidentiality seriously. While we’ve changed their names, the results are real.
GlobalCo*, a diverse conglomerate with operations in 118 countries and over 160,000 employees worldwide, recognized that some of its portfolio companies were missing their profitability targets among other performance issues. The company sought P&C’s guidance to identify and solve the performance and profitability issues at its holding companies.
At a Glance
The Situation
GlobalCo, a diverse conglomerate with operations on five continents, owned businesses in multiple industries including logistics, biopharmaceuticals, commercial real estate development, energy and exploration, financial services, technology infrastructure, and luxury retail. GlobalCo’s board of directors had set a minimum rate of return for invested capital for their portfolio companies, but some fell below their goals. In addition, given the rapidly growing size and scale of some its portfolio companies, GlobalCo sought opportunities to share infrastructure across the enterprise to leverage its economies of scale and reduce duplicative costs. After evaluating and eliminating complex proposed solutions with unclear outcomes from multiple global consultancies, P&C was engaged to address the following challenges:
Identify which portfolio businesses have high potential for growth and scalability and those which need to be divested.
Identify issues tethering performance at high potential businesses and define strategies to boost performance at each.
Identify any low-hanging M&A opportunities for inorganic growth at high potential businesses.
Define a strategy and approach for the creation of a shared services organization to deliver common business services across the enterprise to include the following functions: finance, accounting, treasury, audit, technology infrastructure, human resources, risk management, and corporate real estate.
Our Approach
P&C worked closely with GlobalCo’s key stakeholders – C-level leaders and stakeholders from across the company and board of directors – to gather, consolidate, and prioritize the expected outcomes of the solutions sought.
With input from key client stakeholders, we created specific frameworks to address each challenge:
Our Recommendations
P&C’s top priority was to identify which of the underperforming businesses had potential for substantial growth and which needed to be divested. Concurrently, we wanted to identify potential opportunities to improve businesses already performing well along with potential M&A opportunities to scale those businesses to a new level.
The Results
GlobalCo divested all low-potential, non-performing businesses, made two strategic acquisitions valued over $7 billion, and created a state-of-the-art shared services organization which reduced $375 million in annual costs across all of its businesses. In addition, return on operating income increased from 12 to 27 percent over a 2-year period across all businesses.
*We take our clients’ confidentiality seriously. While we’ve changed their names, the results are real.
ApparelCo*, a European based apparel retailer with over 250 stores in 2 countries, sought P&C’s guidance to improve performance after missing earnings expectations for the first time, causing a significant share price decline.
At a Glance
The Situation
ApparelCo, a European apparel retailer with over 250 stores spanning 2 countries, had enjoyed rapid growth and was planning to more than double its store count within 3-5 years and diversify into new channels, products, and geographies. Despite its successful growth, the company had failed to meet its earnings expectations for the first time, causing significant share price decline. Investors blamed a variety of factors including concept saturation, under-performing new stores, and higher than expected operating costs. In addition, costs associated with a poorly timed rebranding effort had escalated dramatically and created customer confusion, negatively impacting sales.
ApparelCo asked P&C for answers to three questions:
How can we effectively lower our operating costs without sacrificing our growth aspirations?
What changes should we make to our product and pricing strategies to better align with our customers’ needs and expectations?
What changes do we need to make to save our rebranding initiative?
Our Approach
P&C worked closely with ApparelCo’s key project stakeholders—C-level leaders and stakeholders from across the company—to gather, consolidate, and prioritize the expected outcomes of the performance improvements sought.
First, we identified the company’s core strengths. Next, we conducted a thorough analysis of their costs and analyzed their sales data to identify performance impacting patterns. Upon fully understanding the costs and sales data, we articulated the company’s performance improvement options in detail.
Our Recommendations
P&C recommended six concurrent performance improvement initiatives to address ApparelCo’s issues. Working with the company’s key stakeholders, P&C led the execution of each of the concurrent workstreams.
Revenues
Marketing
Consolidated and refocused marketing spend
Targeted programs by segment to grow share of wallet and number of customers
Reprioritized R&D pipeline
Organization
Restructured field front line management
Created performance management and incentive system
Optimized store level staffing by store type
Key driver of comparative store sales out-performance (15% higher than retail industry average over multi-year horizon)
Products
Procurement
Centralized procurement function
Consolidated vendors
Renegotiated key contracts to reduce costs and improve terms
Developed strategic supplier relationships
Profitability
Assessed true profitability of all store level SKUs
Eliminated or re-priced 1800+ problem SKUs
Rationalized R&D spending
Drove €55M+ of annual savings after year one
Drove €12M of annual savings
Operations
People
Implemented store best practices
Enhanced store labor productivity by eliminating administrative work
Increased store level automation
Real Estate
Redefined store “full potential”
Evaluated store portfolio and identified optimal real estate economics
Improved efficiency in leasing, construction, repair and maintaince
Saved €38M in annual labor staffing costs
20% annual R&M savings and a 7% increase in new store ROI
The Results
P&C delivered €105M in annual cost savings and transformed key aspects of ApparelCo’s procurement, merchandising, marketing, real estate, and store operations which led to immediate and sustained revenue, cost, and competitive differentiation improvements. These outcomes created over €2.8 billion in shareholder value since the start of the engagement.
*We take our clients’ confidentiality seriously. While we’ve changed their names, the results are real.
