Home/What we do/Consumer
Industry
Consumer
The brand is the easy part.
Margin, mix and the operating model underneath — channel economics, cost to serve, and the supply chain that decides both.
The sector
We work on margin, mix and the operating model underneath a consumer business — channel economics, cost to serve, and the supply chain that decides both.
The brand is usually the part that is working. What is not working is the cost of serving the customer through channels that were added one at a time, each with its own economics, none of which were ever rebased together. Most consumer margin problems are channel arithmetic, not brand problems.
Start here
Most consumer margin problems are channel arithmetic.
Channels were added one at a time, each with its own economics, and almost nobody has rebased them together since. Direct, marketplace, retail and social commerce carry genuinely different costs to serve, and most P&Ls still report them as though they do not.
Until that arithmetic is visible, pricing and promotion decisions are being made on numbers that describe an average nobody sells at.
- Channel economics
In scope - True cost to serve by channel, rebased together.
- Pricing & promotion
In scope - Effectiveness, architecture and cadence.
- Supply chain
In scope - Network design and service levels.
- Integration
In scope - Post-acquisition operating model.
- Brand advertising
Not us - We do not do creative, brand or media work.
- Product design
Not us - We do not formulate or design products.
What is changing
Three shifts we are working against.
01
Channel economics stopped being comparable
Direct, marketplace, retail and social commerce carry different cost to serve. Most P&Ls still report them as if they do not.
02
Input cost volatility became permanent
Pricing and promotion cadences built for stable input costs no longer hold their margin.
03
Retail media changed the negotiation
Trade spend and media spend are converging, and the two are usually managed by different people against different targets.
Where we work
Across the sector, not one corner of it.
Retail & grocery
Apparel & durables
Consumer health & beauty
Restaurants & hospitality
What we bring
Every service line, applied to Consumer.
Our thinking
What we pride ourselves on.
True of every Taidou engagement regardless of sector — and the three things we are most often told are unusual.
The person who scopes it runs it.
There is no handoff between the team that wins the work and the team that does it. If you met someone in the first conversation, you will still be dealing with them in the last one. This is the single thing clients tell us they notice first.
We write down what we are not doing.
Every engagement starts with a scope that names the things we have deliberately excluded and why. It makes the first conversation harder and every conversation after it easier.
We stay past the point it is comfortable.
Most firms hand over when the design is agreed and the change has been announced — the moment of maximum fragility. We hand over to named owners after it is running, and we come back to check.
Common questions
Before you call us.
No. We work on the operating and economic side. The brand work is someone else's and usually is not the problem.
No. We have no media practice and no media commissions.
Yes, and usually should. We are working on different questions.
Related thinking
What we have published on this sector.
Research
Interoperability isn't a compliance deadline. It's a business model.
CMS-0057-F is being treated as a date to survive. The organizations treating it as an operating decision are the ones still compounding on it in three years.
ResearchWhy transformation programmes stall at month nine
WorkBack-office migration across three delivery centres
Taidou Answer
Bring us the problem, not the category.
Taidou Answer takes the question in your words, indexes it across 11 industries and 8 service lines, and routes you to the person who has solved it before.