Helped brand achieve 7% increase in Gross Margin $s despite a 20% decrease in revenue through pricing analysis

I worked with a large reseller doing over $50M a year in revenue. On the surface, things looked solid, but they had a massive catalog and had never really gone deep on pricing at the product level.

When we ran a full pricing and contribution margin analysis — including all the per-order costs people tend to underestimate — we found that about 15% of their products were actually losing money, and another 15% were just breaking even. Most of those were lower-priced items where fixed costs per order were quietly eating up far more margin than anyone realized.

Once they saw that, the path forward was pretty clear. They raised prices on a large portion of those products and accepted that revenue might take a hit in the short term.

The next quarter, revenue was down around 20%, but gross margin dollars were up 7%. That tradeoff was an easy win.

Just as important, it changed how they ran the business. With real clarity at the SKU level, they doubled down on their most profitable products — putting more marketing, inventory, and attention behind the SKUs that were actually driving profit, not just revenue.