Range and pricing strategy at Ostro Retail Group
The margin map showed that a fifth of the range was paying for the rest. The pricing was tested on the shelf before it went in a deck.
Strategy & Growth · Ostro Retail Group
+3.4pp
gross margin, twelve months after repricing
Ostro Retail Group · 2025
2 ranges
exited, excluded from both periods
Ostro Retail Group · 2025
01
The challenge
Revenue had grown for four years and gross margin had fallen for three. Every category manager had a reason, and the management pack, organised by category, could not show which customers or products were causing it.
02
The approach
The margin map was rebuilt from the ledger by product, store and basket. A fifth of the range was contributing nothing after supply-chain cost. Pricing changes were tested in twelve stores for eight weeks before they were asked of the other 228, and two ranges were exited.
03
The result
Gross margin rose 3.4 percentage points across the estate in the twelve months after repricing, on flat revenue, which was the point.
The engagement, on paper.
The record
ClientOstro Retail Group
SectorRetail & consumer
ServiceStrategy & Growth
Year2025
Duration6 weeks
Fee£60–90k, fixed
You leave with 6 weeks
The margin map: every segment, with its true contribution
A pricing architecture, tested on live quotes
A 12-month plan with owners and a first business case
What Strategy & Growth hands over, whichever client bought it. This one is the version Ostro Retail Group runs now.
Where it sat in the method: stage 01, 4 weeks of the 28.
Strategy & Growth is stage 01 work. Every engagement opens with the audit whichever stage it lands in, and the roadmap from that audit is what priced this one.
“Two reports used to disagree and nobody could say which was right. That question has an answer now.”
Three more, the same sector first.
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The service behind itP.01
Strategy & Growth
Where to compete, what to charge and which bets to stop: decided against your own numbers, priced, and sequenced into a plan the board can hold you to.
6 weeks · £60–90k, fixed
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Agree the number before the work starts.
The audit / four weeks
A.01One figure, agreed in writing before any work
A.02£45–65k, fixed, whatever the audit finds
A.03It prices the stage after it, so nothing is bought blind