Edgewood Consulting Group

One team, from the first insight to a recommendation the retailer puts on the shelf.

Strategy and analytics for the sales and marketing side of consumer packaged goods, for the manufacturers who make them and the retailers who sell them. The consultants who run the analysis stay with you through implementation.

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How an engagement runs

The same people carry the work from brief to shelf.

Most advisory work changes hands at least once between the analysis and the meeting where it has to hold up. Ours does not. The stages below are how we structure an engagement, whatever the category.

Brief
We begin with the choice you actually have to make: a line review, a launch, a portfolio cut, a move on price or promotion. The scope of the work follows that choice, not a standard playbook.
Evidence
We assemble the whole category view: point-of-sale data for every competitor as well as your items, shopper decision research, and where it matters the retail buyer's own perspective through interviews.
Analysis
Our team runs the models. Assortment scenarios, whole-market simulations and price and promotion analytics are delivered as a service, so your people are not left to operate software on their own.
Recommendation
Findings arrive as a clear, retailer-ready case: what to change, why shopper behaviour supports it, and what it does for the category as a whole rather than for your brand alone. That is what makes a buyer listen.
Implementation
We stay in the room. The consultants who built the case support the buyer presentation, the reset and the follow-through until the recommendation is working on the shelf.

Outcomes we work toward

What a good engagement leaves behind.

No analysis we deliver is meant to sit in a deck. Each engagement is judged on whether it produced a decision and whether that decision held with the retailer.

Recommendations a retail buyer accepts because they are objective about the whole category.
Shelf space and distribution defended, or extended, at the next reset.
Portfolio cuts and launches decided with the margin impact known before the meeting.
A category entry or launch tested against the buyer's real view before the spend is committed.
Fewer internal debates, because a quantified scenario replaces opinion.
Sales, marketing and finance working from one model of the category.
Fewer out-of-stocks from a shelf that reflects how shoppers actually choose.
Senior specialists on the work from the first call to the last follow-up.

Glossary

Terms you will hear from us.

The vocabulary of assortment and revenue work is precise, and it should be. These are the terms our recommendations rest on.

Assortment optimization: Deciding which items a retailer carries in a category, and how much space each one gets, so the category sells more from the same shelf with fewer gaps and fewer duplicated items.
Transferable demand: The portion of an item's sales that moves to other items in the category when that item is removed from the shelf, instead of leaving the store with the shopper.
Walk rate: The share of shoppers who leave without buying anything in the category when the item they came for is not there. A high walk rate makes an item hard to cut, whatever its volume.
Line review: The retailer's scheduled review of a category's assortment and space, at which suppliers present their case for the items they want carried and the shelf they want them on.
Net revenue management: Managing price, promotion, pack and mix together so that revenue and margin improve, not only volume. It is where portfolio decisions meet the finance function.
Buyer interview: A structured conversation with a retail buyer or category manager, conducted by an objective third party, about how the category is run today and where the retailer intends to take it.

Capabilities

The tools and services behind the work.

Each is delivered by our own team, and each is built on research into how shoppers decide within a category rather than on sales data alone.

AssortmentEdge®: Assortment optimization run for one retailer at a time and synced to that retailer's planogram. Every scenario carries the full switching impact across the category and a projected economic benefit, presented in a form a buyer can act on.
Trade Probes: Retail buyer interviews with senior buyers, directors and category managers in Mass, Food, Drug, Club, Online and Dollar retail, written up as a report with implications and recommended actions.
RevenueEdge™: A simulation of the whole market, built for net revenue management. Launch and discontinuation decisions are tested on simulated shopper behaviour and tied to gross and net margin, so the whole organization works from one answer.
Shopper Decision Hierarchy: Research into how shoppers choose within a category, gathered outside the influence of shelf layout and availability. It yields the segmentation, switching and walk rates that our assortment and revenue models depend on.
Price and promotion analytics: Item-level and retailer-level analysis of price points, promotional mechanics and trade spend, with a view on where the spend earns its return and where it does not.
Category thought-leadership platforms: A point of view on the aisle, built from shopper and category evidence, that gives a manufacturer something a retailer wants to hear rather than another supplier pitch.

Full services on the main site

Before a first call

Questions worth bringing.

A first conversation is most useful when it starts with a decision you are facing. Any of these will do.

Which line reviews or resets are coming up, and where is your position on the shelf at risk?
Which items is your organization debating cutting or launching, and does anyone know the margin impact?
What does the buyer actually think of your category strategy, and how do you know?
Where does your assortment story rely on your own data alone, and how would a whole-category view change it?
Which decisions have stalled because sales, marketing and finance are working from different models?