A $400M PE-owned personal care brand was struggling with declining profitability and needed to reduce SG&A expenses to improve EBITDA. Trade spend accounted for 13% of revenue, while marketing spend accounted for an additional 17%. Spending at these levels was unsustainable for the business and we were retained to conduct a deep dive assessment into these spend areas and understand how to rationalize the least productive parts of this spend, thus preserving topline.​

The Candela team focused on a deep assessment of all components of trade and marketing spend, including non-working spend associated with agencies, production and other vendors. We assessed the return on trade spend across their top accounts which comprised 77% of total retail sales and separately evaluated the return on marketing spend supporting their direct-to-consumer channel as well as brand-level advertising supporting all channels. All non-working spend was also assessed for rationalization opportunities.​

Reallocated and rationalized trade spend by 10%, while delivering same volume by optimizing promotional and event mix at the top accounts. Cut production costs by 25% (~$1M) through better communication and process, clarifying initial direction and substantially reducing rework. Shifted marketing spend to focus more on bottom-of-the-funnel tactics to drive increase consumption. Built an enterprise-wide, integrated model of return on marketing spend which aligned all stakeholders and provided the insight necessary to optimize spend across the entire system, not just within a single channel or customer. Shifted accountability for return on spend from 4 different functions to a single source of accountability.