In nearly every consumer brand, the same pattern.
← Back to overviewRevenue still comes in, slower than two years ago. Margins under pressure. And somewhere you know something fundamental is moving in your market that you don't have an answer to yet.
From above. On a B2B platform where more than 1,500 brands pitched to the same group of buyers.
From within. In corporates and scale-ups in fashion and lifestyle.
In the thick of it. As an entrepreneur with my own concept store.
On top of that, over the years I talked with leaders and interim managers between two missions. Not interviews, sparring. About their doubts, their trade-offs, and the challenges that don't come up in a board meeting. Stories you don't hear anywhere else.
In nearly all of those brands, I saw the same pattern.
Pushing products in. Fighting for the biggest piece of the pie. And losing the end consumer somewhere along the way, the one who ultimately decides whether it sells or not.
The reflex to move before the market demands it has been diluted by processes, layers and risk management.
The sharpness is there. The operational backbone isn't. Growth leaks out faster than it comes in.
One underlying pattern. A business grows as long as it stays ahead of the market. And stagnates the moment it starts chasing it.
In every consumer brand there's at least one revenue stream nobody's taking. A channel that's open. A proposition that sits just beside the market. A pricing that leaks margin where nobody's looking.
That it stays there has nothing to do with the sharpness of management.
Whoever's inside the system doesn't see the system.
Finding a Waldo is my craft. Implementing it sometimes asks for a specialist I'm not. For that, I have an ecosystem of specialists I trust and that I bring to the table when the work asks for it.
One point of contact. Broad striking power. Maximum four engagements per quarter.
Not everyone. The right ones.
You don't find a Waldo in a company that's too convinced of its own correctness. Nothing changes there, and that's precisely the reason it's stagnating.
Book thirty minutes. One question: is there a Waldo in your business, and is it big enough to be worth going after. You'll know the answer within the hour.