REVENUE FLATTERS.
MARGIN TELLS THE TRUTH.
Commercial Advisory · João de Freitas · Dublin — Ireland
What is owning your customer worth — and who currently keeps that margin?
Every consumer brand pays for the direct relationship. Most pay an intermediary to own it. The retailer's margin, the platform's commission, the distributor's cut - the direct trade exists either way, priced and collected daily. The only question is who banks it.
If no number on the P&L worries you, look for the one that never appears on it.
Answers in figures, not adjectives.
What I believe, in writing.
Essays and Strategic briefs For boards and owners. Private briefs circulate on request.
The Case for Direct
Owning the customer is the most underpriced asset in consumer business. This essay makes the financial case — margin, data, enterprise value — for companies above €20 million.
Read the essayCommercial Discipline in Premium Houses
Why enduring brands spend less and measure more.
Brand Thinking & Financial Rigour
Two languages, one company, and the cost of having no translator.
Most practices serve one. This one is built on both.
João De Freitas
The work, in three shapes.
Direct Channel Architecture
The design, repair, or construction of the direct channel until it carries its own P&L. Economics, proposition, acquisition, operation – and a plan that names the month it turns profitable.
Result · A channel that finances itself, and a customer the house owns outright.P&L Architecture for Premium Brands
Price set across channels so they stop undercutting one another, mix judged on contribution rather than revenue, marketing spend held to a return. Most premium houses price the list with great care, and everything after it by inheritance.
Result · Margin returned to the house, and a marketing budget that accounts for itselfFor Investors and Their Operators
Before the deal: whether the commercial engine can do what the model says, and whether the growth was earned or bought. After it: the first-year commercial plan, written by someone who has run one.
Result · EBITDA bridges that survive scrutiny, and a plan the operators will runThe threshold, in annual revenue - consumer enterprises above it, and the investors who hold them.
Each may be taken as a defined engagement, or held through the year as standing counsel.
João De Freitas · Dublin
Commerce that cannot stand on its own economics is decoration.
The working principle of the practiceThirteen years in the commercial trade - strategy, marketing, finance, and the digital channel - practised as one discipline, because on a P&L they were never separate. I have built a direct business from nothing and held its profit and loss the whole way; I have carried brand portfolios for a multinational house of consumer goods across five markets. The houses go unnamed here - discretion is part of the service.
The record;
- A direct business taken from €0 to seven figures - and into profit - within three years.
- A flagship brand's direct channel in the United Kingdom: profitability up 144 per cent, marketing spend down 88, in its second year.
- A five-market launch, the United States to Spain, inside twelve months.
- Switzerland opened cold; a top-four market by value within fifty days.
Digital transformation, in my hands, is held to one test: the financial gain it leaves behind.
One email starts it.
Describe the company, the channel, and the number that troubles you. Not every enquiry becomes an engagement; you will have a reply within the week.
Engagements across Europe