Industries
Ten sectors. The same nine leaks, weighted differently.
Each read states the money problem and the systems problem separately, names the benchmark numbers for that sector, and defines the words that sector uses — so you can recognise your own programme on the page.
Manufacturing & production
You fund the channel
Ship & debit, chargebacks, promotional funding and price protection — the problems that come from depending on a partner to report what they did with your money.
Semiconductor & high-tech
Ninety percent of your revenue moves through distribution, and almost none of it moves at list. Ship-and-debit is where the margin is decided — and where it disappears.
Read more →Packaging
Your input cost moves weekly, your price moves quarterly, and your volume commitments were written against a forecast the customer has already revised.
Read more →Earth-moving & heavy equipment
The machine is sold once and supported for a decade. Your incentive programme has to survive both — the deal at the point of sale and the parts annuity behind it.
Read more →Medical devices & pharma
Contract pricing is negotiated with a GPO, delivered by a wholesaler, consumed by a member hospital, and reconciled by nobody. Chargebacks are where all three meet.
Read more →Foodservice
Deviated cost is the industry's whole margin model — and the bill-back that recovers it is the least governed transaction in the business.
Read more →Chemicals & agricultural inputs
The entire commercial year is decided in one season, settled months after it ends, on programmes that stack four deep.
Read more →Distribution & resale
You are funded, and you fund
Supplier entitlement, buying-group reporting, special pricing bill-backs and customer programmes — two incentive books that need to be one.
Building & construction
You buy on supplier growth tiers, sell on job quotes, and belong to a buying group that claims on your behalf. Three incentive streams, three systems, one margin.
Read more →Packaging
Your input cost moves weekly, your price moves quarterly, and your volume commitments were written against a forecast the customer has already revised.
Read more →Hardware & electrical distribution
Two hundred thousand SKUs, four hundred suppliers, and a rebate on most of them. The programme is not hard because any one agreement is hard — it is hard because there are four hundred.
Read more →Plumbing & HVAC
Demand is seasonal, equipment is SPA-priced, and half your customer incentives are funded by somebody else — the manufacturer, or the utility.
Read more →Industrial MRO
You sign national agreements promising a cost-savings number, then have to prove it — against a catalogue of hundreds of thousands of items sourced from hundreds of suppliers.
Read more →Foodservice
Deviated cost is the industry's whole margin model — and the bill-back that recovers it is the least governed transaction in the business.
Read more →Chemicals & agricultural inputs
The entire commercial year is decided in one season, settled months after it ends, on programmes that stack four deep.
Read more →By profile
Or start from what you are, not what you make
The problems differ more by your position in the channel than by your product.
Manufacturers
You fund the channel, and the channel tells you what it did with the money. Everything hard about your margin follows from that.
Read more →Distributors
You are on both sides of the incentive: funded by hundreds of suppliers, and funding your own customers. Your real margin lives in the gap between the two.
Read more →Buying groups & co-ops
Your value to members is the terms you negotiate. Your risk is that the data those terms are settled on comes from hundreds of members in hundreds of formats.
Read more →Retailers & dealers
Vendor income is a material line in your P&L and the least systematised one. It is earned in fragments, claimed by hand, and audited annually.
Read more →Not seeing your sector?
The nine leak points are sector-agnostic — what changes is which ones dominate and what the local vocabulary is. Tell us what you run and we will map it.