Case Study
Channel Profitability & Capital Allocation
Your biggest account by revenue is probably not your biggest account by profit. A million dollars allocated to distribution returned $91,000 more than the same million to retail.
Revenue is the number everyone reports. Contribution — what’s left after COGS, trade deductions, compliance fines, and the cost to serve — is the number nobody has, because no single system shows the full path from invoice to cash. A channel that looks like the crown jewel at the top line can rank among the worst once you net out what it costs to keep.
What the analysis finds
Cinderhaven’s channel economics traced through a five-layer cost waterfall — COGS, trade deductions, compliance fines, operational overhead — across all ten channels: six retailers, three distributors, and DTC. The finding: distribution blended at a 90.2% contribution margin versus retail at 81.1%. Per dollar allocated, distribution returned roughly $91,000 more than retail.
On the revenue lifecycle: for every dollar Cinderhaven invoiced, 86.5 cents arrived as cash. The other 13.5 cents disappeared in deductions, processing fees, refunds, and timing delays across six retail partners — and no single system showed the whole path. The leakage rates by retailer ranged from 11.8% to 12.9%, close enough to look uniform and different enough to matter at scale.
See it worked through
Channel profitability
Contribution margins across all ten channels through a five-layer cost waterfall. Informs capital allocation decisions.
channels.lailarallc.com →Where the money comes from
Five-chapter interactive narrative walking a CEO from gross revenue to full channel contribution. Includes the Walmart marginal-contribution curve showing where volume stops earning.
capital.lailarallc.com →Contract to cash
Traces the revenue lifecycle from invoice to bank receipt. Waterfall, retailer comparison, time-to-cash.
cash.lailarallc.com →What you get
A complete channel-level P&L and capital-allocation analysis: which channels actually earn after all costs, where the revenue-to-cash leakage concentrates, and whether your capital is flowing to the right shelf. Deliverables your CFO can work from, not a slide deck.
Start with a conversation.
Thirty minutes. Tell me about your channel mix and where you’re allocating capital. I’ll tell you whether the ranking holds after trade costs and what a scoped analysis looks like. No deck, no obligation.