Enterprise ecommerce consulting: phased, fixed fee, a statement of work, not a retainer.
The retainer tiers are built for founders. A large company buys differently: a defined scope, a fee per phase, a calendar, and a governance cadence, under an MSA. The seat stays the same: me, directly, leading the work.
"The thinking partner I didn't know I was missing · until nothing was the same after working together."
The benchmark set behind every Read is public: 8 trackers (including the consumer brand exits ledger), 27 calculators, 226 rated ad-to-page pairs.
The DTC playbook, rendered in enterprise constraints.
Named deliverables, a fixed calendar, and named associates where a phase needs more hands than one. I lead the work on every phase, start to finish.
Those associates are people I met while running businesses of my own, not a bench I recruited to staff engagements. Each one is deep in a single function where I am broad across all of them: people who built the billing rails inside Shopify, an executive who has taken a consumer company public, the FP&A lead who models consumer roll-ups for private equity buyers. People in this circle have operated at P&G, Unilever, Church & Dwight, Authentic Brands Group, Skims, Fenty, Gymshark, Figs, Ruggable, Mejuri, Kylie Cosmetics and 100 Thieves.
On most engagements you never meet them. You get an answer that has already been checked against someone who has solved that exact problem inside a bigger business, which is why I can be definite on a call that sits outside my own reps. Where a phase needs a second pair of hands, the person is named in the statement of work before the phase starts, and I stay accountable for what they produce.
Direct clients on this side have included Nike, Coca-Cola, Hallmark, and P&G. Separately, Deloitte and Accenture engagement teams have brought me onto their own client projects when the commerce work needed someone who had run the thing being recommended. Those clients are under NDA and are not listed here. Before any of that I was an early Shopify employee who helped build the Partner Program, and I have worked with Shopify product teams since as the merchant perspective they use to shape product and positioning. Most of the problems enterprise commerce faces now are ones the DTC and Shopify ecosystem already solved, at smaller scale and with less money, so a practitioner's lens is worth more here than a systems integrator's or a strategy house's. My job is translating those fixes into the few moves that recover ground, in the order that survives a steering committee.
Brands and retailers
Category defence against DTC challengers, the move from channel-specific to unified commerce, a platform migration or architecture modernisation with a vendor shortlist that needs a practitioner's questions asked of it.
Software companies
Commerce and channel partnership strategy for platforms and SaaS companies selling to merchants: which partners, on what economics, with what deal structures, and what the merchant actually experiences at the join.
Corporate development
An operator's screen on commerce technology and consumer brand acquisitions, build-versus-buy-versus-partner decisions on the stack, and the first hundred days after close, where most of the value is won or lost.
Each phase is its own scope, its own fee, and its own decision to continue.
The next phase is scoped in the readout of the last one, so nobody commits to a year of work on the strength of a proposal. Most engagements are Phase 1 and Phase 2, then a step down to a retainer. Fees are fixed per phase in US dollars. They are stated as ranges because interview count, data scope, and whether an associate is staffed all move the number. The exact figure is in the statement of work before anything starts.
Assessment
Current-state assessment, 10 to 15 stakeholder interviews, the benchmark set against the DTC and platform ecosystem, an options paper with a recommendation, and an executive readout. This is The Read at enterprise scale.
Strategy & Design
The strategy document itself, a financial model behind it, a 12 to 18 month roadmap with owners and dependencies, and a board-ready deck. It is billed by milestone and usually staffed with one named associate.
Mobilise
Fixed-price modules for partner or vendor selection, operating-model design, a first-hundred-days plan, and leadership or board workshops, each bought on its own when the roadmap calls for it.
Sustain
The Advisory or Partner retainer for the leadership team carrying the roadmap through the following year. On this line it comes last, as the step down after the phased work.
What you keep
The deliverables are yours: the documents, the model, the deck, the roadmap. What stays with me is the method, the benchmark set, and the working files behind the comparisons, the same split as The Read.
What it is not
I am not a systems integrator and do not build or run the platform, and I am not an investment bank and do not run your process. The work decides what those firms have to work with, and asks them the questions a practitioner would.
A cadence your sponsor can put in a deck.
- SponsorOne named executive sponsor on your side who owns the decision the work informs, and one named day-to-day lead who owns access. Both are in the statement of work by name.
- WeeklyA 60-minute working session with the day-to-day lead and whoever owns the problem in front of us that week. Interviews, data walkthroughs, and draft reviews sit around it.
- FortnightlyA steering-committee check-in with the sponsor: progress against the plan, emerging findings, decisions needed, risks. One page, sent the day before.
- DependenciesThe statement of work lists what I need from you and by when: data access, interview availability, a systems walkthrough. When a dependency slips, the calendar moves day for day and you hear it in writing, the same rule as The Read.
- AcceptanceEach deliverable has stated acceptance criteria. You have five business days to accept or return it with consolidated comments; one revision round is in the fee. Milestone invoices are raised on acceptance.
- ChangeScope moves by written change order with a fee and calendar impact, agreed before the work happens. Nothing gets absorbed into the fee, and nothing shows up on an invoice that was not agreed first.
- ReadoutEvery phase ends in a live executive readout. The last page of the deliverable is the recommendation for what, if anything, comes next, with a scope and a fee attached.
Because each phase stands alone, the first one is small enough to run without a committee. A sponsor and a problem is enough to scope it.
Written for procurement, so the scoping call can be about the work.
Ranges are 2026 US market figures from published engagement data and procurement benchmarks, stated at the level a large company actually pays. When you compare, ask whether the person doing the work has run a business like the one being advised, and whether you will be talking to that person.
Questions procurement and sponsors ask.
Send the MSA. I'll send the scope.
Every enterprise engagement starts with a 30-minute scoping call with the sponsor: what decision the work informs, who needs to be interviewed, what data exists, and when the sponsor needs an answer. A Phase 1 statement of work follows within five business days.