Halden & Rowe · Sourcing · Quarterly
Supplier Margin Review
A supplier or concentrated group of suppliers has drifted below the category margin plan by more than 100bps over four consecutive trading weeks. Runs against the cost-review window, not the calendar quarter.
Situation
What this Playbook is for.
The commercial pattern the Playbook exists to run against — stated plainly, so the reader knows within one paragraph whether they are in it.
A supplier or concentrated group of suppliers has drifted below the category margin plan by more than 100bps over four consecutive trading weeks. Runs against the cost-review window, not the calendar quarter.
Why this matters
What is at stake if we do not run it cleanly.
The business consequence of running late, of running incompletely, or of not running the Playbook at all.
68% of the current Womenswear margin drift sits with three suppliers — and the levers are in Rachel's team, not on the trading floor. Treating a supplier concentration as a category drift means correcting with markdown discipline when the recoverable margin actually sits at the next cost review, worth roughly £640,000 annualised.
Which objects it uses
Canonical objects consulted.
Playbooks never redefine objects; they consult them. Every reference below is live in the rest of the platform.
Mission served
Insights consulted
Womenswear · Sourcing
68% of the Womenswear margin drift is concentrated in three suppliers, all on quarterly cost review.
£640K · annualised margin recoverable at the next cost review
Womenswear · Supply
Womenswear markdowns follow a replenishment lag of nine trading days — we are discounting stock the warehouse would have solved.
£380K · margin preserved by closing avoidable markdowns
Opportunities pursued
Prompts decisioned
Sequence
What leadership should follow.
The order matters. Sequence is the substance of the Playbook — it is why the same objects, read in a different order, produce a different outcome.
- 01
Anchor to the Womenswear margin Mission.
The Mission carries the plan the drift is being measured against. Every supplier conversation starts here.
Owner · Rachel Okafor · Head of Merchandising
- 02
Decompose the drift by supplier.
The concentration Insight is the read. Do not enter a supplier conversation with a category-level number when the drift is a three-supplier story.
Owner · Rachel Okafor · Head of Merchandising
- 03
Cross-read against the replenishment-lag Insight.
The same three suppliers appear in the lag Insight — one supplier-review programme is stronger than two parallel workstreams.
Owner · Rachel Okafor · Head of Merchandising
- 04
Take the Opportunity to Rachel with a monetised recovery band.
The Opportunity sizes the recoverable margin against the next cost-review window, so the ask is a number, not a narrative.
Owner · Rachel Okafor · Head of Merchandising
- 05
Decision the trading Prompt with a supplier flag.
The Prompt is decisioned with the supplier concentration explicitly noted, so the outcome variance can be attributed correctly at the next quarterly read.
Owner · Rachel Okafor · Head of Merchandising
What has worked before
Lessons carried from prior runs.
Institutional memory. Each lesson is a specific correction the Playbook has already made once, so the next run does not have to.
- The concentration Insight must be Finance-validated before entering the supplier room; Ana's attribution is 68%, but the negotiation is fought on audited figures.
- Volume-weight matters — the fastest-turning SKUs sit with the same three suppliers, so fill-rate risk is priced into the ask.
- The Playbook is stronger when the lag and margin Insights are read together than either alone.
What Ana should monitor
Signals kept under watch while the Playbook is live.
The metrics whose movement tells us the Playbook is holding — or that it has stopped working and needs to be re-examined.
- Weekly margin split by supplier, ranked — the top three should not surprise the committee.
- Cost-review outcomes: negotiated vs asked.
- FX pass-through terms on new contracts — the trigger that started the drift.
Expected outcome
What leadership should expect if this runs cleanly.
The outcome band the Playbook has delivered against in prior runs. Stated up front so the actual outcome can be judged, not narrated.
At least 60% of the concentrated drift recovered at the next cost review, with FX pass-through terms rewritten to remove the recurrence. Category margin returns to within 60bps of plan inside two trading quarters.
Ana's commentary
How Ana would present this in the room.
This Playbook is the honest read on the Womenswear Mission. The trading team has been carrying the whole margin recovery — the supplier programme is where the last third of the recoverable value actually sits.
Playbooks are institutional memory. Every run leaves a lesson behind, so the next opening of this pattern begins from a stronger position than the last.
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