Recent Successes:

• SD Retail worked with a leading food retailer in South Africa to evaluate the processes, tools and structure/organization of the Food division. SD verified that the company was positioned to support corporate growth and deliver an improved customer offer. Specific goals included: creating a structure which will support business growth for the next 2-3 years with no additional head count, defining clear roles responsibilities and accountabilities to improve decision making, developing appropriate scorecards to measure success, streamlining the merchandising and planning processes to improve availability and reduce waste in fresh foods and long life grocery products. Results included: Zero increase in headcount budget for next year, improvement in waste by 50 to 100 base points a saving of $6-$12m, improve availability by 100 to 200 base points improving comp sales. The team was also able to reduce distribution centre stocks by 2 days for long life products and develop a strong customer focus in the simplified category management process.

• SD Retail worked with a leading clothing and homewares retailer to evaluate the processes, tools and structure/organization of the Merchandising and Planning & Replenishment Groups. SD identified that the organization required a radical overhaul to enable it to improve current performance and be able to support future planned growth. Specific goals included: restructuring the merchandising and planning functions, development of a new design team, new processes to deliver a shortened product development cycle, clearly defining the roles responsibilities and accountabilities to support the new processes and decision making, creating additional department capacity, time and teamwork to improve overall performance, improved financial planning and budgeting, new tools and re-engineered processes. Results included: new organization structure which will support future growth with minimal planned increases in head count. A new structured product development time line which will reduce the time to market by 28 days. Planned increases in gross margin by 150 base points overall through improved buying terms and merchandising planning. Improving the flow of stock through the supply chain will reduce stock holding, improve availability, increase sales and reduce the potential for markdowns as the new processes are implemented.

• SD Retail worked with a specialty hard goods retailer to evaluate the processes, tools and structure/organization of the Merchandising and Planning & Replenishment Groups. SD verified that the company was positioned to support corporate growth and customer experience targets. Specific goals included: creating additional department capacity, time and teamwork to improve overall performance, shortening cycle times to meet current market demands and eliminating duplication of effort due to changes, mistakes & rework through improved training, new tools and re-engineered processes. Results included: improve sales – 1.5% to 3% comp store and $10 million to $20 million in top line growth. Increased margins – 50 to 150 basis points and improve promotional lift of 10% to 20%. The team was able to shorten cycle times by 30 days less on promotional cycle, 14 to 21 days less on price changes, 30 days on new product introductions.