A North American industrial operator — hundreds of accounts, thousands of priced units a year, pricing run from spreadsheets and memory. Here’s what one re-pricing sweep against a true-cost model found.
Like most asset-heavy operators, pricing lived in spreadsheets. New business got quoted off the base rate; renewals rolled forward untouched; nobody re-checked a price when lumber, freight, or labor moved. Every account felt profitable, because cost was an average and the average looked fine.
We connected the operator’s existing stack — no rip-and-replace — and built the true cost of every unit they sell: materials, labor, freight, overhead, by account and by address. Then we set a hard margin floor and ran every active account through it.
The result: the bottom 18% of accounts were quietly below the floor — priced at the base rate while their real cost-to-serve had drifted up for years. The lease economics on some literally broke even.
“We stopped pricing every account at the base rate. Allometry showed us where the lease economics actually broke even — the bottom 18% were quietly bleeding us. We re-priced or walked away. $147K of margin came back in the first sweep.”
Each below-floor account got one of two treatments: re-priced to clear the floor, or — where the customer wouldn’t support a viable price — walked away from, freeing capacity for accounts that earn. The floor now runs continuously: when costs or demand move, the price moves, and an agent flags anything that slips before it ships.
The sweep is the wedge — but every priced quote and protected margin also lands in an attested operating ledger. That verified record is what lenders can underwrite against (without ever seeing the raw books). Operate well, and the same data that recovered your margin lowers your cost of capital. Touch the proof →