| Industry | Wholesale: Apparel |
|---|---|
| Annual Revenue | Approx. ¥1 billion |
| Employees | 20 |
| Services Provided | EC Consulting / Profit Improvement Consulting |
"Sales are growing, but somehow there's no money left." This was the candid confession from the company's EC manager during our initial consultation. Operating across three EC malls and their own website as an apparel wholesaler, the numbers looked promising on the surface. However, a deeper look revealed a chronic loss-making situation.
The root of the problem lay in the "hidden costs" of EC operations.
"We had been investing exactly as the EC consultants told us to" — the manager's words perfectly captured the situation at the time.
The first thing Meets Consulting did was expose the "reality" of the EC business through numbers. Rather than starting with sales, we began by cataloging all costs to visualize "what's actually remaining" — the true starting point of the project.
We broke down expenses across all malls and the company's own site by category to understand the exact cost structure. Using three key KPIs — gross margin rate, shipping cost ratio, and mall fee ratio — we designed a new monthly P&L that made profits visible every month.
We established ROAS/ROI-based evaluation criteria for advertising for the first time and boldly withdrew from unprofitable campaigns. We also created a culture of deciding mall event participation based on profit simulations. The shift was from "participate anyway" to "participate only with a winning strategy."
Growing revenue while maintaining profit margins — we tackled this seemingly contradictory challenge. Based on sales data analysis, we continuously improved product pages and ran weekly PDCA cycles. We also proposed cost structure improvements spanning production and logistics, supporting a company-wide transformation toward a profit-oriented culture.
The long-standing loss-making structure was eliminated, achieving EC business profitability. Simultaneously, Yahoo! Shopping sales grew 108% year-over-year, clearing the high bar of "growing revenue while protecting profits."
"They looked at everything from production to logistics across the entire company, which gave us completely new insights," the manager reflects. The greatest value of this engagement went beyond EC-specific improvements — it became a catalyst for rethinking the entire business structure.
"We had been operating across three malls and our own site, managing them all with the same criteria. We had been focused solely on growing sales, and there was an atmosphere of resignation that losses were inevitable. This time, they analyzed our cost structure toward profitability and looked at everything from production to logistics company-wide, giving us entirely new insights. We're glad we were able to achieve profitability while still growing sales."— Apparel Wholesale, EC Manager
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