Getting the
Basics Right.
Our advisory, Strategica, helps you create value and reduce friction between stakeholders by getting the basics right, which include:
- The right product,
- At the right specification,
- In the right place,
- At the right time,
- For the right customer.
Achieving all of these simultaneously is difficult, which is why we exist.
When the basics are mastered, that understanding allows you to move from reacting to the market to confidently setting its terms.
Who We Are.
Elevating perspectives.
We are specialists with decades of practical experience in modern food retail, their supply chains, and more recently commodity trading as part of our supply chain experiences.
We lift your thinking and performance through innovative approaches that open wider perspectives and unlock better decisions.
The Outcomes We Seek To Deliver.
We focus on optimising measurable performance, that you have already achieved. So we are lifting everyone's game.
New Income Streams
Using new technologies between partners.
EBITDA Uplift and improved capital coverage
Upwards of 2% of sales.
Improved Sales Mix
Optimised sales mix, contribution margins and productivity through benchmarking.
These outcomes come from aligning commercial strategy, operational execution, and investment focus.
How We Help.
Our work spans three interconnected layers:
Operational, investment, and strategic.
Each engagement is tailored, but the intent is always the same:
To move from ideas to durable, cashflow outcomes.
Operational Advisory
Making the Engine Run
At an operational level, we help you streamline and negotiate trading terms in food retail and procedures in commodity trades. We make the fundamentals work together so that products, flows, and commercial terms support your earnings goals.
Investment Advisory
Before and After the Deal
At an investment level, we identify and value opportunities and returns preacquisition. We deliver postacquisition synergies to accelerate cashflow recovery and improve ROI.
With our merger and acquisition experience, we connect deal logic with operational reality so transactions perform as synergies intend.
Strategic Levers
Access, Product, Price, Experience, Service
We focus on the strategic elements that drive sustainable earnings: access, product, price, experience, and service. Their mix and contribution are assessed for both P&L performance and balance sheet capacity, so growth is funded and resilient.
Sector Expertise.
Modern Food retail, Food service, Healthcare and Utilities
Our core domain is modern food retail and its supply chain, where we have helped large retailers transform their performance. The same methods apply across many industry sectors and to startups seeking sustainable earnings, where we act as mentors and commercial champions.
Founder & CEO - Barry Shalley
For over 3 decades, in various CxO enterprise roles, Barry has applied a unique approach to enterprise Web2 brands and companies working through his advisory company Strategica and startups he has founded.
Barry has lived and worked across Asia, mostly China and Indonesia, for over 20 years based out of Singapore where he is a PR.
Barry is a subject matter expert capable of adding 1-3% sales to modern food retail EBITDA, using perfected data/value driven, financial, strategic, and commercial techniques through Retail Methods - protecting assets that generate income. His startups built from his Strategica experiences have generated considerable revenues.
CPG and retail brands worked with
Content & Insights
We are content creators as well as advisors.
We build new data sets, talking points, and clear narratives that enable you to enter new markets or strengthen your position in existing ones, with confidence.
Platforms: Retail Methods' solutions
Through our sister company, Retail Methods, we offer products flexible enough to fit your business and keep you informed about its health. These tools build frameworks and help transform productivity mindsets into a performance culture that sustains improvement over time.
DISCOVER THE SOLUTIONSFrom Quick Wins to Embedded Change.
We start with lowhanging fruit, delivering early wins that build trust and momentum.
From there, we move toward more strategic and synergistic platforms, so:
- The more improvements you get,
- The more improvements you will want, and
- The more they become permanently entrenched.
"Appetite comes with eating"
It originates from the Latin proverb "Cupiditas venit cum edendo" which means that the desire or appetite for food increases as one begins to eat.
The same applies to knowledge and the desire to learn from more insight and success.
Our goal is to help you create desired outcomes, not just ideas.
Problems We Help Solve.
Eliminating the friction.
Misaligned Commercial Basics
When product, specification, timing, place, and customer don’t line up, you get friction, leakage, and frustrated stakeholders.
Earnings Below Potential
Suboptimal sales mix, weak contribution margins, and productivity gaps reduce EBITDA as a % sales below where it could be.
Inefficient Trading Terms
Complex, outdated, or poorly negotiated trading terms in food retail and commodity deals destroy value and slow cash flow.
Fragile Deal Economics
Acquisitions underperform when opportunities are not rigorously valued predeal and synergies are not delivered postdeal.
Weak Data and Market Narratives
Leaders lack the data, talking points, and stories needed to gotomarket confidently and defend share in competitive markets.
Underused Strategic Levers
Access, product, price, experience, and service are managed in silos instead of as a system that drives earnings and balance sheet strength.
No Framework for Lasting Improvement
Improvements happen adhoc and fade because there is no framework or tooling to turn quick wins into a productivity culture.
Startups Without Commercial Discipline
Startups have ideas and energy but lack the commercial rigour, mentoring, and structures to build durable, investor grade earnings.
Let's Start the Conversation
There is a lot going on in what we do, but it is second nature to us.
Our relationship is built upon:
- Which areas of interest you want us to focus upon.
- We agree deliverables for those areas.
- We agree a price and terms to help deliver the desired outcomes.
- We can work on a general ongoing advisory basis or consulting for a specific project or both.
If we can help in part or in whole, please contact us to explore how we might work together.