Your business
is leaving
money
on the table.

Olympus Talent is a growing recruitment and talent business. The pipeline was strong and the team was winning work. The problem wasn't demand. It was knowing which of that work actually made money — and making sure growth didn't drain the bank account faster than it filled it.

Three things were biting. Gross margin sat at 18.7%, with around 35% of placements going out below any sensible margin floor. There was no reliable read on profitability by client, desk or consultant. And the classic recruitment cash gap — paying contractors weekly while clients settled on 30 to 60-day terms — had £412k tied up, with 58-day debtor terms making every growth decision feel risky.

First, visibility. We built a margin view by client, desk and consultant — so for the first time the founder could see exactly where money was made and where it leaked. No new system to learn; real-time financial visibility the team could actually run.

Then pricing. We reworked the fee structure, set a minimum margin floor, and repriced the lowest-margin 22 client accounts. Handled properly — not a single strategic customer walked. Finally, we tightened invoicing and payment terms, matched contractor pay timing against client receipts, and laid out the funding options so the founder could grow the contract book without lying awake over payroll week.

A scaling ecom and wholesale brand backed by Dragons' Den investors Touker Suleyman and Peter Jones had revenues of £2.1m and a clear target: reach £5m within 18 months.

The commercial and operational infrastructure wasn't built for it. Fulfilment was handled by a local 3PL that couldn't support growing international volumes, particularly across Europe. EU customers were being hit with taxes and duties at the point of delivery. Returns from Europe were actively costing the business money through import fees. The existing setup would have put a ceiling on the growth strategy before it had a chance to work.

Working alongside the investors, we identified and onboarded a new fulfilment partner. Peter Jones's prior founding of BrandPath opened the door to commercial terms unavailable on the open market — including access to DHL's newly developed DFN programme, with significantly improved courier rate cards and up to 50 international fulfilment locations.

Two primary sites were launched: Coventry for domestic and non-EU fulfilment, and the Netherlands to handle all EU orders. The EU operation moved to a duties-paid model, removing the tax and duty burden for customers and eliminating import fee exposure on returns.

A DTC-led fashion brand had real demand but wasn't converting it. Product discovery on-site was weaker than it should have been. Buying confidence was undermined by poor fit guidance, unclear delivery information and inconsistent returns messaging.

The team had no consistent trading rhythm — no weekly cadence, no clear KPIs, no ownership of what happened next. The commercial fundamentals needed tightening before marketing spend could do its job.

Restructured on-site navigation, collections and best-seller logic. Sharpened fit guidance, delivery promises and returns clarity. Introduced a weekly trading cadence with clear KPIs and ownership.

Repriced the range, built a robust three-month inventory and range plan, and renegotiated supplier payment terms — 60 to 90 days across the board, 120-day terms with the primary supplier. Realigned the customer demographic and repositioned marketing accordingly.

The same DTC-led fashion brand had a clear opportunity sitting untouched. Wholesale had never been properly addressed. No strategy, no pricing structure, no forecasting, no due diligence process, no outreach plan, no onboarding framework, and no one whose job it was to develop it.

Without a structured approach, wholesale would either be ignored entirely or pursued reactively — burning relationships and margin in equal measure.

Built the wholesale function from scratch over eight months. Developed a tiered pricing and range strategy. Built a forecasting model. Created a due diligence and onboarding process for new accounts. Put a structured outreach plan in place.

Core stock investment was separated from new market testing. Recruited a permanent Business Development hire and upskilled them to own and grow the channel — so the function could scale without depending on a consultant to run it.