Behind the Client Projects

Growing the Top Line: Cultivating Innovation in Product, Environment, and Service
Looking beyond short-term performance metrics and day-to-day imperatives to invest in the future growth of your business can be a real challenge, but like a beautiful garden, a business will only grow if someone takes the time to nurture it. This Catalyst outlines how retailers and suppliers can apply innovation to their products, environment, service, and employees using a growth framework comprised of four themes — pioneering, expanding boundaries, competitive attrition, and commercialization — to help determine how best to invest dollars and focus efforts.

Consumer Insights and Brand Benchmarking Survey
Differentiating brands in a saturated retail environment requires the integration of overall company strategy, brand management best practices, and ongoing consumer insights. KSA's Consumer Insights and Brand Benchmarking Survey assesses areas such as corporate strategy and the links to consumer strategy, consumer insights measuring and monitoring, brand strategy/management, and integration with merchandising activities. Participating companies will receive a report outlining their opportunities and benchmarking how they measure up to their peers. Individual company responses will not be shared with others. An aggregate view by market segment will be used to compare responses.

Consumer Packaged Goods Financial Performance Report
Find out if your CPG supply clients are financially fit or as strong as their peersin this year’s “Financial Performance Report.” A joint production of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and KSA, the report includes industry analysis, trends, and key benchmarks. This year we also ranked top performers on several key metrics and found a core group of these highly ranked players were powering much of the industry’s continued success.

Weathering and Winning Grocery’s Perfect Storm: A Fresh Approach to Achieving Top-Line Growth
Industry trends have combined to create a perfect storm for grocery retailers. KSA can help clients not only weather this storm, but beat it. One way to do so: Look to un-reaped profit potential in clients' perishables departments. Using information technology to understand profitability at the flavor level, KSA has helped clients increase sales nearly 20% and cut cost 15% to 50% in these departments.

Kurt Salmon Associates Private Equity Practice
KSA is the leading advisor to private equity firms investing in the retail and consumer goods industries. Our demonstrable analytical rigor, combined with deep industry expertise, informs our recommendations and provides unique insight at every stage of the acquisition process. Since forming a dedicated private equity practice in 2004, KSA has assisted on deals totaling $13 billion and participated in approximately 70% of all U.S. retail deals.