A prominent and leading consumer products company in the FMCG industry had flat top-line growth in GCC. The global management was unhappy with the business stagnation for nearly a decade. As part of the leadership team, I led the company's turnaround to double-digit growth in the top and bottom lines.

BACKGROUND
The business had healthy profit margins behind years of cost-cutting and regular price increases. In those days, the oil prices were down ($20/barrel), and there was economic crisis. The prices of the company products were high and becoming uncompetitive, especially in consideration of the purchasing power of the people. The challenge was that any value correction would mean lower profitability, which was unacceptable. On top, the global initiatives took time to reach GCC markets, the distribution markup was relatively high, and the team had to resolve to slash marketing and promotional budgets to meet profit targets. The organization's mindset was on 'profits' at the expense of growth.

ACTIONS
The business needed to invest in marketing, promotions, and innovation, which required funds. We started by developing an investment plan with the date and gates for marketing and promotional spending to ensure we spend only a little ahead of growth. Post the first few quarters; the plan was that growth should fund the investments. In parallel, we planned to bring the best new initiatives to the existing product line up and expand the product portfolio. In addition, we made plans to improve the in-store visibility and shopper experience of the products. Finally, we assessed the total cost of the program and developed dates and gates to spend and track the results. We measured the ROI of every investment.​

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To fund the investments, we did the following: 1) Got a profit relief from global management to invest to restart the growth engine, 2) Convinced the distributors to reduce their margins and trust that growth will enable them to earn a higher total amount (a little lower margin, higher sales), 3) Value correction on the critical brands while pricing up on flankers and line extensions for the discerning consumers and 4) reducing the product costs and administrative overheads.

RESULTS
In the first year alone, the business started to grow by +5%, and despite the investments we successfully delivered the bottom line. The positive results encouraged the management to invest more and execute the growth strategy with excellence. The result was that in year two, the business grew by +8%, year three by +12%, and year four by +14%. It was unbelievable, and profitability was flowing as the margins were still high though lesser than when we started the investments. Over time the margins also grew back to past levels behind the scale and right portfolio play.