“If we just doubled sales, everything would be fine.”

Sound familiar? It’s a classic founder line—and while it might be true on the surface, it usually masks a bigger issue hiding in plain sight: your margins, cost base, and product mix might be working against you.

We get it. Sales are visible, exciting, and easy to chase. But revenue alone doesn’t pay the bills—profit does. And in the FMCG world, especially in alcohol, things get complicated fast. With excise tax, packaging costs, fluctuating ingredient prices, and different margin profiles for every product, you can easily end up growing your top line while silently bleeding cash.

One of the most overlooked areas in the alcohol industry is understanding your product mix. Not all sales are created equal—your best-selling product might actually be your worst performer once you factor in excise and overhead allocation. And if you’re not accurately valuing your stock on hand, you could be making major decisions based on flawed data.

As someone once (affectionately) described Lara: she has mastered the dark arts of cost accounting. And it’s true—getting a clear view of margin by SKU, valuing inventory correctly, and linking it to pricing and product strategy is not easy. But it is absolutely critical.

Here’s what we often uncover:

• Your hero product is actually killing your margins.

• You’re not making enough on your core range to fund innovation.

• Your inventory value is overstated or not aligned with your actual COGS.

• You’re pricing based on guesswork instead of product-level profitability.

• You’re discounting to move stock, but that discount erases your profit.

Understanding your true product mix helps you make smart, strategic calls:

• Which products should you increase in price (and how much can the market bear)?

• Which SKUs drive real margin and should be pushed harder?

• What happens to your profitability if you shift your portfolio mix?

This isn’t about cutting costs to the bone or squeezing every dollar. It’s about strategically managing your business so you can grow sustainably and profitably. That means:

• Understanding your true cost of goods sold (COGS)

• Tracking gross margin by product, after excise and freight

• Pricing based on value, not fear

• Knowing your real-time stock position

• Aligning marketing and finance so every dollar works harder

The result? You stop chasing sales for the sake of it and start building a business that actually makes money.

So next time you’re tempted to blame the sales team, take a closer look under the hood. Because most of the time, the real issue isn’t how much you’re selling—it’s what you’re keeping.