Seasonal Price Readiness
How Central Garden & Pet uses CostPerform to protect margins and strengthen retailer negotiations with fact-based insight?
Challenge
Deliver trusted, timely cost insight across 25+ business units to reduce margin risk in high-stakes pricing negotiations with major retailers.
Solution
Negotiation-ready cost insight, delivered at decision speed. Multi-scenario cost analysis tailored per business unit and fully integrated into internal data flows to support live pricing decisions.
Benefits
Higher margins from defensible price increases, faster seasonal pricing decisions, and recovery from a $16M loss to break-even through targeted exits and repricing.
About Central Garden & Pet
Central Garden & Pet is a market-leading pet and garden company headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. Founded in 1980, CG&P has expanded organically and through acquisition of 60 companies in the last 30 years.
Central has 6,500 employees across 25+ business units in North America and has built a portfolio of 65 high-quality brands supported by manufacturing and distribution capabilities.
It has two primary segments: Pet and Garden, which reflect a 60/40 split. In Fiscal 2024, Central reported Net Sales of $3.2B, with 95% generated in the US.
One of Central’s pillars is cost efficiency, aimed at optimizing supply chain footprint and cash conversion cycle to improve margins and fuel growth. This is supported by shared ownership culture, where teams use profitability modeling as a cross functional decision tool.
Definitely integral. Couldn’t perform my job without it.
Senior Manager of Business Performance
Central Garden & Pet
Pricing decisions under margin pressure
Primary challenge:
How can Central Garden & Pet support timely, confident pricing decisions across 25+ business units during seasonal, year-end price negotiations?
Inflexible, step-based modelling constrained pricing decisions
Central initially implemented Acorn Systems TDABC. It required heavy manual data consolidation, rigid tooling, and frequent IT dependency. The formulaic, step-based structure limited Central's ability to iterate quickly, test scenarios, or adjust cost logic under pressure to report and update business units. It reduced effectiveness as a real-time input into price negotiations.
Seasonal pricing pressure with a fixed year-end deadline
During high seasonal market, pricing decisions need timely, scenario-based cost insight ahead of peak periods. A hard delivery constraint where cost models must be finalized by December to support upcoming-season customer price negotiations. It was unable to run multiple models at once and respond quickly as negotiations strategies evolved.
Decentralized reporting limited enterprise-wide alignment
All 25 business units need cost models tailored to their operations. Simultaneously, the output must be consumed by all executives and business units, not only Finance, otherwise the model risks becoming a reporting exercise instead of a decision tool.
Flexible modeling and faster reporting with CostPerform
Central replaced its prior tool with CostPerform, gaining flexibility to move between cost layers and drive profitable pricing decisions. Faster ad hoc iterations and reporting using graphical drag-and-drop logic reduce manual effort and turnaround time, enabling teams to refine scenarios early and shape pricing and negotiation outcomes. As an ERP-agnostic tool, CostPerform combines validated warehouse data with business inputs to support defensible, margin-focused decisions.
Driving margin improvement through pricing decisions
Central enters price negotiations equipped to protect and improve margin through seasonally accurate, fact-based cost insight. Rolling 12-month scenarios and running 10 models parallel replace intuition with defensible data - driving stronger negotiation leverage, tighter Finance and Commercial teams alignment, and enabling confident pricing decisions delivered in Excel and Tableau.
Executive sponsorship and enterprise-wide adoption
Multi-dimensional cost models are tailored to each business unit with the right cost drivers and logic. By publishing results in teams' everyday tools and reinforcing adoption through executive sponsorship and a structured feedback loop, data-driven decision-making became the norm. Central exited unprofitable product lines and drove targeted price increases, improving from a $16M loss to break even within a year.
This was driven by clear visibility into which products earned margin, which erodid it, and which pricing actions would have the greatest financial impact.
Central Garden & Pet and CostPerform
Accurate, price-ready cost models delivered on time, supporting confident pricing decisions across seasonal cycles.Â
Teams iterate faster, evaluate scenarios in parallel, and deliver seasonal insights executives rely on.
That is what Central Garden & Pet achieved with CostPerform.
Price Readiness with Cost Transparency
Flexible Modeling, Faster Reporting
Central now sees which products protect margin and which drain profitability across time, channel, and business unit.
Price-ready Insights Backed by Facts
Historic and seasonal views replaced guesswork. Central enters price talks positioned to secure better pricing outcomes.
Enterprise-Wide Cost Transparency
Cost outputs flow into teams’ daily tools. Backed by leadership, cost data shapes product decisions and drives margin recovery.
About CostPerform
Crafted over 20+ years by econometrists and cost experts, CostPerform is the solution for defining, designing and maintaining your cost and profitability model. Any mathematical approach of cost allocation you can think of, is possible.
From insurance companies and merchant banks to central banks: CostPerform is used by financial institutions to determine profitability, report to regulators and to simulate future business models.Â
Contact us today to get insights into which products, customers, channels or transactions make you the most money, by allocating the associated costs.