Espresso: Pricing is Art, not Science - Ed Perry, COOK

0:01Morning, morning, or welcome. Yes, I have grown a tash, I have got a nose ring and I am covered in tattoos. I am your barista for the day. Welcome to Espresso short, snappy, espresso short podcast episodes. I've literally downloaded all the wisdom from all the founders and all the brands like Good, Tills, Coconut Collaborative, Candy Kittens, Little Moons, Planet Organic and I've distilled it into this micro, short, snappy wisdom to give you a mahoosive edge on the day to kickstart your day. So look, without further ado, let's get cracking and enjoy this espresso shot. One of the debates or arguments we have in our business at the moment is well, Marks and Spencers have moved their lasagna to X pricing or their cottage pie to X pricing.

0:46Therefore, we can charge X. And it's like, well, no, it's the customer. Our customers aren't walking into our shops thinking, well, Marks and Spencers are charging X for the lasagna. That's not how it works. It's what they're prepared to pay themselves. So I think if pricing is reduced to just, like you said, it's a spreadsheet right well here it is it's needs to be x now of course that there is there is a you know financial requirement for a business to make a certain amount of money or so you know but you've got to be thinking all the time all the time well is our customer prepared to pay that and if our customer is not prepared to pay that well what are we going to do about it what where what can we do but it's i'm not pretending that i've got the answers here all i all i know is that be really really cautious about pricing and but equally be really really cautious about product engineering as well because that's what often happens because that's the sort of the third the triangulation it's like well the customer won't charge won't pay more and we need to make some margin right we're gonna have to go back and engineer the product well really be bloody careful about that because that is where brands really screw up cutting corners on this cutting corners on that.

2:04One of the, again, one of the few, one of the good decisions we made back in 2008 is we said, right, well, all cost comes out of the business. The only thing we won't compromise is the quality ingredients coming through the door and the product itself. Because I think once you start doing that, you compromise the right to survive as a brand because you're screwing with your customers. You're saying, well, I need to make my margins. So I'm going to give you less of the product or a poorer quality of the product and that's what kills brands quick one guys espresso's got a brand new sponsor unleashed unleashes inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software we use unleashed daily islands i bloody love it we've got our admin time in half saving approximately 30k a year why use it save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is don't miss availability look your favorite brands literally use unleashed as their backbone candy kins tiny rebel trip always religiously look there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with josh and his wonderful sales team at unleashed they're amazing even nothing comes of it and even better news you'll get your first month free if you reference hungry thank you having to triangulate those three things price necessary financial performance and product quality really really difficult um really difficult it's it's so interesting and and what um i interviewed roger wade who's the founder of box park and he very much sees this whole thing as as an art not a science and he said the shopper and the consumer doesn't walk around with an excel spreadsheet like making decisions they just walk into a store but whereas brands or at least from the brand side of things is you'll be saying okay what's our price in in tesco versus sainsbury's versus waitrose or like direct or d2c you almost get put in this thing which is like almost like a brand bubble and the more you get caught in your own brand bubble the less time you're spending with the consumer the less time you're realizing and i think one of the trepidations can be if you spend too much time in your brand bubble and not enough time with your end consumer um yeah so i I love doing these.

4:17I learn so much kind of live, but yeah, I hadn't thought of that before seeing pricing as an art, not a science. Thank you so, so much for listening. It honestly means the world to me. I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day. Let's be having you. If you want the fun episode, it will be in the show notes. A link will be in the show notes, the full episode. Thank you so much. Please leave friends as well. It means the world to me.

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