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Fractional Commercial Direction

Your business
is leaving
money
on the table.

MDA works with UK scaling businesses between £2m and £50m to find it, fix it, and make sure it stays fixed. No full-time hire. No waffle. Just straight commercial direction from someone who's done it.

Revenue range
£2m to £50m
Based at
Basecamp Liverpool
Sectors
DTC, FMCG, B2B, Retail
A selection of brands Michael has worked with across retail, FMCG, DTC and B2B
BrandPath
Nike
Adidas
The North Face
Jack Wolfskin
Ultimate Performance
Power Health
Designs For Health
The Very Group
JD Sports
Levi's
Morrisons
Amazon
Liverpool FC
The Supplement Factory
BrandPath
Nike
Adidas
The North Face
Jack Wolfskin
Ultimate Performance
Power Health
Designs For Health
The Very Group
JD Sports
Levi's
Morrisons
Amazon
Liverpool FC
The Supplement Factory

These represent a selection only. Michael has commercial experience spanning many sectors across retail, wholesale, DTC, FMCG, sports & nutrition and professional services.

The Problem

Most scaling businesses
have the same four problems.

Revenue grows. Margin doesn't. Strategy exists only in the founder's head. The hire you need costs more than you can justify. Sound familiar?

01 / Margin
Revenue up.
Profit flat.

Pricing hasn't kept pace. Channel mix is wrong. Promotions are eating margin you haven't got. No one's had the time or the authority to fix it.

02 / Strategy
Reactive, not
directional.

Over half of UK scaling businesses have no documented commercial plan. Decisions get made on instinct. Opportunities pass because no one's looking far enough ahead.

03 / Resource
Can't justify
the hire.

A good commercial director costs £120k to £150k plus benefits, equity and months of notice. At £5m revenue, that's not a hire you can make. But not making it is costing you more.

04 / Cash Flow
Profitable on
paper only.

Cash flow is the most cited factor in UK SME failures. A business can be growing, invoicing well, and still face a crisis because no one's managing the commercial timing.

The Data

Numbers that
don't lie.

These aren't anecdotes. Every figure below is sourced from McKinsey, the ScaleUp Institute, the FSB and The Marketing Centre.

McKinsey & Company  ·  ScaleUp Institute Annual Review
FSB & UK Insolvency Service  ·  The Marketing Centre, 2024
8%
Profit uplift from a 1% price increase
Pricing is the single highest-leverage action available to any business. Most scaling businesses leave far more than 1% on the table.
McKinsey: The Power of Pricing
30%
Of pricing decisions fail to capture the best price
That compounds across every SKU, every channel, every customer. Year after year.
McKinsey: Big Data & Pricing Decisions
54%
Of UK SMEs have no documented business plan
No objectives. No commercial strategy. A business without direction isn't scaling. It's drifting.
The Marketing Centre, 2024
65%
Of failed UK SMEs cite cash flow as primary cause
Not lack of sales. Not market conditions. Businesses that fail are often technically profitable.
FSB & UK Insolvency Service
#1
Barrier for UK scaleups is senior leadership gaps
Not funding. Not product. The ScaleUp Institute identifies leadership capacity as the biggest growth barrier, consistently.
ScaleUp Institute: Annual Review
19%
Sales growth needed to offset a 5% price cut
That's why undercutting on price almost never works. Commercial discipline on pricing directly protects the bottom line.
McKinsey: The Power of Pricing
What We Do

Commercial direction.
Not fluff.

MDA embeds as your fractional commercial director. That means making decisions, not writing reports about them.

We work across every dimension of commercial performance with the authority and context to move fast.

Book Your Diagnostic
01
Pricing & Margin Management
Core
02
Channel Strategy & Mix
Core
03
Retail Expansion & Buyer Relationships
Specialist
04
Supply Chain Commercial Review
Specialist
05
Cash Flow & Working Capital Strategy
Core
06
Investor & Board Commercial Prep
Advisory
07
DTC & FMCG Growth Strategy
Specialist
How We Work

Four steps.
No wasted time.

01
Diagnostic

Find the Gaps

30 minutes. We map your commercial position across pricing, margin, channels and cash. No pitch. Just an honest look at where the money is going.

02
Scope

Define the Work

We agree exactly what we're fixing, what we're building, what success looks like, and at what cost. No vague retainers. No surprises.

03
Embed

Get Inside the Business

We work as part of your team, in the room for conversations that matter. Not an external voice. A commercial lead who's actually accountable.

04
Deliver

Move the Numbers

Better margin. Clearer strategy. Real momentum. We measure against the outcomes we agreed at the start. Not activity, not outputs.

Day Rate
£1,000 + VAT / day
For focused, time-bound commercial work. Diagnostics, reviews, strategy sessions and board prep.
Fixed Project
POA / project
Defined scope, defined outcome. Pricing strategy overhauls, channel builds, retail expansion programmes.
Michael Alty, Director, MDA Business Advisory
About Michael

Commercial director.
No politics.
No ego.

I'm Michael Alty, Director of MDA Business Advisory. I've spent my career inside scaling businesses — leading commercial functions, fixing margin problems, building retail channels and doing the unglamorous work of making the numbers add up.

Before founding MDA I held senior commercial roles across retail, DTC, FMCG and sports nutrition — working with brands from Nike and Adidas to Liverpool FC and The Very Group. I've sat in the buying meetings, negotiated the supplier terms, rebuilt the pricing architecture and hired the people to run it afterwards.

MDA exists because most scaling businesses can't justify a full-time commercial director but desperately need one. I work fractionally — embedded, accountable and focused on outcomes, not outputs.

Fractional Commercial Director Retail & FMCG DTC & Ecom Sports & Nutrition £2m to £50m Revenue Basecamp Liverpool
Who We Work With

The right fit
matters both ways.

MDA works best with founders and MDs who already have momentum but know something needs to change commercially. You don't need everything figured out. You just need to be ready to act.

£2m to £50m revenue, 20 to 200 staff

The stage where commercial decisions compound. Too much at stake to get wrong, too little resource to do it all in-house.

DTC, FMCG, B2B or Retail businesses

We know how these sectors work: the margin pressures, the channel dynamics, the retail conversations.

Founder or MD who wants straight talking

Not someone to validate your plan. Someone to stress-test it, improve it, and help you execute.

Ready to act on findings, not just hear them

We don't do strategy reports that sit in a drawer. If you're not ready to change, we're not the right fit.

MDA is not for you if…
×You want a report, not a result
×You want validation, not challenge
×You're pre-revenue or pre-product
×You've already got a strong commercial director in post
×You need a full-time hire and have the budget for one
Case Studies

Real work.
Real results.

Three engagements from MDA clients. Different sectors, different problems — same approach. Straight in, find the gaps, fix them, leave the business in better shape.

01
Fulfilment & Commercial Restructure
Ecom & Wholesale 6 Months Dragons' Den backed
+
The Situation

A scaling ecom and wholesale brand backed by Dragons' Den investors Touker Suleyman and Peter Jones had revenues of £2.1m and a clear target: reach £5m within 18 months.

The commercial and operational infrastructure wasn't built for it. Fulfilment was handled by a local 3PL that couldn't support growing international volumes, particularly across Europe. EU customers were being hit with taxes and duties at the point of delivery. Returns from Europe were actively costing the business money through import fees. The existing setup would have put a ceiling on the growth strategy before it had a chance to work.

What We Did

Working alongside the investors, we identified and onboarded a new fulfilment partner. Peter Jones's prior founding of BrandPath opened the door to commercial terms unavailable on the open market — including access to DHL's newly developed DFN programme, with significantly improved courier rate cards and up to 50 international fulfilment locations.

Two primary sites were launched: Coventry for domestic and non-EU fulfilment, and the Netherlands to handle all EU orders. The EU operation moved to a duties-paid model, removing the tax and duty burden for customers and eliminating import fee exposure on returns. A full commercial review covered sourcing, storage, fulfilment and last-mile delivery costs across the entire business.

40%+
Reduction in courier costs
~20%
Storage cost savings
£150k
Forecast margin saving, Year 1 (modelled on £3m revenue)
6mo
Full operational transformation delivered
02
DTC Growth & Commercial Restructure
Fashion / DTC 12 Months 120% YoY Growth
+
The Situation

A DTC-led fashion brand had real demand but wasn't converting it. Product discovery on-site was weaker than it should have been. Buying confidence was undermined by poor fit guidance, unclear delivery information and inconsistent returns messaging.

The team had no consistent trading rhythm — no weekly cadence, no clear KPIs, no ownership of what happened next. The commercial fundamentals needed tightening before marketing spend could do its job.

What We Did

Restructured on-site navigation, collections and best-seller logic. Sharpened fit guidance, delivery promises and returns clarity. Introduced a weekly trading cadence with clear KPIs and ownership.

Repriced the range, built a robust three-month inventory and range plan, and renegotiated supplier payment terms — 60 to 90 days across the board, 120-day terms with the primary supplier. Realigned the customer demographic and repositioned marketing accordingly. Left behind a weekly trade report template, a merchandising plan and pre/post-purchase comms improvements.

120%
Year-on-year DTC growth
+£850k
Additional revenue year-on-year
£120→£150
AOV increase per order
£240k
Additional profit after all costs inc. marketing
03
Wholesale Strategy Built From Scratch
Fashion / Wholesale 8 Months £400k New Revenue
+
The Situation

The same DTC-led fashion brand had a clear opportunity sitting untouched. Wholesale had never been properly addressed. No strategy, no pricing structure, no forecasting, no due diligence process, no outreach plan, no onboarding framework, and no one whose job it was to develop it.

Without a structured approach, wholesale would either be ignored entirely or pursued reactively — burning relationships and margin in equal measure.

What We Did

Built the wholesale function from scratch over eight months. Developed a tiered pricing and range strategy. Built a forecasting model. Created a due diligence and onboarding process for new accounts. Put a structured outreach plan in place.

Core stock investment was separated from new market testing. Recruited a permanent Business Development hire and upskilled them to own and grow the channel — so the function could scale without depending on a consultant to run it.

£400k
Additional annual turnover
4
Markets entered: UK, Germany, Belgium, Australia
1
Permanent BD hire recruited and upskilled
8mo
Zero to fully staffed wholesale operation
References

Straight from the
people who know.

These references come from colleagues, managers and direct reports across Michael's in-house commercial career. They describe the same person and the same approach that clients work with today.

What sets Mike apart is his honesty and commercial clarity. He's not there to agree for the sake of it — he'll challenge, ask the right questions, and focus on what actually drives performance. He understands the numbers, but more importantly, he understands what sits behind them.

DB
Daniel Burley Fractional Tech Leader, CTO/CIO/CAIO · March 2026

Mike is a true leader with a passion for retail, supplements, and eCommerce, whilst being the most honest and transparent person anyone could hope to work with. He is a straight shooter who always tells it like it is, even when the truth is difficult to hear.

RB
Ross Boardman Founder & CEO, Boardman · March 2023

Mike's strategic vision and ability to identify market trends have been instrumental in driving growth. His market analysis, combined with a deep understanding of consumer behaviour and competitor activities, enables the team to make informed business decisions that have positively impacted profitability.

BH
Belinda Hanks Senior Copywriter · June 2023

His work ethic and tenacity in seeing things through thoroughly and successfully end to end is exemplary. He remains calm and unphased in even the most challenging of situations. He is highly respected by clients, his team and wider teams.

LJ
Liz Jardine Director, Bespoke Talent Solutions · February 2023

Michael was a pleasure to work with and always provided amazing advice and support when I needed it. He is incredibly organised and analytical in his approach to work.

AW
Adam White-Jones Head of Garment / Product Technology · January 2022
Watch

Are you the ceiling in your own business?

Founder dependency is one of the most common — and most costly — commercial problems in scaling businesses. Every decision flows through one person. Growth stalls because the structure can't support it.

This short film covers the five signs your business has outgrown you as its commercial bottleneck, and what to do about it.

Book a Diagnostic →

30 minutes.
That's all it takes.

Book a free diagnostic call. We'll look at your commercial position together and tell you honestly where the gaps are. No pitch. No obligation. Just a straight conversation.

Book Your Free Diagnostic →
No obligation  ·  No deck  ·  No sales pitch
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