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.
These represent a selection only. Michael has commercial experience spanning many sectors across retail, wholesale, DTC, FMCG, sports & nutrition and professional services.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
These aren't anecdotes. Every figure below is sourced from McKinsey, the ScaleUp Institute, the FSB and The Marketing Centre.
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 →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.
We agree exactly what we're fixing, what we're building, what success looks like, and at what cost. No vague retainers. No surprises.
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.
Better margin. Clearer strategy. Real momentum. We measure against the outcomes we agreed at the start. Not activity, not outputs.
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.
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.
The stage where commercial decisions compound. Too much at stake to get wrong, too little resource to do it all in-house.
We know how these sectors work: the margin pressures, the channel dynamics, the retail conversations.
Not someone to validate your plan. Someone to stress-test it, improve it, and help you execute.
We don't do strategy reports that sit in a drawer. If you're not ready to change, we're not the right fit.
Three engagements from MDA clients. Different sectors, different problems — same approach. Straight in, find the gaps, fix them, leave the business in better shape.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 →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.
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