Winning the line review is the start. It is not the win.
Every year, US retailers score, reset, and delist the suppliers they carry. We advise companies winning and keeping positions at major US retailers and commercial distributors: entrants pitching the channel, incumbents defending a line review, and PE firms diligencing building-products platforms.
Suppliers rarely fail at the pitch. They fail at the operating layer.
The meeting is the easy part
An introduction gets you a line review. It does not get you a purchase order, and it does nothing for the eighteen months after. Suppliers who enter on a relationship alone are gone by the second reset.
The scorecard runs your business now
Fill rate. On-time-in-full. Chargebacks. Returns. Compliance. From the first purchase order, a US retailer grades you continuously. A supplier who has never read the scorecard is being managed out without knowing it.
The channel is not one channel
Retail, pro, and commercial each buy differently, on different terms, through different people. A price list built for one will fail in the other two, and a European or Asian program rarely survives first contact.
Readiness is operational, not commercial
EDI, advance ship notices, packaging and labeling standards, lead times, replenishment. The deal is won at the table and lost in the back office before the first truck ships.
We have run commercial organizations inside US big-box retail. What we sell is that operating experience, applied to your channel.
Relationships open the conversation. Nothing more.
Real standing across US big-box retail, the pro channel, and building-products distribution: leadership relationships at retailers and distributors including Lowe's, Builders FirstSource, and ABC Supply, and international home-improvement leadership at the Kingfisher group, B&Q and Screwfix. Access starts the conversation. We do not promise contracts, and we are wary of anyone who does.
How big-box retailers evaluate, onboard, and retain a supplier.
This is the center of the engagement and where your return is measured. Below is the operating layer we work in every day: the system that decides whether you survive your first year on the shelf, and every reset after it.
Line reviews & resets
What a line review demands of a supplier beyond price, and how to enter a reset positioned to take space rather than defend it.
Supplier scorecards
Fill rate, OTIF, chargebacks, returns, compliance. How to run your operation against the metrics big-box retailers publish to their vendors, so the scorecard never surprises you.
Commercial terms & program economics
Allowances, rebates, payment terms, freight programs, markdown participation. The terms sheet decides your US margin before your cost structure does. Model it before you sign it.
Retail, pro & commercial channels
Three channels, three buying organizations, three sets of economics. Where your product actually belongs, and how to price so one channel does not poison another.
Operational & systems readiness
EDI, ASNs, labeling and packaging standards, replenishment logic, lead-time discipline. The unglamorous infrastructure the retailer's systems assume you already have.
Staying in
Delisting rarely arrives without warning. The operational signals that precede it, and the operating cadence that keeps a vendor ahead of them.
None of this is confidential. All of it is invisible until someone who has run it walks you through it.
Once the position is won, someone has to hold it.
The account leadership, channel sales talent, and sales operations to run the position you just won. Every search runs through Loom Haven Advisors, our owned executive search firm, extended by vetted staffing partners for volume and specialty go-to-market hiring. 200+ hires placed for clients this year, from volume commercial hiring to executive search.
The machine the team runs.
Revenue and talent systems, AI and non-AI. We run our own modern GTM stack daily, lead enrichment through outbound sequencing to pipeline automation, so the advice comes from operating it, not from theory. Delivery is extended through established AI engineering partners, anchored by an engagement delivered at large US-retail scale. The client stays unnamed; the sector and scale do not.
Revenue systems
Outbound and lead-generation engines, enrichment pipelines, and CRM and email infrastructure. The machinery that finds the next account and keeps the current one warm.
Talent systems
The hiring, onboarding, and performance infrastructure behind a commercial organization, built so the team you staff can execute from the first quarter.
AI workflow builds
AI applied where it moves revenue: enrichment, sequencing, reporting, and the operational readiness retailers expect from a modern vendor.
Three situations. One supplier system.
Entrants pitching the channel
International brands and domestic suppliers preparing a first line review. You have product and a record at home. What you do not have is a map of the US retailer's supplier system, and your current assumptions will not survive it.
Incumbents defending a position
You are on the shelf and the reset is coming. The question is whether you walk into the review knowing what the scorecard, the category math, and the challenger lineup will say about you.
PE firms diligencing building products
Before you underwrite channel growth, know what the retailer's supplier system will say about the asset: scorecard exposure, terms drag, channel conflict, and the commercial bench you are inheriting.
We have operated at big-box scale.
The practice is led by a Managing Director who operated a ~$1B commercial B2B distribution P&L and sales organization in US big-box retail, and led human resources for a $3B North American retail subsidiary. Principal-led with a bench of senior operators, an owned search firm, and established AI engineering partners behind every engagement.
We will tell you how ready you are for the next line review, before the review tells you.
Thirty minutes. Bring your category and your targets; we will talk channels, terms, timing, and whether the position makes financial sense. A straight read from operators who have run this channel, not a pitch.
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