Retail math should give you leverage, not overwhelm.
Download the Retail Math Cheat Sheet and learn the key formulas every CPG brand needs to speak the retailer's language, evaluate promotions, protect margin, and make smarter growth decisions.
Get the free retail math guide.
Use it to understand the numbers behind sales, margin, distribution, promotions, inventory, and cash protection.
Speak the retailer's language
Use the formulas retailers, brokers, distributors, and investors expect you to understand before the conversation starts.
See sales versus cash
Understand whether sales growth is creating profit, protecting margin, or quietly draining runway.
Measure what matters
Pressure-test promotions, distribution, inventory, execution, and financial health with formulas that support better decisions.
Most brands do not need more data. They need to know which numbers matter.
Retail math is not about memorizing formulas. It is about understanding what the numbers are telling you before retailers, brokers, distributors, deductions, or promotions decide the outcome for you.
A formula by itself does not create clarity. Retail Clarity comes from knowing what happened, why it happened, what influenced it, and what to do next.
Sales & Margin
Understand dollar sales, unit movement, average price, gross margin, contribution margin, and net sales.
Distribution & Opportunity
Measure ACV, share, productivity, opportunity gaps, and whether distribution is broad or truly healthy.
Promotion & Execution
Evaluate promotion ROI, inventory, shelf presence, out-of-stocks, and whether growth is creating value.
Use the right formula for the question you are trying to answer.
- The core sales, price, and margin formulas every founder needs
- How to evaluate distribution quality, retail opportunity, and category contribution
- How to measure promotion performance, trade spend, and incremental sales
- How to understand inventory, shelf execution, sell-through, and out-of-stocks
- How to protect cash with break-even, quick ratio, GMROII, and net sales thinking
- A quick diagnostic to know which number to look at first when something feels off
A simple way to turn formulas into better retail decisions.
This guide helps you move from raw numbers to better questions, clearer diagnosis, and more confident decisions around sales, margin, promotion, inventory, and cash.
Identify
Start with the business question and choose the number that can help answer it.
Calculate
Use the formula to understand sales, margin, distribution, promotion, inventory, or cash impact.
Diagnose
Look for the leak hiding behind the result: cash, margin, execution, visibility, or decision quality.
Act
Use the insight to improve the retailer story, protect margin, or decide what to fix first.
Sales are not the same as cash. Revenue is not the same as profit.
If sales are up but cash is tight, retail math helps you know where to look first. Net sales, gross margin, total trade spending, deductions, contribution margin, and break-even can reveal whether growth is strengthening the business or draining it.
If promotions lift volume but not profit, the issue may not be the promotion lift. It may be base sales, incremental sales, trade spend, forward buying, or margin compression. The number helps you see the issue before you keep funding the leak.
- Understand whether sales growth is creating healthy profit or hidden cash pressure
- Speak more confidently with buyers, brokers, distributors, investors, and your own team
- Pressure-test promotion ROI instead of assuming lift equals success
- Find distribution, inventory, execution, and financial health issues faster
- Use retail math as leverage, not just accounting
Practical retail clarity from someone who has been there.
I’m Daniel Lohman, CPSA, founder of Retail Solved and host of Bulletproof Your CPG Brand. I built this guide to help CPG founders understand the core retail formulas that reveal whether sales, promotions, distribution, inventory, and margin are making the business stronger.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this guide for?
This guide is for CPG founders and growth-stage brand teams that need a practical cheat sheet for retail formulas, promotion math, distribution analysis, inventory measures, and cash protection.
Do I need to be good at math to use this?
No. The guide is designed to make retail math more practical. The goal is not to memorize everything. The goal is to know which formula helps answer the question you are trying to solve.
Is the guide really free?
Yes. Enter your email and you’ll get immediate access to the guide, along with occasional practical founder-focused resources from Retail Solved.
What if I already have dashboards?
Dashboards can show what happened, but they do not always explain what to do next. This guide helps founders understand the numbers behind the dashboard and ask better retail questions.
What happens after I download?
You’ll receive the guide instantly. You can also explore the Retail Clarity Founder Toolkit™, the CPG Runway Leak Finder™, CPG Cash Leak Triage™, and Retail Clarity Decision Tools™ if you need help turning your own data into clearer action.
Use retail math to see what your numbers are really saying.
Download the free cheat sheet and start using the formulas that help protect margin, improve execution, and make smarter retail decisions.