# Who this is for > Barking Cat Advisory is an independent advisory firm working with UK retail and consumer businesses from £20m to £1bn, founder-led, PE-backed and listed, and the investors behind them, when a major ecommerce, technology or AI investment is on the table and the room cannot agree what is wrong. Source: https://barkingcat.ai/who-this-is-for/ ## Barking Cat Advisory Retail and consumer businesses from £20m to £1bn, founder-led, PE-backed and listed, and the investors behind them. The £20m to £100m range is one Steve has traded through himself: one ecommerce channel built from negligible to £30m, another run from £60m to £240m. ## You are probably one of these - A board considering a major ecommerce investment and not yet sure the case holds. - A CEO asking whether technology is actually the constraint, or whether the agency simply sells technology. - A PE-backed consumer business whose transformation plan is about to be tested by the people who funded it. - A retailer being told to replatform by the firm that would build the replatform. - A leadership team weighing an AI investment with a vendor deck on one side and a quarter-end on the other. - A consumer business building the commercial case for digital investment and needing it to survive a CFO. - An investment committee that wants the ecommerce growth assumption in a target tested by someone who has delivered one. Sector pages: [apparel and footwear](https://barkingcat.ai/sectors/apparel-and-footwear/), [consumer electronics](https://barkingcat.ai/sectors/consumer-electronics/), [homewares and furniture](https://barkingcat.ai/sectors/homewares-and-furniture/), [publishing and subscription](https://barkingcat.ai/sectors/publishing-and-subscription/). ## The problems we help solve The numbers now: conversion, margin, mix, and the operating rhythm behind them. The channel is running, it is underperforming, and nobody in the building can say where the leak is. Where the growth is and the proposition to win it. Half of this work is deciding what to stop chasing. The structure and capability the ambition requires. Most teams were built for a smaller business than the one they now run. Each of these can be taken as a [strategic project](https://barkingcat.ai/counsel-and-projects/#strategic-projects), scoped and priced before it starts, or held through [ongoing counsel](https://barkingcat.ai/counsel-and-projects/#ongoing-counsel). ## Will our AI investment actually pay back? That is the question [the Barking Cat AI Diagnostic](https://barkingcat.ai/the-barking-cat-ai-diagnostic/) answers, with five scored foundations, an AI inventory, and the one constraint holding the rest back. ## Is there an operator who can sit with the board? That is [ongoing counsel](https://barkingcat.ai/counsel-and-projects/#ongoing-counsel), a standing arrangement with one voice who has run the P&L through a bad quarter and is not selling you a platform. It is also the answer to who makes sure the plan gets done once the Review has landed. Steve holds the agreed sequence and its named owners to account, and does not run the team. ## Who reviews our online experience from the customer’s side and tells the board what is wrong? That is [the Barking Cat Review](https://barkingcat.ai/review/), eleven commercial lenses walked from the customer’s side, resolving to one binding constraint. ## What the work has in common Something is not working, and the room cannot agree what. The numbers are not moving the way the investment said they would, and every voice offering to help also sells the fix it recommends. The job is to find the binding constraint before capital is committed to the wrong one, and to say so plainly when you do not need what you are being sold. ## Who this is not for Businesses looking for an ecommerce agency, implementation or build capacity, software or tooling recommendations, or interim cover for an unfilled role. Barking Cat Advisory is a diagnostic and advisory practice and does not earn from the build. Barking Cat guides the work, shapes it and will contribute to it. It does not fill a seat. If the answer is that you need a permanent operator in the role, that is the advice you will get, and there will be no invoice for a stand-in. Barking Cat leads on the omnichannel proposition: how stores and online work as one customer experience. It does not review a store estate. Leases, space and store labour belong with a retail property or operations specialist. ## Where to start If something about commercial performance or customer experience is not working, start with [the Review](https://barkingcat.ai/review/). If the question is whether AI will pay back here, start with [the AI Diagnostic](https://barkingcat.ai/the-barking-cat-ai-diagnostic/). If ecommerce or AI is not yet a shared language in the room, [the Board Briefing](https://barkingcat.ai/the-board-briefing/) comes before either. If you are an investor, start with [the Pre-LOI Read](https://barkingcat.ai/investors/) for a target you have not yet bid for: named on Monday, memo to the committee on Friday, no access to management required. For a holding already in the portfolio, start with the Portfolio Review. The other two instruments, Ecommerce Commercial Diligence and the Exit Readiness Read, sit at confirmatory diligence and twelve to eighteen months before exit. ### How we work with you You can start wherever your problem sits. Some businesses begin with a Review and stop there, having got the clarity they came for. Some arrive with the problem already named and want it solved. Some want an experienced operator in the room for a while. None of these requires the others first, and most engagements in practice begin with a Review, because until the problem is named nobody can say what the second step should be. If ecommerce or AI is not yet a shared language in the room, [The Board Briefing](https://barkingcat.ai/the-board-briefing/) is a half day spent building it, in plain terms, before there is a specific problem to diagnose. - **The Review**: An independent diagnosis of where the commercial constraint sits, walked from the customer’s side of the screen and landed in a working session. Two to four weeks. - **Focused advisory**: One decision, made well. It starts by diagnosing the problem and ends at an agreed answer: the replatform you should or should not undertake, the market you should or should not enter, the operating model the ambition needs. It closes when the decision is made and the route agreed. What follows, if anything, is decided then. - **Ongoing counsel**: A standing arrangement, minimum ninety days, with an exit. One voice who has run the P&L through a bad quarter, is not selling you a platform, and will tell you the unwelcome thing before it becomes expensive. [Ongoing counsel, strategic projects and selection support](https://barkingcat.ai/counsel-and-projects/). If the search that brought you here was for an independent ecommerce consultant, [this is where to start](https://barkingcat.ai/independent-ecommerce-consultant/). **[You do not need the problem defined before we talk.](https://barkingcat.ai/#contact)** ## Contact steve@barkingcat.ai Barking Cat Advisory Limited. Registered in England and Wales, company number 17338003.