Rung 01 — Diagnose
Margin Diagnostic
2–3 weeks · fixed fee
Is there recoverable margin, and is your data good enough to defend going after it? A bounded, honest answer.
Pricing · Cost Intelligence · Portfolio Operations
Most manufacturers cannot see the margin on their own products.
Cedar Faire fixes the cost architecture underneath, built directly against your ERP transaction data. For manufacturers in the $50M–$1B range, and for the private equity sponsors who own them.
For private equity sponsors
If you own one of them, that margin is your return.
The deal closed on a model that assumed operational improvement. Someone now has to go build it, and the deal team is not staffed to do that.
Your people know the covenant package, the ratios, and the monthly reporting. That is a different skill from opening the ERP, finding out that the variable overhead rate is a plug, and rebuilding the cost layer the thesis depends on. Cedar Faire does the second one.
Recovered inside the business
150 bps
of gross margin, on $180M of revenue, from pricing and cost architecture that was already wrong
Falls to EBITDA
$2.7M
recurring, carried in the run rate every year you hold the asset
At a 9× exit
$24M
of enterprise value, on an engagement costing a low single-digit percentage of it
The revenue base and the multiple are yours. Recovered margin is permanent, it compounds into the exit, and it does not require the multiple to cooperate.
Post-close, first 180 days
Reserve adequacy, opening balance sheet, and cost allocation logic tested against transaction evidence while the measurement period is still open and the findings still have somewhere to go.
Mid-hold, when the plan stalls
The portfolio company reports a margin number nobody will stake a negotiation on. Pricing gets set by instinct. That is a cost architecture problem wearing a commercial costume.
Pre-exit and diligence
Reserves, overhead absorption, and margin claims documented well enough to survive a buyer's QofE team rather than get renegotiated in the final week.
Where the work actually happens. Cedar Faire is engaged at the portfolio company and works alongside its finance and operations team, because that is where the ERP, the data, and the people who have to own the result all live. The conversation usually starts with the sponsor. On a seven-plant industrial portfolio company, that work produced $1M in defensible reserve adjustments and averted a $6M covenant cure.
Selected outcomes
7 plants
Work center costing rebuilt across a multi-plant manufacturer, with labor and overhead derived from HR, ERP, and shop-floor data rather than a single plugged rate.
+3.7 pts
Gross margin on a CDMO's largest account, from a volume-break pricing framework.
15%
Gross margin improvement at a $200M consumer brand, from its first customer-level P&L.
Account-level outcomes, held jointly with client commercial teams. Identities withheld. See the detail →
The deliverable
A margin your team can defend in the room.
Your ERP wasn't configured for accurate costing and your margins are opaque. Cedar Faire rebuilds the cost layer beneath the number, so every step of the bridge is derived from transaction and source of truth data.
How engagements work
Three rungs. Each leaves a working system behind.
Rung 02 — Build
Pricing Framework Build
8–12 weeks · fixed fee
SKU-level pricing model, cost intelligence layer, and implementation with the commercial team.
Rung 03 — Govern
Fractional Commercial Finance
Monthly retainer
Pricing governance and commercial decision support, with senior judgment and no added headcount.
A consultant who cannot build the system will hand you a deck describing the system.
Cedar Faire's principal has spent his career inside ERPs, on production floors, and tying data back to financial statements. Every engagement ends with something operable in your environment, documented well enough that your team can defend it to a board, an auditor, or a lender.
One senior principal, supported by specialist resources where a build requires them. The person on the diagnostic call is the person in your data.
Start with the diagnostic.
Thirty minutes, no deck. You will leave knowing whether this is a data problem, a governance problem, or a negotiation problem, whether or not you engage Cedar Faire.