A global luxury and beauty group of 30+ brands had grown on local autonomy, with no central oversight of production: inconsistent pricing, poorly negotiated contracts and fragmented supplier relationships — set against a brand promise of craft no one wanted to compromise.
VA introduced central production-cost governance that validates every estimate against benchmark before commitment, with a tiered supplier structure separating high-craft partners from standardised production — governing cost where it is invisible to the consumer and protecting craft where it builds brand equity.
Head of Image and Production, Head of Brand, Head of Indirect Procurement
The strategic problem
A group of 30+ brands grew through local autonomy, with no central oversight of production: inconsistent pricing, poorly negotiated contracts, fragmented agency relationships, and a brand promise of craft that no one wanted to compromise. Estimates were committed brand by brand with nothing to test them against, so procurement discipline and creative excellence were treated as opposites rather than as a single design problem.
Diagnose & Design
VA carried out a marketing & production ecosystem audit and spend mapping & cost baseline analysis that established, for the first time, a consolidated view of production spend and supplier terms across the portfolio; a gap & maturity assessment distinguished where standardisation would be invisible to the consumer from where it would erode brand equity; market benchmarking set fair-value anchors for every production category — the reference against which estimates could be validated independently before commitment; and operating model design defined the central governance structure (RACI, approval flows, spend thresholds) that would hold across 30+ autonomous brands.
Ecosystem & Remuneration
Roster rationalisation & consolidation created a tiered supplier structure separating high-craft premium partners from standardised-production vendors; remuneration model design with fee benchmarking & validation (AURA/FRC (Fulltime Ratecard Calculator) used to reverse-engineer ratecards and validate SOWs) set transparent pricing across categories; vendor scouting & shortlisting from the 5,000+ supplier database identified specialist craft houses the group had not previously considered; scoping & SOW design standardised briefs and workflows where creative differentiation was low.
Rollout & relationship management
Contracting & onboarding formalised the new supplier tier structure brand by brand; handover, rollout & commitment tracking — with AURA/Planner back-planning the transition to phased go-live dates — ensured that commitments made during the design phase were honoured in delivery; relationship management navigated the tension between brand creative directors and central procurement throughout, building the trust that made adoption possible.
Execution Oversight
Bid governance applied to each material production commission — triple-award for high-value work, direct award only where craft specificity was demonstrable; production cost validation & budget control (AURA/BMT (Budget Management Template)) checked every estimate against the fair-value benchmark before approval, not after; on-set oversight and post-production monitoring protected quality on the high-craft work ring-fenced from standardisation; wrap & final reconciliation confirmed actual versus approved spend across brands.
Performance Measurement
KPIs and scorecards from governance design tracked via partner performance evaluation on a 90/180/360 cadence; production cost saving of 18% and cost avoidance of 12% on standardised, competitively sourced work reported separately; 25% faster time-to-market [illustrative, to be confirmed]; craft quality maintained as measured by creative quality assessment; today AURA delivers closure reports — full performance measurement as a continuous platform is on the roadmap.
Why VA
In luxury the real risk is saving your way into sameness; by validating every estimate against benchmark before commitment, VA governs cost precisely where it is invisible to the consumer and protects investment where craft creates measurable brand equity — so the CFO and CMO reach the same conclusion from different directions.
Common questions
What is production-cost governance?
It is a central discipline that validates production estimates against external benchmarks before spend is committed, across a portfolio — so pricing is consistent and defensible rather than each brand committing estimates with nothing to test them against.
How do you cut production cost without diluting luxury craft?
By separating high-craft premium work from standardised production in a tiered supplier structure: cost is governed on the consumer-invisible work while investment is protected where craft creates measurable brand equity — so procurement discipline and creative excellence stop being opposites.
How is craft quality protected under the new model?
Craft partners are retained and quality is tracked through creative quality assessment alongside cost KPIs on a 90/180/360 cadence — so the CFO sees cost fall and the CMO sees brand equity protected from the same system.