The Left Seat Brief · Sample
Harbor Industrial Supply Co.
A complete, unabridged sample of the deliverable every Walkaround produces. Harbor Industrial Supply is an invented $86M industrial distributor — every number below is fictional. The five-section structure, the depth, and the register are exactly what a real client receives.
SECTION 01
What changed
Gross margin is the story this month: 20.6% against a 22.4% plan — 180 basis points off, worth about $1.5M a year if it holds. The slide started in April and has run three consecutive months. Revenue is fine — $7.4M for June, 4% ahead of plan on volume — which is exactly why the margin move was easy to miss: the top line kept everyone comfortable.
Two customers account for 61% of the entire margin slip. This is not a broad erosion across the book; it is concentrated, recent, and traceable — which means it is fixable.
SECTION 02
Why it changed
The fuel-and-freight surcharge quietly lapsed in the March renewal of your largest account — and the renewal after it copied the same paper. Both contracts renewed on the new "simplified" template that sales rolled out in Q1. The template dropped the surcharge schedule; nobody priced the drop. Volume is not the problem — units are up. You are shipping more product and keeping less of each dollar.
| Margin bridge, plan → June actual | Basis points |
|---|---|
| Surcharge lapse on two renewed accounts | −110 |
| Product mix (MRO consumables down, commodity up) | −45 |
| Inbound freight cost creep | −25 |
| TOTAL variance vs plan | −180 |
Sixty-one percent of the total sits in the first row — two customers, one template change, effective April 1.
SECTION 03
What doesn't add up
Operations reports 96% on-time shipment. Your credit memos say otherwise. Expedite fees and freight concessions on late orders ran $41K in the quarter — triple last year — and the customer-facing portal shows a different on-time number than the ops dashboard. The two systems define "on-time" differently: one measures against the promise date, the other against the revised promise date. The metric your team celebrates is the second one.
On-time as reported (revised-date basis) vs on-time against the original promise. The $41K in concessions tracks the 87%.
SECTION 04
What requires your attention
1. The Q3 renewal. Your #3 account ($9.4M) renews September 1 on the same simplified template. If it ships without a surcharge schedule, the margin bridge above gets a fourth row. This is a contract-language decision, and it will be made by default in the next six weeks unless you intervene.
2. Nobody owns price-cost pass-through. The controller seat has been open since February. In the gap, no single person is responsible for checking that cost increases reach invoices. The surcharge lapse wasn't a bad decision — it was an unowned one.
What does not need you: warehouse overtime is up 9% and generating noise in the Monday meeting. It is seasonal, it tracks the volume you're ahead on, and your ops lead has it. Leave it with him.
SECTION 05
Decisions & next moves
| The call | Owner | By |
|---|---|---|
| Reinstate the surcharge schedule in the standard template; grandfather nothing at the Q3 renewal | CEO + VP Sales | Jul 15 |
| Reprice or restructure the two lapsed accounts at their next order cycle — recovery target 70+ bps by October | VP Sales | Aug 1 |
| Fill the controller seat with explicit ownership of price-cost pass-through; interim: assign the metric to the CFO by name | CEO | Jul 8 |
Three decisions. Two are reversible. The renewal is not — which is why it's first.
This is the whole product. No appendix theater, no 90 slides. A real Brief is built from your systems, your numbers, and a month of looking — then a working session to go through it. Harbor Industrial Supply Co. is fictional; the depth is not.