Procurement & GNFR

Effective procurement can make a direct and measurable contribution to profitability and EBITDA, regardless of sector. We work with organisations across Retail, Hospitality, FMCG, Manufacturing and beyond, from established procurement functions to businesses with no dedicated procurement resource, identifying opportunities to reduce cost, strengthen capability and deliver sustainable value.

John Bradshaw

Associate Partner

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Key Challenges We’re Helping Clients Solve

Reviewing procurement effectivness & maturity

Procurement performance & structure

Detailed analytics & spend profiling

Specific spend category expertise

Cost reduction, TCO & value enhancement excersises

Reducing supply based risk

Governance improvement programmes & risk profiling

Providing expert resource on demand

“We have worked with Tessiant on a range of projects both on cost, procurement and proposition development and have found the team to be excellent. Driven, precise, knowledgeable and outcome focused. The model we engaged in has been the right fit for our business enabling us to operate as a partnership, bringing in capability and capacity that we work alongside to ensure the change is sutainable. With the teams they have put into our business sympathetic to our culture and way of working”

– Transformation Director, UK Value Retailer

the hidden value in GNFR

One aspect of procurement is Goods Not For Resale (GNFR). Without GNFR there is no product. If we looked at the retail sector as an example GNFR spend categories would typically include the following: IT, Marketing, Ecommerce, Logistics / Supply Chain, Operations, HR, Property, Facilities and Other (Utilities, Travel etc). All of these categories support the end product being sold to the consumer.

Following a survey of more than 100 retailers, 90% of UK clothing and footwear retailers with a turnover of £250m – £500m surveyed consider GNFR a blind spot.

GNFR spend sits beneath every Head Office, store, warehouse and online order but often lacks the visibility, ownership and strategic attention given to merchandise spend. It’s a permanent cost base that can be anything from 6% to 15% of annual turnover and when spend is fragmented across suppliers, functions and locations, inefficiencies can build quickly and valuable margin can be lost.

Research across the UK clothing and footwear sector highlights the scale of the opportunity. The opportunity is not simply to negotiate harder. It is to improve visibility, governance, processes, supplier management and procurement capability so savings can be identified, delivered and sustained.

£3.9bn

estimated GNFR spend across UK fashion retail in 2025

7%

average saving retailers believe could be achieved through a systematic GNFR review

£276m

potential annual sector-wide cost reduction

£5.9bn

additional fashion sales required to generate the same profit as 7% GNFR saving

Source: Retail Economics and CCS McLays, From Blind Spot to Retail Advantage: How GNFR is Reshaping Profitability in UK Fashion Retail, 2026.

FROM HIDDEN COST TO MEASURABLE GNFR

We combine significant procurement expertise, relevant industry operating experience and proven transformation delivery to identify where value can be increased and enhanced but more importantly improved and subsequently delivered.

We can help you to build the right capabilities whether that be process, teams, data or infrastructure and embed sustainable improvement.

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1 | VISIBILITY

Create a single view of spend

Spend data analysis
Data consolidation
Category visibility
Benchmarking & opportunity sizing

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2 | CONTROL

Strengthen governance

Procurement operating model
Ownership & accountability
Buying & approval processes
Compliance & automation

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3 | OPTIMISE

Unlock commercial value

Category strategy
Supplier consolidation
Contract & specification review
Sourcing & negotiation

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4 | EMBED

Make the gains sustainable

Capability building
Supplier performance
Benefits tracking
Resilience & responsible sourcing

GNFR CHALLENGES CHANGE AS BUSINESSES GROW

Procurement capability does not always keep pace with increasing operational complexity. The right approach depends on where your organisation is in its growth and maturity journey.

CREATE CONTROL

Leadership ownership, governance, process and automation.

OPTIMISE AT SCALE

Category expertise, supplier consolidation and strategic procurement

BUILD FOUNDATIONS

Better, higher-quality data, enhanced spend visibility and control