The operational levers that turn the working capital loan from structural to optional — and give the board a real choice about where to deploy the freed capital.
Most of that figure is stock cost flowing through on its way to a buyer — not value-add. The business you run is a capital recycling operation, and the right north star is different.
Improve either lever and ROCE moves. Improve both and it compounds. A 10% lift in capital turns beats a 10% lift in turnover every time — and comes with lower price-risk exposure per lot.
Today the working capital loan is structural — the business needs it to function. Improve capital efficiency and it becomes optional. The board gains a genuine choice:
The choice itself is the prize. A business that can elect whether to borrow is more resilient to commodity cycles and rate moves than one that must.
Lagging numbers tell you whether ROCE is improving. Leading numbers are what the team watches weekly to get there.
The wool merchanting market is mature — limited new customer supply. In harvest mode the lever isn't preventing customer churn (rare at this kind of B2B relationship length) and isn't winning new logos. It's growing share-of-trade with customers you already have. Reliability, grade breadth, and faster cycle times earn you more of each customer's annual wool spend — moving from 20% of their wallet to 30% is the kind of lift harvest mode is built for. The metrics weight accordingly: volume trajectory within existing relationships, share-of-trade indicators, and growth signals matter more than pure retention.
Together these roll up into a Working Capital Health Score. The full inventory with current tracking status, drilldowns, and proposed additions lives on the metrics page.
Primary stock moves on its own merits. It's the long tail of small-quantity residuals — what's left after most of a lot has been consumed — that accumulates, ages past easy clearance, and ends up as write-offs or bulk markdowns.
They should. Residuals behave differently — smaller quantities, harder-to-use grade mixes, often aged worse than primary stock because the easier portions have been taken first. Left invisible, they become write-off candidates.
With roughly 20% external work, Thomas Chadwicks has its own economic weight. Optimising the group number means three things working together.
A connected trading and data platform makes this practical: the blend sheet carries lot age, residual status and carrying cost through to Thomas Chadwicks' view, so scheduling priority reflects group value rather than local optimisation. In the interim, a weekly prioritisation meeting closes the same gap with people and a spreadsheet.
Four phases, each building on the previous. Phase 1 makes visible what's already in WTS; Phase 2 replaces WTS and introduces the new data entities (Quote, Price Book, residual lifecycle, holds) that unlock the bigger levers; Phase 3 adds the ROCE automation and blend optimisation; Phase 4 delivers a Manufacturing Execution Platform (MEP) for Thomas Chadwicks, integrated end-to-end.
What WTS data genuinely supports — visibility from day one. Residuals, Price Book, and quote leakage aren't here because WTS doesn't capture them.
Same functionality as WTS, plus the new data entities that unlock residual management, Price Book discipline, and leakage tracking.
Beyond visibility — active ROCE levers and decision support.
Thomas Chadwicks as a first-class operational entity, integrated end-to-end.
The worked example below is illustrative — built on assumed current numbers to show how moderate movement on each lever compounds. Real baseline numbers replace these and the shape will shift.
Moderate movement on five separate levers compounds because they each hit different parts of the ROCE equation — capital cycle, margin, tail clearance, share-of-trade, and other income.
The point isn't the precise figure. At half these assumptions the upside is smaller but still meaningful. At zero movement on any lever nothing changes. The worked illustration shows the mechanism, not a forecast.
A dashboard without targets and a defined period is just numbers floating in space. Every KPI below is anchored to a period (YTD FY26 shown) and a target. The targets themselves come from planning — ideally OKRs or equivalent goal-setting, otherwise set against the ROCE strategy's illustrative prize figures. Without that layer, the dashboard can't tell you whether you're winning.
The dashboard above is only meaningful because each number is anchored to a target and a period. Those targets need to come from somewhere. Two routes:
Without one of these, the dashboard shows numbers but can't tell you whether you're winning. Worth a separate conversation on which route fits Standard Wool's planning rhythm.
Worth being clear on what the platform capability actually delivers. Market skill, relationship skill, and commercial judgement stay with the team — a better platform makes them faster and more visible, not replaces them.
The design is only as good as the operating conditions it runs in. These are things to own, not caveats to hide behind.