Case Study: Global Leading Specialty Retailer boosts profitability by 12% with Mu Sigma's test-and-learn platform

Institutionalized a test and learn philosophy for a specialty retailer

Global Leading Specialty Retailer, one of the world’s largest home improvement and construction specialty retailers, faced falling store profitability during the 2010 economic crisis and housing downturn. To improve revenue per square foot and determine which pricing, marketing, merchandising, and operational strategies would work best, the company needed a unified way to design and measure experiments. Mu Sigma helped the finance team create a test-and-learn framework to evaluate store strategies consistently.

Mu Sigma implemented an enterprise-level test and learn system, using statistical testing, predictive models, and automated event measurement across customer, SKU, store, and market levels. The solution included a web-based application and R-Hadoop stack to manage and analyze more than 2,000 tests and events, giving stakeholders “one version of the truth.” As a result, Global Leading Specialty Retailer identified $150M in upside opportunities, uncovered $70M in risks, and increased profitability by 12%.