Fractional commercial leadership for creative companies.
Free. 25 minutes. No pitch. You'll leave with one thing worth looking at.
Procurement sets the term of sale. AI is breaking old revenue models. No one fully owns a project's commercial health. Margin leaks where no one's accountable.
Delivery is being re-written. Teams are leaner. You don't have the time or headspace to design what's next.
You can't justify full-time commercial or operational leadership. Day-to-day decisions still flow through you. You're leading, running, and carrying it all. Founder dependent companies are less sellable.
Just over a third of £1m+ creative agencies run at or above the 50% gross profit margin benchmark of a healthy, sustainable business. The industry average sits at 43%.
Source: BenchPress 2026, The Wow Company. £1m+ agencies.
At £4m turnover, the seven points between average and healthy are worth roughly £280,000 a year.
It means they are more likely able to hire before the need is desperate, avoid bad-fit clients and invest in whatever is next without borrowing it from the founder's headspace.
No founder allows for average work. Yet most are running average margins.
tare. exists to get creative companies over that healthy line. Running with margin to grow, not just survive.
Margin doesn't slip because someone is careless. It slips because protecting it is no one's full focus.
tare /teə/ noun — the weight of a container, removed to find the true weight of what's inside.
gives profit focus.
Commercial leadership,
without the full-time cost.
Someone who treats profit as a function.
Senior systems-thinking to bring order to the noise.
A calm, experienced head to share the weight of the decisions.
Track record
Relative increase in gross profit margin at a London-based production company, in year one
Additional annual revenue from restructured value-based pricing at a London creative agency
Proposal value uplift on a single commissioned series (£250k to £750k)
In most creative companies, no one truly owns profitability. It's fragmented across a team already carrying a full load.
tare. steps into that seat at whatever scale you need. We balance what your business needs with how much control you want to keep.
At one end of the scale: a calm, experienced head to think alongside you. At the other: the entire commercial weight, carried. We find the right balance together, and you can move along the scale as things flex.
A sharp commercial & agency ops head to share the weight with.
tare. takes the weight of delivering core outcomes.
tare. becomes your commercial lead, accountable for lifting gross-profit margin.
Limited availabilitySomeone to think alongside you, keep the commercial angle in every decision, and hold you to what you commit to. A standing rhythm of working sessions on your live commercial and operational problems. Clinics most weeks, regular one-to-ones, on-demand access for what comes up. Fresh expertise in the building from day one. You keep ownership of the decisions and the outcomes.
One core result, carried until it lands: commercial or operational, bounded and specific, with the endpoint agreed up front. Not the whole function, just the weight that matters most. Driven with your team on a weekly rhythm and priorities sharpened monthly.
The fractional commercial lead the business doesn't have. Accountable for gross-margin improvement and for building a commercial culture that lasts. Plugged into the business and the people who move the number, win the work, and deliver it. The whole commercial load, lifted.
Not a new business or growth function.
When commercial and operational questions keep landing that sit outside the team's natural expertise, or pull the founder in to solve. A flexible solution for strategising around pricing; procurement negotiations; team tensions; operational drag; workflow design, scope creep; a hot opportunity that needs a second read before it's committed to.
The work that matters most but is currently moving slowest. A service line that bleeds margin, a delivery model that no longer holds, a resourcing model that hasn't kept up with the work. A big opportunity that needs holding to get it off the ground. Anything commercial or operational that needs untangling and someone to drive it.
Nobody is in charge of commercial success or margin, and you sense it's costing you. The commercial function exists in pieces, spread across people who already have full jobs. Too often, the founder is left holding the weight.
A focused read on the problems and opportunities in front of you, and a deep dive into how the business makes profit and delivers. tare.'s diagnostics turn what the business half-knows about itself into a clear view of where margin is won and lost. You finish with the numbers that actually matter named, where they stand today, and a shortlist of the first moves worth making. Our working sessions built from there, on solid ground.
A read of the business built around the result we'd take on for you: time to align with the key people who'll deliver it, and a clear view of the current numbers. We name the outcomes worth owning, the key metric that proves it moved, and where it stands now. We agree who owns what, and set out the roadmap to get there. You end the month knowing exactly what we're driving towards, and ready to hand it over so the work can begin.
The full current commercial picture, read in depth. Time with the team, deep in the numbers, in the meetings that matter. We find where margin drains away, and everything the founder and leadership are carrying that belongs elsewhere. By the end of the month the headline metric is agreed, its baseline set, and the plan to move it is live, with someone accountable for moving it from day one.
A full-time Commercial Director or COO is £120-150k+ a year. This is roughly a fifth of that investment, focussed solely on the questions that matter most.
A full-time Commercial Director or COO is £120-150k+ a year. This is roughly 40% of that investment, pointed at the result that matters most.
A full-time Commercial Director is £130-150k+ a year, and nearer £170k all in with hiring and employment costs. This is roughly half, without the permanent hire.
A sharp commercial & agency ops head to share the weight with.
Someone to think alongside you, keep the commercial angle in every decision, and hold you to what you commit to. A standing rhythm of working sessions on your live commercial and operational problems. Clinics most weeks, regular one-to-ones, on-demand access for what comes up. Fresh expertise in the building from day one. You keep ownership of the decisions and the outcomes.
When commercial and operational questions keep landing that sit outside the team's natural expertise, or pull the founder in to solve. A flexible solution for strategising around pricing; procurement negotiations; team tensions; operational drag; workflow design, scope creep; a hot opportunity that needs a second read before it's committed to.
A focused read on the problems and opportunities in front of you, and a deep dive into how the business makes profit and delivers. tare.'s diagnostics turn what the business half-knows about itself into a clear view of where margin is won and lost. You finish with the numbers that actually matter named, where they stand today, and a shortlist of the first moves worth making. Our working sessions built from there, on solid ground.
A full-time Commercial Director or COO is £120-150k+ a year. This is roughly a fifth of that investment, focussed solely on the questions that matter most.
tare. takes the weight of delivering core outcomes.
One core result, carried until it lands: commercial or operational, bounded and specific, with the endpoint agreed up front. Not the whole function, just the weight that matters most. Driven with your team on a weekly rhythm and priorities sharpened monthly.
The work that matters most but is currently moving slowest. A service line that bleeds margin, a delivery model that no longer holds, a resourcing model that hasn't kept up with the work. A big opportunity that needs holding to get it off the ground. Anything commercial or operational that needs untangling and someone to drive it.
A read of the business built around the result we'd take on for you: time to align with the key people who'll deliver it, and a clear view of the current numbers. We name the outcomes worth owning, the key metric that proves it moved, and where it stands now. We agree who owns what, and set out the roadmap to get there. You end the month knowing exactly what we're driving towards, and ready to hand it over so the work can begin.
A full-time Commercial Director or COO is £120-150k+ a year. This is roughly 40% of that investment, pointed at the result that matters most.
tare. becomes your commercial lead, accountable for lifting gross-profit margin.
The fractional commercial lead the business doesn't have. Accountable for gross-margin improvement and for building a commercial culture that lasts. Plugged into the business and the people who move the number, win the work, and deliver it. The whole commercial load, lifted.
Not a new business or growth function.
Nobody is in charge of commercial success or margin, and you sense it's costing you. The commercial function exists in pieces, spread across people who already have full jobs. Too often, the founder is left holding the weight.
The full current commercial picture, read in depth. Time with the team, deep in the numbers, in the meetings that matter. We find where margin drains away, and everything the founder and leadership are carrying that belongs elsewhere. By the end of the month the headline metric is agreed, its baseline set, and the plan to move it is live, with someone accountable for moving it from day one.
A full-time Commercial Director is £130-150k+ a year, and nearer £170k all in with hiring and employment costs. This is roughly half, without the permanent hire.
Start with Discovery — a single month, no further commitment. Ongoing retainers start with a three-month minimum engagement, then one-month rolling notice either way.
If a deeper piece of work surfaces through the retainer but does not naturally fall within it e.g. a restructure; a business model change, productising a service; a large-scale change programme, it can be scoped and priced on its own terms.
Or it may be suited to our expanding suite of standalone products & transformation programmes.
For a £4m company, every point of gross profit is worth £40,000 a year.
A two-point improvement is £80,000, annually, without winning a single new client. On a standard 4x multiple, that's £320,000 of enterprise value.
Whatever it costs to put a name on the function, the gap costs more.
A free 25-minute call. You'll leave with one specific thing to think about, whether or not we go further.
If there isn't a fit, you'll be pointed somewhere better.