Price Optimization for Home retail, with the root cause attached.
Your Home data already holds the answers. Ward finds them and hands you the next step.
Why pricing matters
in home retail.
A 2x4 has two completely different demand curves depending on who's buying it. Pro customers compare lumber prices daily; DIY customers barely notice per-board differences. Ward segments price elasticity by customer type so recommendations respect Pro sensitivity while capturing margin on DIY transactions.
Benchmarks. Home improvement Pro elasticity on commodity items typically -1.8 to -3.0; DIY on the same SKUs runs -0.3 to -0.8. Pro accounts represent 25-45% of revenue at 4-8x the basket size; protecting Pro pricing while capturing DIY margin is usually worth 200-400 bps of gross.
Pro vs DIY pricing segmentation, lumber category
Ward reveals that Pro account customers show steep price elasticity on framing lumber while DIY customers are nearly inelastic on the same SKU. Ward recommends maintaining aggressive Pro pricing through the loyalty tier while implementing modest increases on non-loyalty transactions. The increase is invisible to DIY weekend-project buyers but protects the Pro relationship and delivers meaningful annual margin improvement.
Three pitfalls Ward catches
in home pricing.
- 01 Lumber and commodity building material pricing gets treated as a single elasticity number when Pro and DIY customers behave completely differently, Pro is highly elastic, DIY is nearly inelastic.
- 02 Project basket pricing focuses on individual SKU margins; customers care about total project cost, so a uniform 5% increase on all components is more dangerous than a targeted 15% increase on the basket-anchor item.
- 03 Seasonal pricing power isn't modeled; the same SKU has materially different elasticity in peak project season versus the shoulder months.
How Ward runs pricing
for home retailers.
-
01
Tag every transaction by customer type
Ward classifies transactions as Pro/DIY using loyalty tier, basket signature, and tax-status cues, the segmentation feeds the elasticity model.
-
02
Score elasticity per segment per category
Cards expose the segment-by-category elasticity matrix, identifying where DIY headroom exists without affecting Pro relationships.
-
03
Test segmented pricing in matched stores
Ward designs Pro-loyalty-tier-aware pricing tests, tracks segment volume separately, and recommends rollout only when both segments hold.
What a Ward card looks like.
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled the spring pre-build against the last three seasons and the weather signal for the 22 Southeast stores.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
seasonal_prebuild | Mulch on-hand hit 61% of plan the week temps broke 70°F |
dc_push | DC push started 9 days after the first-warm-week trigger, LY it was 2 |
attach.project | Soil and edging attach fell 18% at stores that gapped on mulch |
Recommend: tie the push trigger to the 10-day forecast instead of the calendar week, pre-position two truckloads at the 8 stores that gapped, and re-set the attach endcap.
seasonal_prebuild…
Dashboards
Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries.
Sources
Connect external systems to the data lake.
| Name | Type | Last sync |
|---|---|---|
epicor_pos_transactions | import | 2m ago |
epicor_special_orders | import | 2m ago |
netsuite_inventory_snapshot | import | 14m ago |
retail_seasonal_prebuild | import | 1h ago |
retail_sku_velocity | import | 1h ago |
retail_pro_account_sales | import | 1h ago |
retail_weather_daily | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
merch-read-default | permit | Model::* |
pro-team-read-accounts | permit | Model::"pro_account_sales" |
vendor-blocked | forbid | Model::"labor_*" |
supply-read-orders | permit | Model::"special_orders" |
Home pricing:
the shift.
- ×Project basket identification
- ×Seasonal pre-positioning
- ×Long-tail inventory
- ✓Real-time elasticity measurement
- ✓Category-level price sensitivity
- ✓Competitive price monitoring
Questions about home pricing.
A 2x4 has two completely different demand curves depending on who's buying it. Pro customers compare lumber prices daily; DIY customers barely notice per-board differences.
Ward reveals that Pro account customers show steep price elasticity on framing lumber while DIY customers are nearly inelastic on the same SKU. Ward recommends maintaining aggressive Pro pricing through the loyalty tier while implementing modest increases on non-loyalty transactions.
Ward tracks Pro vs DIY elasticity segmentation, commodity price benchmarking, project basket sensitivity (total project cost matters more than item prices), and seasonal demand multipliers on pricing power.
First pricing insight cards arrive within 48 hours. Stable home baselines form within two weeks.
Home pricing
by data source.
More Home insight cards.
Home retailers: see what pricing problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
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