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The next chapterwon't look likethe last.

The business might have been around for decades. It might already be hugely successful.

But markets move, customers change and the old answers don't always work anymore.

Sprowt helps leaders crack the big questions that shape what comes next.

  • Why have we stopped growing?
  • What do our customers really think about us?
  • How do we stay relevant when everything around us is changing?
  • What are we missing?
Bring us the difficult question →
what got you here won't get you therebring us the difficult questionthe problem beneath the problemwhat happens next?where should we play next?when the old answers stop workingwhat got you here won't get you therebring us the difficult questionthe problem beneath the problemwhat happens next?where should we play next?when the old answers stop working

The problem

Sometimes the problem you're trying to solve isn't actually the problem.

You think you need a rebrand.

But perhaps customers don't understand why they should choose you.

You think you need a new product.

But perhaps there's far more opportunity sitting inside the one you already have.

You think you need more marketing.

But perhaps you're talking to the wrong people.

You think growth has stalled because the market is difficult.

But perhaps the business has simply lost sight of what made it valuable in the first place.

We help you find the problem beneath the problem.

The questions we love

You're responsible for what comes next.

Some of the hardest business questions come when you've already been successful.

You have a brand that people know about. You know your market. You have customers, products, infrastructure and years of experience.

Yet, something is changing....

Growth has slowed. The customer has moved on. A category you once understood is behaving differently. A new competitor is rewriting the rules and leaving you behind.

Or perhaps things are working, but if you're honest you're not really sure why and you need to figure it out so that you can do more of it.

These are the questions we love.

  • ↳How do we make a legacy brand relevant again?+

    The brand still has awareness. It still has history. People still know the name.

    But knowing you and choosing you are two very different things.

    What still matters? What needs to change? And what should never be touched?

  • ↳Our market has moved on. Have we?+

    Customer expectations change. New behaviours emerge. Categories blur. Competitors arrive from places you weren't watching.

    Sometimes the business keeps doing what made it successful long after the reason it worked has disappeared.

    Where has the market moved — and where should we move with it?

  • ↳How do we find the next source of growth?+

    You've spent years optimising the core business.

    Eventually, squeezing harder isn't enough.

    The next opportunity might sit with a different customer, occasion, channel, product, proposition or market.

    Where should we place the next bet?

  • ↳We've built something new. Will anybody care?+

    The business loves the product.

    The technology is clever. The functionality is better. The team can explain exactly why it's different.

    But customers aren't buying the engineering.

    What does this actually unlock for them?

  • ↳How far can our brand stretch?+

    There's an opportunity sitting next door to the business you already have.

    But entering it could unlock significant growth — or dilute the very thing that made you successful.

    Where do you have permission to play?

  • ↳The business is performing (for now). But what's next?+

    Sometimes nothing is obviously broken.

    That's exactly when the most interesting questions appear.

    What aren't we seeing? What is changing around us? Where are customers heading? What could threaten the business? Where could the next disproportionate opportunity come from?

    You don't have to wait for a problem to start looking for the next opportunity.

You don't need to know the answer before you call us.

That's rather the point.

How we think

Start with people. Not assumptions.

Most organisations know an extraordinary amount about their own business. The danger is that eventually you become too close to it.

  • Internal language becomes normal.
  • Assumptions become facts.
  • Everyone knows why something exists, so you assume customers do too.

We step outside the organisation and look back in.

We get close to customers. Look at behaviour rather than simply what people say. Pull apart the category. Challenge internal assumptions. Find contradictions. Connect things that haven't been connected before.

Then we work out what it means commercially — and what to do about it.

Our approach

We don't start with the deliverable.
We start with the question.

The answer might be a new proposition. A different customer. An untapped market. A product opportunity. A completely different experience.

Or it might be validating the hunch you've had that the rest of the business can't yet see.

Our job isn't to sell you a predetermined answer. It's to understand the real challenge and work out what happens next.

How we work

Get close. Pull it apart. Figure out what it actually means. Define what's next.

We combine deep customer understanding, commercial thinking and creative problem solving.

We use whatever the challenge needs: research, workshops, strategic sprints, customer immersion, proposition development, commercial modelling, prototyping and creative thinking.

The biggest challenges don't sit neatly in one part of a business. So we don't work in silos. We bring the right people together from across the organisation, combining different perspectives to understand the problem and work out what comes next.

No enormous strategy deck that nobody opens again.

A clear and concise way forward.

Proof

Challenges that have stopped our clients from sleeping.

FMCG: DRINK

01

Future growth / Portfolio strategy / Customer understanding

How do you future-proof a business when 60% of its revenue is tied to one product?

A major drinks business had a hugely successful product at the centre of its commercial model. But customer behaviour around the category was changing.

The question wasn't simply how to sell more of the existing product. It was: where should future growth come from if the thing that made the business successful couldn't be relied upon forever?

We helped the team get underneath changing customer behaviour, understand where future value could sit and identify the strategic choices available to the business. Then we went about creating a prototype to test in the real world.

FMCG: CONFECTIONERY

02

Next generation / Brand relevance / Customer understanding / Product innovation

How do you make an iconic brand matter to the next generation?

An iconic confectionery brand had been part of people's lives for generations. But heritage doesn't automatically create relevance.

We needed to understand a new generation on their terms: how their world was changing, what mattered to them and what role an established brand could credibly play within it, and what would these products need to look/feel like and deliver to appeal.

The question wasn't: how do we make young people like us? It was: what does this brand need to mean to a generation growing up in a completely different world?

FMCG: FOOD TECH

03

Customer understanding / Proposition / Commercial opportunity

What if customers aren't buying what you think you're selling?

A food innovation business had developed a genuinely clever product. Inside the business, the story centred around the product itself: how it was made, the technology behind it and why it was functionally better.

However, customers weren't thinking about the technology. They were thinking about their own lives.

We went back to the customer to understand what they actually valued, the progress the product enabled and where the commercial opportunity really sat, and how does it need to be communicated.

Often the breakthrough isn't changing the product. It's understanding what people are really buying.

HEALTH TECH

04

Future proposition / Service innovation / Commercial strategy

What would you build if you weren't constrained by what exists today?

A specialist healthcare organisation wanted to rethink how people with ADHD and executive functioning challenges are supported. The easy answer would have been to improve the existing service.

Instead, we started with a different question: what do people actually need to live better lives?

That meant looking beyond diagnosis and beyond the existing operating model to understand the experience before, during and after someone asks for support. We brought cross-functional teams together to rethink the proposition, experience, partnerships and commercial model from the ground up.

The ambition wasn't a slightly better version of today. It was to ask what should exist tomorrow.

FMCG: FOOD

05

Growth strategy / Customer understanding / Proposition

How do you take a brand from niche to mainstream without losing the people who got you there?

A fast-growing food brand had built a strong following within a relatively small audience. The business wanted to grow beyond it.

The obvious answer was to market harder to more people. Instead, we went back to the category and the customer to understand why the proposition wasn't travelling.

The breakthrough was deceptively simple: from a dairy-free alternative designed around a specialist audience, to a delicious product that happens to be dairy-free.

The shift created a platform for the brand to reach a much bigger audience without abandoning the customers who already loved it.

What we can help you crack

The approach depends on the challenge.

  • Sometimes it'sabout getting clarity on the customer.
  • Sometimes it'sa new or tightened proposition.
  • Sometimes it'sentering a market you hadn't considered.
  • Sometimes it'schanging the product or identifying product extension/innovation.
  • Sometimes it'srethinking the whole customer experience.
  • Sometimes it'sgetting the organisation aligned around one direction.
  • And sometimes it'sstopping the thing you were convinced you needed to do.

Our work can take us into:

  • Customer understanding and segmentation
  • Future proposition and innovation
  • Market and category opportunity
  • Positioning and value proposition
  • Portfolio and product decisions
  • Customer experience
  • Go-to-market
  • Commercial opportunity
  • Organisational alignment
  • Brand and communications

Why Sprowt

The right brains for the problem.

Sprowt isn't a traditional consultancy and it isn't an agency.

We build senior, specialist teams around the challenge in front of us.

People who've worked inside some of the world's biggest organisations and fastest-growing challengers. Researchers. Strategists. Commercial thinkers. Creatives. Operators.

Different brains see different things.

Our job is to bring the right ones together.

Businesses naturally optimise what already exists.

Tweak the existing product slightly. Spend more money on advertising. Refresh the brand look and feel. Get in a new agency.

Sometimes that's exactly the right answer.

Sometimes you need someone to ask whether you're solving the right problem in the first place. That's where we come in.

Trying to work out what comes next?

It doesn't need to be a perfect brief.

In fact, we'd rather it wasn't.

Tell us what's keeping you awake. What's changed. What doesn't make sense. The thing you're seeing that nobody else in the business seems to see. Or the decision you can't quite make.

We'll start there.

We need to talk →
bring us the difficult questionbring us the difficult question