CASE FILE / 001 · INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS

The Revenue Illusion.

About this project. The business brief and dataset in this case study are simulated, built to mirror a Nigerian e-commerce business. The data cleaning, analysis and dashboards are original BEXIRA work.

The business problem

In this scenario, a growing e-commerce retailer had watched revenue climb 18% year over year — a number that, on its own, looks like a success story. But profit wasn't following at the same pace, and no one could say exactly why: which products, cities or customers were actually driving the business forward, and which were quietly holding it back.

The data

A year of order-level e-commerce data spanning three product categories and three cities, deliberately seeded with common real-world data problems — missing values, duplicate records, inconsistent formatting — and cleaned before any analysis began.

20,000orders analysed

1,500unique customers

3product categories

3cities

What we investigated

Instead of just showing charts, we asked business questions:

Which product categories are actually driving profit, not just revenue?
Which cities are the strongest and weakest performers, and why?
Which products deserve more attention — and which are quietly underperforming?
Which customers are worth protecting, and which have already started to disengage?

What the analysis revealed

Electronics generates the highest revenue of any category, but converts it to profit at the lowest margin — 38.1%, versus 52.3% for Fashion on about 31% less revenue.
Port Harcourt leads on order volume, but Lagos and Abuja run at nearly identical margins — meaning there's room to grow profit simply by increasing volume in markets already performing well.
The Prada Handbag drives the highest absolute profit in the catalog, but the Zara Midi Dress converts most efficiently at a 61.1% margin — while several Electronics products sit at the bottom on margin.
39.5% of the customer base is now At Risk or Lost — nearly matching the 36.4% who are Champions or Loyal, meaning retention is roughly as large a factor in future revenue as new customer acquisition.

Why this matters: revenue growth without margin discipline can mask real fragility. A category can look like the engine of the business while quietly being its weakest link — and a customer base can look stable in aggregate while nearly 4 in 10 relationships are already fraying.

The dashboards

CartPulse executive dashboard (simulated data): revenue and profit by category, with Electronics margin well below Fashion. — **Revenue and profit both look healthy at a glance.** It's only when profit margin is broken out by category (bottom right) that Electronics' 38.13% margin — nearly 15 points behind Fashion's 52.31% — becomes visible.

CartPulse regional and product performance dashboard (simulated data): profit and margin by city and by product. — **The Prada Handbag looks like the star performer on absolute profit** — but the Zara Midi Dress, well down the revenue list, is actually the most efficient product in the catalog at 61.1% margin, nearly double what Electronics products typically return.

CartPulse customer segmentation dashboard (simulated data): 39.5% of customers At Risk or Lost, compared with about 36% Champions or Loyal. — **593 customers — 39.5% of the base — are now At Risk or Lost,** almost matching the 547 Champions and Loyal customers who drive the bulk of repeat revenue.

Recommendation

What the data demonstrates

Electronics is the volume leader but the weakest margin performer of the three categories.
Nearly 4 in 10 customers show clear disengagement signals.
Lagos and Abuja have room to close the order-volume gap with Port Harcourt without a margin penalty.

What BEXIRA recommends the business consider

Review pricing and supplier cost on the specific low-margin Electronics SKUs identified — not the category broadly.
Build a win-back offer targeted at the At-Risk segment before those customers convert to Lost.
Test whether marketing spend could be reallocated toward Lagos and Abuja, given their comparable margins to Port Harcourt.

Business impact

We don't invent financial outcomes that weren't measured. What this analysis points to is a realistic opportunity: correcting even part of the Electronics margin gap, or recovering a share of the At-Risk segment before it lapses, would meaningfully improve profitability — without requiring the business to sell any more than it already does. The opportunity here isn't more revenue. It's keeping more of what's already being earned.

Have a business question hiding in your data?

Start a project