Summary
A surgical Doppler manufacturer engaged Revenue Management Labs to build a data-driven price increase strategy across its disposable probe and transceiver portfolio — a proprietary disposable doppler line and a recently acquired reusable doppler brand. Despite strong volume growth and high retention, the portfolio’s three lines sat in very different pricing positions.
- The newly acquired reusable probes were the market’s lowest-priced option, selling at less than half their closest competitor’s price
- The disposable probes, despite delivering the highest value in their segment, were priced in line with the broader market
- The flagship transceiver sat above most competitors, blocking capital-equipment adoption and the recurring probe revenue that follows each placement
Challenge
The client’s primary goal was to convert operating-room customers from reusable probes to its disposable probes, but its own pricing worked against it. Since a reusable probe is typically spread across 8-10 uses, its cost per procedure ran far below a disposable’s, making the switch hard to justify even when clinicians preferred disposables. That comparison, however, overlooked a hidden cost: reusable probes frequently fail during the sterilization process, so a probe rarely reaches its full 8-10 uses, bringing the true cost per procedure far closer to a disposable’s than list price implied.
The second challenge was determining how to price all three lines going forward. The client had been making ad hoc adjustments with no underlying framework: reusable prices had risen only about 10% since acquisition despite clearly inelastic demand, the disposable probes were priced in line with the market even though they delivered the highest value in their segment, and the transceiver sat above most hospitals’ capital-equipment thresholds.
The core issue was not a lack of pricing power, but the absence of a structured framework for setting price across the portfolio.
Solution
The recommendation sets a deliberate price position for each line rather than another round of ad hoc adjustments.
We took a 55% price increase on the core reusable SKUs (i.e., a blended 33% across the portfolio), closing most of the gap to fair value while still undercutting the nearest competitor, with the sales team equipped to defend it on true cost per use rather than list price.
Disposable-probe prices were held, leaving room to see how the market absorbs the reusable move before adjusting. Rather than push the proposed ~4% increase on the disposable line, the team could capture the same upside by converting just four reusable accounts to the disposable system — roughly $192,000 in net revenue, matching the price increase at far lower stakes, with no volume risk and no need to test customer tolerance for another hike.
The transceiver was reduced by ~10% to bring it under hospital capital-equipment budgets, clearing the CapEx barrier to adoption. With each placement, the recurring disposable-probe revenue follows it.
