Offer Architecture
Category: offers
Sources: trace-summary-services-icp-competitors-background.md, Services & Offers Notion workspace (2026-08-01), Glen chat direction 2026-08-16 (Range Review single public model, Certification Project public scope narrowing), MASTER-BUSINESS-PLAN.md (Trace Launch project, fetched 2026-08-23 — current eight-service ladder, all pricing, and the reversed publishing rule)
Confidence: high
Last Updated: 2026-08-23
Service Philosophy
Trace PPE Pathway: Know the route. Move the product. Regain control. Build capability.
Eight services, every price public, no "contact us for pricing" anywhere in the model. Services are grouped by the customer journey stage and tied together by this pathway. All fixed-fee services and retainers exclude laboratory and certification-body fees, which are separate, approved in writing, and passed on at cost without markup.
Get started
- Free Triage, Second Opinion
Know the route
- Route Finder
Move the product forward
- Certification Management
Regain control
- Issue Response, Range Review, Embedded Support
Build capability
- Training
0. Free Triage — £0
Positioning line: Fifteen minutes to find out if you're in the right place.
Who it's for: Anyone unsure whether their product is PPE, or whether Trace is the right kind of help at all.
Problem solved: The visitor cannot yet tell if they have a compliance question worth paying to answer.
What it is: A literal 15-minute call, booked directly as a cal.com event — no form, no service page, no deliverable.
Deliverable: A qualification decision: is this PPE, is it in Trace's scope, and what's the right next step. No written output.
Boundaries: Qualification only. No route mapping, no technical opinion, no written record.
0.5 Second Opinion — £395
Positioning line: Someone else built the file. Find out if it holds up before you rely on it.
Who it's for: A brand about to rely on documentation nobody independent has checked — an inherited technical file, a supplier's or factory's evidence pack, or a file the team wrote itself and wants vetted before a test house or certification body sees it.
Problem solved: The client cannot tell whether documentation is actually sound — before commercial decisions are made on top of it, or before it goes in front of a test house or certification body.
What it is: An independent pre-submission review of one product's technical file or a supplier's/factory's evidence pack, read with Glen's assessor experience and informed by Trace's record of what individual bodies and test houses usually raise. Never a guarantee of first-time acceptance.
Deliverable: A written verdict plus a gap list.
Credit mechanic: The full £395 is credited against a Range Review booked within 60 days.
Boundaries: Covers only the one product or pack specified. Not a certification opinion, not a full range audit.
1. Route Finder — £495
Public card labels (the eight-service expansion of the four stages). The four pathway stages above are the internal spine. The public site expands them into one verb-led label per service, because several services can share one stage label and identical labels on adjacent cards read as duplication (Glen, 2026-08-17):
| Stage | Service | Public card label |
|---|---|---|
| Get started | Free Triage | Start here |
| Get started | Second Opinion | Check what you've got |
| Know the route | Route Finder | Know the route |
| Move the product | Certification Management | Move the product |
| Regain control | Range Review | Account for the range |
| Regain control | Issue Response | Get it under control |
| Regain control | Embedded Support | Put a name against it |
| Build capability | Training | Build capability |
The four-stage pathway remains the canon structure and is what the Services page's stage rows use. The card labels are card-level only.
Positioning line: Know the route before you commit.
Who it's for: Startups developing a new protective product; established brands entering a new product or market; founders, product leaders, and teams preparing to bring PPE to market.
Problem solved: The team is about to commit budget but does not know the correct order of action, what evidence is needed, which dependencies matter, or where material risks sit.
What it is: A fixed-fee, five-working-day review for a team needing to understand the route before committing major budget, testing, certification activity, or launch effort.
Deliverable: Current position, product understanding, route and sequence, cost and dependency view, evidence position, material risks and assumptions, clear next decision.
Credit mechanic: The full £495 is credited against Certification Management.
Boundaries: Trace advises and maps the route. The review covers only the product family and variants specified during agreed product intake. Any subsequent product families or variants not specified at that point require separate agreement. Independent laboratories, notified bodies, and regulators retain their own decisions.
Status: Price confirmed at £495 — public, per the Publishing Rule below. Exact scope, required pre-work information and follow-on handover remain controlled by the current service specification.
2. Certification Management — £1,500
Positioning line: Move PPE certification forward.
Who it's for: Brands with understood route; product and technical teams preparing for testing or certification; teams needing one technical point of coordination.
Problem solved: Route is broadly known, but the client lacks time or capacity to manage the chasing, updates, submissions, evidence, and actions needed to keep the PPE project moving.
What it is: A defined project for PPE products where the route is understood and the client needs help preparing, coordinating, documenting, or progressing testing and certification activity.
Pricing: £1,500 for the anchor Full Certification Management scope. Repeat clients get a 10% discount on subsequent projects (£1,350), applied only where client route, documentation structure, and working relationship are already established — a materially different product, market, or route is priced as a new first project.
Delivery scopes (private internal reference; only Full and Documentation-only are pushed publicly):
| Scope | First product | Repeat client (10% off) | Publicly pushed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Certification Management | £1,500 | £1,350 | Yes |
| Documentation-only | £950 | £855 | Yes |
| Testing-only coordination | £350 | £315 | No — internal option only |
| Certification-only coordination | £350 | £315 | No — internal option only |
Only Full Certification Management and Documentation-only are pushed as public entry points. Testing-only and Certification-only coordination remain real, quotable delivery scopes but are not presented as public choices — they're offered case by case once a client's situation makes one of them the right fit. (The sub-scope repeat prices are the general 10%-off rule applied consistently to each scope — worth Glen confirming these figures directly rather than inferring them, since the master plan only states the discount for the anchor £1,500 scope.)
What Full Project includes: Defined scope and responsibility map, prepared information and documentation, test and certification coordination, visible actions/dependencies/decisions, weekly written status updates, clear handover and maintenance requirements. Includes one round of corrections; test house fees and additional retest rounds are quoted separately.
What Documentation-only includes: Review and organise product evidence, prepare or update technical documentation, prepare evidence index, prepare DoC draft, coordinate IFU/marking/product information inputs, weekly status updates.
What Testing-only includes: Confirm testing brief, prepare test-house submission, coordinate sample and document requirements, manage questions and actions, track reports and outstanding points, weekly status updates.
What Certification-only includes: Prepare certification submission, coordinate with certification body, track comments/requests/actions, manage submission updates and follow-up, weekly status updates.
Boundaries: Trace prepares and coordinates. Trace works with test houses and certification bodies but does not perform independent testing, issue certificates, or control certification decisions. Test-house and certification-body fees are separate.
3. Range Review — £500 + £150/product
Positioning line: Know what to keep, fix, or remove.
Who it's for: Established PPE brands with live ranges; businesses that have inherited a product portfolio; brands with product, evidence, or certificate uncertainty; commercial, quality, product, and technical leaders.
Problem solved: The business has PPE products in development, in stock, or on market, but cannot confidently see which products are properly supported, which evidence belongs to each product, what is missing, or which products should be kept, fixed, consolidated, paused, or removed.
What it is: Range Review is one public service — the Portfolio Review. It establishes what products are supported, what evidence belongs to each product, what needs attention, and which products should be kept, fixed, consolidated, paused, or removed.
Deliverables: Defined range population and review boundary, product-to-evidence view, review of reports/certificates/technical documentation/DoC/IFU/markings/claims, documentation and traceability gaps, risk and priority assessment, product-level recommendation (retain/fix/consolidate/pause/remove), compliance calendar and next-cycle plan, ownership and action order, next commercial or technical decision.
Pricing: £150 per product, no setup fee, no minimum.
Worked examples: 1 product = £150 · 5 = £750 · 10 = £1,500 · 20 = £3,000. Genuinely exceptional products may be quoted separately.
(Superseded 2026-08-24: Range Review previously had a £500 setup fee and a separate "Deep Product Review" tier at £350/product, offered only after the main review flagged a product. That structure is retired. Range Review is now one flat £150-per-product price, with no separate deeper tier.)
Entry path: Second Opinion is the natural single-product entry for a brand not ready to commit a whole range; the £395 fee credits in full against a Range Review booked within 60 days.
Boundaries: Range Review identifies and prioritises issues. It is not automatic certification, legal opinion, recall-management service, or guarantee of market access.
4. Issue Response — £495–£1,250, triage then severity-priced
Positioning line: Get PPE issues under control.
Who it's for: PPE brands facing a defined active issue; founders and technical/commercial leaders under launch pressure; teams needing rapid technical organisation.
Problem solved: PPE product is about to ship, stuck in testing, held up in certification, challenged by marketplace, or affected by serious documentation or safety concern. Need someone to establish position quickly, coordinate response, and keep next actions moving.
What it is: Priority technical support when a defined issue has interrupted a PPE product project or live product route. All issues arrive in writing — there is no phone route, by design.
Deliverables: Defined issue and affected scope, evidence and product position, immediate facts and uncertainties, response plan and priorities, coordination actions, clear owners, deadlines, and next decision.
Pricing by severity level, after triage:
| Level | Name | Price | Response time |
|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | Contained | £495 | 2 working days |
| L2 | Urgent | £795 | 1 working day |
| L3 | Critical | £1,250 | 4 hours |
The public page maps each level to common example issue types so clients self-classify — a failed or disputed test, a certification body raising unresolved questions, a marketplace or distributor challenge, a supplier-document or evidence problem, a product-change of uncertain effect, or a recall/regulatory response. L3 has an emergency booking event. L1 and L2 are always billed outside Embedded Support retainers; a retainer never silently absorbs incident work.
Each price covers defined issue scope, initial review, agreed response actions, and clear next decision. Wider remediation, legal work, recall management, or multi-product work requires separate approval and scope.
Boundaries: This is an exceptional entry route, not a guaranteed resolution service. Trace does not provide legal advice or control decisions made by regulators, marketplaces, test houses, or certification bodies.
(Superseded 2026-08-23: this service priced by issue type — Testing £450, Certification £650, Marketplace £750, Supplier-document £450, Product-change £650, Recall £950 — until the master plan replaced that model with the severity-tier table above. The issue-type language is kept here as descriptive examples of what each severity level covers, not as separate prices.)
5. Embedded Support (from £750/month, built from selected tasks)
Positioning line: Technical responsibility without a full hire.
Who it's for: Growing PPE brands without a full technical team; businesses with recurring product, supplier, evidence, or certification decisions; teams needing external technical owner or structured oversight.
Problem solved: Important technical decisions are recurring, ownership is unclear, or the business needs a technical function before a full-time hire is justified.
What it is: Ongoing technical responsibility and advisory support for a PPE business that needs continuity without immediately hiring a full internal function. There is no entry-tier "Watch" plan. Every client configures their package from the same fixed task menu:
| Task | What it covers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Technical Q&A | Any team member can ask quick technical questions, at any time | Included, unlimited |
| Second Opinion | Review of documentation the client's team is preparing or has submitted, factory reports, certification body comments, test failures, and product development decisions. This is the existing Second Opinion service, now also available inside a retainer instead of bought one-off | Flat monthly fee |
| New documentation | Glen creates technical documentation for a product from scratch, using his standard process and templates. The client submits it themselves. The client picks how many sets a month | Per set, by band: Small £855, Medium £700, Large £600 |
| Organisation | Glen manages testing and certification submissions directly with test houses, certification bodies, and factories, including matters already in progress when the client joins. Comes with a weekly project status update | Flat monthly fee |
| Forward planning | A half-day planning session with Glen covering new and existing products, timelines, costs, tests required, and renewal schedules. Bookable once every 3 months while the retainer is active | Flat monthly fee |
| Range Review | The client nominates products each month for a full Range Review: verdict, risk, and costed next actions per product | £150 per product |
Second Opinion, New documentation, and Organisation are each sized behind the scenes from one fact the client already knows: how many products the business handles a year. This is not shown to the client as a formula. New documentation and Range Review are both priced directly: the client states a number, the price is that number times the per-unit rate (New documentation's rate itself varies by band; Range Review's does not), with nothing hidden.
Band pricing (internal, not shown to the client as bands):
| Task | Small (1–10 products/yr) | Medium (11–30/yr) | Large (31+/yr) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Second Opinion | £150/month | £275/month | £450/month |
| New documentation | £855/set | £700/set | £600/set |
| Organisation | £150/month | £300/month | £500/month |
| Forward planning | £150/month | £200/month | £250/month |
Range Review stays £150 per product nominated, at any band, the only task with no band variation at all.
Deliverables: Written responsibility schedule, named owners and response route, agreed rhythm and access, review points and clear exclusions, and the outputs of whichever tasks are switched on.
Price floor: £750/month minimum, regardless of what's selected.
Key distinction: A retainer is not undefined access. Scope, response expectations, and independent-party responsibilities must be explicit. Normally begins with a Range Review.
Boundaries: Embedded Support normally begins with a Range Review. Pricing is based on responsibility and product volume, not hours. The client retains responsibility for product claims, final approval, DoC signature, and third-party costs. Issue Response L1/L2 always sits outside the retainer, even when Organisation is active.
(Superseded 2026-08-23: this service previously published three named fixed tiers — Advisory £750/mo, Oversight £1,500/mo, Operations from £2,500/mo. The master plan replaced that structure with the Watch + configurator model above. Flagging for Glen: the old Operations detail — "one standard new-product documentation set included, each additional standard new product adds £500/month" — may still describe how a large configured package is built; worth confirming whether that mechanic survives inside the new configurator or needs restating.)
6. Training — £750–£3,500, interim pricing
Positioning line: Build PPE capability.
Who it's for: PPE product-development teams; technical, quality, and compliance teams; new starters working with PPE; teams overly dependent on one technical specialist; brands wanting internal PPE champions.
Problem solved: Teams are expected to make PPE compliance decisions but lack confidence, structure, or practical understanding to do so consistently. Important knowledge sits with one person, and documentation, product, evidence, testing, and certification decisions are often disconnected.
What it is: Practical, interactive PPE training built around real decisions, evidence problems, documentation failures, and product questions that teams face when bringing PPE to market. Delivered through Trace's app-based training platform. Prices are interim and flagged as such on-site until a ground-up costing of the course content replaces them.
Three sessions:
| Session | Price | Format | Duration | Location | Audience |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PPE Foundation Training | £750 | Individual or group, with Glen | Half day | Remote | All PPE teams |
| PPE Document Workshop | £1,750 | Individual or group, with Glen | Full day | In person | Teams building documentation capability |
| Motorcycle PPE Training | £1,500 | Individual or group, with Glen, client's products | One day | In person | Motorcycle protective-apparel brands |
| Complete three-session pathway | £3,500 | Combination | — | Mixed | Teams building full capability |
Format note: "Individual or group, with Glen" — never "one-to-one." All three sessions can be delivered to one person or a whole team; the constant is that Glen personally delivers it, not an associate.
PPE Foundation Training introduces the Product → Evidence → Certificate → Claim chain, core PPE compliance concepts, CE and UKCA requirements, who does what across product/testing/certification/documentation, common failure points, and how to ask better compliance questions. Does not train people to become technical PPE specialists.
PPE Document Workshop is individual or group, with Glen, working through Trace's interactive platform around real-world documentation failures, evidence gaps, certification-body questions, test-house issues, product variant decisions, practical solutions, and methods for keeping documentation usable and current. Covers the whole documentation set (technical file, Declaration of Conformity, IFU, marking) and how they cross-reference each other, plus storage/readability and the minor-modification update process. Intended outcome: develop internal PPE documentation champions who can recognise problems earlier, challenge weak evidence, and reduce dependence on one specialist.
Motorcycle PPE Training is product-specific for motorcycle protective apparel, built around the client's own motorcycle products and range, including product decisions, protective components and claims, evidence and testing, technical documentation, certification questions, product variants and changes, and common motorcycle PPE failure points.
Before session: Client completes short product intake covering product types/families, intended protection claims, current standards/certificates, product variants, known testing/certification issues, and questions. Trace maps relevant standards pathway from agreed product scope.
After session: Client receives short action summary covering product routes discussed, relevant standards, key decisions, evidence or documentation gaps, questions requiring external confirmation, and recommended next actions, plus two Q&A sessions of up to one hour each, bookable at no additional charge.
Boundaries: Trace provides practical training and capability development. Training does not replace independent testing, certification-body assessment, legal advice, or the client's responsibility for its products and market decisions.
Status: Fees confirmed as interim pending a ground-up course-content costing. Complete pathway saves £500 against booking sessions separately. Interactive platform design and build are managed separately.
Publishing Rule: Prices Are Public
Reversed 2026-08-23. Every price on the service ladder is published. There is no "contact us for pricing" anywhere in the model, and no service is priced only in a private conversation. Placement is controlled: each price appears once — on the service's own page, and at the diagnosis tool's recommendation moment — never in footers, navigation, cards or comparison tables. See Website Redesign Direction's Public Presentation Policies for the full placement rule.
History, for the record: the rule ran the other way for most of this wiki's life. Route Finder's £395 fixed fee was the one named exception on the old public site (src/route-finder.html, .hero-price), confirmed intentional 2026-08-09 as a friction-reducing entry price, then reversed 2026-08-12 when Glen pulled all pricing from public copy ("I don't want people getting a headstart on mine") — the concern being that publishing any price, even a low anchor, gives competitors a free read on Trace's pricing structure. That no-prices rule held until the master plan set the current, opposite rule on or before 2026-08-23: every price public, by design, as a trust and friction-reduction signal for the new site build. Where CLAUDE.md's Website Copy Rules still state the old no-prices rule, that rule now governs the old website only (digital-home/frontend/) — see CLAUDE.md's Website Redesign section — not the current model this article describes.
Flag for Glen: this is a full reversal of a deliberate, previously-confirmed decision, not a small correction. Worth an explicit yes/no that "every price public" is really the final call before it's built into new website copy — see wiki/log.md for the dated entry.
Offer Progression
Customers typically enter through:
- Free Triage if unsure whether they're in the right place at all
- Second Opinion if they already hold documentation someone else produced and need it checked
- Route Finder if starting fresh (startups with new products)
- Range Review if managing an established business
From there, they progress to:
- Certification Management for defined product launches
- Issue Response for urgent matters
- Embedded Support for ongoing responsibility
- Training for capability building (can run alongside other services)