Below base case,a published record.

The principle

Cycles settle above base, within base or below base. The platform publishes all three. Hiding the below-base cycles would turn the archive from a record into a marketing document and once that happens, the above-base cycles lose their meaning too. Selective transparency is worse than none.

The record is useful only if it is complete. That's the principle. The rest of this note is what it resembles in practice.

Cycle #39, the setup

Cycle #39 opened on 2 January 2026: Koroneiki extra-virgin olive oil from a first-cycle Peloponnese cooperative, 2,400 boxes, 6 × 750 ml bottles per box, 75-day resale window into the UK, Germany and Austria. The brief carried the full chemistry (acidity 0.28, peroxide 8.4, K232 1.91), PDO certification, the conservative margin anchor at +6.2%, base at +10.4%, optimistic at +14.8%.

Gate-2 review included a factory audit, a first-cycle supplier on a specialty category warrants the full pass. The audit cleared. Sample testing cleared. Pre-authorisation channel scan showed reasonable depth in specialty food retail across all three destination markets at the base-case price.

The cycle filled on day 7, on the faster side of the window. Shipment from Piraeus departed on 18 January; Rotterdam arrival on 2 February.

What went right

Origin inspection cleared without flag. Shipment documentation was clean. Hub clearance at Rotterdam was routine. The supplier communicated milestones on schedule and responded to pre-shipment queries within the platform-level SLA.

What went wrong

Two things, both visible on the record.

Labelling correction at the hub. The German-market allocation had a labelling discrepancy, a nutrition-panel line that didn't match the LFGB requirement for that specific presentation. Caught at hub re-inspection, corrected at the hub before release. That's the re-inspection doing its job. The correction cost sat on the 3PL handling line, running the line from the modelled 3.1% to an actual 4.2%.

Channel softening in DACH. More consequentially, specialty-food retail demand softened across DACH during the 75-day window. A larger incumbent dropped price on a mid-tier comparable early in the window. Our channel mix held UK at near-base pricing, but the Austrian and German resale lanes cleared 17% below the base-case channel price on average.

The settlement

Outcome: below base. Net to members came in at a level that reflected both the hub-handling adjustment and the DACH channel compression. The settlement statement carries the itemisation:

• Bulk procurement, at the contracted figure.
• 3PL handling, at 4.2% (above the modelled 3.1%) with the labelling adjustment isolated on its own sub-line.
• Partner commissions, reflecting actual DACH channel pricing, which means a lower realised revenue before commission.
• Platform fee, at the disclosed percentage, applied to the realised figure.

Every line reads the same way it would on an above-base cycle. That's the point.

What stays on the record

The ledger retains all 47 events. The labelling discrepancy is on the exception log, with the inspector signature and the corrective action. The channel compression is documented in the per-channel partner settlement export. The outcome band is stamped below base on the archive entry. The case study at /case-studies summarises the cycle alongside three others, without framing.

The Peloponnese cooperative is still in the supplier directory. The gate-2 review on their next cycle will reference this one, the labelling catch is on their supplier record, with the remediation.

Why the transparency matters

Physical commerce has variance. Channels soften. Labelling catches exist because inspection catches them. A platform that only publishes its above-base cycles is not a platform that members, suppliers or partners can rely on, because the first time a cycle disappoints someone, the omission is conspicuous.

Treviya runs on a different principle. Every cycle the platform has closed is in the archive. Each one reads the same way. That's the architecture behind the word documented and it's the reason the cycle briefs on the live book can be read as serious commitments rather than marketing.