Much like the King of England was born into his life as royalty, I was born into this life of the grocery industry. Okay okay, royalty and grocery cannot even be compared but I thought that would be a good ice breaker to introduce myself.
It was about 30 years ago that my father had started a distribution company for licensed sports product (NCAA, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, FIFA, NASCAR) to grocery, drug and c-stores where we created shopper marketing displays and did category management. In middle school and high school, I would spend my summers and weekends working in the warehouse doing pick n pack for chains like Meijer and Kroger. In high school, I started to work with vendors, handle shipping logistics, work with account management for the retailers. In college, I owned the accounts for Publix, Walgreens and CVS where I worked with category managers, buyers, district managers and store managers. I built p.o.p. displays and planograms as well as sold product through corporate offices.
In 2015, I joined SwiftIQ, a data analytics start-up because I have a passion for helping the industry move forward to compete with e-commerce and best serve shopper needs. I brought the first grocery chain client and a $26.5B CPG client. To be all hands on deck for the companies needs, I transitioned to client success to consult with clients to take the data to create activations in shopper marketing, shrinkage, distribution and new retailer promotional programs.