Assortment Planning: The Holy Grail of Retail

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	Dale Achabal - Keynote Speaker Achabal is the L.J. Skaggs Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Research & Development at Santa Clara University. He is also the Director of the Retail Management Institute and the Retail Workbench Research & Education Center, sponsored by a consortium of leading retailers from around the world. Professor Achabal is active in research focusing on the development of decision support and knowledge systems and multi-channel retailing strategies. He has published numerous articles in leading journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Retailing, Management Science, Decision Sciences, Geographical Analysis, and Social Science & Medicine. He is also a member of the CIO Council of the National Retail Federation (NRF), the Editorial Board of the Journal of Retailing and a recipient of three national awards for his research. Professor Achabal received his Ph.D. in Marketing and Regional Economics from The University of Texas at Austin. He has taught in the undergraduate, graduate, and executive development programs at a number of leading universities around the world, including the University of California – Berkeley; University of Florida; ACRS - Monash University, Australia; the Norwegian School of Management; Ohio State University; Oxford University - Templeton College; Sup de Co - Rouen, France; The University of Texas; and Tilburg University - Tias Business School in The Netherlands.

	Lisa M. Bachmann Senior Vice President Information Technology/Merchandise Planning and Allocation Big Lots, Inc. Lisa Bachmann is Senior Vice President of Information Technology/Merchandise Planning and Allocation for Big Lots, Inc., a Fortune 500 retail corporation with annual revenues exceeding $4 billion. As the nation’s largest broadline closeout retailer, Big Lots offers consumers a wide range of bargain-priced merchandise, including brand-name closeouts, seasonal products, consumables, and furniture. Bachmann joined Big Lots in 2002 as Senior Vice President of Merchandise Planning and Allocation, directing all aspects of merchandise planning, open-to-buy, allocation, and replenishment for more than 1,500 stores in 47 states. In 2005, her role was expanded to include responsibility for mission-critical information technology for all areas of the company, including supply chain management, merchandise planning, allocation, distribution, store operations, fi nance, human resources, and business processes. Bachmann brings over two decades of retail and fi nancial expertise to her position. Prior to joining Big Lots, she was Senior Vice President of Planning and Allocation for Ames Department Stores, a general merchandise discount retailer. She also served as Vice President of Planning and Allocation for the Casual Corner Group, overseeing Casual Corner, August Max, and Petite Sophisticate brands. She holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Western New England College in Springfi eld, Mass.

	Maryann M. McGeorge Senior Vice President Merchandise Operations / Business Integration Polo Retail Group - Polo Ralph Lauren Maryann McGeorge is Senior Vice President of Merchandise Operations / Business Integration for the Retail Group of Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, a leader in the design, marketing and distribution of premium lifestyle products with annual revenues in excess of $3.7 billion. The Polo Retail Group consists of retail-channel sales directly to consumers through wholly owned, full-price and factory outlet stores located throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South America and Asia, and through our jointly-owned retail internet site located at www.polo.com. McGeorge joined Polo Ralph Lauren in 2000 as Senior Vice President of Merchandise Operations with responsibility for planning and allocation, retail supply chain, and retail MIS. In addition, she was charged with the development of common retail business process supported by retail systems implementation. With the roll-out of Polo Retail as a global concept, her role was expanded to include oversight of all retail format integration. McGeorge has over 30 years of retail experience. Prior to joining Polo Ralph Lauren, she was Senior Vice President of Merchandise Operations for Venator Group (formerly Woolworth Corp.) She also spent 20 years at Federated Department Stores serving in a variety of merchandising, store management, and planning/allocation assignments, completing her tenure there as the Senior Vice President of Merchandise Planning at Federated Merchandising Corp. She is a 1975 graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

	Debra L. Berit Executive Vice President Planning & Allocation Ann Taylor Stores Corporation Debbi Berit is Executive Vice President of Merchandise Planning, Store Planning and Allocation for Ann Taylor Stores Corporation, a premier women’s specialty retailer, with over 800 stores across the United States. She oversees the planning and allocation functions of all three Ann Taylor divisions; Ann Taylor, Ann Taylor Loft and Ann Taylor Factory. Berit joined Ann Taylor in 1996 as Director of Merchandise Planning for the Ann Taylor Loft division. She played a key role in the development of the Ann Taylor Loft brand, growing from 19 stores in 1997 to over 400 stores today, generating over $1B in sales. In 1997, she was promoted to VP of Planning & Allocation, then in 2001, promoted to SVP of Planning & Allocation for the Loft division. During this time, Berit was a key driver of systems development to support the Merchandising and Planning functions across the entire corporation. In 2004, Berit was promoted to Executive Vice President of Planning & Allocation for the corporation, adding Ann Taylor Stores and Ann Taylor Factory to her responsibilities. In her new role, she has initiated consistent business processes and standardized reporting tools across all divisions of the corporation. She is the Executive Sponsor for the new merchandising systems, with a heightened focus on Assortment Planning. Berit has 29 years of retail experience. Prior to joining Ann Taylor, she held senior merchandising roles at United Retail Group, Lerner New York, and Bradlees. She started her retail career as an executive trainee with Abraham & Straus. She is a 1977 graduate of University of Massachusetts, majoring in Fashion Merchandising.

	Bill Keith VP - Replenishment/Merchandise Support Belk Bill began his retail career over 25 years ago as an executive trainee with Belk. He subsequently held positions of merchandise training specialist, assistant buyer, buyer, DMM and Import/Sourcing Director. After a year as VP of Business to Business for E- Commerce, he became the Vice President of Merchandise Support and Replenishment. One of Bill’s primary roles is to provide direction on system requirements and improvements to support merchandise, planning, allocation and marketing efforts. Over his career, Bill has been responsible for leading the formulation of the Belk business-to-business strategy, documenting process changes (process re-engineering), and developing implementation, training and change management plans. In recent years, he has led the successful implementation of new replenishment and merchandise financial planning systems. Belk is in the process of implementing 7thOnLine for Assortment Planning which will be the foundation for increased and improved collaborative planning with vendor partners. 7thOnLine replaces the existing 3rd generation spreadsheet solution Bill helped develop and manage. Bill holds a BA in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte.

	Jeff Gragg IT Solutions Delivery Director, Hallmark Cards, Inc. Jeff has 20+ years of experience in both Retail and Consumer Products companies. He spent a significant number of years working for Payless Shoe Source, where he eventually held the position of Director of Merchandising Systems. During his time with Payless he participated as a leader and change agent on several business planning change initiatives. His experience included the implementation of Merchandise Planning, Demand Forecasting, Allocation, Inventory Management, Assortment Planning, Price Optimization, Marketing Effectiveness and Consumer Segmentation. For the past six years, Jeff has been with Hallmark Cards Inc. as Business Development Director - Retail and Channel, and as Director of Solutions Delivery. In these roles with Hallmark, Jeff has been responsible for the systems strategies for the Gold Crown Channel, as well as Mass Channel distribution systems, including Wal*mart, Walgreens and CVS. Jeff also continues to create change strategies and lead large initiatives such as Planning and Forecasting projects, Point-of-Sale, Distribution, etc. Jeff holds a Bachelors and Masters degrees in Business from Washburn University.

	Beth Thomas EVP of Learning Solutions Sequent, Inc.

	Peter Hora President Peter Hora & Associates Peter Hora has spent the last 30 years in the information technology industry providing independent consulting services to some of North America’s largest organizations. His broad information technology industry experience includes the retail, financial and transportation industries. He founded Peter Hora & Associates in 1989 as an independent consulting organization with the objective of providing complete consulting services to the retail industry. Peter has been managing large implementations and integrations of retail enterprise applications in some of North America’s most successful retailing organizations, including Giorgio Armani, Ann Taylor, Stokes, Kinko’s,Wet Seal, Reitmans Inc, Henry Birks and Sons, El Palacio de Hierro, Cato, Zellers and many others. He was among the earliest adopters of Retek software and pioneered the integration of complementary retail software applications that were later acquired and added to the Retek solution suite. His commitment to the retail industry software solutions suites and best of breed retail software products has resulted in significant insight into the process of implementing and integrating retail software applications. Peter Hora & Associates’ focus on effective integration and embedded business process optimization continues to deliver significant benefits and support the retail infrastructure requirements of their clients.

	Rick Amari - President, Columbus Consulting www.columbusconsultinginc.com/team_amari.htm Rick is the president of Columbus Consulting, having founded the company in 2001 after a successful 20 year plus career in retail. Rick began his career with Arthur Andersen in Chicago. After a few years in staff consulting roles, he found his love in retail and joined a Mid-Mountain Foods, a grocery wholesaler n southwest Virginia serving Piggly Wiggly and Food City stores. Rick initially held the position of Director of Data Processing and was later promoted to Vice-President Assistant General Manager. His responsibilities included IT, HR, Warehouse Operations, and Transportation. After 9 years, Rick and family relocated to their home state of Ohio as Rick joined the Victoria’s Secret Stores (VSS) division of The Limited (now LimitedBrands) as Project Director. Rick was promoted to VP IT for VSS in 1993 and led the group for 4 years during a significant growth and IT transition period. By 1997, The Limited had begun IT consolidation across the operating units and Rick moved into a central Group CIO position, leading IT organizations for the VSS, Limited Stores, Limited Too, Lerner Stores, and Lane Bryant divisions. Over the course of 20 months, these divisions became Y2K ready through a series of 16 major systems conversions, moving from a legacy mainframe environment to a best-of-breed consistent package environment. Just prior to Y2K, Rick added responsibility for the IT groups at Structure and Express divisions. Post Y2K, Rick led the home office system development teams across all Limitedbrands divisions including merchandise, planning and allocation, data warehouse, and financials. In 2001, Rick resigned from Limitedbrands to begin CCI. His client engagements have been extensive and include American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch, New York & Company, Disney Stores, Wet Seal, Longaberger Company, Ann Taylor, David’s Bridal, Charming Shoppes, Guitar Center, CVS, redEnvelope, and DSW Inc. He specializes in IT Strategy and Assessment (including Interim CIO), product development systems and processes, planning and allocation systems and processes, and data warehousing. Rick is a graduate of Georgia Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management. He earned his MBA from East Tennessee State. Rick has served on numerous industry groups and is currently on the Advisory Panel of ERI Journal. He resides in Columbus, Ohio with wife Mary Ann.

	Jon Beck - Principal, Columbus Consulting www.columbusconsultinginc.com/team_beck.htm Jon is a senior consultant who has been with Columbus Consulting since 2003. Jon started his career as a consultant for Comshare implementing the Arthur Merchandise Planning System. During his time with Comshare, he led many major planning initiatives, including ones at Gap, Target & Dayton Hudson, Casual Corner, Guitar Center, and Pier 1 Imports. After a few years in consulting, Jon was named the Product Manager for the Arthur Planning & Analysis Suite, where he led the effort to launch the initial Windows and initial Client-Server Arthur applications. In 1996, Jon left Comshare to found Ready to Plan, a niche Planning & Allocation Services firm. Ready to Plan grew over its 4 year history and provided support for planning projects at Foot Locker, Sears, Payless ShoeSource, Neiman Marcus, Bear Creek, Lamps Plus, and Claire's. In 2000, Jon and the Ready to Plan team joined Planalytics and continued to provide services in the Planning space; additional clients included Polo Ralph Lauren, May Company, Hallmark, Dots, and Kmart. In 2003, Jon left Planalytics to join Rick Amari at Columbus Consulting. During his time with Columbus, Jon has led projects at Big Lots, Ann Taylor, Polo Ralph Lauren, J Crew, and a few others. Jon's domain expertise is in all planning, projection & allocation disciplines, including merchandise planning, store planning, assortment planning, space planning, allocation and replenishment. Jon earned his degree in History at the University of Connecticut and has spoken at industry conferences on these topics.

	Richard von Hirschberg - Principal, Columbus Consulting www.columbusconsultinginc.com/team_vonhirschberg.htm Richard is a merchandising systems specialist with 23 years experience in the design, development and implementation of various merchandising systems. In addition to spending many years in the software industry he has also worked with numerous clients internationally implementing merchandising solutions. Clients include American Eagle, Ann Taylorand Saks Fifth Ave.

	Marc Reifeis - Principal, Columbus Consulting www.columbusconsultinginc.com/team_refeis.htm Marc is a Retail Systems Specialist with over 20 years experience in both consulting and 14+ years with Limited Brands. His experience spans the spectrum of operational systems with a focus on the supply chain and analytical support systems (data warehousing).

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Assortment Planning Focus of Columbus Consulting Two-day Retail Conference in New York City

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