Flora is a retail business executive with corporate savvy. With over 20 years of multi-channel, cross-functional experience, she has consistently delivered strategic projects through change leadership, process design, team mentorship, and IT partnership. Her engaging style inspires high-performance teams within a trustworthy and collaborative atmosphere.
Before starting her consulting career, Flora held various positions in the retail and consumer goods industries including VP of Merchandising and Visual Merchandising for Musicland, Director of Merchant Process Development at Best Buy – where she was awarded a U.S. patent for her work on a promotional dashboard, Director of Category Management at AholdUSA, Director of Business Services at Intactix, Account Manager at Helene Curtis and at ACNielsen.
Flora’s functional experience includes:
Category Management – Assortment, Pricing, Merchandising, Clustering, Micro Assorting, Assortment Rationalization
Vendor Management – Sales & Operations Planning, Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, New Business Development, Supply Chain Integration
Merchandising – Visual Merchandising, Store Planning, Store Design, Space Management, Planogram Management, Space Optimization
Retail Operations – Demand Forecasting, Promotional Planning, Markdown Optimization, Cross-Functional Process Development & Implementation
Marketing – VOC, Branding, Strategic Spending, Marketing Effectiveness, Digital/Social Strategy, Cross-Platform Consistency, Consumer Insights, Syndicated Data, Marketing Research
Information Systems – Data Warehouse Management, Business Metrics & Scorecarding, Business Intelligence (Big Data) Analytics
Account Management – New Business Development, Sales, Entrepreneurship
She has a proven ability to seize opportunities to achieve bottom line results, improving financial performance while ensuring a quality customer experience. The following is a representative sampling of these projects and achievements:
- Grew a new consulting business and led its sales efforts creating an ongoing revenue stream of $4 million in 3 years.
- Led a critical engagement for a Fortune 500 Big Box retailer to create a collaborative forecasting process with four of its largest vendors who represented over 40% of its total revenue. Developed tools, processes and organization design which improved promotional forecasting by 34% in its first year and 55% in its second year.
- Managed a merchant team and was responsible for a $300+ Million P&L of the consumer electronics, wireless, gaming, apparel and trend category, including: vendor management, negotiations, inventory management, promotional activities, pricing, and team process, consistently delivering financial performance.
- Designed and implemented store prototype analysis and reviews with senior leadership highlighting global space allocation and productivity and evolving the space allocation decision making process.
- Led the design and execution of a 400 store remerchandising effort in six weeks that supported critical new business launches and came in under budget.
- Successfully implemented customized Space Management systems at four US grocery chains.
- Led the design, development and implementation of processes for space management, merchandising and visual guidelines, store/merchant process creation, and training and communication programs.
- Led the design and selection of a Price Optimization solution for an $80 billion US retailer which rolled out on time and on budget and delivered its business case in less than one year.
But what she really wants to be is an empress.
See Flora’s Schedule HERE