Annette Miller is joining the Simpactful team as a Sr. Consultant with vast strategy and leadership expertise in retail. Miller is a merchant leader with broad experience across professional beauty, apparel, home, food and commodity categories, crossing department store, mass and specialty sectors. Recently, Miller was the Chief Merchandising Officer of Regis Corporation where she instituted core best practices related to financial planning, assortment planning and data analytics. Prior to Regis Corporation, Miller spent 18 years with Target Corporation developing business growth strategies across food, commodities, home and apparel. While SVP, merchandising for food, Miller led the expansion of perishable food in 1200 Target general merchandise stores, increasing sales and traffic.
Miller believes what deserves more attention with today’s retailers are a focus on continuously improving the customer experience in their brick and mortar locations. “The focus on the local consumer and making sure brands are putting the consumer first by understanding the uniqueness of each market is critical,” explains Miller, “this experience includes knowledgeable and trained sale people, seamless use of technology, product being in-stock, and flexible fulfillment and shipping options. As on-line retailing continues to grow, retailers need to give the consumer a reason to shop in their brick and mortar locations and if they get the experience right, it is a big competitive advantage over online-only retailing.”
The consumer-centric mindset, according to Miller, begins with understanding the target consumer the retailer is focused on and clearly understanding how to create a great experience for that specific consumer. Miller elaborates, “a great experience for a millennial parent will be different than an experience targeting boomers or young men. Regardless of who the consumer is, a retailer should strive to know as much as possible about their customer’s motivations, preferences, annoyances and priorities. By tailoring their in-store experience in a way that engages the consumer, a retailer can create brand loyalty for the long term.”
The Simpactful retail team will bring increased expertise of business prioritization to its retail clients with the addition of Annette Miller. “A manageable number of strategic priorities is three and you shouldn’t have more than that,” adds Miller, “everyone in the organization must understand what each priority means and can execute against each one. By focusing on fewer and bigger priorities and not letting the little stuff get in the way, retailers will be set up for success with future consumer demands.” Miller goes further on to explain the ability to say “no” to things that won’t move the needle on your big priorities is critical to execution.
If your retail organization is looking for to create a sustainable difference in your business, start with an assessment from Annette Miller to look at opportunities around prioritizing business needs, executing your vision and mission, and creating a business model that is consumer-centric to thrive in today’s retail environment.
Visit www.simpactful.com or contact us at contact@simpactful.com or 925-234-6394.
About Simpactful
Proven | Connected | Results
Meet Simpactful – a CPG/Retail consultancy firm built for today’s challenges, with a team of experienced leaders from both CPG and Retail firms.
Our experience spans functions – Sales, Marketing, Consumer Research, Human Resources, Product Supply – and all retail channels including eCommerce, Food, Drug, Mass, Club, Dollar, C Stores, and more.