Retail strategy, assortment and the decisions behind the shelf
Getting into retail and being ready for retail are not the same thing. I spent five years on the retailer's side of the table helping decide where brands, products, inventory and investment went. Now I bring that retailer-side judgment to brands navigating what to launch, where to grow, how much to bet, and what happens after they hit the shelf.
Where
Target BeautyHaircare & cosmeticsScope
$1.7BBeauty business plannedBreadth
75+ vendorsMultinationals to emerging brandsExperience
I was a senior planner across haircare and cosmetics — responsible for the financial and inventory architecture behind the business, working with more than 75 vendors, from global manufacturers to brands in their first year of national distribution.
Merchants chose the brands. I built the case that said what the choice would cost, what it would displace, and what it would take to work.
What the seat involved
Which meant sitting in the reviews where those decisions got argued — and hearing the questions that never make it back to the brand.
The lens
Founders walk in with the story of the brand. Retailers are evaluating the story of the business. Once the meeting ends, the conversation turns to a different set of questions entirely.
Is any of this actually incremental?
What happens to what's already on shelf?
How much inventory does this really deserve?
Is the growth real, or is it launch noise?
And what do we do if it doesn't sell?
Those are the questions brands rarely get to hear. Answering them was my job for five years. It's still the lens I bring to everything below.
Field Notes
Notes on what I'm seeing in stores and what the numbers underneath it actually say. Some pieces are observation — a retailer, a launch, a shelf set, and the commercial logic behind it. Others are Reality Checks: the same five questions above, applied to one specific decision.
Latest Field Note
Walmart's NYC fashion pop-up changed how I saw the retailer. The more interesting question is what happens after you convince a customer to see you differently.
Read the Field Note
About
A beautiful brand deck and a credible commercial case are two different documents. Most founders only ever build the first one.
I wasn't the buyer. I sat beside them with a different lens. When a merchant said "I love this brand," my job was often to answer the question underneath it: does the business support that decision? That's the combination I've come to trust in myself — product instinct and curiosity, trained to be pressure-tested against the economics.
ShelfLine is where I work that out in public. What I notice in stores, what the numbers underneath a launch actually say, and where the two disagree.
Work with me
I take on a small number of advisory and project engagements with consumer brands — usually around one of four decisions:
Some of it is a read on a specific decision. Some is ongoing — the person you think out loud with before the decision gets made, including translating what a retailer's scorecards and reports are actually telling you.
Engagements are scoped to the problem rather than sold off a menu. Tell me the situation and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right help and what it would take.
Contact
A brand decision you'd rather not make alone, a question about something I've written, or a conversation worth having. All welcome.
