Trusted Experts: Retail Acumen - Retail Consultants

Your project will not be the same as anyone else's.

Your requirements, coupled with your culture, internal capability and skills, will determine the type of team you need to have on board to help you to deliver exceptional results.

At Retail Acumen we work with you to identify which of our "trusted experts" have the right blend of skills and expertise to best support you. We carefully select your team to ensure that they have the right "Retail Acumen" for each and every assignment to achieve the best skills mix and the best cultural fit for you. This will be fundamental to your project success.

Clare Rayner, Founder and Managing Director
Patrick Ballin, Senior Consultant
Adrian Axtell, Senior Consultant
Robin Chappell, Senior Consultant
Liz Steer, Senior Consultant

I am the Founder and Managing Director of Retail Acumen and The Retail Conference.

With over 20 year's practical retail experience I am considered to be a leading authority on retail commercial planning, from range and space to forecasting, replenishment and supply chain management.

Passionate about retailing, my experience spans fast food to fashion, and supermarkets (perishables and non-food) to consumer electronics and general merchandise. My career has afforded me roles across the majority of the commercial and operational functions in retail, including store and operations management, merchandising, supply chain and category management. This comprehensive experience lead to roles in projects, change management, solution selection and implementation, and most recently, management consulting.

Those who know me well regard me as an ambitious, confident, highly motivated and innovative thought leader who thrives on challenge and variety. I am known for my considerable passion, energy and enthusiasm. The work value that is of most significant importance to me is reputation, my own and that of my business. To that end I am dedicated to ensuring that all of my relationships with clients, suppliers, colleagues and with my wider network are based on honesty, openness, courage to speak out and authenticity - and most of all that these relationships add value.

I set and expect high standards from my team, creating a high performance culture among those I work with, initiating and driving forward new ideas and change projects, engaging key stakeholders and creating a sense of excitement about the future.

I am regarded as an excellent communicator with a very open and direct style, which ensures that those I work with have complete clarity and can trust what I tell them. Whilst they might not necessarily like what they hear, I have found that this open, honest approach achieves greater trust - and in my experience trust is fundamental to gaining the buy in that leads to the delivery of exceptional results.

Although I am the managing director of Retail Acumen I balance leading the business with working on consultancy projects. I believe that to be a consultant or to lead a consulting practice it is of real importance to the delivery of practical, pragmatic solutions that I do my share of the hands-on consultancy work.

This approach keeps my skills and expertise relevant and most importantly keeps me close to my customers. This way I can ensure that all of the team are really delivering on our promise of exceptional results.

Patrick is a retail management consultant and executive coach. He assists high potential organisations and individuals to achieve their business and career goals.

Patrick possesses over 27 years of operational and multi-channel retail expertise at a senior level across business areas of supply chain, logistics, information systems, business strategy, business development and integration, managing global projects and change.

He has outstanding communication skills, enabling him to effectively deliver his message to stakeholders of all levels, supporting acceptance and understanding of change initiatives.

Alongside consulting and coaching, Patrick also lectures at the Business Schools at Brighton, Cranfield and Warwick.

Adrian is a Senior Consultant / Programme Manager with over 25 years experience in the Retail sector including Thresher, B&Q, Sainsburys and Argos. His more recent background is in Change management, Process Engineering, Programme and project management and Systems implementations, whilst his career has spanned a range of commercial roles (Buying, Merchandising, Supply Chain).

He possesses strong leadership skills across multi-functional teams both within project and operational environments. He has the ability to develop and sell a vision of the possible and then work within project management constraints and practices to deliver that vision, due to his extensive experience across all elements of Business operations.

Robin is a retail professional with 30 years of retail experience combining operations, head office functions, space, marketing, and consulting. Robin has experience, at senior levels, of Food, FMCG, Fashion and Non-Food retailing gained in the UK and across Europe.

He started as a store manager and then moved into the marketing department, that experience of the day to day operations of running a store gives him the knowledge of why Retail Initiatives do and don't succeed and how to plan for success. He has extensive knowledge of Space Management at all levels having run the Space Management function of two major retailers, he also grew the Space and Range consulting function with a space management software provider. As a result he has worked with many blue chip suppliers and major retailers with a focus on ranging, space and out of stock management. He was involved at a senior level in the restructuring of a major Supermarket group alongside McKinsey and as a result he has experienced, managed and successfully implemented change in a large organisation.

Robin is able to use financial and other data to find new, beneficial insights into business performance. He communicates as well with shop floor staff as he does with senior management and his ability to develop and implement new ways of doing things helps change internal culture and enables others to achieve their full potential.

Liz is a highly experienced retail practitioner who has had roles at all levels from assistant merchandiser to director throughout her career. She also has expertise in the areas of supply chain, logistics and distribution, space planning and management and implementation of all elements change (organisational design and structure, business process and supporting systems).

Now a highly dedicated and diligent consultant, Liz adds value to the team, integrates well with the business representatives and can work as effectively in both leadership, consulting and interim management roles.

Her style, approach and knowledge engenders trust from those she works with, enabling her to achieve rapid buy-in to her proposals from a wide variety of stakeholder groups.