Webcast: A Fresh Look at Category Management

Presented by Progressive Grocer, sponsored by Tyson Foods

Successful category management is less about brand promotion and more about delivering solutions to consumers; it’s all about growing and sustaining categories. Retailers that are successful category stewards know their shoppers’ needs and behaviors. Prized CPG partners work with retailers to develop innovative solutions that meet those needs and respond to consumer behaviors. 

Together, goals are met, and customers are happy. But the market continues to shift, and with information  revealing deeper levels of the consumer psyche and new channels of engagement taxing retailer resources, new category management tactics are warranted. Learn category management strategies that have proven successful in today’s complicated marketplace, through this free webinar replay.

Watch the webinar replay on demand

Presenters: 

Gordon Wade, Managing Partner and Director of Best Practices, Category Management Association 

Gordon Wade is one of the founders of the category management discipline. In 1991, along with Dr. Brian Harris and Bill Burns, Gordon started the Partnering Group to improve collaboration between retailers and manufacturers. They were asked by the CPG industry co-coordinating committee called Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) to lead development of the category management process. 

Gordon’s personal contributions to CatMan include the development of the Efficient Item Assortment process for the ECR committee along with virtually all the consumer focused analytical templates. Gordon has served scores of manufacturer clients around the globe in the development of their CatMan platforms and has facilitated category management projects with retailers and manufacturers on every continent. 


Doug Barnett, Category Manager, Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. 

Doug began his career in grocery retail in 1979 with New Mexico-based Furr’s Supermarkets, where he worked in sporting goods before promotions to non-food manager, assistant store manager, non-food supervisor, and store director. In 1995, he became one of Furr’s first category managers. 

Doug has been with Brookshire Brothers since 1998, when he was tasked with converting the company from wholesalers to warehouses in General Merchandise and Health & Beauty Care. He became Director of Non-Food in 2000. He was moved to Category Management of GM/HBC in 2010, and was the first at Brookshire Brothers to become certified in category management in 2001 through the Category Management Association as well as the first Certified Category Advisors for Brookshire Brothers, also through his affiliation with CMA. 


Eric Le Blanc, Vice President of Marketing for Supermarket Deli and Convenience Stores, Tyson Foods, Inc. 

Eric Le Blanc is the Vice President of Marketing for Supermarket Deli and Convenience Stores for Tyson Foods, Inc. His responsibilities include Trade Marketing, Consumer and Shopper Marketing, Insights and Innovation, and Category Management. 

Moderator: 

Joan Driggs, Editorial Director, Progressive Grocer 

Joan (Holleran) Driggs was named Editorial Director of Stagnito Media’s Progressive Grocer and Progressive Grocer Independent in June 2013. Her role is to oversee these comprehensive food retail publications and their related events and deliverables, including conferences (Top Women in Grocery), webinars, PG Daily News, special supplements and more. Progressive Grocer’s mission is to Stay Ahead of What’s Next, and for more than 90 years has provided top management at grocery headquarters, key decision makers at store-level, and supply chain partners with authoritative, relevant, research-based editorial content and need-to-know news. 

Prior to joining Stagnito Media, Joan was Director of Research at Mintel, a global consumer and market research firm (2008 - 2013), where she oversaw the company’s robust series of syndicated reports. 

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