Lisa Merigan

Managed Food categories within Pantry, Perishables and Impulse across 360 IGA supermarkets.

• I currently manage the Impulse portfolio (worth ~ $250M) which encompasses confectionery (~70M), seasonal, water, soft drinks, non-alcoholic beverages, cordial, energy drinks, sports drinks, biscuits, salty snacks, nutritional snacks and nuts and jerky.
• Develop, negotiate, and implement state category and promotional activities and business plans.
• Deliver state sales (warehouse and retail), retailer GP and budgeted income objectives.
• Build strong relationships with retailers, suppliers, and internal stakeholders to establish a viable alternative to competitors and sustain consumer loyalty to the retail offer.
• Proactively drive key national and state initiatives and category strategies
• Work with inventory, marketing, operations, commercial, charge through/cross dock and promotional departments to maximize service levels, income generation, LAM activations whilst reducing aged stock, low code, leakage and closing base range gaps.
• Specific to confectionary I manage the execution of key seasonal events across Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Father’s Day & Mother’s Day with an intent to win market share.
• More recently I have been the stream lead in promotional optimization, focusing on price elasticity to maximize promotional sales and GP within a competitive landscape.

Key Achievements

• Exceeded all category KPIs in FY24:
• Achieved sales and income budgets
• Key contributor to overall EBIT results
• Current year on track to exceed all category KPIs:
• Impulse portfolio invoice sales +8% YTD vs PY & +16% vs budget
• Successfully managed the Container Deposit Scheme with stakeholders, driving a $1.5M revaluation profit that surpassed the target.
• Scan sales growth over-indexed for Easter 2023 confectionery vs other states, finishing +11.6% $ growth % YA, and gained 2% market share (+0.5pp vs PY). Achieved through close collaboration with retailers, suppliers, operations and inventory teams.

• Develop and maintain efficient and effective planograms/layouts to support TWCM 500+ store network based on demographic and store format nationwide, whilst balancing visual, financial and operational metrics.
• Manage category review process, provide category analysis and range recommendations.
• Support delivery of the right range & micro space to enhance the customer experience, support sales, optimise inventory and improve store efficiencies.
• Develop promotional planograms in line with a National marketing program and timelines.
• Develop effective merchandising plans, strategies and standards.
• Creating and maintaining store floor plans for new, refits and existing stores to deliver customer centric, commercially and operationally efficient standards.
• In depth knowledge of product relationships and interdependencies within a store.

Key Achievements

• Restructure of the Category Development Schedule and Promotional critical path, improving the alignment of business needs. This delivered product layout information to stores on time in an accurate easy to implement format optimising financial returns and store compliance.

• Manage the tender, pilot and implementation of a national pricing strategy to support stores with varying competitive needs.
• Introduce in store pricing strategy aligned to an established pricing policy to ensure prices are within a pre-set pricing structure, market competitive and customer expectations.
• Sourcing and development of the appropriate external partner to integrate into our existing POS/ticketing software within a franchise model.
• Develop 4 levels of pricing to support both metro and regional locations nationwide.

Key Achievements

• Results allowed franchisees access to pricing, relevant to their competitive landscape, linking to in-store ticketing. This maintained in-store pricing whilst maximizing GP dollars and protecting margin erosion.

• Manage $50M retail portfolio across 14 categories and 50 suppliers.
• Increased sales whilst maintaining profit margin through coordination of new promotions, sku rationalisation and planogram development.
• Develop and Execute strategic category plan, whilst delivering on core business priorities.
• Research, analyze, and monitor competitive landscape for new product opportunities.
• Lead category reviews to drive return through category flow, range selection, product placement and data analysis.
• Drive sales & profit performance whilst managing income budget.
• Manage promotional program across multiple platforms.
• Manage national retail pricing/KVI strategy.
• Ensure maximum profitability by validating any cost price increase proposed against current market trends.
• Manage supplier relationships/commercial arrangements, trading terms, pricing/promotional negotiations.
• Evaluate category portfolio profit & loss and apply this information to key business decisions.
• Support and develop private label.

Key Achievements

• Development and implementation of a cosmetics strategy across the network within a fragmented landscape. This involved negotiating a tiered supplier trading terms agreement for the various network footprints and demographics, aligning with brands best suited to our core customer and business model, whilst protecting the franchisees stock changeover investment.
• This resulted in leveraging national distribution to drive competitive pricing, promotions and income budgets.
• A second-tier agreement was also put in place to accommodate the larger footprint beauty destinations stores.
• Grew cosmetics category by 18% in first 12 months of roll out off a base of 2.5% growth MAT.

• Group buyer for 15 pharmacies
• Maximise category management opportunities through key stakeholder relationships by developing and promoting products and services to generate sales and profit to the business
• Manage supplier relationships, negotiating contracts including discounts, rebates, trading terms, co-op & training to maximise GP & sales
• Develop pricing strategy/policy
• Monitor core ranging compliance
• Range selection
• Monitor purchasing budgets
• Analyse current trends and translate into increased sales via new products and product rationalisation
• Planograms development
• Drive promotional program
• Track and measure the effectiveness of purchasing strategies in conjunction with inventory
• Maximise opportunities to reduce cost of goods
• Analyse supplier profitability
• Data analysis

Key Achievements

• Standardize core ranging across the networks existing fragmented product range resulting in group trading terms and increased GP for stores, and co-op for head office to drive a catalogue program.
• Implementation of product planograms across the group and recommended pricing policy resulting in all stores selling the right products at the right price to better compete in the market and leverage group buying terms.

• Purchasing scheduled, OTC, vitamin, cosmetics, fragrance & gift products for the hospital, retail and compounding services sector
• Maintaining accurate stock levels to supply hospital contracts
• Implement and maintain supplier deals and brand preferences
• Communicate daily stock issues with pharmacist/staff/management including ETA’s, brand changes and brand substitutions
• Report analysis/costing reports
• Liaise with suppliers
• Inventory/Stock control
• Manage all product requests/orders
• Report analysis to maximise purchasing patterns and practices, bulk buys/forecasting
• Review purchasing budgets, stock on hand v stock turn
• Track supplier bonus payments/stock or discounts
• Process supplier credits, credit summary reports
• Maintaining data integrity

Key Achievements

• Improve ordering efficiencies, reducing wastage of high cost drugs within the hospital pharmacy sector.

• Buying new products from both America (GNC) and locally
• Update/maintain company intranet
• Centralizing stock ordering for stores
• Stock Control/Inventory management
• Trend analysis of local brands, highlighting import opportunities with GNC
• Data analysis
• Pricing analysis
• Manage national in-store promotional program and co-ordination of collateral.
• Maintain GNC international planograms
• Internal and external stakeholder management
• Manage GNC branding in supplier advertising
• Co-ordinate product/sales training
• Attending trade shows, review trends
• Negotiate trading terms
• Maintain mail order catalogue
• Liaise with the Regulatory Affairs manager regarding product labelling
• Liaise with the Marketing manager regarding product labelling/positioning/promotions

Key Achievements

• Under new international ownership, GNC asked me to re-join the company to realign the buying department. This also focused on product development in the re-formulation and manufacturing of herbal and sports/food supplements to Australian standards
• Implementation of new POS system
• Implementation and maintenance of planograms
• Advising CEO of product suitability/ranging for both the Australian and Malaysian markets