Hi, my name is Avery Starks, since 2006 I’ve had the best and worst times of my career leading organizations through the complexities of selling to retailers.
The best advice I’ve learned is to not sweat the small stuff, then I realised it’s all small stuff compared to things that really matter. The relationships with people that love you most will always be your greatest legacy left behind.
I’ve been fortunate to work for some of the most respected fortune 500 organizations in the retail industry, but what makes me most proud is the impact I’ve made on people’s lives, this what gives me fulfilment.
I founded Retevo 4 years ago because I wanted to feel something more than just having an accomplished career, I needed to feel that I was truly making a difference in people’s lives. If you are like me, you’ve probably worked for an organization that wasn’t so fun and it was a struggle to consistently deliver your best work. I decided that if I am going to create a company, then there’s no way we’re gonna do it the way it’s always been done. It was actually pretty simple, we created an environment in which everyone could truly be themselves and a culture centered around having fun. It’s impossible to deliver the greatest services the retail industry has ever seen if you don’t absolutely love what you’re doing, and I think winning is always fun.
Today, as I look back on my journey I can admit that there were things that drove me absolutely crazy, like being embarrassed in a buyer’s meeting because our team wasn’t fully prepared to answer the obvious pain points. The most challenging for me has always been making sure we received the most value from our contracted service providers.
Many organizations have thorough processes and methods for managing expected ROI, but some services are not as apparent. If your company is currently investing in a retail merchandising provider, then I’m sure you’ve had difficulty calculating this value accurately. In fact, if you ask 100 people, you’d probably get 101 different answers. Trust me, I have felt the same frustrations of making sense of the merchandising recaps, like why is store coverage always so low, why do I still have so many non-scanning items, or what happened to my display execution?
I apologize if I caused you to revisit these emotions, but these are all valid questions that we never really get an answer for. I have learned that the reason this has become a point of frustration is maybe we’ve been looking at this completely wrong.
The real value for retail merchandising isn’t sales growth at all, actually it’s the prevention of sales loss. I know some of you are thinking, isn’t this the same thing? Nope, not even close. By now you’ve probably guessed it, retevo has finally figured out a solution to make retail merchandising valuable for you without the headaches, and you don’t even have to change your current provider to do so. We made retail merchandising easy and effective for organizations just like yours.
Falling short of blowing our own horn, we didn’t create Retevo because we wanted to find a way to get rich, we did it because of the impact it has on real people who felt the frustrations of constantly being underserved.
I am humbled by the achievements our company has experienced, but I feel we are most accomplished when our clients received the value they paid for. One of our clients who’s been a partner for 6 months recently mentioned that there isn’t a service company in the retail industry that provides the level of expertise quite like retevo.
The feedback that made an impression on me was from one of our long-term clients who mentioned she has completely changed the way she feels about retail merchandising, not only is it working for her organization, but she’s less stressed about the results, she states Retevo is like the easy button for suppliers struggling to make merchandising work.