I have spent my career on both sides of the same table — running stores and teams, then managing products, distribution and the relationships with the retail chains that buy them.
That order matters. Because I started on the shop floor, a listing has never been an abstraction to me: it is shelf space, stock cover, a team's time on a Tuesday morning and a customer who decides in a few seconds. And because I later built portfolios and sales budgets, I know what has to be true on the supplier's side for that shelf to stay full.
Most commercial decisions look obvious from one desk and impossible from the next. My job is usually to find the version that works from both.
Today I work in brand licensing, which sits on top of all of it. A licensed programme only works when the brand, the supplier and the retailer each see their own reason to commit — and when someone keeps the plan moving after the meeting ends.
For a partner that means practical conversations: what a category manager needs in order to defend a decision internally, what a distributor needs before committing stock, and what a store team needs to make it work on the floor.