Personal Note: Big changes for the man behind the blog

After 15 consecutive years making my living as a principal for well established retail merchandising firms… I’m finally hanging out my own shingle.

Effective this week, I’m now an independent consultant available for hire.

As many of you know, I helped build my last firm from a small operation with $10M in revenue to a large firm with over $100M in annual sales.  I’m certainly proud of that success, and optimistic about their future.   I will miss working with the talented team we built there.

But the basic business model for firms like MTI, is that people like me craft solutions and dispense advice for free, and those solutions include a heavy dose of products and services that clients can buy directly from MTI.  That is a very successful model, but it really limits the kind of projects that have the right scope to be profitable.

As an independent contractor, I have the flexibility to find the right solution for a client, no mater what mix of products and services that solution might entail.

This is a tremendous time in shopper marketing.  Products are more complicated, shoppers more savvy, and shopping environments more competitive than ever before.   The old practices are no longer effective and  the next generation of shopping experiences and marketing tools are being invented.  It’s incredibly energizing to be a part of it.

So this week, I began working directly with a few initial clients who are inventing some great new customer experiences.  It remains to be seen if I’ll have the right disposition to be an independent contractor for the rest of my career, or if I’ll eventually find my way to a new firm.  Either way, you can count on me to have an opinion about how we should all be able to shop!

Wish me luck, and feel free to drop me a line if you have any advice.