Sara Austin Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Il, Us

New York, Ny, Us

Blackfriars, London, Gb

Blackfriars, London, Gb

Lead a team of ten to drive growth across a $1.2B grocery business across all Unilever categories. Provide strategic direction and guidance on macro and micro space changes to drive category growth in the market.

Blackfriars, London, Gb

Own Big Data strategy, third party vendor relationships and budgets, develop training plan for Category Management • Developed and continuously update the “Big Data” strategy and plan for field sales. Created one version of the truth dashboard that combines POS, shopper and promotional data. Reducing time pulling and organizing data allowing the Category Management team time to work toward a solution.• Negotiated contracts and saved $0.5MM in 2017 across 20+ vendors by standardizing approaches on how the sales field uses the data, and reducing the overlap across vendors.• Simplified and standardized current set of reports and enhanced the retail heath dashboard showing retailers the loss to unmeasured retailers and true market results.• Manage direct reports.

Blackfriars, London, Gb

Optimize sales for the category by analyzing data or insights to determine industry and consumer trends. Develop long-term strategies for product categories.• Opened Center of Excellence showcasing Unilever’s best in class research and insights capabilities. Hosted over ten consumer research events co-created with Walgreens. Walgreens changed their in-store market research based on the results of one of the studies saving Walgreens thousands of dollars in ineffective research. Resulting in Unilever’s Beauty Vendor award in 2014 and 2016.• Presented an aggressive innovation plan that was flawlessly executed resulting in growing share 96 BPS with the second highest innovation share in the country on a $210 million category in 2016. • Implemented future leading shelving recommendations merchandising a new form in the middle of the current set, driving trade up strategy for both the retailer and Unilever.• Forged partnership with the Category Manager to build a three-year strategy for an entire aisle. Increased Unilever’s POD by 130,000 in year one and 55,000 in year two.• Managed an intern and junior analyst that is a part of Unilever Future Leaders program.

Blackfriars, London, Gb

Summer 2013 Strategy Leader – Rhode Island• Develop the five-year strategy for a category plan for a $540 million category. Outlined quarterly tactics for 2013 and 2014 and yearly objectives for 2015 and beyond. I broke down the growth drivers, top strategies and quarterly tactics for the next 18 months. Strategy and Tactics executed in year one exceeded growth projections and Unilever was awarded vendor of the year in 2014.• Analysis revealed an area to place big bets in Naturals, Pro/Salon, and medicated hair care. All areas proved to be growth drivers.Support the US Field-based Cat Man team’s VR project initiatives and software support. • Created a dynamic virtual endcap for the Vice President of Grocery at a top grocery account for a Leadership Conference. As a result, she was able to demonstrate her vision of how the stores will execute her new plan.• Sold in shelving changes based on Virtual shopper research across deodorant, hair care, and tea. Unilever was called out as best in class for proposing endcaps.

Responsible for leading a sales team with annual plans of $490 million.• Approved P&L and investment spend/business cases with Kroger business team. Was able to identify a decrease in birth rates as a driving factor in overall category decline resulting in a need to change strategy. We were able to grow share despite missing our topline sales.• Strategically analyzed and interpret customer loyalty card trends. Projected the Scott bath tissue brand would continue to lose customers and promotional endcaps unless their customer count doubled or we doubled the profit to maintain the endcap support. Gained incremental funds to stop the customer leakage on a very exclusive brand.

Drive sales plans around; assortment, merchandising, pricing and shelving for our brands, monitoring and assisting in the delivery of top-line and bottom line commitments from sales perspective• Launched the U by Kotex brand and secured an incremental 13 items across all top grocery accounts. • Re-created displays to improve margins by 50 BPS while still meeting the needs of the top grocery retailers. •Strategic Consultant for business planning and sales strategy development across family care brands (KLEENEX® facial tissue, COTTONELLE® bath tissue, SCOTT® bath tissue and paper towels, and VIVA® paper towels)•Responsible for gaining new distribution and creating new packings to meet the needs of grocery channel retailers•Lead customer presentations for new product lines or product improvements across the family care brands•Facilitate conversations between team leaders and internal candidates regarding career development

•Introduce Virtual Reality to FMCG in the US• Presented Virtual Reality capabilities, worked to establish Virtual Reality as a tool to conduct shopper and consumer insights. Lead over twelve research projects. Validated that VR can be used as a tool for research. • Featured on ABC World News Tonight news spot showcasing Kimberly-Clark’s industry-leading Virtual Reality research.

Optimize sales for the category by analyzing data or insights to determine industry and consumer trends. Develop long-term strategies for product categories.• Analyze the CVS shopper using the CVS ExtraCare database, a 41 thousand active loyalty cardholder database.• Won Vendor of the year in 2005.

•Trained the Northeast Region field sales team on computer software programs. The region covered Maine to Virginia and as far west as Pittsburgh, PA•Worked with Director of Sales and Regional teams to create a customized work plan for the team members who needed to improve their skills on different software programs•Coordinated training sessions, reserved travel, meeting room, food and beverages for the trainees operating within a travel and expense budget of $20,000 per year

•Created end user training course guides for seven courses on the Asset Management Process (AMP) project. •Assisted in converting four manufacturing facilities software programs to SAP