In this episode I delve into the world of in-store merchandising from the agency perspective with Vanessa Schnekenburger, Managing Director at Match Retail. This innovative Canadian company is helping brands and retailers alike execute on-shelf and in-store, so it’s a great opportunity to tap into Vanessa’s experience and wisdom about the state of brick and mortar retail
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this episode I delve into the world of in-store merchandising from the agency perspective with Vanessa Schnekenburger, Managing Director at Match Retail. This innovative Canadian company is helping brands and retailers alike execute on-shelf and in-store, so it’s a great opportunity to tap into Vanessa’s experience and wisdom about the state of brick and mortar retail
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Thanks for tuning into today’s episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we can continue getting amazing guests on the show.
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada. In this episode, I delve into the world of in store merchandising from the agency perspective, with Vanessa Schnekenburger, Managing Director at Match Retail. This innovative Canadian company's helping brands and retailers alike, execute on-shelf and in-store. So it's a great opportunity to tap into Vanessa's experience and wisdom about the state of brick and mortar retail.
Vanessa Schnekenburger
I think it has an important role, because I think that consumers will never stop going online. You know, determining what brands they're interested in, doing all of their homework. But I do think that they'll always continue to want to go into the retail brick and mortar to have that moment where they're maybe asking a few more questions to an educated associate, in order to finally push them to that buying decision. Because, I find a lot of people want to look at feedback from others, they want to understand more. And so that's where that experience is going to come into play with.
Michael LeBlanc
Let's listen in now.
Vanessa, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, thanks for joining me. Another great opportunity to find and discuss and review another interesting part of the retail ecosystem. So I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Let's, let's start the beginning. Tell me about yourself and your background and your role at Match Retail.
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Great, thank you. Yes, I will. Today I'm a Managing Director at Match Retail. I started my career as a sales rep, pounding the pavement. I called on gas and convenience, I moved into grocery store retail, national accounts, and then had an opportunity to flip agency side. Working my way through different managerial levels. And through my career, I've had phenomenal mentors along the way. I really enjoyed coaching and growing employees and helping clients drive results. So, to say that 'closing the sale' is in my blood really.
Michael LeBlanc
So, if I was to offer you a job on client side today, and you had the opportunity you still have, would you would you go back to client side? Or are you like, you like, there's people who just love the agency side, and really thrive there, does that, does that describe you? Or how do you feel about that?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
I think it does describe me. I think that, you know, for a lot of people I know things are very busy. I would say that I'm at my best when I'm at 150% capacity. And on the agency side, things move and change constantly. And that's what keeps it exciting.
Michael LeBlanc
Right, right. It is, it is in your blood I find. You know, once there's, some people go back and forth between agency and client, and it's a very valuable experience on both sides of the table, so to speak, or the phone, or the Zoom, I guess these days. But it is, it is an exciting time.
So, let's talk about Match Retail. Tell me all about the agency, clients and the key pillars of your offering. Give us a give us the 411 all about Match Retail.
Vanessa Schnekenburger
So, we describe ourselves as an agency really who gets clients retail ready. Our goal is to enhance the customer experience at retail and drive conversion. We focus specifically on three key areas of that. And I would define that as merchandising, assisted sales, or sales solutions, and branded retail.
So, if I break that out, merchandising, for example, we have over 1000 merchandisers across Canada. They're trained to get in and out of retail. And the goal is with minimal store and customer interruption. So, our clients, they're both brands and retailers. Our job is to ensure that the shelves are ready, at store level, for any consumer to shop. We'll execute plan grams. We'll do new inserts, you know fixtures, stock shelves, all that type of work. Most of our clients, or many of them, are in the cosmetics. L'Oreal, for example has been a client of ours for over 12 years. But we also play a unique role where we have retailers as our clients. So Metro, Rona, Lowe's, Home Hardware, Shoppers Drug Mart. We partner with all of these retailers to help them drive seamless execution when it comes to setting up their stores, redesigning their stores, merchandising, that type of work, in order to be ready for their consumers
Michael LeBlanc
Unpack that one for me a little bit. So I get the kind of working for the big, the L'Oreal brand that, you know, they're in the planogram. They need to get established. Your, your people go in like ninjas right. They're just, there, they have a light footprint. Tell me more about what the, what you do for the retailers. Is it an execution in certain categories and certain aisles? Like unpack that one a bit for me.
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Yeah, so for a client like Lowe's Rona for example, we just finished doing our resets for plumbing and fixture categories. So, we will send in teams overnight. And they will redesign to planogram, the way that Rona Lowe's would like to see their store layout. So, they also have teams in-house. But when they're looking to execute large scale operations in, you know, a certain amount of time, then we are their partner, and we will augment their teams, and we'll get across the country and get into a number of their stores and ensure that we're executing this work so that they can get to their end result faster.
Michael LeBlanc
Right on. So you're the, you're the the top spin. You're kind of the A team that comes in and helps execute at scale and scope. Like you said, over 1000 people from coast to coast, right. So you got a lot of, you can stand up something real quick, right?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Exactly. And that's, you know, where we've got advantage is that we are in every nook and cranny of Canada really. So, you know, sometimes we'll have clients who, like I said, may have their own execution teams, but they're only in more than urban areas. And then they need that augmented field team. And so we can deploy quickly in order for them to get to their work fast.
Michael LeBlanc
Oh, interesting. Okay, so that's, that's the merchandising part. Talk about the assisted sales and the, and your other component.
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Yes, this is also a very fun area. So, you know, we will train and manage field teams across Canada, in order to drive customer shopping experiences, educate consumers on brands, educate in store personnel, and drive conversions. So, we have had our 10 year clients on the side of the businesses over seven years plus in many areas. For example, Nespresso, if you were to go into a Canadian Tire, or The Bay, or Costco and you were to see any store associate demonstrating an Nespresso machine and in providing a consumer with an experience, those would be a Match Retail employee. For LG, for example, we manage their entire field force across the country on all three of their business units. So mobile, home appliance and home entertainment. And we are in store driving productivity, educating consumers and basically selling on the floor on behalf of LG.
Michael LeBlanc
Right on right on. And talk about the third component for you
Vanessa Schnekenburger
The third one is branded retail. So, this started, one of our big programs is the Wow! boutique kiosks that you would see in a lot of malls across the country. Rogers and TELUS came together in a partnership program with us, where we execute, operate, manage a full end to end solution for 83 locations across the country. So, anything from loss prevention, to the staffing, to supply chain, marketing, we do everything within the Wow! boutique.
Michael LeBlanc
Right. So, coast to coast, big communities, big cities, small communities, French and English, you got it all covered in all these, in all these three things. Okay, so I got it. You're based in the Toronto area? You're based in Canada, right?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Yes, our head offices is in Mississauga. And, we also have an office in Montreal. And like you said, yeah, we're fully bilingual.
Michael LeBlanc
All right, fantastic.
All right, so, I mean, as you said, you've been part of this ecosystem, part of the retail ecosystem for your most of your career. And let's think back to the before time, pre COVID. And because I find a lot of what and how you've been thinking about where you fit, the value add. So, talk about, you know, how things have changed over the years and your view of modern retail and, you know, your role in it? And like, what, what are the kind of three key differences that you've discovered and have experienced since you began your career to, to what it is today? And again, I'm prefacing it a little bit in the before time, because of the COVID era is such a bit of an anomaly. We'll talk about that later. But just in general, heading in to COVID, how did you see retail change? And how did you react to it?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Yeah, I think back in, you know, I see the competition is so much greater in retail. So many more brands, so many more choices. There's a stronger need now for the consumer experience than ever before, because of all the choices. You know, today people are looking for more of the moments, the experiences that they can share through social media. And that social platform is driving discussion and visibility. And these are all things that we didn't have as much as in you know, previously. You know, if you look back, you know, over the years because we didn't have the same technology platforms. So everything wasn't as in your face or readily available to you, you had to get more into the bricks and mortars to see what was going on.
You know coming from being a sales rep into managing a business where we deploy people to the field, technology has really supported this and, you know, driven efficiencies over the years. Through technology, we're able to optimize the sale call coverage that we do for our clients. We're able to track instantly what's happening in the sales call. The results that are coming out of it. And this does two things for us and our clients. It leads to faster intel from the field and the results, which is allowing us and our clients to make decisions faster and more accurately. And it also allows us to look at the ROI on our client's spend. So you know, for the clients, hiring agencies return on investment is huge. And through the technology that we use, and the data capture, we do, we are able to spend less time on the road and more time on the floor selling. And that's huge for our clients.
Michael LeBlanc
So, in your world, technology advancements have made you a better agency and able to measure better what, what you. You, retailers would recognize your value from the start. But now you can actually put a number to it and have that great discussion. Yeah,
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Exactly, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, listen, a lot of what you do, I'm sure was impacted by, by COVID. Like we're all impacted one way shape or another. And so I'm kind of curious on your views of how you've seen working with retailers, how the COVID era has changed what you do. And kind of where I'm going with that as well as, is what do you think might be, you know, what do we learn? And kind of a permanent structural change versus a, you know, an accommodation to an unusual period that we're in. So what's, tell me about your year so far, and in the COVID era, and how you've adapted?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Well, COVID certainly has, you know, made everyone a lot more agile. You know, things change every day you wake up and you know, something's changing in the world of news, and it makes us have to react quickly.
Our clients, you know, many of them have key selling periods and missing those opportunities can be devastating. So, as a partner to them, we need to react as fast as they want to react in order to ensure that, you know, they're getting back to the market the way they need to.
I believe, you know, myself and what I hear from the clients is that even though online orders, you know, have increased significantly for clients over the last year, people still want to go and shop in the bricks and mortars. And so, the brands are investing in retail, they want to be retail ready. They're designing the retail to enhance the customer experience, I believe. You know, adding in the digital technology, ensuring that the environments are safer for them to shop. And we can support them, through ensuring that the customers have everything at their fingertips, once they're in retail to make a faster buying decision, to keep the traffic moving. Because no more I don't think are the days of a lot of lingering in stores anymore. I didn't,
Michael LeBlanc
Certainly not now.
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Yeah, I think people are going to be a lot more cautious of that. So, it's going to be the balance of creating this, you know, special environment where you feel safe, but you're also getting out of your home now and reliving some of your past moments.
Michael LeBlanc
It's interesting, let's, let's talk about that for a little bit. Pull on that thread for a bit because, you know, there's this idea of stores as experience. That stores will have a broader role than just a place to transact, which I think, you know, the COVID are likely accelerated that that idea. But it was happening anyway, right? I mean, you know, even pure plays, were opening up stores, you know, pure play retailer, ecommerce retailers, because it was a place to experience the brand.
So, it feels like you know, you've got a, you've got a dual role there. One, you've got a role to make the stores and the shop efficient and effective, right. Just as efficient, less friction, well merchandise so you can find what you're looking for all that, all that great stuff. And then the second part is that experiential part, right? I'm sure you can you're looking forward to getting back to doing more of that experiential part. Do you think it'll have a bigger role in retail, and moving forward post, post COVID?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
I think it has an important role, because I think that consumers will never stop going online. You know, determining what brands they're interested in. Doing all of their homework. But I do think that they'll always continue to want to go into the retail brick and mortar to have that moment where they're maybe asking a few more questions to an educated associate, in order to finally push them to that buying decision. Because I find a lot of people want to look at feedback from others. They want to understand more. And so that's where that experience is going to come into play, which I think is great.
Michael LeBlanc
So, it's still, I think I agree, I think It is still the case that for some transactions, a lot of research is done online, or maybe it's done in, in Instagram or social media these days, a lot of influencing happening. And, but then, you know that final, there is still a lot of that final decision made on the store floor, yeah?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Yes. And that's where, you know, you talk about looking at things through Instagram and other places, when someone has a great in store experience, they also then want to share that because everyone wants to share. So the more that a retailer can have that destination spot, hopefully then the more that consumers are going to talk about it, which is going to enhance that retailer even further.
Michael LeBlanc
Right, right, right. All right, well, listen, let's talk about the success of your firm. And I'm using that as kind of a proxy to understand what and how the whole retail system can be effective. What are the, what are the kind of key things if you boil it down that make Match Retail, very successful and effective? And, and how does it allow you to stand out from, from what can be a pretty crowded market?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
I would say one, you know, through our Wow! boutique program, we operate retail. So we can relate to our clients. We face the same challenges. You know, we're able to sit across the table from our clients in a strategy session and say, "We know, we know, we're living it", yeah. And we need to stay ahead of the curve, just as much. So, we can partner and we can learn and share.
Secondly, I would say you know, we believe that better people deliver better results and better optics. And people our product. We invest in them. We train them. We ensure to manage and support so that they feel empowered to perform. What's more important to anyone? If you can get up every day and say that you love your job. That's fantastic. And we've done, you know, a good chunk of our work there. I was gonna say we train our employees, so that they can be our client's next employee. So it's good for us and for our clients that we can be that feeding ground. Because, you know, as an extension of our clients in field, if we can give them the right platforms, then that's a nice segue into the growth of those employees, maybe into their client's roles one day.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, one of the things that, and as it happens, I'm chairing an HR, Retail HR conference. And one of the things that we'll be talking about, and did talk about, was mental health. So tell me a little bit, I was on your site, and there's a lot of, a lot of great content around mental health. Not just you know, there's the, you know, the technical skills, processes and things that your people need to master. But how have you been thinking about that over? You know, it's been tough on all of us, it's been a long winter. We're not out of this thing yet. How are you thinking about your people from a mental health perspective? And again, I'm, I'm asking because as you said, you're a retailer yourself. And, you know, you got 1000 people coast to coast, all kinds of different communities. How have you been helping and making sure your people are taken care of?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
That's a great question. And we have spent a ton of time in that area. We more than ever are ensuring that we, at all levels, are doing check-ins with our employees. We have different programs. We do enhanced online training. We have a library of training platforms and courses that our employees can take whenever they want to. So that they can continue to stay connected. We focus on, we have a program called Edge. So, we focus on diversity and inclusion. We have different team building events throughout different groups and on a national and North America perspective, because we have agency partners in the US.
And, we also encourage conversation. So, we actually have a program through our Edge platform where every Friday, teams can get on and connect with others across North America. And it's just a place to talk. And, it's a place to talk about any hot topics that week. Anything that's on someone's mind. But, what it's really allowed us to do is get further connected versus being in the office. Because we're taking the time to visually see each other through the technology and spend time talking, not just the water cooler talk if you were in the office, but truly having an engaged conversation with everything else put away in that half hour or one hour that they put aside.
Michael LeBlanc
And I guess that would have been a part of your DNA even in the before time, pre COVID, right. Because you've got a distributed workforce, so to speak, all across, all across the land. So, it's not like you went from a head office to having people working at home. You, this is this is how you operate, right? Is keeping people connected even though they're physically separate and apart, right?
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Yes, and, you know, that leads to, we were talking earlier about, you know, a few things that I believe make us successful. And, you know, one that I would also highlight is our training platforms. And our training platforms, which also leads to, you know, how we engage our personnel that are all over the country. We want someone that's working in a small part of Canada to feel just as connected as if they're in their head office. And so, we've spent a lot of time and investment in our training platforms, the processes, how we deliver, how we connect. And actually, we've got some exciting things that we're going to be launching in the next few months, which I'm looking forward to sharing down the road.
Michael LeBlanc
Oh, fantastic. Well, in the interim, that's coming in a couple of months, where can listeners go to learn even more about Match Retail and get in touch with you
Vanessa Schnekenburger
matchretail.com actually, and there's a spot to look at what we do, how we do it. And there's also a place to reach out to myself there as well.
Michael LeBlanc
No, well, fantastic. Well, Vanessa, thanks for joining me on The Voice of Retail. It's great to get to know you and get to know your business. And I wish you much continued success. And thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail.
Vanessa Schnekenburger
Thank you for having me, Michael. This was great. Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc
Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on the latest episodes, industry news and insights. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review as it really helps us grow so that we continue to get amazing guests onto the show. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc Company Inc. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn. Visit my website at meleblanc.co. Until next time, stay safe and have a great week.