New Market Penetration

When asked by the Ricoh Board of Directors to establish the company in 360-degree spherical imaging, I selected and led the strategic launch team with strategy, tactics, market segmentation, product positioning, communication, and sales channel requirements. Architected to achieve category objectives, the executed plan generated the needed attention and consumer demand to exceed launch forecast quantities by 200%. The launch team worked closely with Facebook and YouTube to develop and activate their 360-degree video sharing platforms leading to significant gains in consumer adoption of the technology. The successful launch of Ricoh Theta doubled sales, displaced competitors, demonstrated industry prominence, and secured #1 market position, stimulating national media buzz with programs on Bloomberg, USA Today, and others.

Brand Positioning KPI

Lack of investment in PENTAX prohibited growth and distressed the brand globally. Determined to restore both the company reputation and brand promise, I led the development and execution of a 3-year strategy combined with an investment commitment to nurturing communication, product development, and channel growth. These activities rebuilt credibility and stabilized the business, recovering viable market share, and restoring customer confidence.

Professional Accomplishments:

Brand integration, achieving all KPIs, and growing brand recognition 15% (unaided brand recall) and 22% (aided recall).

Year Two:
Stabilized core market segments. Launched 11 new products and phased out-of-date legacy SKUs.

Year Three:
Penetrated new segments and achieved #1 market share, which drove 400% industry growth

Year Four:
Released phase II of innovative technology, dropped unproductive SKUs, and entered strategic price points.

Product Launch

Selected to rollout Sony Reader, an innovative, disruptive product designed to transition consumers from buying physically printed media to downloading digital books. Utilizing new product launch tools on a national scope, demonstrating product features, leveraging media relations (PR), channel development, experiential marketing, advertising, and social engagement KPI.

I delivered 2MM hands-on trials during the Reader Revolution campaign, which placed 1,000 product demonstrators into retail locations over a six-week program. Achieved targeted presale quantities and exceeded first-year sales projections by 11%. The resulting program established a sustainable media and product launch platform for future Sony products.

Customer Engagement

Inherited a team accustomed to a lack of transparency, which led to poor customer service standards, unacceptable service times, and a legacy service provider who routinely failed KPIs. Despite repeated warnings, site visits, and internal analysis of performance gaps, a significant change in strategy and vendors became necessary.

Co-developed and led the service and operations teams to evolve the service model for both PENTAX and RICOH branded products in the United States and Canada to ensure customer excellence. Post-execution measures, including customer service, revealed new and continuing gaps in customer satisfaction resulting from an internal parts flow bottleneck in delivery from global inventories. These gaps resulted in a program extension to resolve all missed KPIs during a 180-day post-deployment period.

Global Integration

After completing a Global assessment of marketing and communication capabilities, the investigation revealed disparate and competing management and systemic operational flaws. Mapped Pentax against Ricoh’s global infrastructure throughout Europe, The Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Global Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. My insights defined the future state of the organization, including re-allocation of group resources, elimination of redundant costs, internal and external communication improvements, brand strategy, Voice of Customer (VOC) requirements, and enhancements to product development processes. My transformation methodology was the catalyst, on a global basis, to initiate change management and compliance with defined merger strategies. Provided expertise, executive leadership, and execution standards to Ricoh Corporation’s CEO, CFO, COO, and GSMO team.

Strategic Planning Success Measures

Entrusted with multiple Sony brands and spanning a variety of consumer products, I had the privilege and opportunity to push the creative envelope for both existing and newly entered market segments within the consumer electronics segments.

Professional accomplishments are rooted in market analysis and customer segmentation, advertising such as the launch of the Cybershot T-1 with Steven Tyler and the establishment of “Rush Mylo” broke new ground for Sony Electronics within the Corporate Marketing division.

Having the opportunity to team with bright minds in creative agencies, I was able to develop, approve, produce, and deploy unique creative foils that built brand equity for Sony. Stagnant product categories such as noise-canceling headphones and exciting new market segments like digital cameras offered me the opportunity to showcase my creative instinct and business acumen to deliver results.

Business Process Transformation

Instituted Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to integrate with Ricoh Company, Ltd. infrastructure by actually analyzing and managing global business requirements of automating the back-office needs. Provided leadership to the arduous task of converting from SAP to Oracle in the United States and from FX to BAAN in Canada.

The new ERP systems transition required effective planning, coding, deployment, training in adopting the new infrastructure. The systems transitioned professional accomplishments to Ricoh Company, Ltd. legacy systems streamlining forward and reverse logistics, financial reporting, sales reporting, and visibility to “Just in Time” inventory planning; all accomplished ahead of schedule and cost savings.

Operational Optimization

Competing company priorities combined with poorly defined roles and responsibilities, limited productivity, negatively impacted profitability. Determined to design a measurable and traceable process improvement plan, I built and branded the ACE 8 (Achieve Customer Excellence) model. ACE 8, co-developed with my leadership team, identified and provides execution tactics to resolve eight projects of the most pressing performance gaps in the company.

The multi-phased Ace 8 program was architected in 60 days, framing long-term continual business improvement initiatives. This program identified and executed vital business development projects complete with benchmarks, ROI objectives, and customer excellence measures.

Profit Restoration Projects

Poorly conceived pricing and commission structures, lack of analytics, and dated inventory strategies resulted in overproduction, eroding revenue, margins, and profit. Despite multiple attempts by previous leaders to resolve the fundamentally flawed plan, their efforts were not successful. Therefore, I restructured the compensation model by shifting the measure from gross revenue on sales to profit contribution by SKU and profitability by account.

Tying compensation to profit dollars, restructuring pricing, instituting analytics, and ensuring inventory improvements resulted in improved profit contribution; restoring profitability, exceeding budgeted Gross Profit contribution by 6.7%.

Restructuring / Cost Reduction

Fixed costs were high and eroded profit. The Professional Accomplishments challenge was to reduce expenses without affecting sales performance or service. Built the strategy within the first 90 days and oversaw execution. Transitioned logistics process goals from a fixed to variable cost operating model. Engaged 3PL (Third Party Logistics), eliminated warehousing, and sold or disposed of obsolescent inventory. These efforts reduced costs by 55% while improving customer response and satisfaction, meeting all defined KPI.