1st Choice for Category,
Shopper & Retail Expertise
Shopper & Retail Expertise
click play to view video
Our Strategic Growth business unit brings ORDER to your challenges and in turn enables the creation of solutions:
Our Strategic Growth business unit brings ORDER to your challenges and in turn enables the creation of solutions:
click play to view video
Organisations biggest category and shopper challenge is often a lack of resource. Head counts shrink as workload grows!
Catcom can provide expertise on short term work requirements or longer term interim placements. We can provide expertise that can hit the ground running, whether that is a strategic gap that needs filling, a customer range review or producing a planogram – we can support you.
Here at Catcom our aim is to be your #1 choice for expertise in Category Management, Shopper Marketing and Retail Deployment.
Our defining principle is a focus on practical application, always starting with the end in mind. We ensure insight driven thinking challenges norms and perceptions but ultimately leads to tangible, real world deployment opportunities.
We do this through an amazing team of people all of whom have real and relevant experience and a passion for turning insight into action!
Gavin Smith
Managing Partner
Anyone that knows Gavin knows that he’s a people person! He is perfectly suited to leading Catcom’s Capability and Deployment business.
Having started his career at Nielsen 20 years ago and moved through the ranks with United Biscuits, Pepsico, and Accolade Wines, he has a wealth Category and Shopper experience to draw upon and a unique eye for interpreting insight.
Significant consulting experience since Catcom was founded, alongside his prior roles, has delivered broad knowledge across many categories, channels, and geographies.
Gavin has a real passion and skill in creating interactive and engaging
capability programs which are both memorable and effective.
Robin Trask
Managing Partner
He hates the badge, but Robin has built a hugely successful career through being an insight geek!
25 years of FMCG experience gained at Carlsberg, United Biscuits, and Nestle has enabled Robin to both work in and lead some of the best Category and insight teams in the business.
His focussed experience has enabled him to become a leading protagonist of turning insight into action. A breadth of customer facing category roles has resulted in a real ability to turn theory and data into
customer ready initiatives.
With an attention to detail and a depth of understanding of available data, insight and customer challenges, Robin brings both strategic thinking plus a healthy dose of realism to his leadership of Catcoms Strategic Business.
Paul Selvey
Commercial Consultant
Paul epitomises Catcom’s focus on practical application.
With over 25 years FMCG experience spanning commercial roles for
Coca-Cola Enterprises, KP Foods, United Biscuits and Lindt, plus 10+
years consulting for many global organisations, there’s not much he
hasn’t seen (or has an opinion!) on.
Having worked across all trade channels his passion and knowledge
excels in wholesale, foodservice and convenience impulse
environments.
Paul has a straight talking and practical approach to both strategic and
tactical projects and his strength is simplifying complex challenges.
Laura Gray
Client Director
With over 20 years leading Category, Shopper and Customer Marketing
disciplines, Laura has a natural ability to understand and connect
category/shopper/customer insights.
Laura has worked in CPG client leadership roles (eg GSK), in Retailer
Marketing (eg Safeway Stores HQ) and as a Category/Shopper
Marketing Consultant for nearly 10 years, so can draw upon her breadth
of experience and apply multiple perspectives to any challenge.
Her passion and knowledge of Category dynamics and connecting this
to Shopper behaviour through interrogating their motivations and
attitudes, enables Laura to deliver world class Category Vision and an
ability to translate strategy into real solutions for Customers.
Martyn Chidwick
Client Director
Alongside a passion for training and facilitation, Martyn has a strong ability for creating and delivering simple solutions from complex data and insight.
His breadth of highly toned insight and data skills cover both Continuous Research (Nielsen Answers, IRI, Kantar Powerview, Dunnhumby Shop, I2C, brand equity tracking, marketing mix econometrics) and Ad Hoc research (ideation, concept testing, conjoint, comms testing, shopper insights, U&A)
This huge experience and skill set has enabled Martyn to build a hugely success career leading and developing category and shopper teams both locally and remotely across Europe. This, coupled with an extensive consulting career, makes him a hugely dynamic and valuable member of the Catcom team on both Strategic and Capability driven projects.
Lynne Renton
Category Consultant
With a background in Psychology and research methods, combined with long-standing interest in why people think, feel and act in the way they do – Lynne quickly identified an opportunity for the practical application of this in the world of Category Management.
Having begun her career at Henkel and progressed rapidly through the ranks in a variety of customer facing Category & Sales roles, her ‘Category first’ approach and ability to balance the needs of the organisation with those of the customer, shopper and consumer soon saw her asked to head up the Category and Brand teams.
Through her previous roles, and most recently with Catcom, Lynne has worked with a range of categories and channels across different geographies.
With an eye for detail and a passion for getting to the crux of an issue, she takes problems and questions as a challenge and works on them with a clear focus on resolution and results.
Nicola Browne
Client Director
Nic’s charismatic personality is infectious, and when combined with over 20 years’ experience gained across commercial roles within FMCG, she has become an integral part of the Catcom team.
With experience spanning Sales, Shopper Activation, Commercial Planning and Category Development, Nic has developed a broad skillset that has enabled her to support many clients on a variety of projects.
Her passion for focussing on the shopper and a natural ability to blend creativity with insights, has enabled Nic to explore and develop interactive online learning solutions for a number of clients.
“An approach that evaluates theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.”
We’re ambitious, challenging, creative, strategic, innovative…. but ultimately pragmatists.
We start with the end in mind. We believe our job is to help find solutions. Consumer, shopper, retailer, brand and channel solutions.
Clarity on this ensures the output is real and tangible.
We always encourage ourselves and our clients to ‘Pub Talk’ a challenge – to strip language complexity and industry preconceptions out of a conversation in order to simplify issues and brainstorm solutions.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough” (Einstein)
Big Agency Experience, Small Business Agility & Value
Big Agency Experience, Small Business Agility & Value
Big Agency Experience, Small Business Agility & Value
Big Agency Experience, Small Business Agility & Value
We’ve been lucky enough to work with many businesses across the world. Explore the links below to understand more about some of their challenges we’ve helped find solutions for.
Email:
info@catcominternational.co.uk
Address
Wyvols Cout, Swallowfield,
Berkshire, RG7 1WY