Winning the Line Review: How a Retailer Actually Decides — How Private Label Builds Sales, Traffic and Loyalty
Juan De Paoli
President & Founder
De Paoli Consulting Group, LLC
Every item on the shelf is renting space, and the line review decides who renews the lease.
Most of the decision is shaped months before the supplier meeting, by the category’s role and the buyer’s data, and it often comes down to one question: “If I delete this item, where does the shopper go?” It then looks at the biggest force reshaping those decisions today.
Using industry data and examples from Costco, Target, Aldi, Walmart and Kroger, this presentation will show how retailers really make assortment decisions and demonstrate how private label drives sales, store traffic and shopper loyalty at the same time.
Loyalty Is Earned: Turning Shopper Empathy into Private Brand Advantage
Drew Stocker
Creative Director
Pearlfisher
Customer loyalty is earned, not given. Moving past functional table stakes, Drew Stocker will share how designing around real shopper empathy creates lasting brand devotion. Drawing on recent work with CVS Health, this interactive session explores how meaningful solutions turn everyday store brands into trusted destinations.
Private Conversations: Private Brands in a Conversational Marketing World
Bryan Gildenberg
Managing Director
Retail Cities
The evolution of private brands in the last decade has been profound. Transforming from mirror images of national brands at lower prices into strong brands with their own equity and consumer relationship.
As the commerce world becomes more digital and increasingly conversational through AI, private brands will need to manage a world where shoppers aren't going to compare the national brand and the private one, while only being served one personalized solution.
This presentation will outline the strategies retailers and private brand manufacturers need to undertake to ensure private brands continue to grow in strength and relevance in this more conversational and personalized world.
The Private Brand Opportunity: What It Takes to Capture It: Thinking Like a Retailer to Turn Data into Incremental Volume
John Clear
Partner
Alix Partners
Private brands represent a significant commercial opportunity, but capturing it often runs into operational barriers inside the manufacturer. This session explores how manufacturers can think like retailers, marrying their own data with true insights that solve category managers' problems and drive incremental volume.
Drawing on hands-on retail operating and advisory experience, the discussion will explore the operating models, capabilities and ways of working needed to support this shift.
Confidence Is a Choice
Julien LeBlanc
President and Co-Founder
blueprint N.A.
What if greater confidence was the key to unlocking more impact, stronger relationships and bigger business growth?
In this engaging and practical session, Julien LeBlanc will help attendees discover how to build confidence through three powerful pillars: Mind Set, Skill Set, and Jet Set. It will help how the way you think, the skills you develop and the way you show up can transform your impact, elevate your performance and open the door to new opportunities. The session helps you away with actionable strategies that can be applied immediately to grow your business.
Champions, Not Contacts: Building Retail Partnerships That Outlast the Buyer
Amy Buchan Siegfield
Founder
Cultivate A Network of Champions
Every supplier knows the feeling. The buyer who championed your program takes a new role, and suddenly your next line review feels like a first date. If the relationship lived in one inbox, it walked out the door with them.
In this session, Amy Buchan Siegfried will explain how suppliers should stop showing up as vendors and act as a partner. That means learning a retailer's business well enough to bring solutions to their challenges, not just products to their shelves, and building trust with the people across the account who live those challenges every day.
Amy will share practical tactics suppliers can put to work right away: mapping each account, asking questions that uncover what a retailer actually needs, and building simple follow-up habits so no relationship goes cold.
Finding the Margin That’s Already There
Lindsey Hu
Consulting Partner
Bradley Uhr
Senior Consulting Partner
ERA Group
Private label manufacturers are being squeezed from every side. In their presentation, ERA Group will show manufacturers, retailers and distributors where 10–30% of addressable spend typically hides in plain sight, and how to recover it without waiting for markets to turn.
Attendees will be shown where margin can be found in their own operations and present a practical plan to recover it. This is critical at a time when tariffs, freight and ingredient costs are pressuring on manufacturer economics.