Retail & Consumer
The latest trends are constantly shifting, and no industry appreciates this more than retailers. To stay competitive, retailers must control costs, keep operations running efficiently and tap unmined areas of the business to unlock additional value. AArete’s retail consulting services help create competitive advantages by aggressively managing costs within your supply chain, store operations, product merchandising and IT infrastructure. Through customised profitability improvement strategies and leading data analytics solutions, AArete arms you with the data and strategies to transform and optimise your existing business for a sustainable future.
Capabilities
Strategic Profitability Improvement
Nearly all retailers operate with compressing margin pressures and a customer base who is less loyal to brands than ever before. AArete’s expertise in sourcing and data analytics in addition to market intelligence and comprehensive retail and consumer strategies aids retailers in significantly reducing their costs across store operations, transportation/logistics, IT, HR and general administrative functions.
Using our proven data-driven methodology and cross-industry best practices, AArete helps mitigate the continually rising operational expenses by implementing strategic profitability improvement initiatives. We accelerate cost savings to ensure spend reductions are impacting your bottom line. Despite constant change and market pressure, our strategic profitability improvement solutions position our clients to feel confident in their financial position.
Procurement as a Service
The most successful procurement function drives maximum value. But for many retailers, procurement has evolved into a low-value, high fixed-cost department. For some stakeholders, procurement is nearly non-existent. Yet, transforming the procurement function may not always be the right answer. AArete’s Procurement as a Service (PaaS) solution takes the guesswork out of procurement, allowing retailers to step back from managing these non-core functions and focus on their core market differentiators, such as growing their revenues.
Our PaaS offering is an independent, managed service that accelerates the realised savings and improves the ROI of your procurement function while optimising your operations through automation and digital transformation. We focus on rate renegotiation, demand management strategies, process improvements and technological best practices to help you realise a significantly greater ROI from your procurement function. Rather than insourcing, we take on all procurement responsibilities from tactical buying to strategic sourcing initiatives to contracting, giving you confidence in your procurement function, while keeping you focused on strategic initiatives.
Customer Personalisation & Analytics
The strength of any retailer is knowing its consumers. When consumers visit online or in store, they create critical data points that can be interpreted to understand who they are and what they want. Retailers must harness this data effectively to gain insights into customer behaviours, drive more frequent transactions and greater revenues, and increase new customer acquisition.
AArete employs powerful data analytics to help empower sales associates with upsell opportunities and sharpen their marketing strategies. Our advanced team of retail data scientists and industry experts extract critical insights by capturing the most pertinent customer data and interpreting it through our variety of powerful analytics engines in order to improve consumer reach and acquire new customers. Using rich purchasing, customer loyalty, merchandising and third-party data, AArete implements behavioural and contextual targeting to create a personalised and tailored approach for your customers. From there, we employ upsell opportunities, personalised marketing campaigns, loyalty programme analysis and foot traffic assessments to help drive growth, retain existing customers and win new ones.
Supply Chain Optimisation
The timely and accurate flow of goods is a significant challenge for most retailers. With an ever-changing merchandise mix and the constant pressure to incorporate omnichannel strategies, retailers must react quickly to continually optimise their supply chains. AArete looks at improving supply chain operations as an automation and innovation challenge rather than a run-of-the-mill process problem – with a particular emphasis on the power of data analytics.
We pull from our extensive transportation industry experience, supply chain expertise and our work with retail leaders to develop custom data-driven solutions for your supply chain needs. Using a hands-on approach, we assess the direct and indirect network of interlinked providers and entities connected by product, suppliers, information and systems to recommend more efficient supply chain management processes. By examining source vendors, distributors, transportation network, distribution centres and warehouse processes, we’re able to integrate operations, identify opportunities for bots and automation, improve handoffs, transform silo management to cross-functional processes and enhance visibility to product flow.
Inventory Optimisation with E-commerce Integration
The lines between brick-and-mortar and online experiences are blurring more every day. Charged with balancing stock and assortment with omnichannel delivery, you must find ways to integrate these two environments, while still meeting consumers’ ever-increasing shopping preferences and delivery demands.
AArete’s data-minded approach assesses and works to improve your inventory management capabilities, while creating a more responsive and efficient supply chain that supports all channels and product requirements. Whether responding to new buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) strategies and changing product assortments, retailers like you rely on AArete’s data-centred approach to ensure service levels and product availability match, while reducing investments in working capital. Using data, we create customised algorithms that manage demand and supply uncertainties across your entire network. This helps determine optimal inventory levels at stores and distribution centres and how best to deploy inventories between brick-and-mortar locations and e-commerce platforms. By decreasing inventory costs, reducing stale inventory and increasing fill rate, AArete’s online retail consulting methods help increase profitability while staying relevant across each and every channel.
Store Operations, Labor Optimisation & Cost Efficiency
While foot traffic in stores has declined, store customer expectations continue to rise. Meanwhile, a world of options and choices have resulted in volatile customer loyalty. In response, retailers are forced to respond by balancing the cost of store labour with the need to meet customer expectations. While most retailers have invested in human capital applications, AArete adds accretive value to those programmes with a fact-driven approach rooted in process improvement, automation and innovation.
We combine time studies, transactional data, employee interviews, foot traffic data, delivery scheduling, assortment information and traditional industrial engineering standards with our own internal dataset to develop a custom labour model for each physical store. And because every store is different, our approach helps streamline each location’s roles, responsibilities and operations to ensure its store workforce meets demand. Armed with a clear profile of each store’s unique foot traffic pattern and customer data, AArete can also help you predict future labour needs, while maximising your workforce’s efficiency and output.
Our Retail & Consumer Experts

Andrew Bae

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Andrew Bae
Andrew brings over 10 years of experience to AArete’s strategy and operations service lines in enterprise-wide strategic profitability improvement, operational improvement, advisory services and business transformation across a wide range of industries including Transportation, Logistics and Distribution and Retail and Consumer. He specialises in leading cross-functional teams working towards establishing and executing a wide range of strategic initiatives to achieve goals and objectives of internal and external senior executive teams. Andrew holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Southern California.

Vasudev Bhat

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Vasudev Bhat
Vasudev brings over 16 years of experience in information technology, business analytics and big data to AArete’s Digital and Data Services practice. His work encompasses a vast array of meta-analytics including claims correspondence, customer experience, data governance and data profiling, revenue optimisation, usage based insurance, data warehousing and Data Lake. Prior to AArete, Vasudev was a leader at IBM specialsing in big data, advanced analytics, Internet of Things and cognitive customer care advising clients on business/IT transformation by leveraging technologies in this space. Prior to IBM, he worked at Accenture and iGATE, which is now a part of Capgemini. Vasudev holds a Master in Computer Engineering degree from North Carolina State University and is a published author in Property Casualty 360.

Tyler Higgins

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Tyler Higgins
Tyler has robust experience leading multi-year sourcing initiatives within Higher Education, Retail, Consumer Products, Transportation and Energy, achieving over $250M in strategic profitability improvement. He has over 10 years of sourcing experience and developing strategic solutions regarding innovation, automation, process improvements, and strategic programmes integral in generating substantial strategic profitability improvement. He has completed projects in a multitude of sourcing categories including temporary labor, most facilities (material and services) areas, IT hardware and software, scientific supplies, supply chain/transportation, outsourcing and human resource benefits. Tyler holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a published author in Internet Retailer.

Mike Kim

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Mike Kim
Mike Kim is Vice President Data & Analytics and Head of AArete’s Centre of Data Excellence (CODE). Mike’s over 15 years of analytics experience includes technical delivery of machine learning/predictive models, implementation of advanced database designs, custom application development, and thought leadership for various analytic strategies. Representing healthcare, entertainment, professional sports, and numerous other industries, Mike co-leads AArete’s Digital & Data Services solutions and international expansion efforts. He holds a PhD in Health Policy and Management from Johns Hopkins University, a Masters of Public Health degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Brown University. Mike is a published author in Chain Drug Review, American Pharmacists Association, Mass Market Retailers, Retail TouchPoints, Advertising Age, Retail IT Insights, Managed Healthcare Executive, Property Casualty 360 and Financial Executives.

Tim Lefkowicz

Expertise Areas:
Tim Lefkowicz
With over 15 years of consulting expertise, Tim leads AArete’s Advisory Services offering and the Education, Retail and Consumer, Transportation, Logistics and Distribution and Diversified Industrial industry practices. With additional experience in strategic profitability improvement and the Health: Payer industry, Tim has leveraged his diverse range of consulting experience in supply market economics, negotiations, process improvement, team-oriented problem-solving and market intelligence research. He holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from The Anderson School at UCLA, a Bachelor of Arts degree from The University of Virginia and is a published author in CMCSP’s Supply Chain Quarterly, Target Marketing, and Retail TouchPoints.