1. Chris Simon
PROJECTS - PORTFOLIO

2. Chris Simon
DESIGNING AND EXECUTING BLUEPRINTS FOR PROFITABLE CHANGE
As Flagship Target Store Manager generated, analyzed and presented continuous improvement
projects, operational stock shortage training and new merchandising opportunities to Directors,
Divisional Merchandise Managers and Senior Vice Presidents.
Acted as Primary Category Insights Liaison between stores and buyers for Men’s, Women’s,
Shoes, Accessories, Children’s, Jewelry, Entertainment, Electronics and Holiday Candy divisions.
Including assortment, planogram development, space productivity and floor mapping.
Known as an Innovation Catalyst, unleashing employees creativity by embracing
experimentation, noticing friction points and implementing solutions to improve results.
Expert at conducting thorough operational assessments, educating stakeholders and building
coalitions for change, generating solutions to drive sales and profits, and facilitating continual
process improvements.
Previously, as Regional Manager, led a field staff covering 800+ Target stores and 1 billion in
sales.

3. Department Early Set Walkthroughs
PROVIDED MAPS (Merchandising, Assortment, Pricing and Shelving) insight to buyers and merchant team for Men’s, Women’s, Shoes, Accessories, Children’s, Jewelry, Entertainment,
Electronics, Trim a Tree, Halloween, and Holiday Candy divisions.
• Assumed the Lead Role in presenting insights, strategies and tactics to business partners
• Supported delivery of formal category reviews to merchant group, identifying current state, business drivers and opportunities for growth
• Assisted in the assessment of shelf layout and productivity, develop shelving recommendations to optimize category performance, manage schematic development and distribution
• Help Create and deliver fact-based presentations that compelled merchants to take action against opportunities to improve their performance.
• Broadly shared retail best practices and successful retail execution examples such that others could adopt and replicate.
• Provided guidance in support of shelving and assortment principles
• Actively participate in the improvement of retail MAPS execution

4. Department Early Set Walkthroughs
PROVIDED MAPS (Merchandising, Assortment, Pricing and Shelving) insight to buyers and merchant team for Men’s, Women’s, Shoes,
Accessories, Children’s, Jewelry, Entertainment, Electronics, Trim a Tree, Halloween, and Holiday Candy divisions
• Instilled a customer-focused approach to decision making with the merchant teams and category managers or vendors.
• As Visual Merchandising Leader helped deliver new in Store Concepts and Experiences
• Acted as consultant to the team delivering short and long-term visual merchandising strategies that support the Target brand image
• Built strong partnerships and communication with key cross functional team members
• Demonstrated the ability to work with and influence peers and senior management
• Possessed and shared expert knowledge and key understanding of the visual industry and competitive market place
• Demonstrated passion for: style trends in Apparel, sharing enthusiasm in a retail environment, and providing an amazing shopping
experience for customers

5. Not on planogram task force member
for Target corporation
Field representative of a cross-functional project team to investigate the amount and root causes of
NOP in the stores. Developed a process to regularly determine the amount of NOP in all the stores
and clean it up.
• Facilitating training for merchant partners on how Entertainment (music and movies) scan return
worked and identified and resolved gaps in existing process.
• Identified not on planogram merchandise in stores, researched causes, and developed strategies to
reduce and prevent future issues.
• Reduced non productive inventory to historic lows and increased open to buy dollars which
improved in stocks and drove sales

6. Reducing NCF (Non carry forward)
product markdowns
Identified the need for a new reporting tool for stores to use to ensure all of their NCF product
was merchandised on the sales floor and reduce markdown liabilities.
• Created tool that was used chain wide and became best practice to help reduce markdowns
and drive profitable sales in Back to School, Toys, Lawn and Patio, Electronics, Entertainment and
LTO offers

7. Price Change Productivity
Identified opportunity to reduce the amount of unproductive clearance ticketing workload being
driven in stores
• Analyzed guest behaviors and purchase habits, to create a model to optimize price change
productivity through signing versus ticketing
• Partnered cross-functionally with store operations to ensure a decision tree and HQ process
was in place to determine if clearance stickers or signing should be used for price change events.
• Turn downs have saved stores more than 85K in payroll (2 million dollars) in the first 2 years

8. Genuine Kids by OshKosh at Target
Demographic allocation Test
Identified a sales opportunity by analyzing income and age demographics to over allocate
Genuine Kids by OshKosh at Target contrary to over all department sales in area that over
indexed on grandparent purchases of Infant Toddler clothing at a higher price point.
• Drove sales up 50bps in the worst category and over 250bps in the best

9. Just One You by Carter's Rebranding
Identified sales opportunity with Just One You by Carter's within Target. Carters had added
assortment into Kohl's and Walmart reducing brand partnership exclusivity feel with Target
Guests.
• Strategized with business partners to rebrand Just One You by Carter's to create exclusivity feel
to differentiate with other retailers selling Carters merchandise.
• Generated, analyzed and presented ideas for creating new signing and hang tags that were
relaunched within Target increasing the brand awareness and sales.

10. Holiday Candy Reinvention Taskforce
Identified assortment and presentation ideas to help reinvent Target's 2012 Christmas candy and
food gifting assortment driving Target's market share up 89bps to LY.

11. Target In-Store Marketing TV Wall
reinvention
Identified changes to be made for new Target In-Store Marketing TV Wall.
• Completed shopper insights to learn what specifications customers were looking for when
making purchasing decisions for TV"s
• Incorporated these specifications on all new In store marketing to help customers quickly
determine what each TV had to offer and helped expedite the sale process.
•The reinvention resulted in a +33% increase in store sales.

12. Kaizen | Check less debit card payment
option
Stores pyramid representative looking at ways to improve the productivity of the approval
process for check less debit card enrollment procedures

13. Video Game Reinvention
Advocated design and execution of a differentiated shopping experience for the video game
department to increase clarity, accessibility, and education for video game guests resulting in
significant sales increases for the department and the overall Electronics area as a whole.
• Improved Service scores by allowing customers to interect with product without having to wait
for employees to unlock security cases.
• Increase in market share from 10% to 11.5% with an annual incremental revenue at 300
million.

14. Mega High Volume Pharmacy
Prescription Storage Project
Identified issue with existing pharmacy prescription storage process that lead to a cluttered and
unproductive workflow for mega high volume pharmacies.
• Designed a bin storage process that provided an attractive, neat appearance that increased
capacity by 40%
• By providing a optimized will-call bin management system length of wait times were reduced
as measured by customer service surveys and reduced prescription errors by 50%.

15. Sample Demo Dome Best Practice
Identified need to improve consistency in executing sample demo domes in Deli, Bakery and
Produce. Old method depended on the diligence of staff to check fill and freshness. This often
lead to inconsistent product quality or empty sample domes reducing customer loyalty and
sales.
• Implemented a innovative, low cost and simple-to-use timer for monitoring the freshness and
fill. The timer ensured that Fresh samples were available to customers every time.
• Created the Best Practice that improved Sales and profit in Deli, Bakery and Produce

16. Cities 97 sampler CD incremental sales
driver
Developed category coupon program to drive incremental sales during the cities 97 sampler CD
event.
The CD usually generates over $500,000 every year for Minnesota charities.
• Effectively collaborated with internal and external business partners to execute event
strategies that created buzz, generated sales and media impressions, increased traffic and
enhanced Target’s brand position and reputation.
• Coupon redemption rate was the highest in Target corporation history.

17. Item Merge Process
Discovered issues in stores backroom location system when Headquarters iniated UPC item merges were executed.
• Identified backroom location accuracy issues that occured when item merges occured. Items were removed from
location data file and were trapped in the backroom resulting in reduced instocks, lost sales and increased markdowns
due to product exceeding expiration dates.
• Partnered with Regional leadership and store operations to define problem and provide recommendations for
immediate communication to field.
• Created a stop gap reporting tool for stores to utilize to weekly fix problems caused by item merges with backroom
location data file.
• Helped create an on-going system generated report to ensure stores could address item merge location issues
• Educated headquarters peers on the workload associated at the store level with item merges and the impacts of not
following SOP's on the item merge process

18. One World Pediatric OTC Merchandising
Through shopper insights identified an issue with customers trying to find Pediatric Medication.
All medication was merchandised by brand within its category. Recommended that Pediatric
medication be a merchandised in the first 4ft section within each category.
• One-world pediatric destination across numerous healthcare categories drove +9.8% same
store comp and +13.5MM in sales.

19. Latin Music New Release Sales
Target's sales of Latin music new releases were not meeting goals. I spearheaded a team to improve
this result. My major insight was that execution was not timely and the follow-up was not happening
in the stores.
• I implemented a New at Target Signing program that would set with the Latin new releases.
1. This gave more visibility to customers shopping, highlighting new releases
2. A follow-up tool was created and sent out to the store teams
3. The signing would be additional flag for the sales team to ensure timely execution
• Target's market share of Latin new release music doubled within 2 weeks

20. Entertainment Street Date
Replenishment Improvement
Studied replenishment process from vendor to distribution center to store.
• Identified shipping improvement opportunity that cut 72 hours from replenishment of time
sensitive, street dated replenishment.

21. Store FIFO replenishment opportunity
Identified a critical error in Target's backroom dating system that did not allow for FIFO to take
place in the replenishment process.
• Performed a Bottom Up productivity analysis for the Backroom dating system project.
Identified process improvement opportunities that allowed backroom system to use FIFO.
• Improved freshness of all grocery and pet items which lead to reduced markdowns and
reduced liability from outdated OTC medication.

22. Top item instock opportunity
Leveraged field and HQ partners to transition top item instock analysis and adjustments into a
systematic process from HQ replenishment team.
• Took workload out of stores and increased consistency of top item instock analysis.
• Drove double digit increases on instocks of Target's top 300 selling items
• System aggressively looked at service levels on large cube items

23. 3*5 Signing Flags
Identified an opportunity with Targets 3*5 promotional signing to drive impulse sales and increase
the visibility of the promotions being offered.
• Prototyped the use of Flags inserted into 3*5 sign holders to increase visibility from the main aisle
of promotions being offered.
• Communicated recommendations to senior leaders within the organization, including store
operatons.
• After increasing the visibility of the number of promotions being offered the disparity in the Price
perception was reduced between Target and Walmart.

24. Watch Battery pricing analysis
Analyzed the pricing of watch batteries and the Labor that went into changing the battery.
• Completed shopper insights on the perception of pricing of watch batteries
• Benchmarked competition on pricing and found opportunity to increase retail of watch
batteries improving margin by 100%

25. Seasonal Liability and Markdown
Reduction
Conceptualized, prototyped and collaborated with HQ partners to create a new reporting tool
aimed to reduce seasonal markdowns.
• Report became part of company wide best practice increasing visibility to seasonal liability. It
systematically could be used to improve presentation, improve in season sales and reduce after
season markdowns.
•Seasonal Markdowns were reduced 25-40% per store based on volume

26. Transition Trapping
Identified issue with trailer breakout that pushed all freight to the sales floor regardless if the
product was set or coming in for a new transition.
• Collaborated with headquarters partners to create a process that sorted all new transition and
revision cartons prior to bringing out to the sales floor reducing the number of times product
was being handled and improving productivity.
• Transition trapping became a Best Practice for all Target stores and was leveraged further up
stream to enable new product to hit stores just in time sorted for efficient stocking of new sets.

27. Custom Blocks
Identified productivity issue with trailer unload stock zones. Zones were set up uniformly for all stores
not taking into account prototypes, unique store layouts or merchandising tests.
• Created custom blocks to increase productivity and minimize workload during truck unload process.
• Increased productivity by 60% by reducing unneccessary steps in pallet breakout of freight, moving
merchandise to its proper location effectively and quickly as possible.
• Custom blocks allowed stores to analyze, assess and reconfigure blocks at any time. This process is
used in all Target Stores nationwide enabling efficient stocking in new prototypes including City Target
and Target Express.