Brian A. Riffle New Albany, OH 43054 brian.riffle@outlook.com | www.brianriffle.com | 412-915-4226 QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY Experienced visual presentations manager with nearly 20 years of experience leading merchandising projects including process reengineering, store merchandising, and corporate wide transformational initiatives leading to increased customer satisfaction, sales, and profit. EDUCATION Ohio University, Athens, OH December 2013 Master of Business Administration Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, PA May 1995 Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy, Minor: Mathematics EXPERIENCE Ignite Ashland, Ashland, KY 2014- Present Co-founder Provided management consulting services including current situation analysis, business plan development, tactical guidance, e-commerce implementations, social media presence coaching, and mentoring for small business startups and entrepreneurs. Ohio University, Athens, OH 2014- Present Teaching Assistant Provided meaningful feedback to students in the MBA program through the timely and thorough review of essays and exams. Utilized the Blackboard Learn learning management system to organize workflow and to communicate comments and grades to the students. Dick’s Sporting Goods, Pittsburgh, PA 2003- 2011 Manager of Visual Presentation- Corporate Developed, implemented, and directed the process for the creation of merchandise plans to support the seasonal merchandise changes for 450+ Dick’s Sporting Goods Stores and more than 80 Golf Galaxy stores. Partnered with store operations and other internal partners to improve regional merchandising strategies within the stores while protecting the corporate brand. Created and maintained an enterprise wide merchandising calendar that was utilized by visual, marketing, operations, logistics, and the merchant team. Trained and coached the corporate staff responsible for creating new store merchandise floor plans to facilitate the rapid growth of the leading sporting goods retailer from 125 stores to over 450 stores. Created and implemented new business processes for the creation of floor plans to utilize the information modeling tools in Autodesk’s Revit software leading to a 20% reduction in lead time. Partnered with the finance and merchandising departments to create a structure for the analysis of the relationship of assigned store space to sales using data from numerous sources resulting in reallocated space in select store locations leading to increased sales and reduction in under productive inventory. Provided ad-hoc reporting to senior executives to support business decisions. Managed the evaluation of all vendor fixtures and props. Led the design and development of store fixtures to drive incremental store sales. Collaborated with merchants and the construction department to determine correct fixture assortment for new stores. Partnered with key brands to develop shop in shop concepts. Participated in market tours with merchants, assortment planning, sales planning, and operations to determine the effectiveness of merchandising strategies. Supervisor of Space Planning Directed the department migration from Spaceman to JDA Space Planning (Pro Space). This included the software implementation, the construction of a more efficient item library, fixture creation and planogram conversion. Created reports in Micro Strategy to allow data to be imported/ exported from the space planning tools. This resulted in avoided costs and allowed the transition to take place with minimal non-productive time. Collaborated on the conversion of 46 stores obtained as part of the acquisition of the Galyan’s Sporting Goods chain. Responsible for the creation of individual merchandise plans for each store location based on existing store fixtures and sales history. Trained and mentored eleven new planogramers. Created training curriculum and led classroom sessions on the use of JDA Space Planning software and proprietary software solutions. This led to a greater employee retention rate and allowed many planogramers to quickly advance their careers within the organization. Converted the department from paper based publication to electronic publication allowing for a 66% quicker time to the stores, less wasted paper, and avoided costs for shipping. To support this initiative, the department converted to Adobe InDesign for all publications. Planogramer Created planograms and merchandising directives, including floor plans, for a chain of over 250 sporting goods stores using Spaceman software. Planned department transitions in a highly seasonal, high SKU environment. Used Excel and Access to manage large data sets. Phar-Mor Inc., Youngstown, OH 1992-2002 Manager of Store Projects Collaborated as part of a cross-functional team in the creation and implementation of a space management driven auto- replenishment system that centralized ordering for the chain, reducing inventory by 22% while increasing sales. Developed and implemented merchandising guidelines for a chain of 139 drug and super stores. Supervised the creation of planograms and their dispersion to the stores. Prepared and presented training material for a broad audience including executives, directors of operations and store managers in groups as large as 100. Oversaw the auditing of store adherence to company guidelines resulting in a 40% improvement in planogram accuracy.