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Philbert's Agenda Includes Melding A&P, Pathmark

MONTVALE, N.J. Ask Rebecca Philbert for a brief description of her mission at A&P, and you get one. Pure and simple value creation, said Philbert, whose official titles senior vice president of merchandising and supply & logistics, and a member of A&P's executive committee are a bigger mouthful. Philbert, a 25-year veteran of the grocery industry, joined A&P in December 2006 after a lengthy career

Name: REBECCA PHILBERT

Title: Senior vice president of merchandising and supply & logistics, A&P

Biggest challenge: Seeing that A&P effectively applies its newly gained leverage in the areas of merchandising, transportation and logistics.

MONTVALE, N.J. — Ask Rebecca Philbert for a brief description of her mission at A&P, and you get one.

“Pure and simple — value creation,” said Philbert, whose official titles — senior vice president of merchandising and supply & logistics, and a member of A&P's executive committee — are a bigger mouthful.

Philbert, a 25-year veteran of the grocery industry, joined A&P in December 2006 after a lengthy career with Safeway, Pleasanton, Calif. At Safeway, Philbert served as corporate vice president and senior lead for that company's innovative “lifestyle” fresh store format. Across the country at A&P, a similar program of store remodeling and repositioning had begun.

“My varied background provides me with a unique understanding of customer and retailer needs,” Philbert told SN. “This perspective allows me to make truly impactful merchandising decisions.”

Though on the job for a relatively short period of time, Philbert has already counted some significant accomplishments to her credit. She has led the introduction of Starbucks cafes into select stores and to the addition of pharmacies in other locations. Confronted with the issue of improving A&P's performance in its wine business, Philbert last fall directed the company's acquisition of the innovative wine retailer Best Cellars. Joshua Wesson, who founded Best Cellars, is today overseeing the transformation of A&P's wine business and reporting to Philbert.

She has also been instrumental in developing the new pricing strategies at A&P that deliver a competitive pricing message to accompany dramatic shifts in fresh and service departments in fresh store makeovers.

“Rebecca is an integral member of our executive team,” Eric Claus, chief executive officer of A&P, said in a statement. “Her innovative thinking and remarkable understanding of customers' needs have taken our merchandising to a new level.”

This year, as A&P begins the process of integrating the assets of Pathmark Stores into its operations, the spotlight will be on Philbert's work with regard to the solutions the company chooses in logistics and distribution, as well as in areas like private-label products and how merchandising will inform the positioning of its store brands going forward. Her goal, she said, is to shape these strategies to optimize A&P's newfound size and leverage, and lead the market, not follow it.

In other words, value creation.

“My mission is to leverage our merchandise and supply/logistics operations to grow our company to the top position in every market we serve,” Philbert said. “As the cornerstone of our company, merchandise drives the business and it is my goal to ensure that we have an effective strategy throughout all of our formats to add that value.”

Philbert said that merchandise offerings will tend to differ in each of A&P's four formats: the upscale/urban Food Emporium; the fresh stores under the A&P, Waldbaum's and Super-Fresh banners; Pathmark, which will combine service elements with a focus on value and local community demographics; and Food Basics, a hard-discount brand. She said quality products and competitive pricing within their categories would be characteristic of all A&P stores.

A private-label program to share among the banners is another area where Philbert has focused. To that end, she hired Douglas Palmer, a former colleague at Safeway, to head up A&P's private-label program. At Safeway, Palmer led the development of a brand rationalization and consolidation initiative, the redesign of packaging, and the launch of Safeway's O Organics products brand. His work garnered national acclaim for Safeway's private-label efforts.

Both A&P and Pathmark had announced plans to revamp their private labels prior to their merger. Philbert said A&P's “America's Choice” brand is already featured at Pathmark stores. A program currently in development will launch complete lines of more than 2,000 private-label products at all banners, including Pathmark, in the coming months. Although she declined to provide details, she said A&P has “some extraordinary innovations ready for rollout over the course of the year.”

Aligning Pathmark and A&P to facilitate merchandising and supply has already begun, and in some cases been completed, she said.

“Right out of the gate, the biggest priority was to effectively migrate Pathmark's data into our systems,” Philbert said. “This was an eventful time in which we conducted numerous top-to-top meetings with our vendors to ensure a seamless transition and to also see where we could add value.”

This effort resulted in what she called a “pioneering strategy” regarding A&P's relationship with its suppliers.

“Another challenge was merging two merchandising strategies while trying to ensure all stores and formats continued to effectively meet our customers' needs,” she added. “A lot of hard work went into making sure this happened.”

The success of these efforts to combine the businesses is showing in improvements in sales, transactions and customer counts, Philbert said. “The approach also gave store employees renewed energy around the different ways we can meet our customers' needs,” she said. “This excitement resonated throughout the stores.”

Philbert said she has taken considerable pride in the success of A&P's new pricing program, utilizing “red tag” discounts on known-value items to price them competitively with the leaders in the marketplace. “To be in the fastest-paced market in the country and leading, not following, has been extremely satisfying.”

TAGS: Marketing