Mercedes Blakeley

• Led the commercial performance of the Ambient categories and Supply Chain function for all categories, delivering approximately £3m in weekly turnover with accountability for sales, margin, waste and availability.

• Project managed the socities Vape strategy and backline relaunch, including supplier sourcing, negotiation, stakeholder engagement and full kiosk redesign, to overseeing the roll out with Operation influence.

• Achieved a 30% uplift in Vape sales following the June launch, improving margin contribution and offsetting cigarette decline with a future first strategy in motion.

• Redesigned Ambient promotional strategy to reflect changing customer behaviours, the GLP-1 landscape, inflation and consumer confidence, resulting in improved promotional profitability.

• Repositioned Non-Food as a fully incremental convenience range through data-led decision making, supplier partnerships and testing new approaches.

• Managed commercial contracts for Fuel and Forecourts, ensuring strong commercial value and compliance.

• Delivered step-change improvements in Food-to-Go propositions through partnership with Range and Format teams to redesign offer with a customer first approach. Supporting design of kiosks and fixtures to support transient formats specifically train stations to deliver strategy.

• Worked cross-functionally on various projects with Marketing, Operations, Building Services, Human Resources, IT Development and Finance whilst stakeholder mapping to a senior audience through to implementation and relationship building.

• Led and developed a high-performing team of three, with overall accountability for the wider team of ten. Driving a culture focused on curiosity, challenge and support to allow colleagues to take ownership, defining clear responsibilities and accountabilities. Creation of RACI mapping for roles that report into Head of Commercial to create structure and framework.

• Contribute to senior commercial decision making and deputise for the Chief Commercial Officer when required.

• Responsible for the BWS, Cigarette/Vape, Non Food categories and commerciality of the business forecourts, with a weekly combined category turnover of £2 million.
• Accountable for designing and managing a calendar of promotional activity; responsibility extends to sales, profit, waste and availability.
• Managing price and promotions for the categories to maximise margin through supplier negotiation for promotional funding and activation plans to drive category growth.
• Developed comprehensive sales risk management strategies to minimise financial loss on declining categories such as Cigarettes and Vape circa £47m yearly risk, to create a long term business strategy whilst balancing responsible retail practises.
• Ensuring process and statutory compliance is followed for product labelling, route to market, supplier responsibilities including GSCOP practises.
• Monitoring industry trends through IGD, Kantar, retailing events to identify product opportunities. Growth of the RTD category lead to the creation of 'BWS To Go' range, leading the way for transient and coastal store locations supporting incremental sales.
• Creating communication briefings for Food Operations to ensure commercial objectives and initiatives are clear, pragmatic and understandable to all store colleagues.
• Cross collaboration with Food Marketing to ensure customer journey aligns within category needs; NPD POS creation; and social asset identification. New ways of working set up, identified and developed through communication and wider business understanding.
• Leading a team to create a culture to positively embrace change, supporting colleagues to develop and challenging current ways of working to ensure productivity, efficiency and high performance.
• Led negotiations for successful contract agreements with high commercial and business impact.
• E-commerce range experience to drive sales through omnichannel.
• Key roles undertaken to deliver business events and conferences; comparing roles, presentation of category data to 300 guests, and supplier negotiation in funding and attendance to support the events.

• Managed 16 Petrol Forecourts and Store Managers directly and indirectly 300 colleagues during the resale of the forecourts to Asda, covering a region across central England Region.
• Responsible for over £850k weekly turnover, driving and maintaining KPI's such as waste, availability, payroll to maximise commerciality for the region and maintain controllable expenses for bottom line contribution,
• Building relationships over a short period of time, with awareness of the colleague change curve and how best to support for the colleagues going through TUPE process, through effective conversations and reviews.
• Ensured communication clarity, stability, and engagement for colleagues during a period of organisational uncertainty and structural change.
• Safe and secure audit coaching with colleagues, including forecourt legality and certification checks to maintain compliance and safety.
• Directed end-to-end operational readiness for resale including compliance, data integrity, stock processes, and maintaining profitability.
• Working collaboratively with HR business's partners and colleagues in risk to fulfil contractual obligations for the forecourt resale, including building a sustainable colleague base for the establishment requirements and concluding long term HR cases.

• Previous other roles from 2014
• Previous Retail roles from 2016