Retail In Detail

Jan van der Oord

Mr. Jan van der Oord has worked as a consultant for more than 14 years, supporting companies throughout Europe to improve their competitiveness. His functional focus is on Operations excellence, Cost Reduction, Restructuring and transition management mostly in consumer related industries. He is working intensively with companies in SEE since 1992 and the most of his current clients are served by A.T. Kearney and himself for more than 10 years. Following an earlier career as a consultant at A.T. Kearney in Amsterdam and Oslo, Mr. Van der Oord gained extensive management experience as Vice President of Bertelsmann and as Director Sales & Marketing of Gorenje-Germany. His current position is Vice President and Shareholder of A.T. Kearney and member of the leadership of A.T. Kearney South East Europe with a specific focus on Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.

A.T. Kearney is global management consulting firm that uses strategic insight, tailored solutions and a collaborative working stile to help clients achieve sustainable results. Since 1926, A.T. Kearney has been a trusted advisor on CEO-agenda issues to the world leading corporations across all major industries. A.T. Kearney’s offices are located in major business centers in 36 countries.

Vilém Hübner

Vilém Hübner is managing GfK monitoring of retail promotions in the Adriatic region. He started at GfK back in 1992, established its non-food tracking operations in the Czech and Slovak Republics. Since the late 90ies his responsibilities included online market research, and CEE retail panel coordination at the headquarters in Germany. As Director of GfK Consumer Tracking in Czechia in 2001-2007, he was mainly focused at tracking and understanding trends in consumer behaviour. In his current role he concentrates on retailer promotions, their trends and impact.

Wolfgang Twardawa

Wolfgang Twardawa started at GfK after his time at university studying business administration. He continued as Managing Director for Panel Services. Currently he is responsible for the division Strategic Marketing. During his different positions as a consultant, he was working with the leading manufacturers of food and non-food. Because of his projects and publications he is member of the board of G.E.M. (German Society for Research on Brands and Branding).

Laurent Bendavid

Laurent Bendavid has 15 years of experience at Carrefour. Born on May 4, 1970 in Morocco, he graduated from the Higher School of Commerce at Rennes, France. He started his career in Carrefour-France as department chief. For 6 years he was sector director and head of Textiles, as well as head of Fast Moving Consumer Goods at Carrefour Mexico. The next 6 years of his career were at Carrefour Brazil, where he occupied the office of head of Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, head of Foods and head of Hypermarket Exploitation.

Momchil Vasilev and Galina Bunkova

Momchil is a Senior Manager in the Advisory department of PricewaterhouseCoopers Bulgaria. He joined the firm in 1995. Momchil has extensive experience in project management of large scale transformation projects of R&C companies in Bulgaria and Serbia. Projects led by him covered corporate and organisational restructuring, optimisation of business processes, value chain and human resource management, post-acquisition integration. On an ongoing basis, Momchil advises many of his clients on their strategy development process and identification and utilisation of the available synergies in their operations.

Galina Bunkova is an attorney-at-law and a Senior Managing Associate at Tsvetkova Bebov & Partners, Attorneys-at-law (Landwell Bulgaria), the correspondent law firm to PricewaterhouseCoopers Bulgaria, where she leads the team engaged in structuring commercial transactions and M&A. As a legal consultant Galina has worked with world leading manufacturers of fast moving consumer goods, with a focus on structuring the relations between suppliers, distributors, retailers and consumers, consumer and competition protection, trade marks.

Presenters
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Landwell run a Global Industry Programme which enables their experts to collect, concentrate and share industry-specific experience and knowledge. The Retail & Consumer sector is a priority industry. The Global Retail & Consumer industry group has designated professionals and territory sector leaders in more than 50 countries around the world, serving all types and sizes of retail and consumer goods companies. In Bulgaria, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Tsvetkova Bebov & Partners, Attorneys-at-law (Landwell) have deep expertise and experience in the retail and consumer industry and their client list includes most of the large retailers and international and local FMCG producers. The Bulgarian Retail & Consumer industry group maintains close relations with the industry managers, initiates thought-leadership discussions and offers tax, legal, financial and business solutions. Both presenters are active members of this group.

Orlin Dochev and Boyan Martinov

Orlin Dochev has been managing the Microsoft Business Solution (ERP and CRM) team in Bulgaria for the last year and a half. Before that he worked at Oracle Bulgaria and was responsible for Oracle business applications. He has more than 6 years of practical experience positioning the value of the business management solutions. His team has won a lot of ERP and CRM projects for Bulgarian customers: Bella Bulgaria, Ficosota, Balkanstroy, Lev Ins, First Investment Bank, etc. Dochev has a master degree in Computer Science from the Technical University in Sofia and a MBA. He has many qualifications in sales and strategic marketing, processes and business management systems.

Boyan Martinov is a Sales Manager at the Bulgarian most successful Microsoft Dynamics partner - Intelligent Systems Bulgaria. He started his career in the IT industry as a consultant and later as a salesman at OmegaSoft. Then, he worked as a Navision consultant at Team Vision when he passed an exam and became the first Microsoft Business Solutions Certified Professional in Navision Manufacturing in Bulgaria. In the beginning of 2004, together with four of his colleagues, he established Intelligent Systems Bulgaria where he is a Sales Manager until now. Boyan Martinov has a master degree in Computer Science from the Technical University in Sofia and many successfully completed sales and marketing courses.

Suzana Nikiforova

Suzana Nikiforova has more than 15-year experience in the field of management, marketing, strategic planning and sales. She is responsible for the development of Mercator markets outside the Headquarter in Slovenia. She coordinates the transfer of the corporate know-how and standards at local level. Suzana is in charge of the company's strategic positioning on international markets, the trade and marketing activities management with a special focus of the development of private label products within the company's network of operation. Prior to joining Mercator's team, Suzana has been strategic business development consultant for different clients in Southeast Europe. She holds a licence for an independant EU Community project management advisor and has been an independent consultant in several EU projects. She is also a visiting lecturer of Brand Management at the
University American College Skopje.

Ivailo Marinov

Mr. Marinov will present schemes adopted by independent and smaller retailers in other countries in the face of crisis and the entry of discount formats. He will introduce the advantages of various alliances and the opportunities for retailers to preserve their flexibility and overcome the contemporary challenges. Details on the pending launch of the first Bulgarian nationwide franchise programme for food retailers will be presented. Mr. Marinov will also introduce the drowing initiative of the company to support Bulgarian products. The presentation aims to illustrate how the development strategy of a company benefits not only the firm but also cares for the traditions, preserves smaller communities, and promotes local producers.