Customer & Demand-Led
Ground decisions in how customers search, browse, and shop, informed by external and internal demand signals.
Approach
Four principles guide the work.
How I approach product data challenges for retailers.
Assortment-Aware
Design around the realities of a client's current assortment while anticipating future products and business growth.
Structured to Scale
Establish consistent, adaptable, and governed foundations across products, systems, regions, and channels.
Outcome-Oriented
Prioritize improvements that deliver meaningful customer, operational, and commercial value.
How I work
Listen, Shape, and Embed stay connected. Each pass feeds the next.
Listen
I gather search, navigation, and demand signals that show how customers shop and what the assortment can support.
Shape
I shape taxonomy, attributes, and data models from those inputs so the structure fits demand and scales with the assortment.
Embed
I embed standards, ownership, and operating recommendations so the foundation stays adaptable as context shifts.
Then back to Listen - new signals from what just shipped.
Global core, flexible customer expression.
How a fragmented merchant SKU record becomes a governed core product record that powers site search, faceted navigation, and regional storefronts at the same time.
Assess
Audit internal site-search queries, zero-result logs, category depth, and sample SKU exports to pinpoint where customer intent collides with catalogue structure.
Design
Define a canonical product hierarchy and a governed attribute dictionary separating core structural facts from flexible channel and regional expression.
Map
Connect raw merchant and supplier terminology to standardized facet values, inheritance rules, and customer-facing search synonym rings.
Validate
Test the model against real assortment edge cases, seasonal onboarding workflows, and cross-functional stewardship roles before rollout.
Before: opaque strings and stranded inventory
Unstructured ERP and merchant feed
- ERP Category: Women > Tops > Knitwear (flat bucket mixing tanks, cardigans, and heavy knits)
- Product Title: 'W-KNIT-TOP-04 Merino Crew Hthr Oat'
- Colour Field: 'Hthr Oat / Crème' (free-text string; excluded from Beige and Neutral filters)
- Material & Care: Buried inside a single marketing bullet; missing from structured filter facets
- Search Behaviour: Shoppers searching 'washable merino sweater' or 'oatmeal jumper' hit zero results
After: structured facets and demand-aligned discovery
Shared core with flexible channel expression
- Canonical Taxonomy: Apparel > Tops > Sweaters > Crewneck Sweaters
- Storefront Placements: Women > Clothing > Sweaters & Cardigans; Autumn Merino Edit
- Core Attributes: Material = 100% Merino Wool; Fit = Relaxed; Neckline = Crewneck; Care = Machine Wash Cold
- Normalized Colour: Display = Heather Oatmeal; Filter Family = Neutral / Beige
- Search & Regional Synonyms: Resolves 'merino jumper' (UK & Canada), 'crewneck pullover' (North America), and 'washable wool sweater'
Three inputs inform every decision.
Relevant today. Scalable tomorrow.
Customer Demand
How customers search, browse and shop, from external demand signals to internal site search, navigation and filter behaviour.
Product Assortment
What the business sells today and plans to sell tomorrow: categories, variants, complexity and future expansion.
Business Context
Commercial, organizational and technical needs: priorities, systems, selling channels, regions and constraints.
Customer demand informs not only what information is captured, but also the language and terminology used to classify and describe products, balanced with assortment realities and business requirements.
