LISLE, Ill. -- Royal Buying Group Inc. (RBG) has announced new hires and developments to its vendor department, which works to improve the products, services and technology available to independent convenience store operators, while also making the accessibility of these essential business tools more readily available.
The employees and new hires accredited to the vendor department include:
Sharon Porter, director of vendors/business development. Porter joined the RBG team in 2003 as the director of business development. Her primary responsibilities include overseeing new opportunity development, field merchandising, services, foodservice and coffee category management. Since then she has also acquired the role and title of director of vendors. With her newly obtained role she took on overseeing all vendor relationships, category managers and vendor marketing and field merchandising.
She came to RBG with more than 20 years of experience in the convenience store/petroleum industry, which includes working as a field consultant for Southland Corp./7-Eleven and overseeing corporate and franchise operated locations branded 7Eleven, CITGO and Southland Liquor Stores. She then joined chains of independently operated locations branded Shell, BP Amoco and Dunkin Donuts before coming to RBG.
Porter also holds an active Food Sanitation Certification and continues to participate in many c-store industry advisory councils and roundtable panels.
Mike Small, senior category manager. Small joined RBG in February 2011 as a business consultant and is responsible for developing, negotiating and securing national programs and promotions with national vendor corporations with a heavy concentration in the beverage industry.
He began his professional career in 1991 with Pepsi-Cola working his way through the sales division at various roles including account executive within the marketing department responsible for the convenience and petroleum channel of business. Prior to RBG, he was the national sales and marketing director for Power Mart/Power Buying Dealers USA in Oak Brook, Ill., for 11 years. In this role, he worked with a national team of category directors and various regional personnel to negotiate, secure and implement national programs across all categories for the ExxonMobil franchisee organization.
Darrin LiCausi, category manager. LiCausi has been working with RBG since 2008 and was hired as the category manager directly responsible for the tobacco and general merchandise categories. His career path began as an associate buyer for Montgomery Ward, where he worked to implement sales and promotional strategies in all retail stores nationwide, while building a vendor base to help maximize exposure and promote vendor products through advertisements.
His path continued in the direction of becoming an inventory analyst for Sport Mart, followed by taking on buyer roles and responsibilities, which includes his prior position as a buyer working at Sears corporate headquarters to meet and work with vendors to develop sales strategies and a means to communicate new items and programs in the market place.
New Hires:
Khatija Ali, statistical assistant. Ali joined RBG in June. Her primary responsibilities are data analysis, report generation and distributor order placement.
Jill Aimone, administrative assistant. Aimone is the newest member of the vendor department and joined the team in August. Her responsibilities include vendor marketing coordination, lead communication, networking events coordination and department scheduling.
Promotions:
James Kern, junior system/network administrator. Kern has been working with RBG since 2004 and was hired as the data analyst. Kern has recently been promoted to junior system/network administrator, working alongside the vendor department performing maintenance, repairs and general upkeep for all IT matters. His tasks include monitoring and verifying the integrity of all hardware, server resources, systems, key processes, logs and backup jobs. He maintains the company's network, company data and storage drives and archives, phones, hardware and software, installations and employee's user accounts.
Lisle, Ill.-based RBG is a national organization dedicated to maximizing sales and profitability of convenience stores, petroleum locations, college book stores, truckstops/travel plaza centers, auto repair facilities, drug stores, tobacco outlets, and liquor stores. It now represents more than 6,500 locations nationwide. Core service capabilities include negotiating with regional and national suppliers for sales and marketing programs and providing category management expertise, marketing support and customer service support.
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