Merchandising and analytics advisory for retailers, consumer brands, and the investors behind them.
Most recently AVP of Data, Insights & Merchandising Enablement at a Fortune 10 retailer, leading ~55 people. Ex-Monitor Deloitte; former Marine Corps officer.
Assortment, space, pricing, promotion, and vendor funding, worked from the retailer's side of the table. Ben ran category performance improvement (CPI) across six merchandising business units for two years (five on the team in total). Category reviews, joint business plans, and trade-term negotiation strategy are part of it.
Syndicated data (e.g., Circana, NIQ, Numerator), category analytics, and data science aimed at the decisions that move margin: what to carry, where to price, how much inventory to hold, and how to tell whether it worked.
Where AI pays off in merchandising workflows, and where it doesn't yet. Most agent projects stall upstream, on metric definitions nobody governs. Ben was business general manager for a certified metrics layer that gives AI agents one governed answer per business question, and his team built a multi-agent support engine for category managers.
For investors in retail and consumer companies: commercial diligence on category health, price and assortment headroom, vendor funding dependence, and inventory productivity. After close, the same work becomes a merchandising plan for the first 100 days.
Founder & Principal
Boston, Massachusetts
Ben Crovella spent eight years at a Fortune 10 retailer in four line accountable roles. He ran category performance improvement (CPI), led inventory planning and buying for the consumer health business, and most recently served as Assistant Vice President of Data, Insights & Merchandising Enablement, leading ~55 people across syndicated data, category analytics, data science, vendor trade funding, and master data management.
Before that he was a manager at Monitor Deloitte, where his work centered on grocery and store operations, and he traded at Citigroup. He served four+ years as a Marine Corps officer, including a year in Iraq. Fall Line Advisory brings that operator's view to retailers, consumer brands, and their investors.
Working on a merchandising, analytics, or AI question in retail or consumer goods? Start with an email.