Alison Crosbie – Commercial & Merchandising Specialist
Sharp on strategy, obsessed with detail, and fuelled by caffeine and curiosity
Alison Crosbie is the go-to expert when your retail operations need realigning, refreshing or just rethinking altogether. With over 25 years in the industry, Alison has seen it all—from biscuit-counter dreams as a teenager at Woolworths to masterminding multi-million-pound retail transformations for high street giants.
She’s worked across a vast range of categories, including homewares, toys, cards, alcohol, baby care, and seasonal gifting, bringing structure, insight and impact to every range plan, budget sheet and supplier conversation. In 2023, Alison launched her own consultancy to help businesses—from nimble independents to household names—get the commercial foundations right and the merchandising strategy working hard.
What sets Alison apart isn’t just her vast experience in WSSIs, KPIs, and financial forecasting (though she’s a dab hand at those). It’s her uncanny ability to walk into a room, spot the inefficiencies, ask the right questions, and build collaborative, strategic solutions that actually get implemented. Her style? Warm, direct, and refreshingly no-nonsense.
Alison believes in the power of planning, trading, and reviewing—but also knows that data without creativity can only get you so far. Whether she’s trialling out a 100-store shop-in-shop concept for Toys R Us in WHSmith or renegotiating multimillion-pound contracts to unlock profit at Tesco, Alison combines commercial acumen with pragmatism, empathy, and a seriously strong spreadsheet game.
Areas of expertise:
- Strategic planning & implementation
- Business process reviews & transformation
- Budget creation & financial analysis
- Range & price architecture
- Supplier management & contract negotiation
- Commercial analytics & WSSI
- Cross-functional collaboration & problem solving
Alison, Outside the Office
When she’s not optimising your retail strategy, you’ll likely find her elbow-deep in compost at the allotment, unwinding with some beginner-level crochet, or dancing at the Isle of Wight Festival. She’s also got a not-so-secret passion for interiors and a growing travel wish list that currently includes Japan, South America and a slow road trip through Devon and Cornwall.
After a long day, she’ll most likely be found with a chilled glass of wine, mentally rearranging the displays in Oliver Bonas or planning a boutique-meets-design-studio retail dream of her own.
Q&A with Alison Crosbie;
Too much stock across everything, tying cash up, no clear trade ups for the customer. Often shows a lack of confidence in trading & backing the winners (& equally getting out of stock that isn’t moving quickly) .
Plan, trade, review to keep on top of this is key to avoiding these situations. Clear good, better, best ranging, ROS planning and stock covers give the business the basics to be able to tailor their stock & subsequent trading actions to make the best decisions.
Sustainability will continue to be key. Brands need to be reviewing this across their business, end to end to ensure that they continue to move with & ahead of the market. Consumers want to be doing the ‘right’ thing but often don’t know how but brands need to ensure that they communicate their strategies to bring the consumer on board with them too.
Retail theatre on the high street. This is starting to come through, especially via the independents and is the way to get the consumer back to the high street, shop local etc
To be clear on your USP in the market, what makes you different / why should the consumer come to you and not to another retailer.
Having worked in the drinks industry previously I would love to get more immersed in a knowledge of wine so probably a wine buyer. Although I’m not sure a day would be long enough!!
My Sonos speaker. Love to have some music going on in the background as I work. It focuses my mind