IRI Hires Leaders for UK Convenience Market Initiative

In the UK, retail and healthcare data giant IRI has appointed Stephen Lampard as Head of Convenience and Stuart Byron as Head of Impulse for its recently launched Convenience Market Place initiative.

This initiative provides manufacturers with insight and data across the UK convenience market, worth an estimated £37.7bn in annual sales according to IGD Research. The solution provides store-level analysis of sales, price and distribution measures spanning almost 20,000 stores, and in addition IRI has partnered with 44 convenience retailers, including SPAR, NISA, Costcutter and Londis, with many of them releasing EPOS data for the first time.

Lampard joins from Mars Confectionery, where he served as a Category Controller in charge of a team of managers and execs across the UK Convenience and Discounter channels. Prior to this, he worked in a number of roles at Novartis Consumer Health, most recently as Business Insight Manager. Byron was previously Johnson & Johnson's Customer Director EMEA for the Pharmacy Channel, leading development and implementation of Shopper & Category strategy. Earlier, he held various positions at PepsiCo International in the UK and Ireland.

In their new roles, based at IRI's European head office in Bracknell, UK, Lampard and Byron will lead teams tasked with providing store-level convenience channel data to manufacturers and retailers. Kieran South, SVP IRI UK, comments: 'Stephen's extensive experience in developing client solutions and providing actionable business insight across the confectionery and healthcare sectors brings a fresh perspective and approach to the IRI team, while Stuart's expertise in development and implementation enables us to help manufacturers to identify key growth areas such as gaps for best-selling lines'.

Web site: www.iriworldwide.co.uk .