How it all began

My foray into Category Managing/Space Planning happened in stages, and over time. At that time, I was doing Project Management specialising in Credit Card Automation in Retail Systems and befriended one of my current BFF Eil who was in Marketing Dept doing "Merchandising" as they used to call it. Infact, this label is mostly inaccurate to describe her role. She is more of a buyer/category manager for the our company's convenience retail stores. Our company is a "close-knit" family and I soon hang out alot with her team which is the Marketing Team and was then introduced to the fabulous world of Category Management in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).

Over the next year as I negotiated my transition into the team, I have also been recruited under the wings of highly skilled & highly specialised team of passionate individuals who trained me & groomed me into an equally passionate, if not as knowledgeable Cat-Man. It was really a labour of love, I remember going to work everyday rejuvenated and feeling blessed that I love my work eventhough sometimes I have to be at work 7 days a week, working on 16-hour days (thankfully days like those are far & in between)!

So, this blog will be documenting my (past) journey as I recall about my life in the fast lane managing FMCG categories in convenience stores of not one, but TWO major oil companies.

Restaurant City follows merchandising rules?

Currently on day 7 playing the highly addictive Restaurant City (RC) game on Facebook, I've come to realised that RC is kinda like how a Merchandising Specialist will strive to layout a store to optimize earnings making use of the customer throughput isn't it?

The main objectives of RC is to have the restaurant you manage :

1. Cashing in cash as fast as you can so that you can also...
2. Collect Gourmet Points (GP) faster so that you progress to the next level
3. Have a good rating for customer satisfaction aka "Pop Count" (Popularity Count).

Which is aligned to what Merchandising & a good store layout should achieve in your store. What a brilliant game.