During a 37 year career with Western Merchandisers / Anderson Merchandisers, I lived in many locations and was fortunate to experience many different job responsibilities.

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Wholesale music distributor Western Merchandisers was founded by Sam Marmaduke in Amarillo along with the Hastings retail chain which most residents of this area are very familiar with. Working with Sam, John and Steve along with all of the other great Western associates was a great education in business, leadership, and working with team members to accomplish common goals. In 1994 the company was sold and became Anderson Merchandisers.

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• Sales Merchandiser out of the Irving branch in a territory that included all accounts in the Fort Worth area

• District Manager of the Austin area which began my management career

• Branch Manager/District Manager of the Denver area

  • Responsible for all Branch activities as well as the sales reps in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming

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By now, we were doing business with Walmart, the world's largest retailer. Anderson distributed music, books, and video to the stores and our merchandisers serviced them. As an account executive, I participated in many meetings at the Walmart corporate level as well as in retail stores as I traveled extensively. Public relations was a big part of our success and we excelled at taking care of our retail partner. Walmart has very high expectations and it made all of us at Anderson better business people. I gained a thorough knowledge of budgeting, P& L analysis, strategic planning, inventory management  and goal setting.

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• Promoted to one of two Regional Managers in the company based in Irving

• Field Operations Manager which involved moving to Amarillo; in this position I was responsible for all of our District Managers and Sales Merchandisers

• Director of Training where I instituted classroom training and was charged with getting all managers and merchandisers educated in providing quality service to our customers