From the buyer's desk: Winning the shelf in 2026
Summary:
When the shelf stops growing, every listing is contested - and won or lost in the buyer meeting. In this session, former Tesco and Sainsbury's buyer Simon Dunn (Optima Retail) and Anna Henwood (Stickybeak) cover what actually cuts through from the buyer's side of the desk, and the consumer evidence that backs it up.
Date:
Thursday, 6 August 2026
Time:
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Location:
Online event
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Join us for an honest, practical session on winning the buyer meeting - when the shelf has stopped growing, and every listing, facing and range decision is contested.

Simon Dunn (Optima Retail) spent over a decade as a buyer and category leader at Tesco and Sainsbury's. He'll show what actually cuts through from the buyer's side of the desk: why historic data loses the meeting, what wins more facings, and what saves a SKU from the delist sheet.

But winning that room also comes down to something bigger than meeting tactics: the teams that win are the ones who've built the capability to turn the right data into better decisions, faster than the competition, including knowing where AI genuinely helps and where it just adds noise.

Anna Henwood (Stickybeak) will bring the consumer evidence that backs it up - how the best teams walk in already knowing how their product performs on shelf, why the pack works, and where their price sits, before launch.

This session is for FMCG commercial marketers, sales and category teams - anyone whose work has to win at the shelf, whether you sit in the buyer meeting yourself or you're the marketer or category lead whose pack, price and NPD get judged there.

A conversation between Anna Henwood, CEO of Stickybeak, and Simon Dunn, founder of Optima Retail.

Speaker profiles:
Simon Dunn
Founder & Managing Director at Optima Retail
Simon Dunn is the founder and Managing Director of Optima Retail, which helps commercial and category teams make better growth decisions through training, executive education and advisory work, grounded in a global research programme exploring the future of category and commercial excellence in grocery. Simon is one of the few people to have sat on both sides of the buying desk. He spent more than a decade as a buyer and category leader at Sainsbury's and Tesco, making the range, pricing and commercial decisions suppliers were working to win, before moving supplier-side to help build category management capability at Philips. Since then he has worked with businesses from scale-ups to global leaders, and that mix of buyer-side judgement and supplier-side reality shapes everything Optima does. A RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for 2025 and 2026, Simon helps commercial teams build the capability to make sharper, faster, evidence-led decisions.
Anna Henwood
CEO at Stickybeak
Anna is CEO of Stickybeak, the global consumer testing platform helping marketers move faster with more confidence. Formerly a global CMO, Anna brings deep expertise in brand, marketing, and international growth. She’s passionate about helping marketers make better calls, backed by real feedback from real people.