Each wider product remit brought another part of ordinary use into view.

Mandate

Define household product choices using observed space, task and routine, with the limits of the proposition stated clearly.

Outcomes

• Selected 18 storage formats around 3 lid footprints after studying 60 households, then retained 36 unmet situations from the 120-household pilot.
• Supported A$4.6 million storage-development work without presenting pilot acceptance as national demand.
• Revised the 2025 replenishment proposition around timing choice and pause after 180 households expressed three different ordering preferences.

Decisions in context

The CPO role brought the product argument into the executive account of the retailer. I wanted the range story to retain the household conditions that made the proposition useful, including the conditions it had not yet served. The storage decision required separating common lid footprints from the different formats needed around them. The replenishment trial required another distinction between repeated use and a shared ordering interval. Both decisions complicated a simple commercial story, but that was preferable to letting the story erase the observation. My delegated expense funds the product function and its work; it is not the company's buying authority or retail operating budget. Executive board presentations began in July 2021 and do not constitute statutory service. The outcomes recorded here concern defined development choices and bounded pilot responses, leaving sales, safety, operational and subsequent customer results to the evidence and owners responsible for them.

Reason for the move

Promoted from portfolio leadership to the enterprise product remit; current appointment.

Mandate

Assess which differences should remain in a household range and explain the fit conditions behind its common identity.

Outcomes

• Separated 24 frames served by an existing cover pattern from 12 requiring different patterns in 2018.
• Supported A$3.2 million for a 12-pattern development programme instead of extending a universal-fit claim.
• Required the product proposition to describe pattern-to-frame relationships without claiming completed releases or lifetime benefits.

Decisions in context

Portfolio leadership made me responsible for the relationships among product choices, not merely the development of one item. A common identity could help people recognise a range while concealing differences that determined whether an item fitted. The furniture-cover decision exposed that tension. Twenty-four frames shared a workable pattern, while twelve needed different work. I accepted a fuller development programme and a less sweeping description rather than use universal language to make the range appear finished. The result was a funded scope with clear boundaries, not evidence that every new pattern had already reached a customer. This period also required closer coordination with buying and store colleagues whose work was affected by range complexity. I learned to give their concern a place in the decision without allowing operational convenience alone to settle what the product could honestly promise about use.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CPO as the portfolio remit expanded into the enterprise product agenda.

Mandate

Develop product propositions that made observed household differences consequential in the choices offered by the retailer.

Outcomes

• Used a 72-household study to distinguish smaller-pourable and bulk refill preferences in 2012.
• Supported A$1.6 million development of two formats while retaining the range-management cost of that choice.
• Reported the 90-household pilot as 52 smaller-format and 38 bulk selections without importing national share or environmental claims.

Decisions in context

The move to Belvarel placed product development closer to the choice a customer encountered in a shop. I had to understand not only how an object worked, but how alternatives were explained and why one household might choose differently from another. The refill project gave that question a concrete form. A bulk-only range would have simplified the retailer's account, but the research included people who wanted a smaller pouring and storage task. Retaining two formats meant accepting more work around the range, with buying and supply colleagues contributing to the decision. I did not treat the household counts as a national demand model. The useful result was a proposition grounded in the situations we had observed and a pilot that could examine those choices. This role prepared me to ask which differences a portfolio should preserve, while keeping the commercial consequences distinct from the product team's own expense and authority.

Reason for the move

Promoted to product-portfolio leadership after expanding the development remit across household categories.

Mandate

Shape homewares propositions and the explanations through which people would choose, assemble and use them.

Outcomes

• Accepted responsibility for perspective-only stool instructions misread by 18 of 48 participants in 2006.
• Supported A$280000 for revised orientation, sequence and part labels after Owen Calverden challenged the original account.
• Retained 6 assisted cases in a separate 40-person retest rather than declaring the revision universally successful.

Decisions in context

Product management gave me authority over explanations that would travel beyond the development team. The assembly drawing I approved showed how that authority could conceal an assumption. I understood the brace orientation because I already knew the object; eighteen participants did not read the perspective the same way. Owen's challenge forced me to examine the confusing step instead of defending the illustration's appearance. The revision took additional time and expense, and the later exercise still contained people who needed help. I wanted those limits visible when the result was discussed. This appointment did not make me the owner of product-safety approval, and the observed assembly work should not be read as such an approval. The episode belongs in the chronology because it changed my approach to product explanation before I moved into the larger retail remit. It also shows a correction I had to make to my own judgement.

Reason for the move

Joined Belvarel to lead product development in a broader own-brand retail setting.

Mandate

Help connect product drawings and descriptions with the questions raised by the object’s intended household use.

Outcomes

• Developed an understanding of how surrounding space changes the usefulness of a dimension or format.
• Supported product comparisons and instruction discussions under senior colleagues without release authority.
• Progressed towards product management after learning how the same object could be interpreted differently by its designer and user.

Decisions in context

I started in February 1994 after completing industrial design the previous December. The analysis group gave me a practical setting in which to test the relationship between a drawing and the life around the object. A container could be well proportioned in isolation and awkward inside a cupboard. An instruction could be technically recognisable to a designer while leaving a new reader unsure what to do next. My role was to help colleagues organise those questions, with management responsible for spending and commitments. The company's later retail scale should not be projected backwards onto this first appointment. I was an individual contributor among twelve people, learning how to make an observation useful in a product discussion. That learning did not make my later judgement infallible; the assembly mistake remained possible. It did give me a reason to take the user's interpretation seriously when the evidence eventually challenged my own.

Reason for the move

Promoted into product management after developing practical homewares-analysis experience.