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Four Seasons Consulting, Inc.
Experience
Experience
Who We Are
Steve Jansen has over thirty-eight years of experience in the home improvement industry. He is a well-rounded executive having served positions in retail operations, marketing, purchasing, and has worked directly with top manufactures. Has always been a student of both retailers and innovative products. Steve uses a common sense approach to the business and provides an upbeat teaching style to add value to your business.
Steve started his home improvement career at the 65 million dollar Chicago retailer, Courtesy Home Center. He quickly moved up the ranks by holding the jobs of Store Management, Buyer, Advertising Director, and General Merchandise Manager. He was responsible for all departments regarding buying, store layout and marketing. Steve worked for Courtesy Home Center for 15 years.
Handy Andy Home Center was the next stop in Steve’s career. He was hired to help consolidate the acquisition of Central Hardware St. Louis into Handy Andy Chicago. He was the Divisional Merchandise Manager responsible for lawn and garden, nursery, hardware, tools, lighting, electrical, plumbing and flooring. Steve worked for Handy Andy home Center for 2 years.
Home Depot hired Steve to help open their new Midwest office as the Lawn and Garden Merchant. A few years later he was transferred to open the Dallas office and work on a strategic plan to slow competitive growth while purchasing seasonal.
Next he became the National Product Merchant, working on creating consistency between all the Home Depot buying offices around the globe. This was a major turning point in the organization because it allowed Home Depot to develop national programs for the first time. Steve was then promoted to the Merchandising Vice President of lawn and garden, the largest department in the company with sales of over 11 billion dollars.
In February of 2006 Steve opened Four Seasons Consulting in Woodstock Georgia. The focus of the business is bridging the gap between how a manufacture and retailer thinks. He helps deliver the financial goals needed as a manufacture while meeting the needs of a retailer. He works with his manufactures on product development, acquisitions, corporate strategy, sales and marketing strategy. Steve only wanted to open a consulting business if it were a long-term business strategy. He has just passed his 8th year as President of Four Seasons Consulting and the business continues to expand.
KEVIN HOULIHAN
Kevin spent the first 14 years of his career at True Value Hardware (Cotter & Company, TruServ) starting in 1994 as an Inventory Analyst in Appliances then in Lawn & Garden ordering for 15 distribution centers. He was the Assistant Buyer in Lawn & Garden for 3 years and Merchandise Manager for Lawn & Garden for 3 years. Kevin's latter years were as Group Merchandise Manager over Lawn & Garden, Automotive, Outdoor Living, Sporting Goods, Farm, Back to School, Christmas, Toys and Pet. Kevin also managed 6 Regional Merchandise Managers who were liaisons between the stores and merchandising.
Kevin was asked, in 1999, to join The Scotts Company and build a Business Development Team calling on all the Hardware Co-ops, Independent Distributors and Garden Centers. The objective was to consolidate very diverse programs (Scotts, Hyponex, Miracle Gro, Ortho and RoundUp) into one uniform business that was easy for the Co-ops and retailers to manage. As Account Vice President, Kevin helped build the Team from 3 people to 60 while increasing sales to $360 million and improving profitability.
In 2005, Kevin was recruited to join Home Depot's new centralized Merchandising initiative. He was initially the Merchant for Chemicals and Holiday and asked to manage the Outdoor Living business as Divisional Merchandising Manager the following year. The last four years Kevin has helped turn around the Outdoor Power Equipment business as the DMM.
Kevin's successes at Home Depot include rolling out the Total Kill line, doubling the Christmas Business, growing the Outdoor Living business double digits, reversing the negative trend in Power equipment and returning it to profitability.
JASON WHITE
Jason White, most recently, was the Vice-President, National Accounts, at Weber-Stephen Products, LLC from 2008 to 2019. In this role, Jason directed the sales, marketing, and demand planning efforts in selling Weber’s line of barbecues and accessories to The Home Depot. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, he worked with the store and e-comm merchandising and marketing groups at The Home Depot, as well as managed the Weber Home Depot team, made up of demand planning, retailer services, channel marketing and product development personnel, at Weber’s headquarters in Palatine, Illinois.
During his time working with THD, Jason’s major duties included negotiating annual marketing contracts, developing sales budgets, forecasts and marketing spends, developing and executing advertising campaigns, promotions and merchandising fixtures, crafting and leading line review meetings, and participating in monthly RVP/MVP store walks.
His major successes during this time included crafting an omni-channel strategy which grew the overall Weber business 170%, designing and implementing a 24’, brand-blocked, in-bay merchandising run, developing a family of THD-exclusive Weber products, and attaining “Supplier of the Year” for Department 28, and “Top 10- Product Innovation” in 2014.
In a previous capacity with Weber, Jason was a Regional Sales Manager from 2000 to 2008. In this position, Jason sold Weber and Ducane grills and accessories to independent and regional accounts in the Midwest and Southeast regions. Major tasks included directing the sales efforts of Weber’s manufacturer’s representatives in the territories, conducting regular audits and performance evaluations of his reps, conducting product knowledge sessions, and working all Weber trade shows.
Before coming to Weber, Jason was a manufacturer’s representative for an agency in Texas, where, as Director of Service, he managed an eight-person team that serviced the Home Depot and Lowe’s stores across ten lines, including various products from major brands like Bertch, Toro and Weber.
KIM PUDLO
