Combining art & business skills is a rare asset
Like Clare, Julie has over 25 years of experience delivering products and services to clients. She has worked across retail and B2B in product development, publishing, marketing, manufacturing and logistics. Central to her focus has always been that the customer experience is always in the realm of surprise and delight, whilst streamlining the business operation to be world-class and more recently leading in digital transformation. A holistic Marketing philosophy.
Julie began her career in retail category management and marketing where she learnt the fundamentals of retail merchandising, selling and the theatre which could be created in-store. She then transferred these skills into book publishing [both traditional and electronic] and was involved in the export sales and marketing for Anne Geddes books at the Frankfurt Bookfair and other NZ properties/brands. This was followed by 4 years exporting food and beverages into the Asian market. Travelling internationally in buying, sales, marketing and events for over 20 years.
The last 15 years has seen Julie working in B2B marketing in the building industry for 10 years; and then the last 5 years as a Marketing Consulting, contracting to retail customers and recently to the Child Cancer Foundation in the not-for-profit sector.
During her time working in B2B marketing, she managed major loyalty programmes and staged some of New Zealand’s most significant overseas customer event programmes including hiring Hayman Island in the Whitsundays, for 400 guests for a week including transportation, accommodation, food and a daily event programme, plus group travel events to Italy, Mexico, Dubai and New York to name a few. She managed these large-scale event programmes over the course of 6 years with a minimum of two major trips per year. Her experiences also included running educational events, advertising and promotional campaigns, using analytics and market research to redefine business offerings and aligning business processes. This was a time of major change in the building industry with the introduction of Licensing to Builders, and a market transformation was required.
The last 5 years has seen Julie more New Zealand focussed as a Marketing Consultant to a range of retail and not-for-profit organizations. These assignments focussed on marketing strategy, marketing process and fundamentals, digital transformation, loyalty marketing and business improvement. She excels in business automation and metamorphosis ensuring that customer experience is always in the realm of surprise and delight and loyalty is a focus.
Having studied at Auckland University in Art [Elam], Art History and Anthropology she has a real connection to the arts. She has travelled internationally for many years visiting galleries and museums furthering her interest in the arts. Julie is also a practising artist, working in photography, mixed media and painting.
So, what does Julie bring to Artful Curation?
Julie is in charge of “making the magic happen smoothly, enjoyably, on time, to spec and transparently”.
For those of you who have heard of the saying “Retail is detail”, that summarises Julie.
She is all about the customer experience being amazing but is the person in the background making everything happen seamlessly.
