Chris Osborn is Commercial Director at Marketing for Merchants. He spent four years at Kingfisher, the group behind B&Q and Screwfix, most recently running the kitchen sinks and taps range, and now helps independent builders merchants compete with it.
What does Chris do at Marketing for Merchants?
Chris runs the commercial side of the business: new client relationships, how packages are structured and priced, and where the business goes next. If you're a merchant working out whether marketing support is worth the money, he's usually the first conversation.
He also brings something a marketing agency rarely has: experience from the other side of the table, deciding where a very large budget goes and what it has to return.
Why does big-group experience help an independent merchant?
Because it's the other side of the competition. In Chris's own words:
"Sitting inside one of the biggest groups in the market showed me exactly how much scale, budget and expertise the big players put behind winning customers - and that's precisely the gap I'm now helping independent merchants close."
Most of what the nationals do isn't clever - it's consistent, and properly resourced. Knowing which parts move the numbers, and which parts are just spend, is the difference between a merchant's marketing budget working and disappearing.
What did he do before Kingfisher?
Account management, sales leadership, marketing and process improvement at Supertracker Ltd, and operations at Xerox.
