Where to play. What to sell. How to win.
Winning in retail starts with the right fit: product, market and retailer.
Retail Playbook helps suppliers and their investors make the big choices - backed by 30+ years of commercial retail experience.
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Retail changes every day.
Your strategy may not have, or it was never built for this in the first place.
Retail is changing faster than most strategies can keep up with. Discount has become the norm, retailers are consolidating or joining buying alliances, and retail media is now a major revenue stream for them.
At the same time, choice keeps growing. A major supermarket chain carries around 30,000 products, and private label keeps taking share. Branded manufacturers are paying the price.
Innovation doesn’t make it any easier. It accounts for around 6% of European FMCG revenue, increasingly driven by smaller manufacturers taking share from established players. Around 65% of new products are still available after two years, but survival isn’t success: 64% of shoppers won’t buy again if the first experience falls short.
Buyers and category managers move on every few years too. In this market, change is the constant.
Sources: NIQ (2026), Launch Fast, Learn Faster · Circana (2025), Europe’s Innovation Pacesetters · Europanel (2023), Innovation survival rates · Circana (dec 2025), EU6 private label share · RetailTrends (2025), Retail Merkenonderzoek · Albert Heijn, eigen opgave aantal producten
Retailers aren’t thinking about your brand first. They’re thinking about their own strategy: which categories to back, which risks to avoid, and which partners they can rely on.
Retail Playbook brings that experience to you: thirty years of buying at Albert Heijn, Etos, Gall & Gall, Xenos and Google, across food and non-food, plus 15 years repositioning retail chains from the inside. That background turns into practical advice on buying strategy, category innovation and supplier selection, and makes it possible to read a retailer’s structure and interests quickly, often before their next move is announced.
Understanding what’s really behind a retailer’s strategy changes the relationship: you start working with them instead of just selling to them. Sometimes the most useful advice is that a particular retailer or channel isn’t the right move for a specific product, not yet, or not at all. That honesty is part of the job too, whether you’re the one supplying retail or backing a company that is.
It’s built for suppliers who want to grow in retail, for those looking for their first spot on the shelf, and for investors who want to know whether a product will actually succeed there.
Annemieke Rijke, 30+ years inside European retail.
Retail is in my DNA. I grew up in a family of grocers and started my career as a trainee at Ahold. I worked as a professional buyer at Albert Heijn, De Tuinen and Etos, across AS Watson’s brands (Kruidvat, Savers, Ici Paris) and later held commercial responsibility for strategy and purchasing at, amongst others, Gall & Gall, Xenos and DA Retail Group, which I co-owned with two private equity partners.
Later, I worked at Google as a retail strategist, helping retailers such as HEMA, Coolblue, De Bijenkorf, Omoda and Ahold bring retail decision-making into the digital world. Over the years I’ve worked with 1,000+ suppliers across Europe and trained commercial teams at major FMCG brands. Today, I’m the founder of Retail Playbook, and recognised as a retail expert in the media.
I know how retailers make their choices. I use that experience to help suppliers make better choices of their own.
"Where we used to pitch endlessly and got nowhere, we listed 3 new SKUs in one meeting. Retail Playbook changed our approach completely."Sales Director, premium food brand
"I saved hours per week on buyer back-and-forth. I now know what they need to hear, and what I can skip."Category Manager, international beverage supplier
"Instantly increased our team’s confidence and performance. We went from begging for shelf space to negotiating from strength."Commercial Director, European health & beauty brand
"One email rewrite. The proposal that sat for a year was signed within 2 months."Founder, specialty supplier to a 900-store chain
Experience across leading retailers, built through years of collaboration with supplier teams across Europe.
Two tracks, one foundation: understanding retail from the inside. Pick the one that fits where you are.
A retail strategy that actually holds up, built with you, not for you.
Workshops via incubator programs (such as Food Valley), for groups of 8 to 24 people.
The Book: coming soon.
For a select number of start-ups, I can arrange a reduced rate on an individual basis. Interested? Get in touch.
Contact MeConsidering an investment, or looking for advice on a specific retail question?
A writing tool for Retail Playbook participants only.
After the training, you get access to MailCoach: a private AI tool that applies what you learned in the program to your own emails. Paste your notes, a rough draft or the retailer’s email, and get back a short, ready-to-send email built on the Kortly method from the masterclass: warm, competent, warm. MailCoach also shows what it cut and why, so you learn with every email.
Open MailCoach →Access requires the participant password shared after your training session.