As the western business director for the Giumarra Cos., Kellee Harris specializes in building and maintaining customer relationships.
“When I work with key accounts, I fly into major areas where the retailers are based, and I help set up marketing promotions, introduce our sales staff, get meetings to talk about category planning and what we’re bringing to them for opportunities, both promotional volumes as well as regular line goods,” Harris said.
“My goal is to try and be the first point of contact for some of those buyers and then help them get to where they need to go and also to support the programs they’re buying in, through merchandising, (point-of-sale material), advertising, (public relations), whatever they particularly need to help support the commodities they’re buying from us.”
Harris has been with Los Angeles-based Giumarra for about five years and takes pride in a nickname she earned for her tenacity in the job — “The Piranha.” The complimentary moniker came from CEO John Corsaro.
“When I came on board, there were some accounts that they were looking to try and make some inroads in and hadn’t had (much) success, so I kind of put those on my target list, and I’m really excited to say that a few of those have come into fruition,” Harris said.
Hillary Brick, senior vice president of strategic planning and marketing for Giumarra, described Harris as energetic and enthusiastic.
Brick said one of the great promotion ideas Harris developed was sparked by the story of a plum pie made by a longtime Giumarra grower.
“She saw the opportunity to do a promotion around Mrs. Krause’s pies, so she put it all together, we did a video, which was available, and we did our packaging ... we had the point-of-sale (material), and many customers took this up as a unique way to promote plums and it also of course connected with the consumer with the grower,” Brick said. “That was an extremely successful promotion ... and it was unique.”
Creating ways to increase sales and celebrate growers is something Harris hopes to do more of as she continues in her career. Ideally, that endeavor starts with more visits to the areas where growers do their work.
“It’s really exciting for me to go to the source and to really get to know these people and understand what their life is like and how dedicated and committed they are to what they do,” Harris said. “It really is a passion. When you understand that passion at the grower level, you can so much better request that when you’re there in front of your buyers and your accounts talking to them because you’ve actually been there and seen it, and so I really am looking forward to being able to do more of that.”
