Craig Johnson
President
Customer Growth Partners

Craig Johnson is President of Customer Growth Partners of New Canaan, CT, consultants serving the Retail and other consumer sector industries. He has three decades of experience in consumer service industries, in both senior corporate management and consulting roles, and has advised both institutional investors and private equity participants on opportunities in the Retail and Consumer sectors.

Johnson has appeared in media forums worldwide, including ABC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC in the U.S. and internationally on the BBC (UK) and NHK (Japan). He is cited as an authority on Retail and Consumer issues in publications such as Business Week, Fortune, New York Times, The Times (London), USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. CGP studies are frequently quoted in the Retail trades, including Chain Store Age, Retail Traffic, Retailing Today, Stores Magazine and WWD. Johnson has also published and spoken widely on Retail and Consumer issues, authors the Unconventional Wiz column in Chain Store Age and writes frequently for Barron’s.

He is formerly a Partner of Marketing Corp. of America, the consumer strategy subsidiary of Interpublic (NYSE:IPG), and Partner and Director of the e-Commerce practice at Peppers & Rogers Group/Carlson Marketing. He was also CEO of Celutel, Inc., President of PSI International(Duke Energy), and a member of the Technology Management practice at Booz Allen & Hamilton.

His Retail clients have included firms such as BJ’s Wholesale, Crutchfield Electronics, JC Penney, Lands’ End, Lowe’s, Perry Ellis, Simon Group, Toys R Us, Walt Disney, Westfield America and Williams-Sonoma. Johnson’s Financial sector clients have included Blue Ridge Partners, Capital One, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Och-Ziff Capital and Warburg Pincus.

He holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from Stanford.

Warren Shoulberg
Editor-in-Chief
HFN

Warren Shoulberg is the Editor of HFN, the magazine of home products retailing. A business journalist for more than 25 years, he has covered a variety of home furnishings markets, from textiles to furniture to tabletop, as well as other consumer product businesses, including children’s apparel, baby strollers and motorcycles.

He writes a regular column, for which he has been honored twice by the American Business Press with Neal Awards. He has also received more than a few angry letters of protest about those very same columns. He welcomes both equally.

He has appeared on behalf of HFN on television on NBC-TV and CNN and has been widely quoted in publications such as The New York Times and the Washington Post.

He has received the Editor of the Year award from the Fashion Institute of Technology, as well as the award for editorial achievement from the International Furnishings and Design Association.