Harvest Group

Innovation is the key to the Harvest Group’s success.

Steve Blair, the company’s vice president of people and culture, said the retail industry requires that approach in today’s fast-paced world. Harvest Group serves as a broker for consumer packaged goods companies that sell through Walmart Inc. and Sam’s Club of Bentonville and Kroger of Cincinnati.

“We are in the business of helping clients grow at the biggest retailers in the world,” Blair said. “We are constantly tweaking the model. We constantly stay on the front edge of what it will take to grow in retail. When you do it the way we do it, we just don’t buy an off-the-shelf solution.”

Blair said the company had a great growth year in 2019, both financially and in other ways. Harvest Group launched a couple of new technologies, Blair said, expanded its Cincinnati offices and improved on its 24% growth of the previous year, although Blair said the exact financial figures weren’t finalized yet.

“The only way to keep growing in this crazy retail space is to keep innovating and keep doing things differently,” Blair said. “People still shop in stores. In this world it is constantly evolving but very few things fall off. They might become less important, or smaller as a percentage of your business. We are having to keep up with every new channel, every possible way for a consumer to buy a product from our clients.

“You have to become an expert of every new channel, but you don’t get to forget about all the ones that still have millions of people using them.”

Blair said it is a testament to his company that it has an executive with his title. He said the company values its employees and that’s evidenced by a high retention factor and high marks in annual employee satisfaction surveys.

“We are a mission-driven, values-led organization, and that appeals to people who want to work with a higher purpose,” Blair said. “We truly do want Harvest to be an unrivaled place to work.”

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