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Clifford L. Epstein
  President

Cliff Epstein, a founder and chief executive of Retail Process Engineering and RPE Outsourcing, has established and operated a number of companies throughout his 35+ year career as a retail and business entrepreneur. His first venture was the establishment of a chain of sporting goods stores where he soon expanded services operating a corporate recognition business, textile imprinting and embroidery company and an awards and trophy company. As his success continued, he pursued business ventures in real estate development and equipment leasing.

With his growing reputation in the retail industry, he served as a corporate executive with several national retailers. Recognizing the power of information to intelligently manage retail business, Epstein was an early adaptor of retail systems. Through his knowledge and foresight, he was one of the first customers to install the Island Pacific Merchandising System.

Epstein's passion for reinventing businesses as market conditions changed and being nimble in the development of evolving corporate strategies to support those changes were key elements in the successes of these companies.

Under Epstein's leadership, RPE has followed the same principles in adding practices to take advantage of changing technologies to optimize the retailer's performance. RPE has recruited and attracted results-driven associates with experience in retail from both a functional business user level and retail IT organization standpoint. This allows for a complete understanding of the business process to make recommendations leading to improvements in merchandise performance resulting in increased financial performance and customer satisfaction.

Epstein has built a foundation of being committed to recognizing and maximizing the most value of the applications to receive the highest possible return on investment. Knowledge transfer is a hallmark of RPE's methodology and is achieved by involving the client's internal resources from both the IT group and the business users. A buy in is established right from the beginning of the process and support through formal and informal training is continuous throughout the interaction with RPE consultants and the client's team.

RPE's growing list of satisfied clients continues to establish Epstein's reputation as an industry leader.





Tom Villa
 Executive Vice President RPE Outsourcing

Tom Villa is a founder and managing member who was instrumental in the establishment of RPE in 1999. He is a seasoned, hands-on senior IT executive with more than 30 years of experience, including 20 years of retail operations.

His areas of responsibilities include delivery of RPE’s Cloud Computing, SAS 70 Type II certification, management of the 24/7/365 operations in the RPE Data Center, delivery of the ASP and Software as a Service (SaaS) client services, remote operations management, maintaining RPE's certifications with IBM, development of new service technologies and staffing. He is a veteran in all phases of retail including new system implementations from concept planning through go-live. Villa’s core competency is IBM Power and he is an IBM Power Certified System Specialist. He designs, configures and installs IBM Power Systems for clients ensuring reliability, capacity, scalability, performance, flexibility and effectiveness.





Rob Henneke
  
Executive Vice President

As a fiscally conscious and goal driven retail technology and services executive, Rob Henneke is a vital member of the RPE team. He works closely with clients providing insight into retail processes and best practices. Henneke’s depth of retail experience and rich knowledge of the IT industry allows for a complete understanding of the business process to make recommendations leading to improvements in merchandise and supply chain performance.

He is a master retailer with more than 30 years of management experience in merchandise, operations, systems, sales, distribution and special projects. He began his retail career at Gold Medal Sports gaining the experience to rapidly move up the ranks holding corporate merchandising and management positions with Herman's and JumboSports. Throughout his retail career, he was instrumental in advising on potential technology investments to address company needs.

Understanding the importance of technology in retail, he made a career move to consulting when he joined RPE as vice president business development in 1999 responsible for new business, marketing, customer relationship management and project management. Under his leadership, RPE expanded its growth in the retail market where the company has become an industry leader in consulting services.

Promoted in 2010 to executive vice president, Henneke oversees the consulting team responsible for working with clients to improve bottom line performance. Services include:

  • Cloud computing
  • Software evaluation and selection
  • Pre-project planning
  • Implementation
  • Project management
  • Application development
  • Modifications, updates and conversions
  • Interfaces
  • Post implementation support
  • Training
  • Documentation

 

 





Gary Lowen
  
Vice President Business Development

Gary Lowen brings with him 30 years of CPG/Retail experience. He spent 16 years on the independent software side where he served as senior vice president of Intactix International, vice president of U.S. sales at JDA Software and vice president of retail at Manhattan Associates. He joined RPE from Retail Optimization, Inc., a start up company focused on assortment and macro space optimization, where he served as senior vice president of sales and marketing. He began his career working 16 years for beverage alcohol giants Seagram's and Diageo in sales and sales technology roles.

Lowen is responsible for expanding business development efforts with current clients and prospects and will work closely with software vendors to optimize demand and supply chain opportunities.

 

 

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