Kurt Jetta, CEO of Shelton-based TABS, worked for Playtex in Westport for seven years before founding the business analytics company in 1998 in his Shelton basement, a one-person operation that has since grown to 25 employees at a 2 Corporate Drive address.
TABS”™ data-driven model has gained a global clientele that includes the likes of sweets-makers Mars and Wrigley, baby products maker Evenflo and beverage maker Anheuser-Busch, which is one of 26 companies in the “food and beverage” client list on the company”™s website.
If the client list is stacked with A-listers ”” which it is ”” Jetta said the backbone of the company is a cohort of small and midsize businesses. The TABS system ”” which he said “cuts through the clutter” ”” offers big-company data management to smaller companies. “These companies typically do not have large marketing budgets or marketing departments,” he said.
- Kurt Jetta. Photo by Bill Fallon
TABS stands for The Analytical Business Solution.
Jetta, who already possessed a 1986-minted MBA from Duke University, went on to earn a doctorate from Fordham University ”” in three years, while working ”” with his dissertation on “price promotional theory,” a topic he still holds dear. “People say promotions don”™t work,” he said. “Promotions work, if they”™re done correctly.”
Jetta”™s “lightbulb moment” for founding TABS came with the realization that data management, for all its promise, was underperforming and “causing the same pain” repeatedly.
“Massive databases have been out there forever,” he said. “And nobody has known what to do with them.” Instead of efficiency, he had witnessed a cumbersome system of creating reports, presenting them and meeting about them. “Soon enough, you”™re looking at six months and a 500-page monstrosity,” he said.
The TABS method is based on streamlining data troves ”” “stripping out the inefficiencies” ”” and empowering manufacturers to use the results in sales-driven ways, whether wholesale or retail. “We address both issues,” Jetta said.
“We use analytical innovation to simplify and improve the way business analysis is conducted in our industry,” Jetta said. The company website says, “Our analytics reports won”™t give you headaches or hernias.”
TABS provides specific data points to assist sales and marketing. It could mean macromarketing a product in the Northwest versus the Northeast or it could mean product placement on a shelf. If a product is wrapped or packaged and sold in a supermarket, TABS likely has data on it.
Jetta identified the current moment as a new age in sales where, for the first time, the product”™s attributes ”” the pitches of newest, brightest, best ”” share the driving with data analytics.
And therein lies a rub.
Jetta said the data analysis industry nationally is focused in Fairfield County, northern New Jersey and the suburbs of Chicago. He pointed out all those areas are expensive, which can skew data analysis. He said, “The trouble is that the people who practice this think the country is just like they are. They think everyone shops at Whole Foods. If you want to see the American marketplace, go the DMV ”“ that is your typical consumer. You get everyone. I write on this topic. I call it out. A lot of weakness in the industry is a function of that basic disconnect. By living in places like Fairfield County, where the median income is high, it creates a bubble.”
Kurt is absolutely correct about operating in the bubble of Fairfield County. To understand the US retail market you must study the masses and markets across all parts of our great country.