Then & Now: Clint Lazenby works to add value to retail businesses

Editor’s Note: The following story appeared in the March 16 issue of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal. “Then & Now” is a profile of a past member of the Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class.

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After spending 13 years in high-travel international corporate roles, Clint Lazenby co-founded a business in Rogers because he wanted to do something different and was overwhelmed with traveling.

“It was time to get off the road,” he said, adding that he and his wife, Staci, wanted to be based in Northwest Arkansas. “This is an interesting chapter and challenge to go see if you could build something.”

In July 2014, he co-founded #ONshelf in Rogers with Steve Kaza and Tony Cook, who’s no longer with the company. Three years ago, it merged with Rogers-based Legacy Retail Solutions, owned by J.D. Hayes. The consumer packaged goods advisory company was founded in 1999, and its total portfolio represents more than $500 million in retail sales under management across multiple categories and departments, according to the company’s website.

“We have tried to reimagine what a sales and marketing company would do in the age of technology and information,” Lazenby said. “We’re a sales and marketing organization. We focus on helping companies with their brick-and-mortar retail business and their e-commerce business.”

Lazenby, 46, declined to disclose revenue, how many clients it has or who they are, citing competition, but he said revenue has doubled annually. Legacy has offices in Seattle, the Kansas City, Mo., metro area and Dallas, and it has outgrown its existing 5,000-square-foot office in Rogers. He said the business is hoping to move into a 10,000- to 12,000-square-foot building in the city.

“It’s a good problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless,” Lazenby said. “We’re just bursting at the seams.”

Lazenby said the company has been successful in that it has almost no turnover in its client base.

“Everything that we do is focused on adding and contributing to their business,” Lazenby said. “We bring the mentality of a Fortune 50 company that has an office of 100 people here, and we put that to work on a small- or medium-size company.”

Lazenby was director of Walmart International for ConAgra Foods Inc., which is now Conagra Brands, when he was named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class in 2010.

He worked in director-level roles for about four years for the Chicago-based food company before leaving for a better opportunity. He joined the food-service division of Eagle, Idaho-based Lamb Weston, a spinoff company of ConAgra Foods that provides frozen potato products to restaurants and retailers worldwide.

He went from working with large retailers to general management of the private brand business for the company’s international segment. The business was focused on French fries and frozen vegetables.

The most fun job he said he had was in a director-level role with Lamb Weston in which he was tasked to find a use for the French fries that weren’t perfectly made for restaurants, such as McDonald’s, Burger King or Chick-fil-A.

“This was a huge opportunity for the company financially to find a way to transform it into an actual business, as opposed to a loss-making entity,” he said. “Figuring out how to do that was an incredibly fun project. It was a meaningful project. It helped the entire organization by finding a way to change the way that we dealt with this material.

“Finding the symmetry in that chaos was really what the challenge was,” he added. “And I spent a couple of years working on that problem and solved it.”

Before leaving the company, Lazenby was director of the international Indian subcontinent for Lamb Weston and oversaw a team of more than 20 employees and virtual resources. He managed a region that included Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. He co-founded #ONshelf after leaving the Lamb Weston role.

The establishment of the company has been the highlight of his career. His goal over the next three to five years is to expand the company to a medium-size business, and he would like to see it grow to have 10 offices across the nation with 100 employees.

The Springdale native supports Arkansas Children’s Northwest and Beads of Courage. He spends his free time cycling, skiing and playing soccer.