Footwear, Jewelry, Handbags, Fashion Accessories, Legwear

• Drive the product development and growth strategies for Alfani and Giani Bernini brands with $70M in annual sales. Grew these brands by almost $15M in two years.• Ensure product differentiation by brand and exceptional price/value ratio.• Drive sales and margin with developing balanced shoe lines, maximizing key items, negotiating competitive pricing for quality product, and initiating strategic markdowns. • Influence the Buyer to place the optimal assortment by class, channel, and region. • Interpret trends to develop seasonal strategy for OTB and Class plans. • Inspire and challenge my team and vendor/design partners, to identify opportunities to maximize sales and profitability. • Attended a shoe-making workshop hosted by Arsutoria to become more knowledgable about constructions, materials, international sourcing strategies and analysis of product costing.

• Source and develop knit top/dress/athleisure classifications of $60 million annual sales volume. This includes shopping into new trends, updating best sellers from prior years and coordinating with the design team on new product development for each season. • Create weekly and monthly selling recaps to determine voids and opportunities for future deliveries.• Negotiate costing for all styles to achieve competitive pricing and strategic mark-up goals.• Partner with MMG overseas counterparts, as well as design, color/cad and technical design teams, to maintain production timeline to achieve on-time delivery and quality product.• Create vendor allocation plans in partnership with upper management that ensures global sourcing strategy is sustained.• Review make of new development and fit, when counter sourcing new factories to determine level of quality.• Travel internationally to build and maintain business partnerships, negotiate product costs and explore new vendors/factories.• Manage, lead, and develop high performing team members.

• Assist in the development of the line and style plans, within the context of the sales/margin plans and business strategy. • Monitor and report merchandise performance by program and style in order to develop more profitable assortments.• Compile and share information within team on trends, pricing, positioning, materials and assortments. • Support the product manager with pricing negotiation and pricing management with overseas offices.• Responsible for communicating, conducting, and selling line to divisions. • Collaborate with cross functional teams (design, tech design, colorists, cad artists) to produce saleable/profitable merchandise.• Travel overseas to work with MMG counterparts and vendors on key initiatives and strategies of the brand.• Mentor my direct reports on internal systems, management of the line development calendar, and mastering daily tasks. Partnered with my assistants to help coach them to get to the next level.

• Effectively demonstrates ability to establish strong relationships with vendors and excercises flexibility in an approach to negotiations.• Manages the open-to-buy to insure the availability of having liquidity for opportunistic buys.• Objectively assesses merchandise mix to continually improve assortments.• Consistently shops competition to obtain information from vendors with regards to market trends and current buying activity of competitors.• Work closely with analysts and control to maximize opportunities and react to business trends.

• Create assortments and manage Better Sportswear Private Label department, consisting of about 20-25 brands. Launched Petites dept. • Analyze and react to selling, key item analysis, vendor profitability, and aged inventory. Complete accurate financial forecasts, evaluating sales, markdowns, and receipts.• Communicate with stores on business opportunities, assortment needs, stock levels, and strategize to maximize sales.• Branch to metro doors to merchandise floors and conduct seminars. Help organize in-store events within departments to drive sales and to create excitement on the selling floors.