Ike Whiting Email & Phone Number

Saint Paul, MN, US

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Launch 2 Retail was formerly JMC Retail Group but split into its own company in early 2017.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Managed a broad spectrum of merchant roles, including reporting development, supply chain management, assortment planning, inventory management, category analysis, vendor account management, product development, pricing negotiation, marketing strategy, promotional strategy, wholesale growth, competitive analysis, digital marketplace optimization.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Led buying responsibilities in Bridge and Designer sportswear for the top 1% of the 800 Macy’s stores nationwide, worth $50MM in annual revenue.
• Built seasonal financial plans and continually adjusted in-season forecasts to respond to changing trends in sales, stock turnover and profitability.
• Negotiated multi-million dollar seasonal vendor margin assistance.
• Established a replenishment strategy in mid-sized stores which grew Petite category of business by 6% in incremental revenue and 4 points in natural margin.
• Revamped buying strategy in Plus-sized category through associate feedback and sales/profit reporting analysis, which resulted in a 10-point margin improvement.
• Identified large-scale theft activity across multiple markets through enhanced data analysis, prompting urgent strategic collaboration with regional LP partners. Efforts resulted in a 48% reduction in annual inventory.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Organized and led seasonal training sessions twice annually for selling and support staff in 10-12 national markets.
• Developed internal and external communication tools to support and motivate selling specialists.
• Created in-store events, promotional strategies and selling contests to drive incremental sales growth opportunities in key locations.
• Instituted item-level organizational structure to more efficiently analyze delivery and silhouette performance.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Created and allocated purchase orders and monitored receipt flow to ensure timely delivery to stores.
• Established business recaps from corporate reporting to analyze business and build strategies for upcoming markdowns, pricing promotions and reorder opportunities.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Collaborated with various Property Development teams to provide support for technology upgrades to store blueprint database.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Processed home mortgage refinances during an era of historical volume.