As a Senior Buyer at Academy, I lead all aspects of the daily buying, merchandising, advertising, inventory control, markdowns, vendor management, profit margin, and client success. Direct a cross-functional team of six in the sales and merchandising strategies for the Team Sports Footwear category for Academy Sports and Outdoors (a $5.7B retailer with more than 269 stores across the United States). Some of my Key Accomplishments are noted below:• Strategically manage the Team Sports – Footwear category to exceed $165M in annual sales volume through customer-driven sales plans and omni-channel execution.• Develop and implement business strategies for 18 different sports categories t0 exceed annual sales and margin projections.

During my term as Buyer, I successfully managed the buying and merchandising efforts in the Cleats/Athletic Slides and Men’s Training/Basketball Footwear Departments, together representing more than $175M in annual sales and a significant portion of company sales volume. Led sales and assortment planning, as well as budgeting, consumer and market analysis, inventory turn, gross margin, sales development, and merchandising for those departments.• Consistently achieved an 11% compound annual growth rate for four consecutive years while achieving both margin and inventory turn goals.• Created and managed financial plans for both categories driving profitability for the department and company.• Established and implemented several in-store merchandising strategies that were ultimately adopted by entire footwear division.

At Belk, I developed strategic analysis of sales trends and provided stock projections to determine most profitable placement of merchandise for a $126.7M Home Goods area in Belk Department Stores.