Rick Katz Email & Phone Number

New York City Metropolitan Area

* Global Head of Product Development for a state of the art newly constructed sustainable garment factory, laundry, and embellishment facility producing for brands including Kuhl, Anthropology, and Sundance. * Exclusive Global agent for Instant Karma sustainable fabrics. * Global agent for Instant Karma / Kornit digital fabric and garment printing.

Greater New York City Area

Directed product development and technical design teams in men’s woven shirts and swimwear for all Polo brands as well as the Purple Label Made in Italy Collection. Oversaw the garment execution process from design hand off and BOM development through bulk production delivery of a multi-million unit product category. —Process Improvement—• Decreased the need for garment modifications post line review by 30%.• Served as the “go to” person to resolve all design and costing issues and external production related concerns, while continually analyzing the development function, constantly improving the processes. • Onboarded new factories by joining factory management and production teams onsite to indoctrinate into Ralph Lauren processes.• 8-point reduction (from 10% to 2%) in sample execution issues and minimized bulk production errors.—Cross-Functional Collaboration—• Collaborated with Ralph Lauren’s Italian, Asian, and Indian product and production teams by regularly traveling to work directly with the offices and factories. • Attained double digit gross margin percentage growth by working closely with Production / Design / Merchandising partners to ensure margin requirements were attainable and attained. • Led all product categories in meeting milestone dates by implementing a woven shirts specific development calendar. • Reduced the need to reallocate for bulk to alleviate margin and execution challenges to less than 1%. Skills:Product Development | Sourcing | Leading | Mentoring | Onboarding | Problem Solving | Innovating & Creative Thinking | Process Improvement | Margin Building | Cross Functional Collaboration | Wash, Trims, Embellishment | Fabric Construction | Sportswear, Denim, Tailored Clothing | Microsoft Office Suite, PLM

Greater New York City Area

• Opened and ran a NYC showroom for sales of the Johnny Cotton Mens and Womens premium collections. Also functioned as a mill agent and converter selling fabric to NYC based denim operations. Regularly attended US regional trade shows to sell the collections.• Worked with European fabric mills to select the fabrics and with the garment factory in India to execute the collections. Regularly traveled to European fabric fairs and the Indian factory.

Greater Los Angeles Area

• Partner in a Los Angeles based apparel company that produced a premium Mens sportswear and a Mens denim collection, produced in Portugal with some LA production; and a leather collection produced in India. Collections were sold to better specialty including Fred Segal.• Executed global production, costing, and factory sourcing in consort with our Portugal office.• Traveled regularly to European fabric fairs and Portuguese garment factories.• Sold the collections at US regional trade shows and through regional US travel.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Designed private label collections for Marshall Field’s Department Store division of Target Corporation.• Shopped global markets for design inspiration, sketched models, and picked fabrics and trims.• Approved counter submits from mills and garment factories.ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE:Bachrach Clothing Inc.Senior Product Manager Created the initial concept, design, development, and merchandising of men’s dress, sport, and denim bottoms for a $100,000, 80 door, better tailored clothing and sportswear retailer. Traveled regularly to European fabric fairs and garment factories. Promoted three times from an initial part time sales position.• Worked directly with Italian and European fabric mills, and Italian, Portuguese, and Asian factories as well as with outside vendors to produce denim jeans through fully tailored woolen trousers. Bachrach Clothing Inc.District Sales ManagerManaged a five-state, ten-store district with ten direct reporting managers and head count of 200+ staff. Served as a role model for all employees. Liaised for the stores to the corporate office product merchandising teams. • Posted upper single digit sales growth in previously struggling districts by turning around operations through the astute leadership of all aspects of store performance including recruiting, training, and hiring skilled managers.