Atul M

Premium Brand Partnerships, Brand on-boarding, Global Sourcing, Off Price / Discounted Brands Sourcing & Supply Chain management. Apparel, Footwear, Home & Accessories .

•Strategic Planning and Financial Management: Prepare financial projections in line with market trends and past sales performance. Planning budgets and presenting sales forecasts and figures for new ranges. •Buying: Sourcing from manufacturing hubs like China, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Turkey -Travelling and sourcing product at the best possible price and conceptualize product presentation and packaging look. •Product: Selection and implementation of designs, artworks and understanding color palettes of the season. Going for Market surveys on the new products, fits, fabrics and then implementing in the Range accordingly. •Price Management and Markdown Planning: Review and analyze selling and inventory reports by article number to determine items which contribute to satisfactory stock turn; also understand markdowns for slow selling items. •Vendor Management and Development: Sourcing, development and constant negotiations are key work areas here. Also timely merchandise supplies, defects management and constant feedback to develop and grow. Maintaining relationships with existing suppliers and sourcing new suppliers for future products.

Range building – Building ranges for kidswear apparel and ensuring pricing architecture, trends, product detail and end uses are fully considered. Able to build a range of 500-550 options without the guidance of a designer.  Price & Delivery negotiation - Independently and regularly negotiated prices and delivery’s with suppliers in order to achieve target margin and launch dates.  Contributing to future range strategies - Supplier strategy planning, analysis of weekly best sellers, competitor shop reports and pricing architecture strategies.  Supplier Building – Arrange and attend supplier meetings selecting a range according to market trend. Also travelling to far east in order to scout for new suppliers and placement of current buying.

- Determine buying requirements and formulate buying plan and budget for the assigned department/category. - Help meet the profit targets by ensuring timely procurement of the department/category Merchandise. - Pursue cost reduction measures through centralized bulk buying and/ or selecting appropriate vendor mix, scanning the environment for benchmarks and constantly improving the purchase process. - Develop an adequate vendor base for the concept through active scouting and negotiation / renegotiation. - Build and maintain relationships with vendors and suppliers and negotiate the best deals with them for procuring merchandise. - Maintain contact with vendors; update list of vendors for bidding purposes; attend product demonstrations, obtain samples and literature regarding potential products and vendor capabilities. - Identify, evaluate and select appropriate vendor mix to achieve business objectives. - Place orders based on the buying plan and ensure merchandise is delivered as per the plan based on the agreed service level agreement. - Ensure effective communication, collation and follow-up on various product requirements and findings obtained from the sales/store data. - Keep abreast of the latest trends in buying. - Gather information from Industry trade groups or through trade shows/market visits. - Effectively deal with fast / slow moving items / ranges and end of ranges and take corrective action on timely basis. - To visit our competitors who carry same range of products, study their designs, color, price & compare with Mybuy products. By studying we can analyse & make our buying better. - Constant research on new products and develop the same with our existing suppliers.

- Directly responsible for the sourcing, costing and production of all kidswear for Mexx (A mojor European retail brand). - Managing Product Development, Business Development & Cost Finalization. - Building and maintaining business relationships with all the vendors and brand buyers. - Assessment of vendor’s performance based on various criteria such as on-time delivery, Pricing , Rejection percentage, quality etc. - Customer Relationship Management : Identifying requirements & specifications, Interacting with factories, Interfacing between buyer & manufacturers for facilitating smooth order execution. - Close monitoring of workload matrix to assess equal distribution of workload within teams & assigning clear cut roles & responsibilities for effective management of resources. - Developing and coaching staff to achieve seamless execution.