maide graebin: Creative Director / Co-Founder in Brooklyn, NY

Co-founding and managing an athleisure apparel lifestyle brand, while maintaining responsibility for all aspects of creative direction, from sourcing, merchandising, design to presentations to commercialization. • Successfully developing and producing all aspect of marketing, from photoshoots to social media. • Developing and managing the brand E- Commerce web site.

• Creating, designing, developing, tech fitting, and merchandising all aspects of Apana, Layer 8, and Skora footwear. • Successfully developing and producing a new athletic footwear venture for apparel private brands at Adjmi/IFG. • Driving development from concept including trend boards/materials/colors to sketches, presentations, and preproduction. • Sourcing new factory and agent sourcing, pricing, merchandising, and materials procurement for the athletic category. • Presenting the collection and working directly with buying team to guide, determine, and negotiate competitive prices. • Collaborating with senior management to develop seasonal design products with appropriate margin for target customers. • Directing and providing technical support to overseas design teams and technicians from conception to production.

• Created, designed, developed, tech fitting and merchandised all aspects of LF/Life, L4L. • Managed a 2 people design team. • Developed contemporary footwear with competitive pricing through negotiations with local production footwear facilities. • Created and executed merchandising plans for all brands including executing fashion photoshoots and social media. • Working with leather, fabrics, and PU suppliers internationally including agents and factories in Brazil, India, Italy, and China. • Drove YoY customer engagement growth by creating unique photoshoots and a branding campaign that increased views.

• Oversaw all design elements from concept to final product for M4D3/Groove and Sudini and private labels • Managed the design team of 4 people to oversee all brands in contemporary, junior, athletic, and performance footwear. • Created trend boards for materials/colors and designed, executed, and merchandised all aspects of M4D3 footwear. • Re-launched Sudini Comfort brand, oversaw the designed Groove footwear, and oversaw all branded • Presented the collection working directly with the buying team to guide on pricing, deliveries, and final merchandise.

• Oversaw the re-design, recreate, and re-launch of Kelsi Dagger, transforming it into KDB - Kelsi Dagger Brooklyn. • Drove all design elements from conception to final product including trend research, sourcing factories, sketching, presentation, price, tech fitting and pre-production. • Contributed to KDB becoming the most important brand on the PLV portfolio to be acquired by Millennium Brands. • Performed extensive market research and competitive analysis to better communicate product value proposition. • Created product branding and positioning through unique photoshoot visuals to differentiate footwear niche in market.

• Drove all design elements while managing a 4-person team responsible for $6M in licensed branded revenue. • Maintained constant communication with Far East agents from development to production stages for all designs. • Traveled to Asian and European markets to oversee all product development with multiple agents and forecast trends.