Neil Staley: Art Director in Irvine, California

Fifth Sun/Mad Engine - Men's: Core, Lounge, Swim, Private Label, Packaging. • Private Label Brands: Oversaw all creative, working closely with buyers, sales, and merchandising teams to hone brand guidelines and push newness while maintaining brand aesthetic integrity - all fast-moving and under tight deadlines. Helped to drive numerous private label brands to consistent and unrivaled success. • Lounge & Packaging: Art direction and artwork for all Walmart and Target lounge businesses, including the growth of the Walmart D5 entertainment space. • Led a creative team to own and grow multi-million dollar licensed and non-licensed programs at Walmart, Target, Kohls, Belk, Hot Topic, Ross, Box Lunch. • Holiday: Art direction and created art for all lounge, tees, sweaters and packaging for holiday business.

Led a team responsible for creating sales-driven and market-hungry graphics packages encompassing several private label divisions, based on buyer team reference, market and trend research or a combination of sales reporting best-selling items and trend forecasting over various demographics. I oversaw programs from initial request through hand off to the sales and merchandising teams, including trend research/shopping, team art application and strategy meetings, art direction of various art styles and completion of packages within tight seasonal deadlines.