Whilst at FT.com I was approached by a clothing designer who was looking for a partner with strong marketing skills and commercial awareness to assist him with building a mail-order catalogue company selling a range of own branded women's travel clothing.

I accepted the opportunity and took the risk of forming a partnership with him and building Newfoundland Ltd. As a result of ill-health my partner is unable to continue working on the project which has meant that the business can no longer pursue with the launch.

• Entrepreneurial  - raising capital, selling my skills and making the most of what resources we had 
• Pitching - Presenting and 'selling' our business plan to CEOs, private investors and Bank Managers
• Negotiation  - Negotiating deals with key suppliers and influencing them to work alongside us
• Creativity - developing new ideas for garment designs, developing marketing communications material and coding the pre-launch website
• Project management - ensuring that the whole product development and launch process was kept on track and to budget
• Business start-up skills - from developing the business and marketing plans with financial forecasts through to networking with local government agencies and other key businesses
• Market research - conducted research on the marketplace for our product, customers, competitors and key promotional avenues

• Developed both the business and marketing plans which were successfully used to raise capital for the project from both private investors and the bank.
• Developed the 'look and feel' and wrote the copy for the draft catalogue
• Single handedly developed the pre-launch website
• Developed the supply chain for all garment components
• Managed the whole product development process - from collaborating with the University of Wales on the development of initial designs through to working with manufacturing units to produce first samples
• Carried out extensive research on the marketplace using Mintel and Keynote reports. Conducted competitor research and used the information to modify prototypes. Carried out research on suitable business start-up support worth exploiting
  

Printable copy of my CV