NIROSHA FONSEKA

Set up a niche Activewear Sourcing company in Australia & Sri Lanka with an offer for innovation in product and flexibility in volumes.

• Strategically enticing new markets hitherto unfamiliar with sourcing from Sri Lanka to establish partnerships on the Island through the offer of innovative products at flexible volumes.
• Changing the production landscape in Sri Lanka through the introduction of modular production lines to cater to smaller volume runs at higher production efficiencies.
• Enhancing product innovations by upscaling existing innovations to higher value product ranges. Generating over US$30mn turnover (at FOB) within a short period purely on upscaled innovations commercialized from Sri Lanka to a single brand in Australia.
• Established robust 1st to industry work streams to cater to online brands who required a higher product mix and reduced volumes. Examples include being lead vendor to ASOS for their home brand of activewear right at the onset of the brands launch. Similarly with Very (UK), Shop Direct (UK) to name a few.
• Expanded the business offer to new markets & regions and products with examples of supplying to Poland’s leading sports retailer and supplying to new product segments such as adaptive clothing, special corrective apparel and new age medical apparel.

Executive Committee member that set up and established South East Asia's 1st and most recognized and sort after swimwear solutions company MAS Linea Aqua (A JV between MAS Holdings, Speedo & Brandot).

Responsibilities as Head of Marketing servicing the Brands in Product Development, Merchandising, Sourcing and Planning functions with full responsibility for marketing and securing business for an annual capacity of 12million units, critical path management, and customer relationship management at senior level.

• Setting up the Frontend functions for the Company from ground up, and marketing & securing global brands from word 'go' including Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Lands End, Victoria's Secret, Next, A&F to name a few
• Spear headed the front-end strategies to mitigate risks associated in going into a niche market with its share of challenges due to technical specialty and seasonality of product.
• Contributed to the Company growth from its infancy to become a US$120mn plus annual turnover company within 4 years.
• Surpassed the initial business growth plans as set out in the business plan by 300% and secured expansion to triple capacity within the 2nd year of the business.
• Innovating on 1st to market products across fashion and technical swimwear. Examples include the hidden shape wear swim for Land's End, Build Your Own swim for Victoria's Secret.
• Creating a sense of "partnership" with the Brands that we serviced; thereby being crucial to formulating brand sourcing and product strategies. Examples including the collaborative work streams established with Victoria's Secret across inventory management & quick replenishment, and on product, creating distinctive product offers across Core and Fashion.
• Developing robust models for quick response and read & react orders. Examples include being the key vendor to Victoria's Secret for quick replenishment with 7-10 turnaround.
• Strong relationships with leading fabric mills spanning Europe, Far East, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. I was a key driver in getting JV partnerships established between Dogi EFA and MAS to set up Sri Lanka's 1st warp knit mill thus enabling the Company to offer attractive long term solutions to the Brands.
• Taking the responsibilities of implementing and actively collaborating on improvements to subsequent upgrades on SAP ERP systems. I led requirements of the SAP Planning tool to bring about a robust traffic light system that would enable the team to focus on exceptions proactively
• Was instrumental in project managing the implementation of lean systems (modeled on the famed Toyota Production Systems) to all front end divisions as well as drawing up the requirement to be covered through a PLM system
• The growth of the teams that I was directly responsible for was my biggest achievement at Linea Aqua. Several of my young team started out as management trainees and went on to grow to take on senior positions both within and outside the company.