Forever New
Early-stage product employee turned US Brand Consultant
Fashion Retailer | Australia
Globally trading vertical fashion brand with over 300 stores and product categories including footwear, accessories, home, stationery, and gifts. Established in Australia, where I’m originally from.
As a fast-growing direct brand, Forever New was making waves in the fashion industry in Australia.
With in-house designers from ASOS, Topshop, River Island and other UK high street leaders, plus hard-working merchandising and operations teams, the company expanded from six stores to over 300 globally in just five years.
Trend insights and proactive thinking were keys to remaining the market leader.
I made and sold LOTS of bags, visited China, negotiated some big deals and managed millions of $ in sales and open to buy.
I researched and identified trends early, I adapted them to the Australian market wherever it made sense and it worked.
I built and managed a team of 20 people, and we expanded our monthly collections from one category to four sub-categories, with 50 SKU’s dropping monthly. That’s a lot of bags.
We strategized innovative opportunities for our retail store presence, and closely monitored reactions, then we launched an e-commerce platform.
I moved to New York and continued to work for the brand, offering real-time trend insights and analysis to inform the design teams for all categories.When the team visited the US, I made sure that they saw all the right things, and of course, ate at all the right places.
Working with Sarah was always a pleasure. She is extremely talented at understanding and interpreting trends to suit the target customer. She played a key role in building our brand and customer base over the years and much of the success we had can be attributed to her contribution.
