Production Fabric /Trims Buyer

NORMA KAMALI is a women’s clothing company who design, manufacture, and distribute globally, primarily through e-commerce accounts and the brand website.

Must have extensive fabric knowledge in the contemporary RTW market,

as well as cut sew knits classification.

A minimum of 10 years in the cut sew knits market.

Work directly with the CFO and the production manager.

Collaborate with the design development fabric manager.

This is a contemporary brand in the contemporary price range.

We are 85% a cut and sew knits brand and many types include Lycra in the knits.

We have a core group of knits we use from season to season developing prints and colors for each new season. We do new types each season.

Experience with cut and sew knits is incredibly important because knits stretch and offer a wider range of fit opportunities for our clients. Therefore, we need to measure stability of the relaxed and stretched fabrics to ensure consistency in the fit of the garments from sample to production yards and from season to season.

The weight stability, the stretch, the hand and the color or print are carefully measured for quality control to confirm the use of our patterns for the consistency of fit. This procedure begins with sample yards since the yards we use for the samples is the standard we will use as our original approved samples of which the production will be based. When production yards are ordered the exact specifications are needed to be the standard of the production yards.

Responsibilities

• Place purchase orders
• Seasonal, core, and reorders in a sense of urgency efficient manner.
• PO must include, negotiated price, delivery, and specifications matching the sample yards used from the suppliers with several sample cuts to share with the vendor, the mill and their QC person.
• Negotiate fabric prices in a timely manner based on several factors including the increase in orders, the planned yardage as well negotiating fabric deliveries to ensure fabric deliveries can be met.
• Anticipate any possible delays or issues with a Plan B for the collection each season.
• Communication is key and constant. Daily communication with fabric vendors on delivery and bulk submits to mitigate delays with solutions and plan b.
• Communication with the CFO, the production manager, the factories, and the production team, and most important the sales team with solutions in place.
• Confirm fabric delivery controls at the factories with standards approved from the bulk submits to use as quality controls. Any rejected bulk should be communicated immediately with the vendor and the factory so the lot the roll and the rejected quality is not shipped to the factory as good.
• Daily communication with the factories to make sure they have fabric inspection procedures in place to immediately advise if any issues.
• Have timely quality meetings with a factory rep who manages the fabric control at the factory and is closely aligned with their cutting staff to ensure only the quality selection meeting the standard is used for production.
• Maintain fabric tracking charts to be sure you are ahead of a potential problem or delay.
• Maintain estimates and actual delivery of bulk fabric submits, and bulk fabric X mill delivery.
• Source and purchase trims for the sample room and domestic factories.
• Source trims in partnership with our overseas factory to insure an exact match to our sample styles and our domestic factories.
• Maintain an assortment of trims on site sourced overseas and each season match the colors for development for the sample room.
• Specs for elastics as well as approval on all trims being used matching what we used for samples.
• Maintain domestic fabric inventory and maintain trims inventory and fill in as needed at domestic factories.

Protocol

Maintain a collaborative spirit with the design and development team and do end of day daily reports to your direct reports and team members.

Attention to detail and a sense of priorities from day to day with urgency as a method of time management specifically required as the Production Fabric Buyer