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Eric is a highly respected and innovative apparel and consumer goods executive who brings more than 25 +years’ experience working with premier brands specializing in profitable growth through best in class go to market strategies for both direct to consumer and wholesale businesses.  Eric’s reputation for brand development, merchandise and financial planning, supply chain optimization, and international business strategy has helped contribute to the successful advancement of many global brands such as: NYDJ (Not Your Daughter's Jeans), Kate Spade & Company, Bestseller, Mexx, Kenneth Cole, Ralph Lauren, Mark Ecko Enterprises, Hart Schaffner Marx, Ted Baker and more. Eric has held many Senior Executive positions in addition to consulting roles throughout his career including, Divisional President for a $570M Men’s apparel company and VP of Planning and Allocation for a $2.4B international fashion brand. 

Eric has spent the last 5 years as a professional consultant to the Retail and Branded consumer goods industry completing projects centered around Planning, allocation, supply chain management, product development, business process re-engineering, and sales strategy development.

Since graduating from The University of Michigan, School of Business Administration in 1983, Bob Schafer has accumulated years of business experience working with a significant number of retailers and wholesalers in the areas of merchandising business process and system design, development, integration and implementation. Prior to becoming and independent consultant in 2007, Mr. Schafer spent over 15 years as a principal of MarketMAX, Inc., a Merchandise Intelligence Software Company, where he was largely responsible for leading the solution design and implementation teams, then with SAS Institute, the world’s leading provider of Business Analytics which acquired MarketMAX in 2003.

Mr. Schafer’s strong understanding of the business objectives as well as the various system capabilities and architectures are critical components when designing a business process and the approach to implementing and integrating solutions within the overall Merchandising environment.

Prior to Marketmax and SAS, as a Certified Public Accountant (1985), Mr. Schafer spent five years in “Big Eight” Public Accounting and four years as the CFO and Operations Director of a consumer products manufacturing company which provided a tremendous foundation for his continuing career.