| Profiles: Fashion Business Essentials Panel |
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Nancy Ploeger is the President of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. Enhancing New York City's economic growth and advocacy for small businesses has been Nancy's goal for the past 14 years. Nancy has developed MCC's membership from 250+ to over 1400, launched a variety of economic development initiatives and committees and established the Chamber's relationships with officials at all levels of government. This powerful network contributes and supports to build the Chamber into a small business advocating force with expanded influence across the globe. For the past few years, the Chamber has become a catalyst that has created and strengthened a global SME network including India, Spain, South Africa, Korea and Turkey etc. to build up SMEs' global expansion capacity and bring about sustained competitive growth. In order to develop MCC's international presence, Nancy created the MCC Chamber of Commerce Foundation which oversees the Manhattan International Development ("MIDC") program. www.manhattancc.org David Nocero served as Director of Information Systems for Itochu / Prominent USA from 1994 to 1997. Citi Systems was established in 2002 with a primary objective of consulting for top designers such as Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenberg, Girbaud, Antik Denim and many more. Citi Systems is a solution provider that covers all aspects of fashion and accessories. David Nocero has been on many end user boards that consisted of major retailers including Walmart. David has had many new and existing implementations which included pdm, erp, plm and edi. www.citisysinc.com Donald M. Choi is a successful senior executive, most recently serving as Chief Financial Officer for Diane von Furstenberg Studio, L.P. In 2004, Mr. Choi was recognized a one of the "50 Outstanding Asian Americans in Business" by Asian American Business Development Center. In 2000, he successfully started his own software company, raised several million dollars for the operation of the company and closed a million dollar deal with the Federal government for the company's "Viditalk" software program. Mr. Choi sold his interest in the company in 2001. Mr. Choi also served as Chief Financial Officer for Kinderhook, an IT consulting company, from 1996 until its sale in 2000. Prior to joining the workforce, Mr. Choi earned a BS/BA degree from Boston University School of Management. Janie Franks started out in retail over ten years ago where she did sales, management, and buying. She studied fashion business and merchandising at the London College of Fashion and then moved to New York to pursue her career in fashion. It was in NYC that she got involved in sales on the wholesale level through and accessory showroom. Ms. Franks got first hand experience with trade shows and developed great relationships with buyers and designers. Soon she saw that she could do more for new designers on her own. She collaborated with her friend Heather Carlos and 3Femme was born. They specialize in representing the young, up coming designer. They realize that there is a lot of talent out there and they want to be the ones to build these designers from the ground up! 3Femme currently represents Ave Swimwear, Saha Swimwear, Reverie, Mestif, and Laurance Rassin. www.3femme.com Nancy Johnson is the Owner/President of Optimyze LLC, a consulting services organization wholly focused on the fashion industries. Optimyze combines the decades of executive level experience of its associates to bring a rich history as a strategic consulting partner for new and established companies looking to manage the complexities of developing products and intricacies of business optimization. Customers such as Michael Kors, Olivia Rose Tal and Polo Ralph Lauren have benefited from the various services related to merchandising, design, product development, sourcing, and the technologies that enable these business functions. Prior to starting Optimyze, Ms. Johnson held senior design and product development positions with House of Design Bridal, Calvin Klein and Warnaco covering a wide range of responsibilities. Teaching, writing and speaking on topics related to the fashion industries, small business initiatives and women's' issues provides an important balance. Ms. Johnson has affiliations to AATCC, FGI, FIT, and Massachusetts College of Art and sits on the Board of Directors for the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. www.optimyze.com Share this Article:                        Advertisement |
