Emilie Ponsin

- Increase awareness levels for the furniture market in Pacific Asia :
Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam.

- Facilitate communication between our distributors and Ferrari Group, liaise with our distributors in the Pacific Asia region.

- Evaluate industry structure, players’ conduct, keys success factors of potential opportunities.

- Managing new Business Development opportunities for the region.

- Manage our portfolio of customers with existing and establish new contact as well: Manufacturers, furniture brands, final customers.

- Product specification toward designers, architects, agents for the hospitality & contract industry.

- Stock management, back-order (Needs depending on the final customers).

- Resolve incoming customer inquiries related to technical issues.

- Marketing support to the Hong Kong office.

- Local Assistant to the Product Managers in France with the development and follow up of new projects.

- Assistant to the local product research team responsible for providing marketing feedback on ongoing projects.

- Mildly creative role in the packaging creation team with significant proof reading tasks.

- Produce concise, error free packaging briefs in a timely manner to the attention of our in-house team of graphic designers.

- Coordinated, reviewed and proof reading of all packaging artworks and other communications materials.

- Tested electronic products and reported to product researchers (debugging).

FRENCH FURNITURE INDUSTRY REPRESENTATIVE
Worked for three companies (Duvivier – Fermob – Taillardat).

NORTH AMERICA MANAGER
(Duvivier, French high-end leather sofa, www.duvivier.fr ), New York, NY, USA.

- Found a distributor for Duvivier’s product in a NYC showroom named Art & Maison.
- Liaison with overseas client and factories / buyers and vendors.
- Engage in promotions activities and exhibition.
- Reporting on a weekly basis to the business French CEO and the Export manager.

SALES MANAGER / BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
(Fermob : French outdoor furniture www.fermob.com ), New York, NY, USA.

- Knowledge of consumer sales, retail trade and strategic marketing in the furniture industry.
- Promoted Fermob line products through end user calls, product demonstrations, trade shows, sending emailing, press releases and documentations.
- Organized an event in the showroom for showing the new collection, invited the press and clients.
- Identified new clients opportunities, explore and develop a common business on the ‘contract’ market in New York City and its surroundings. - Created a research market on the outdoor furniture in the United States.

ASSISTANT SHOWROOM MANAGER
(Taillardat: French furniture from the 18thcentury, www.taillardat.fr ), New York, NY, USA.

- Identified and handled potential customers during the international Maison et Objet trade show in Paris, France.
- Responsible for developing new business opportunities and expand customer database.
- Good relationship with developers, architects, designers.
- Proven experience in price quotation, development and production follow-up.

- Coordinated logistical activities for various Horse Shows in the US and Canada for Devoucoux USA: ensured product availability, handled sponsorship communication (brochures, emails campaigns, etc.) and prepared Devoucoux’s show booths.

- Developed strong customer relationships and facilitated the understanding of customer needs and issues. Implemented an efficient customer-tracking database through the use of ACT software.

- Managed the company product inventory and the customer order process flow through billings using Fishbowl software in combination with QuickBooks.

(Apparel & Fashion industry)

November 2005 – March 2007 (1 year 5 months)
- Managed sales strategies (seasonal and trends cycles strategies) and customer follow up for the fashion & paper industry.
- Maintained, organized and updated customer portfolio database containing more than 3000 contacts.
- Attended to the three major trade shows in New York (Printsource, Direction and Surtex), for prospecting new customers, present new collections and to analyse market to prepare the next trends for the future season.
- Consistently surpassed sales objectives after first month of employment.

- Worked at the advertising agency supporting travel agencies such as Thomas Cook, Nouvelle Frontières and Galeries Lafayette. In charge of selling the advertising spaces on their catalogues.
- Generated marketing content: media plan and media kit to support marketing presentations.
- Presented the catalogues to strategic holding company that manages a portfolio of global market leaders such as OMD, Euro RSCG, Havas.
- Acted as primary liaison between advertisers and travel agencies. Responsible for validating and arranging agreements between the advertisers and the travel agencies.
- Implemented a partnership with the ESI (International Skiing School, 70+ schools) and SFR (Second French wireless phone provider) to distribute marketing materials oriented towards international customers.
Supervised distribution of marketing materials at multiple ski resorts.
- Researched and analyzed travel agency’s market and synthesized competitor’s advantages to improve sales revenues