Elisa Jara

Managed and tracked the development of home textile products for various retail clients with simultaneous timeframes. Communicating with overseas offices and vendors in China and Pakistan, following up with customer approvals throughout the process, from artwork designs through final production samples.
Worked with product development teams including Martha Stewart Home Textile Designers, Macy’s Merchandising Group, Bed Bath & Beyond, TJ Max, HomeGoods, and Dillard’s.
Developed and managed packaging materials, including insert and bag designs specific for each product and client’s requirements, in collaboration with the technical, design, and operations teams.
Key contributions:
• After a new vendor in Pakistan increased price and reduced quality of sheets, successfully negotiated compliance with the contracted price and higher quality, and worked with the operations team to improve the new delayed ship date. The solutions for late shipments were adapted for future sales.
• Developed rapport with clients by tailoring lunch meetings to individual preferences, building trust and a record of resourcefulness that facilitated order extensions, price increases and order minimums, maintaining existing client base and profit margins.
• Conceptualized the design and production of fabric swatch booklets for five bedding sets with the sales and manufacturing team, to be displayed at retail stores nationwide, reversing lagging sales; impressed client asked for additional design booklets.

Liaison between designers, clients, and overseas teams.
Key contributions:
• Eliminated backlog of projects awaiting approval due to broken communication between sales and design teams by creating a visual tool providing orders, specifications, schedule, and responsible party for each phase of the job. Ideation to elimination of backlog took one month.
• Designed fabric displays vendor could not produce in small quantities or at an acceptable price; created embroidery artwork and sourced a local embroidery shop to make 200 displays in less than a week using pillowcases from surplus production.
• Charged with preparing a set of fabric swatch samples in descriptive booklets in less than three days, drafted a list of tasks and assigned them to knowledgeable coworkers, searched for swatches and persuaded a nearby dry cleaner to stitch them together into neatly produced samples; shipped competed sets under deadline for a successful meeting with clients.

Assisted in the design process of new design specification sheets, patterns, and colors for new projects. Key contributions: * Sketched and created visual layout and instructions for embroidery production for custom designed curtains after a lack of design specifics for the artisan and a language barrier threated the order. Artisan produced curtain panels according to specifics and on time. Template for relaying instructions and design to the artisans was made the company standard.

* Organized and performed research as part of a team on how a local business association could better serve its community. Prepared contextual research data and applied design thinking methodologies to synthesize information, design, and test solutions. * Consulted with the local business association members to implement recommendations, designed and provided a practical tool for their use. * Presented findings to 200-attendee conference dedicated to put design into action and improving design's contribution to society.

Performed contextual research on various store locations and analyzed brand perception. Key contributions: * Initiated and established process progress log shared with team visiting 20+ retail stores to analyze customer experience. Reduced redundant effort of team and recorded evidence that supported arguments resulting, on time, design brief.