Sarah Mason

Consult and mentor mothers on the early years of parenting. Navigating challenges with more compassion, joy and empathy. To empower women, and offer them guidance to their own inner healing, wisdom, and innate power.

• Listen attentively to customer challenges, responding with empathy and compassion, to feel heard, seen and understood, ensuing high client satisfaction and retaining/upgrading clients.
• Proficient in maintaining calm and centered presence, while navigating client feelings and challenges moving towards practical solutions successfully.
• Skilled and able to identify underlying needs and feelings behind behaviours and challenges.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively engage with clients via phone and Zoom, ensuring a positive and engaging interaction.

Lead and oversee the Instock function, including demand planning, ordering, and capacity management, ensuring optimal inventory availability and health, for Consumables ~$32m

• Worked in partnership with internal warehouse teams and top tier vendors (suppliers) in optimising supply metrics, through development of reporting, identifying opportunities, navigating conflicting priorities and driving the project towards a common goal.
• Drove cross-functional strategic initiatives to improve customer experience and overall cost structure of the business
• Performed complex business analysis to identify business opportunities to improve revenue and profitability
• Partnering with internal teams to develop tools, automation, and process improvements that affect purchasing and vendor management workflows
• Utilised strong negotiation skills to balance supplier and stakeholder satisfaction with company interests, achieving positive outcomes for both.

Manage end to end supply chain processes. Annual budgets, forecast model development, demand & supply planning, procurement, logistics partners & 3PL, inventory management, reporting & analysis.

• Applied critical thinking and analytical skills for data interpretation, driving ongoing performance improvements.
• Identified and addressed potential issues in inventory and quality control through strategic changes.
• Demonstrated strong negotiation skills, achieving positive outcomes for both third parties and company.
• Collaborated directly with third-party personnel to resolve production and logistic challenges, ensuring positive relationships.
• Specialized in financial planning support for diverse business portfolios and individual needs.
• Innovated tools and processes for efficiency, cost savings, and customer satisfaction, exceeding KPI targets and contributing to company growth +185%, including launch of new brand H2melon.
• Managed and trained 2 team members.

Develop, execute and communicate strategic vendor financial plans that improve company's financial outcomes.

• Developed supplier profitability reporting software, in collaboration with SQL developer (excel end user interface). Pivotal in success of commercial trading terms program, resulting in 2.1m incremental net profit FY15.
• Perform complex business analysis and offer strategical recommendations for improvement of supplier trading term negotiations.
• Managed accounts receivable project - reducing aged receivables from $14.5m to $8m within 6 months. Hiring & training 5 temps, coordinating stakeholders, and performance reporting.

Develop administrative processes and implement change to support continual fast growth of merchandise department & business.

• Managed, coached, and developed team, expanding from 2 to 6 administrators in promotions, allocations, merchandise, and pricing/margin analysis.
• Oversaw RMS system and processes for ~16,000 SKUs, including cost, pricing, product cards, and weekly database maintenance.
• Conducted ongoing data and system analysis to enhance efficiency, continuously monitoring and improving systems and outcomes.
• Led merchandise team during IT developments and system integrations, with focus on creation of Promotional Mud Map and coordination of monthly sales.
• Spearheaded project with IT to develop allocation/ordering module, resulting in significant time-saving of 25 hours weekly.
• Implemented promotional planning tool and rebate funding report, gaining insights into maximising profitability while maintaining GM% and GM$.

Planning & replenishment for David Jones and Myer accounts, a portfolio of $6.7million, +170 stores.

Led team of 6 staff in complete store operations, including business planning and implementation, sales and customer service, merchandising and visual displays, stock management and loss prevention, and financial and administrative functions. Supervised, selected, oriented, trained, coached, motivated and performance managed team members.