Brief Profile
With a vision to bridge the gap between Industry and academics, Mr. Sharma has joined Footwear Design & Development Institute in Oct 2021 as Head of Footwear.
A Mathematics Graduate & Economics Post Graduate by formal education, He is a Footwear Technologist (an FDDI alumnus SFT 1999 batch). Studied Rail Transportation & Management from IRT Delhi and Purchase Management from European Institute of Purchasing Management (EIPM) Shanghai Campus. Unique opportunity to live and work in city of Cologne, Germany during an internship with Galleria Kaufhof for 91 days.
Vast corporate & industry experience of 23 years. Worked with the world’s largest Multinational retailing companies like Carrefour France and Metro sourcing Germany. Served as specialist in the areas of Merchandising, International Sourcing, Business & product development taking care of the entire life cycle beginning from buying meetings, Vendor sourcing, Product & competitor benchmarking, Market Intelligence, CSR, Retro planning, sample approvals, risk assessment, PPM, shipments QC & ETD, post shipment issues, commercial forecasting and managing KPIs. Frequent travel to Germany, France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Italy, Hong Kong, China and Sri Lanka . Attended important international shoe fairs like Garda Italy and GDS Dusseldorf.
Been to various good Tanneries in India. Handled several product categories like Leather Footwear, Accessories - Belts, Bags, Wallets, purses, scarves ,Hard goods, Textiles like soccer T shirts and jog suits, Leather garments etc . Visited International stores for brands like Zara, S.Oliver, Espirit , Clarks ,Metro, Makro, REAL , Galleria Kaufhof ,Carrefour , H&M & others. Have worked for brands like Rover & Lakes ,C.Comberti , Bexleys, L.Lambertazzi, Lloyd ,TEX etc .