Sebastien Giraud

The Mauritius Sugar Syndicate is a Fairtrade cooperative and sole commercial entity responsible to sell and promote, both locally and internationally, the white refined and special unrefined sugars produced in Mauritius. Their board members consist of Alteo and Terra Milling, Omnicane Refinery, ENL Corporate Agri and all the small planters. Its primary goal is to maximize the net revenue of its sales proceeds which are entirely redistributed to its members.

Reporting directly to the CEO, I am responsible of the Sales and Marketing of all the sugars produced and sold to 65 countries across 162 customers (retail / food service and industrials) for a turnover of 11 billions rupees.

My core accountabilities consist of:

• Managed a team of 1 senior sales and marketing executive, 1 sales and administrative coordinator, 1 customer lead and 6 customer service officers: defining clear job objectives, monitoring KPI, conducting performance appraisal, mentoring and leading by example on accountabilities and measuring occurrences for a culture of performance, learning and growing, and make it happen attitude.
• Developed and implemented comprehensive marketing strategies aligning with organizational goals
• Led cross-functional teams meeting from production planning to export execution.
• Cultivated partnerships with key customers to expand market reach and business results.
• Streamlined internal communication channels, fostering collaboration among various departments within the organization.
• Delivered consistent growth in key performance indicators by continuously refining marketing strategies based on analytics insights.
• Championed customer-centric approaches to improve overall satisfaction levels and foster customer loyalty among targeted market segments.
• Oversaw budget allocation and management for all commercial and marketing initiatives, maximizing impact while maintaining cost efficiency.

My core achievements to date are:

Improving the Net Revenues and leading the business towards a market driven organisation

• Increasing the Net Revenue to bring the Ex Syndicate price per ton from Rs 12,500 to Rs 26,000
• Growing the sales of Special Sugars with higher margins from 90,000 tons t0 130,000 tons
• Implemented a market driven culture with the creation of marketing tools such the Mauritius Sugars Core Pillars, Product Usage Guideline, Newsletters, MSS Club for sharing best commercial and marketing practices, MSS Awards Ceremony to reward best customer practices, launch of MSS brand on the Gourmet Premium Segment and Mauritius Sugars as Geographic Indication label.

Team Management and organisational culture

• Built an A class team (ensure there is no below average performer in your team), ensuring that each team member has a well-defined, updated Job Objective that is results-focus
• Coaching my subordinates and monitor the progress to make them grow.
• Running effective Routine meetings to jockey my department KPIs (from goal-setting, KPI monitoring, Corrective actions plan) for both commercial operational planning and execution).

Improving process from production planning to delivery

• Optimisation of production capacity across the different factories ensuring on-time delivery
• Working closely with all operational team with clear accountabilities to ensure efficient operations from order taking to delivery

Floreal Knitwear Ltd is part of the Ciel Group and produces and supplies garments and textile products (4.5 million garments per year) for key retail customers globally (US, Europe, Oceania and Africa) with own manufacturing plants in Mauritius, Madagascar, and Bangladesh and sourcing office in China. They are vertically integrated with spinning mill. It has a workforce of 4,600 employees and over USD$80 million in annual turnover.

I was responsible of the management of customers’ portfolios across UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Australia and South Africa across diverse customers and brands positioning (Mass Market to Higher End Retailers) across multi-distribution channels (Retail, Wholesale, Agent and On-Line Businesses).

Reporting to the CEO, I was also managing the customer service team consisting of 1 Merchandise Manager, 11 subordinates (4 Merchandisers and 4 Assistant Merchandiser, 1 Costing Clerk and 2 Trims purchasers). Also, I was managing the performance of 1 Commercial Manager, 3 Commercial Agents and 2 Specific Product & Design Developers.

This role involved Sales strategies and Key Account Management, Marketing initiatives, Clients & Suppliers relationship, Sourcing & Buying along Supply-Chain, Product development, and Operational infrastructure and Team leadership.

• Managing effectively and efficiently a portfolio of international key account customers and be accountable of preparing all related market analysis, forecasts, financial and operational reporting.
• Defining sales strategies and marketing plans included operational objectives per market, per client and per product category, and ensuring they aligned with broader organisational strategies including the parent group’s key commercial goals. These Includes monitoring the profitability of the business (pricing and costing).
• Meeting and exceeding the business KPI’s in terms of customer satisfaction rating, new business developments, repeat orders, revenue growth, profitability, market share, sample hit rates and factories loading.
• Optimising and Leading integrated marketing, product development and customer segmentation strategies – using each area to inform the other and develop truly holistic solutions that facilitated growth and expansion amongst product lines, categories and markets.
• Managing the client relationships at multi-level of the clients’ organisation to know your customer inside out who they are, what they buy, where, when and how), using this to define operational and sales strategies and align the business goals with customers’ strategy in view of maximizing new business opportunities
• Managing supplier relationship across the supply chain to identify and select the best suppliers including compliance with timelines and quality levels, negotiate prices and drive cost savings initiatives to improve margins, develop appropriate new product to sustain attractiveness and innovation and drive improvements on ways of working.
• Optimising the order management process from sampling to bulk delivery across multi-production sites, partnering with clients to understand their requirements, translating these into effective and efficient ways for cross-functional teams and providing appropriate solutions to issues impacting the production flow, quality and delivery.
• Setting the right management infrastructure of your back-office team, managing their workflow, establishing objectives and KPIs aligned with broader strategies, and providing the tools and support necessary to improve productivity and increase employee motivation.
• Coaching and training the teams, comprised of both direct and indirect reports, to encourage them to streamline operations, simplify communications and apply an entrepreneurial approach and customer-centric focus to their workflow.

My core achievements have been made across the following KPIs:

Customer Satisfaction: Business Growth & KPI’s Improvements

• Consistently drove high customer satisfaction resulting in business growth and operational improvements. Results included:

o Achieved customer satisfaction rating of 8/10 across unbeatable values

o Generated additional sales worth USD$ 4.2 millions

o Improved margins by 8% by implementing entrepreneurial initiatives

o Improved customer retention by driving repeat purchasing behaviours and offering new product trials

o Developed attractive product development offers leading to new business within new customers, new markets and new product categories

o Increased market-share by 30% by providing support in maximising product penetration across each product category

o Improved product-sales hit rate with effective cross-fertilisation of product development across sales teams

o Reduced “Muddas” and “Red Tapes” resulting in improved order management (Inputs / Processes / Outputs)

o Improved the cost price of raw materials in implementing entrepreneurial approach with external suppliers

o Achieved 40% in cost savings by introducing digital and innovative technology within product development process, by cross-fertilising best selling product lines, by sourcing aggressively product components.

Influencing Business Drivers: Sales Strategies and Marketing Initiatives

• Defined sales and marketing initiatives that drive commercial and strategic growth, all presented in a Master Plan to the Top Management team
• Established a proactive approach to business development by introducing sophisticated business intelligence, data and analytics activities (CRM System) to inform forecasts and allow the business to anticipate buyer behaviours based on competitor and market trends.

o Achieved a world class knowledge of customers (Clients promises, Product mix, Pricing hierarchy, Range building and Decision-making process)

o Investigated and analysed market trends, competitor’s analysis, opportunities and competitive positioning optimizing competitive advantage

o Established strategic business dashboard to assess new clients fit to the organisation know how, capabilities and goals

• Introduced market segmentation to identify and pursue new markets and establish a series of new client portfolios, involving:

o Generating new business by identifying opportunities with appropriate synergies of partnerships

o Expanding the product lines to expand market penetration by driving product development inputs with design team

o Building up the leviers to introduce a new inspirational and puller customer to create overall business attractiveness

• Developed successful product proposals meeting client’s needs or offering new alternatives or opportunities.
• Driven and managed successfully diverse projects in meeting the scope, on time and within budget and achieving the deliverables.
• Defined the pricing policy, costing and business terms & conditions applicable to each orders contracted subject to the order size, the timing of order confirmation, the lead-time up to delivery, the tolerance on quantities and measurements, as well as the complexity of retailers’ ways of working.

Team leadership: Inspiration, Trust, Support and Mentoring for World-class Key Account Management

• Managed and coordinated effectively and efficiently the performance of a direct team: a Merchandising Manager and a customer service team composed of 11 accounts executives, a Commercial Manager, Commercial Agents and Specific Product Developers.
• Led and Improved organisational capability by training, coaching and optimising the workforce – managing the team of 8 Customer Account Executives by clearly articulating shared goals aligned with the broader strategy and empowering them to take ownership of outcomes. This involved:

o Built up a high performing account executives team through clear job descriptions, right recruitment, Efficient KPI management tools, and People Performance Appraisal leading to collective and individual development plan

o Development of a champion culture by setting high targets and seeking continuous improvements by measuring performance, learning and implementing best practices from other marketing teams and or business units

• Performed in-house training to account executives on Delivering Unbeatable Value / Effective Communication / Critical Path Management.

Multi-level Stakeholder’s Relationship Management: Clients, Suppliers and Cross-Functional Teams

• Built up strong and mutually beneficial relationship with stakeholders within client’s organisation

o Professionally represent the organisation as first point of contact for all key and strategic customers

o Created, developed and sustained strong multi-level relationships with all the different stakeholders of the customer’s organisation (CEO, Head of Buying, Buyers, Merchandise Planner, Designer, Garment Technologist, and Imports department) resulting in trustful and sustainable partnership

o Successful relationship management through regular visits, face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and video conference, enabling to share goal setting and performance review at both strategic and operational level for mutual benefits

• Developed effective relationship with suppliers and service providers involved technical requirements, planning, forecasting and negotiation
• Dealt effectively and efficiently with the cross-functional team involving sampling, planning, and production, quality, logistics and finance department. This consisted of:

o Working with different factory location and management team with regards to capacity booking, customer vendor manual requirements, lead-time and critical path management.

Sourcing & International Supply Chain Management: Transition, Alternatives and Cost Savings

• Sourcing, buying and Fob negotiations with off-shore suppliers
• Improved the cost of price of raw materials in implementing an entrepreneurial approach with external suppliers:

o Cross-developing raw material across alternative supply to achieve better quality-price-service offers

o Applying negotiation techniques which optimized the savings on trims cost by 70%

o Benchmarking source of supply across countries to understand industry standards and drivers to improve cost price

• Led an organisational restructure that involved transitioning the customer account management to Bangladesh from Mauritius, followed by shifting manufacturing operations from China to Bangladesh. This involved:

o Establishing and articulating shared strategic direction, operational objectives and individual goals to motivate staff

o Coordinating knowledge transfer of client requirements, operations and customer service delivery measures

o Recruiting, training and coaching the new team and supporting the handover process to ensure a smooth transition.

Product Development: Design to Price Point

• Initiating product seasonal strategies to lead the product development process and ensuring cross functional alignment across Design, Technical and Merchandise Planning
• Understanding of market trends for yarns by attending international yarn fairs and assessing sourcing options both for new suppliers and new yarns.
• Developed successful product proposals meeting client’s needs or offering new alternatives or opportunities.

Operational Infrastructure: Effective and Efficient inputs, processes and outputs

• Set-up a customer centric approach for the management of customer accounts involving:

o Measuring customer satisfaction, understanding their expectations, creating a dynamic interaction with all influencers and decision-makers, defining corrective actions, assessing customer needs evolution and implementing effective response

o Customising our customer service toward specific clients profile and needs.

• Optimised critical path management and improved factory loading on time by 50%, which in turn improved speed to market:

o Mapped internal and external priorities, partnering with the client to support them in prioritising their decision making

o Proposed cost efficient freight route in the sourcing and in the shipment of orders

• Rebuilt customer confidence and addressed legacy issues relating to poor performance by undertaking a root cause analysis and:

o Assessing and identifying cost implications, factory capabilities, investment, skills, resources, targets and business drivers

o Developing new strategies to address poor performance and clearly outline improvements and a progressive action plan

o Introducing “champions” within the team to support customers and oversee the delivery of each strategy

• Worked with the operations and production teams to drive efficiencies, which involved:

o Evaluating internal resources and capabilities to optimise operations and facilitate new product lines / extensions

o Improving process lead time by streamlining the ordering processes for each customer and client group

• Improved communication channel and process across the business by:

o Improving communication between marketing and production teams, encouraging them to work collaboratively by using appropriate tools translating efficiently the customer needs

o Improving customer satisfaction by bringing together a cross-functional team of managers to manage and mitigate issues (pre-production / production / technical / quality)

o Improving relationships with suppliers by involving them in each stage of every sourcing project

• Streamlined office operations to enhance workflow efficiency and reduce processing time.
• Developed and implemented administrative procedures that improved team productivity and communication.
• Led cross-functional teams in project planning, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives.
• Mentored junior staff, fostering professional growth and enhancing overall team performance.