Resume

General Manager (February 2024 – Present)

While making sure all aspects of the day-to-day run smoothly, I also take primary responsibility for the sales pipeline of the business.

Admin Manager (November 2022 – February 2024)

Primary responsibilities:

• Daily admin tasks that cover showroom operations, online/offline sales support and occasionally sales
• Delivery scheduling and route planning
• Customer support in person and over support channels (phone, email, social media)
• Credit control
• Purchasing and inventory management
• Marketing content creation

Co-Founder & Director

Primary responsibilities:

• One of the key decision makers for the company regarding all matters
• Corporate account management
• Production floor supervision
• General administration
• Supervision of all day-to-day operations including order management, fulfilment, customer service, inventory management, supply chain and finances
• Team building, coaching and training
• Representing the company at industry events and in the media

Notable achievements:

• Cutting down production lead time by more than half (compared to outsourced manufacturing)
• Maintaining low production costs, enabling us to keep Bear Appeal products affordable through the pandemic and an economic crisis
• Creating a fully bootstrapped profit-making startup with no external funding
• Offering exceptional customer service and great products (Rated 4.9/5 on Google with 1000+ reviews)
• Growing sales and new customer acquisitions through a pandemic
• Excellent customer retention and loyalty throughout the years
• Offering a lenient refund/exchange policy to all customers

Field Marketing Manager (April 2016 – May 2017)

Primary responsibilities:

• Designing and executing campaigns for brand awareness and demand generation, especially in Australia and New Zealand
• Email marketing (using Marketo)
• Social Media marketing (primarily LinkedIn Advertising)
• Web Advertising and PR (with external partners)
• SEA and SEM (with external technical partners)
• Event marketing (primarily SAP and MS Dynamics related)
• Acting in an advisory capacity to the Database Marketing team which I managed earlier
• Overseeing the regional business development (cold calling) team in close collaboration with the regional Sales Manager

Notable achievements:

• Maintaining a 35%+ QoQ increase in incoming qualified leads for the sales team to engage (2016)
• Introducing CamCard (https://b.camcard.com) to the sales and marketing teams in order to streamline the process of collecting, recording and following up business cards (I prepared documentation and conducted one-on-one sessions to onboard colleagues)
• Close cooperation with Sales, Product Dev and Upper Management to develop effective campaigns that aligned with broader company goals
• Special focus in Sales and Marketing alignment

Database Marketing Manager (October 2015 – April 2016)

Primary responsibilities:

• Heading the team which was responsible for managing and effectively distributing all inbound lead related data that gets captured in the company’s CRM and Marketing Automation (Marketo) systems on to the sales team
• Liaising with the Digital Marketing and lead generation teams to optimise processes of lead generation, lead nurturing and data enrichment, while providing the international Sales team the best data to work with.

Notable achievements:

• Introducing and onboarding (by creating and conducting tutorials, documentation, videos, support material and one-on-one sessions) the international marketing team spread across 3 continents to the task management platform Trello.
• Training a member of my team to take on the team leadership role

Team Captain – Marketing Support (August 2015 – October 2015)

Primary responsibilities:

• Conducting market research
• Supporting the International social media marketing team
• Formulating and implementing the online content strategy of the Sri Lankan operation (social media and website content)

Notable achievements:

• Producing a weekly video content programme which featured employees as the ambassadors of the company
• Co-ordinating the Great Place to Work 2015 programme for the company

Junior Business Developer (January 2015 – August 2015)

Primary responsibilities:

• Data entry and enrichment
• Lead generation via social media prospecting
• Market research and analysis

Notable achievements:

• Training new colleagues for the data entry team
• Actively contributing to making a fully-fledged business development centre with separate teams for sales, marketing support, and lead generation

Intern

I worked briefly in the company as a trainee where I mainly supported the organising of a soft skills training programme. PACE Institute, the educational arm of eBEYONDS, organised this event focused on filling the much needed gap in the academic and professional education industry to mould and build a high value employee.

Intern (Remote)

I was selected as one of the 20 blogging interns from around the world for Voices of Youth remote internship programme in 2014. During the 6-month internship, passionate youngsters from around the world published articles regularly on a range of youth and development related topics.

Intern

I worked as a project official for the 16th National Health Run (2014), the annual national awareness event organised SLANA. I also helped in organising and conducting two other community-based awareness projects for schoolchildren, labourers and vulnerable communal groups.