Zubair Aslam

PROFILE:

• Apparel Sourcing & Product Development Regional/Global transformational leader with over 30 years career history, having led sourcing, manufacturing, and product development operations of global leading brands and leading teams to deliver globally leading results.
• Extremely Strong in Strategy, leadership, management, talent development, apparel & textile sourcing, product development, sustainability & vendor compliance, and quality assurance. 
• Intimately knowledgeable with high comfort operating across diverse business cultures across Asia & Americas. 
• Demonstrated track record of building high performance regional teams and creating growth & value by developing partnerships, capabilities, and using product development and iterative innovation. 

ROLE & KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

• A member of PDSLT - global product development and sourcing leadership team that is responsible for developing strategy & setting direction for global product development & sourcing for Levi Strauss &Co. 
• Responsible for managing sourcing for 58% of all global Levi Strauss & Co sourcing – Approximately 135 Million garments worth about USD $1.2B FOB from South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, India & Sri Lanka) & East Africa.
• Lead & Managed sourcing, product development and operations teams in South Asia & East Africa: organizations with over 150++ headcount consisting of Dockers, Levi’s, Signature/Denizen PD & Sourcing teams, Sustainability, Quality Assurance, Logistics and HR, Finance & Admin teams in a matrixed organization.
• Reported to SVP Product Development & Sourcing based in San Francisco. 
• Won Levi Strauss & Co most prestigious “Koshland Award” 3 times. 
  • Led & Guided Bangladesh team to win the “Koshland Award” for its deliverables in 2013 under severely adverse circumstances. The first sourcing team in history to ever win this award! 
  • Won “Koshland Award” as part of PD & Sourcing fabric and vendor negotiations teams which helped save Levi Strauss &Co $112M in product costs in 2014. 
  • Won “Koshland Award” for ensuring that 60% of all products were made from Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) cotton in 2018. My region started using 100% BCI cotton from 2020.
• Awarded Levi Strauss & Co “Global Excellence Award” for performance 8 times from 2011 - 2018 – this is awarded to 15-20 individuals/teams across all functions globally. 
• Built high energy performance-oriented teams – that has been recognized as one of the best, globally. 
• Delivered Industry leading results from each managed location…. Delivered 95%++ on-time from each country… compared to 73% from other locations…. When I took over each country, they were delivering between 51-60% on-time… One of the major reasons, Levi Strauss &Co shelves were not empty during COVID-19.
• Built strategic vendor partnerships with a focus on manufacturing deliverables, capabilities, product development, costs, quality and sustainability.
• Increased Sourcing volume from Bangladesh from 10M to 45M units and Pakistan from 3M to 17M (2005-2011) and then from 32M to 60M units in last years, and in the process made Bangladesh the largest source base for the company in 2013 which it remained till 2021 when Pakistan became the largest source base
• Reduced costs in each location by $0.75 - $1.50 and led/addressed sustainability issues across board. 
• Reduced order lead-times by 20-30 days to offer one of the best lead-times for core products from Asia/Africa. 
• Developed various capabilities & sources within the region for Levi Strauss &Co. infact, a continuous process for capability enhancement was put in place.
• Leading Sustainability efforts for the region: Some of the major asks were: 
• Reduce & Recycle wastewater by 50% in 2023 …. 75% by 2025.
• Provide clean drinking water to the communities for at least 15,000 people by each vendor & mill.
• In Pakistan, increase women participation in workforce to 20% by 2023, 40% by 2025.
• In Bangladesh, increase Women supervisors to 50% by 2025
• GHG reduction targets in alignment with global asks. Worked with sustainability teams and Bureau Veritas (BV) in 2011 to build & put in place fire & electricity codes, audit & implementation programs for our vendors in Bangladesh – a pioneering effort in the industry much before the Accord and Alliance platforms were established. After Rana Plaza incident, partnered with Sustainability to ensure we were the first company to start working on building safety – again an industry leading effort. 

Levi Strauss & Co – Levi Strauss Global Trading Company:                                      May 2005 – Dec 2022

Vice President   Product Development & Sourcing, South Asia & East Africa        May 2021 to Dec 2022
Sr. Director         Product Development & Sourcing, Pakistan & Bangladesh          Jun 2018 to Apr 2021
Director  HK       Product Development & Sourcing, Pakistan & Bangladesh           Jun 2017 to May 2018
Director - BD      Product Development & Sourcing, Bangladesh                               Apr 2014 to May 2017
Country Manager - BD Product Development & Sourcing, Bangladesh                   Mar 2011 to Mar 2014
Sr. Sourcing Manager Product Development & Sourcing, Pakistan                         May 2005 to Feb 2011
 

Gap International Sourcing:         
Country QA/Sourcing Manager Pakistan & Bangladesh                                          Jan 1999 – May 2003
 

Key Achievements 

• By aggressive sourcing & strategic planning Increased Gap International Sourcing Pakistan business from US$6.9M to US$45M in a span of 4 ½ years – unit volumes increased from 1.2M units to 12.7M units in 2003.

• Building a “high energy performance oriented winning team”.

• Reduced garment costs by 7-8% per year to retain a competitive edge against emerging garment sourcing countries.

• Used product development innovation to develop & source variety of products like hand embroidered garments, leather jackets, bottoms with rhinestones & embroideries. In the spirit of iterative product development, developed future business opportunities in products like home furnishings, leather belts, crochet tops, hand knitted sweaters, hand woven fabric, socks etc.

• Delivered hand embroidered products from compliant locations – developed compliant hand embroidery facilities of over 700 workers in 4 different villages by partnering with NGO Kashf Foundation. This work was lauded and reported worldwide as one of the better responsible business practices.

• Ensured that $200M business ran smoothly in Bangladesh overcoming severe compliance and quality issues.

Levi Strauss & Co – Levi Strauss Global Trading Company:      Aug 1992 – Dec 1998

Assistant Brand Manager   Dockers brand & Non-US Business   Aug 1998 to Dec 1998
Sr. Technical Product Developer  Dockers brand     May 1996 to Aug 1998
Product Integrity Supervisor  Dockers brand     May 1996 to Aug 1998
Sustainability – TOE Point Auditor  LS&Co      Aug 1994 to May 1996
Product Integrity Team Leader  Levi’s brand     Aug 1994 to May 1996
Quality Auditor    LS&Co      Aug 1992 to Aug 1994
 

Held cross functional positions ranging from Head of Quality department to Senior Product Developer and Vendor Compliance Officer to Assistant Brand Manager. One of the few professionals in Asia to be given such cross-functional exposure at management level. Managed three teams in three different functions. Quality, Sourcing and Product Development and was the lead auditor for Terms of Engagement, Levi Strauss & Co.  

Bachelor of Management & Information Systems, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA     1988                                                    
Associate of Science of Electronics Engineering Technology. Franklin University, Columbus, Ohio, USA   1992