LEONARD aLENa COSIMANO 122 12th Street H: 732-846-8264 a" C: 732-668-6212 Somerset, NJ 08873 E-mail: lc13753a8@westpost.

net ________________________________________________________________________________ _________________ SUMMARY PROFILE Top producing Senior Vice President of Merchandising and Marketing with over 20 years of retail experience. A highly successful leader who develops and delivers innovative and creative solutions for merchandising, marketing and store operat ions, including bringing digitized previewing to America. A driver with a stron g track record of identifying changes in the market environment, creating a new focus and implementing category management programs that result in a bottom line return on investment. ________________________________________ SKILLS Leading Organizations & Teams Account Management Category Management/Portfolio Plans Project Management Strategic Planning Customer Presentations Supplier and Contract Negotiations Implementing Operational Strategies Financial and Business Modeling Store Layout and Design PERFORMANCE HISTORY Baker & Taylor, Inc., Charlotte, NC 2004a"2010 The worldas largest distributor and supplier of books, video, music and digital book products, with over 1.5M titles and over 90% penetration and 60% market sha re with the Library channel. The company has over 6,000 customers and direct 5, 000 supplier relationships and sales of $1.9 billion. Senior Vice President a" Merchandising, Entertainment Worked with merchants to negotiate discounts and higher margin with the supplie r community including training them on negotiation skills, implementing measurem ents and metrics and working with marketing to negotiate better rebate terms tha t improved profit margins by 400 basis points, increased marketing rebates by $1 .5M, created $8M in cost of goods bottom line and added $70M in new business. Built a strategic planning process and executed sales model for acquiring and m anaging new business that included using current performance as the baseline, id entifying how to change store presentation and assortments and improving categor y management that improved selling margin by 900 basis points. Created new business opportunity by developing a category management program th at allowed customers to sell a new product line without financial risk or by hav ing Baker & Taylor mitigate the risk by managing the inventory that resulted in sales of $200M per year. Managed the P & L for music, video and video games including negotiating with s uppliers, cost pricing, offering rebates, meeting metric goals, and managing DOH , turnover and analytics, attaining the goal of over $220M in cost savings for t he buying program. Built a measurement tool (dashboard) for a new retail customer, that included d eveloping and reporting an annual sales goal, selling price, sales margins, top performance items, and individual store performance that was used to manage the customer and companyas performance, and is currently used by an additional 4 cus tomers including Wegmans, Shopko, Roundyas and Michaels Borders, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI 1992a"2003 The nationas second largest book, video music chain with 500 stores in 50 states and Puerto Rico, offering over 100,000 items and seasonal goods, with annual co mpany sales of $2 billion per year. Vice President a" Marketing & Merchandising (1996a"2003) Built a purchasing system for Borders music and video inventory that included a

nalyzing the existing book purchasing process, working with 1 IT lead and 3 deve lopers to build a selling curve and replenishment model for each product that re sulted in lower cost of goods sold by 1500 basis points (BPs), store discounts b y 150 BPs and improved purchase margin by 1300 BPs. Created new retail experience for customers to shop for music, video and books by working with merchants, store operations and digital preview firm to develop, install and execute digitized preview that resulted in an average of 16% per ye ar comp growth. Created a multi-media marketing and co-op program that included having actors, directors, and musical artists/groups educate customers about the product and re positioning the artists and products in the store that increased revenue an aver age $26M per year. Developed and created a retrofitting program for Borders to allow for browsing all multimedia products, presenting key titles more effectively, and improving t he department presentation, increasing sales by 6% to 10% and decreasing the shr ink rate. Managed $850M P&L including budgeting, sale forecasting, developing measurement s and goals for inventory, sales, supply chain management, advertising and marke ting with staff of 38. Regional Director, Store Operations (1992a"1996) Orchestrated dramatic high growth new store openings and operations across eigh t states (16 locations) as Borders expanded from 12 locations to 53 with 8% comp store growth. Record World Enterprises, Roslyn, NY 1987 - 1992 Director of Store Operations Implemented broad corporate operational initiatives and managed P & L and opera tions for 93 chain stores with a total of 700 staff and sales of $80M annually. Created innovative customer service program throughout the store operations tha t included managing by empowering the team and executing flawlessly. EDUCATION Bachelor of Science, New York Institute of Technology, Old Brookville, New York Major in Accounting, Minors in Taxes & Business ASSOCIATIONS National Association of Retail Merchandisers (NARM) a" Board of Directors North American Video Distributors (NAVD) a" Board of Directors Entertainment Merchandisers Association (EMA) a" Retail Advisory Committee AWARDS Received Bordersas NARM Retailer of Year Award 6 of 8 years eligible (1995 a" 2 003) Received Baker & Tayloras NARM Wholesaler of year award 4 years running (2004-0 8)