About Shanley

Career

I started at Liz Claiborne in 2002, designing men's knitwear and sweaters — five years of learning what "commercially viable" really means: product that honors a brand's DNA and still sells. From there I went to Macy's Merchandising Group, where I ended up designing 40% of the Tasso Elba private label business and got my first taste of fixing process: original design and a streamlined approval flow that cut expenses without cutting corners.

In 2009, Brussels. At C&A I ran knitwear and sweaters for the European market and grew the Essentials business 25% — mostly by turning global trend research into direction a cross-functional team could actually execute on time. Europe taught me to design for a customer I had to study, not one I grew up with.

Back in the States, I spent eight years at Sears Holdings managing men's knitwear, activewear, sweaters, and outerwear across the private label portfolio — $125M+ in annual volume. Multiple categories, multiple brands, relentless AUC targets: the perfect training ground for building systems that keep quality up when complexity explodes.

Threaded through those years: eight years teaching design and denim construction at Academy of Art University, and my own consulting studio for fashion startups. Teaching forces you to make the implicit explicit — the same skill that later let me turn instinct into systems.

Then came the job that defines me. In 2019 I joined O5 Group to lead Lee men's — at the time a $5M business with no seasonal rhythm. Seven years later it's a $200M business. Not because of one hero product, but because of the system: elevated design, a 24-week calendar that put four teams on one clock, fabric and wash innovation on a seasonal cadence, and customer partnerships built in the sales meetings I never skip. When we took on the Dickies menswear license in October 2025, I stepped up to head that brand too. And I became the person who heads PLM and ships internal apps that give teams hours back each week. Today I head design for $1B denim and workwear brands, running product from trend research to buy meeting with factory partners across ten countries.

Somewhere in those 25 years, I got tired of watching creative time disappear into manual work — tech packs, BOMs, spec reviews, endless spreadsheets. So I taught myself to build software and shipped the AI apps I always wished existed. The four Shanley.ai apps now take a product from market research all the way to launch. No dev team, no agency — just me, Claude Code, and a very long list of things I never wanted to do by hand again.

The pattern under all of it: I grow apparel businesses. Design is how I do it. Profit is what I'm after. That's also how I work with fashion founders and brands today — I advise on product operations, the calendars, tech packs, factories, and margins that decide whether you make money, and my apps do the heavy lifting.

If you're wrestling with a business that needs order — or a team that needs a leader who builds the machine, not just the product — I'd love to talk.