About Dave Killebrew!
Dave Killebrew has sourced and purchased products worth multi-millions of dollars for a large variety of buying offices with many major retailers. He holds patents for several products he saw from concept to completion, including tooling, testing, package design and advertising. He has developed a strong business background through buying and product management positions in home, outdoor, electronics, textiles, specialty products, and astronomy. Throughout his career, Dave has been a mentor and helped numerous people develop their professional skill sets and advance their careers.
Dave's career in retail started just after he completed college when he was accepted into the Robinsons May Executive Training program after competing against over 500 applicants for 30 positions. He was promoted quickly and participated in the Executive Recruiting Committee.
Dave continued to rise in the retail world and became known domestically and internationally as a premier resource for product sourcing and buying through brokers and direct from factories. During his tenure at Discovery Channel Stores, he coordinated with Discovery Channel Headquarters to integrate The Nature Company into Discovery Channel stores. Dave was directly responsible for international market travel and establishing vendor relations in order to improve product development and implement company brand awareness. He also established vendor relations and sourcing overseas directly for a new department. He continued to grow the department, leading to a split that created two new offices in 2001. It was during his career at Discovery Channel that Dave met Jim DeBetta and the two established a professional relationship built on true mutual respect for one another's professional acumen.
While with Brookstone, Dave created and developed high quality, innovative products exclusive to Brookstone by working with designers, engineers and factories overseas and domestically. He sourced and created new product opportunities overseas and domestically to maximize sales potential. He negotiated costs directly with manufacturers and factories to develop profitable products and maximize gross margin potential. Dave partnered with the Online and Catalog divisions to integrate product sales through all sales avenues for increased sales by three tier product exposure (Retail, Online and Catalog).
Moving home to be near his ailing parents, he accepted a position at Mervyn's through the exclusive Target Executive Testing Program. He worked with designers to create brand name exclusive product lines and the factories that would bring the best quality goods to a store focused on pricing for working families.
Dave wanted to branch out and explore some of his other talents. In 2006 he obtained his real estate license and ventured out into the world of commercial and investment finance. He founded and presided over the Commercial Loan division and offer unified commercial funding programs to branch offices in 46 states. He was responsible for establishing and managing a commercial loan division for two mortgage companies; by using his experience with online and direct marketing, relationships with clients, establishing standard practices and instituting new software solutions, he was able to maximize an under-developed revenue channel.
Dave is excited to bring over 16 years of experience in buying for major retailers and negotiating significant deals to work in conjunction with Jim's experience in taking products to market to create a one-of-a-kind resource for inventors seeking to see their products on store shelves. Dave teaches inventors how to create sales and marketing strategies, understand the world of licensing, develop a product using CAD design and locate factories overseas to produce products..
