Luke Sanabria

2024 – present

I joined Max Mara in early 2024 after two years in financial service sales. A role I discovered on the ecommerce operations team sounded like it would let me to marry those commercial business skills with a passion for luxury retail harbored since the year I lived in China. It turned out to be all that and more.

My First Challenge: Unifying What Was Once Divided

My biggest undertaking in year one was the VDF Channel Consolidation—a project that required me to streamline what was previously managed by five different people across multiple departments. When I started, the Bloomingdale’s assortment and turn-in process for six brands involved three brand managers and two operations managers submitting over 12 turn-in files per season. The complexity was overwhelming, but the opportunity was clear.

I became the single point of contact with Bloomingdale’s, managing the complete lifecycle for 1,203 unique styles across two full seasons (FW24 and SS25). From receiving initial buys to ensuring every style was properly published online, I learned to see the entire ecosystem from a bird’s-eye view.

One of my proudest achievements was creating a weekly inventory check process sent to senior management each week, and reduced completion time from 4 hours to under 60 minutes. Sometimes the best innovations come from asking simple questions: “Why does this take so long? Can there be fewer cooks in the kitchen?”

Solving the Duplicate UPC Issue

Between August 2024 and February 2025, I spearheaded the resolution of what we called “the duplicate UPC issue.” Every day, we were getting 50+ error alerts for over 1,100 duplicate UPCs—a problem rooted deep in Bloomingdale’s legacy database.

Working across departments with our CRM, Ecom, and Concessions teams, we coordinated a mass-deletion of stale UPC codes, with many dating back 10+ years. The day those error alerts stopped flooding our inboxes felt like a small victory for organized systems everywhere.

Becoming a Customer Care Detective

Taking ownership of our Customer Care Excellence program has taught me that great customer service is really about great data analysis. I instituted weekly QA meetings with directors, turning customer interactions into actionable insights.

Managing an average of five Level II escalations daily in Salesforce Service Cloud (sometimes 10+ during peak sales) made me realize that every customer complaint is actually valuable feedback about our processes. I developed comprehensive, cross-channel reviews of our contacts in monthly KPI reports that inform our quarterly meetings and strategic planning sessions.

Currently, I am spearheading an initiative to have store associates trained in product philosophy and brand codes handle product-related contacts. After a post-hoc analysis of revenue generated after a contact with high purchase intent, we decided to devise a way to move product-related live chats from our third-party agency to in-house specialists.

The Dropship Deep Dive

When I assumed full ownership of Marina Rinaldi and Marella dropship operations across Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Saks, I discovered the art of high-volume communication management. Since September, I’ve handled thousands of vendor contacts across imagery, style turn-in, and inventory data.

The most rewarding part was eliminating all the logistical work that was previously weighing down Eleonora and Iliana, the two brand managers. When Iliana described my contribution as “absolutely indispensable” during the SS25 season, I knew we were on track to finding the right system.

Digital Storytelling

Managing two complete websites (Sportmax & Marella) taught me that e-commerce is really about storytelling at scale. Publishing and merchandising four seasons’ worth of styles and editorial content required coordination between our US team and Italian headquarters for campaigns like Marella x Emrata and Sportmax Klepsydra.

Creating four marketing emails per week in Salesforce Marketing Cloud became my crash course in understanding how technical execution meets creative vision. Running monthly KPI calls with the Marella HQ team in Italy reminded me that businesses are built on great relationships, regardless of time zones.

Strategic Projects That Stretched My Thinking

When our CCO asked me to develop a comprehensive analysis of Max Mara’s handbag strategy in the US market, I delivered a 40-slide presentation that taught me the difference between data and insight. Building weekly sales and traffic reporting systems for that same audience using Tableau, Google Analytics, and Looker Studio showed me how the right visualization can turn numbers into narratives.

Perhaps my favorite project was creating a streamlined tech stack for our wholesale regional management team in Notion. Completing it in less than 5 business days—integrating calendar, expense tracker, and budget calculator where three separate tools were previously used—reminded me that sometimes the best solution is the simplest one.

The Learning Curve: Embracing the Unknown

I won’t pretend this year was without challenges. Taking ownership of the VDF program without any legacy systems to model on meant significant self-directed learning. I set up training sessions on everything from UPC/EAN information, Excel, Tableau and proprietary systems during my first 3-6 months.

Establishing twice-monthly Salesforce trainings with our HQ team in Italy (shoutout to Pablo and Francesca) taught me that asking for help isn’t a weakness, it’s a strategy.

What I’m Working on Next

Looking ahead, I’m focused on three key areas:

Further VDF Consolidation: Our goal is to complete a season larger than FW25’s record of 663 styles while achieving 100% publication before markdown begins

Enhanced Analytics: I’m diving into VBA and Python on my own time to create automated reporting that will turn manual workflows into regular strategic insights.

Knowledge Management: I’m documenting every process I’ve optimized this year to build training materials and improve our team’s resilience.

Reflections

This first year at Max Mara taught me that operations isn’t just about making things run smoothly—it’s about creating systems that enable creativity and growth. Every process streamlined, every duplicate UPC eliminated, every customer escalation resolved was really about creating space for our team to focus on what matters most: building something effective and sustainable.

The fashion industry moves fast, but the fundamentals stay the same. As I head into year three, I’m excited to keep building on this foundation.