Team

Portrait of Julia Tokareva

Contact

Languages

  • English, Russian

Education

  • Specialist, Financial Management
    RANEPA, Moscow
  • Public Administration
    Lomonosov Moscow State University
  • High Performance Collaboration: Leadership, Teamwork and Negotiation
    Northwestern University

Julia Tokareva

Founder, Partner

Julia leads business development.

Co-founder of SOVA. For fifteen years Julia held senior commercial roles in-house, including at an international fashion platform, a major technology group and a global brewing business, leading procurement, key account management and business development. She has also founded and run her own lifestyle brands.

At SOVA she is usually the first person a client works with and the one who makes sure the engagement runs the way it was promised. She is also the reason our commercial advice reads like it was written by someone who has sat on the other side of a supplier negotiation, because it was.

Areas of expertise

Select experience

  • Directed the fashion category — women's, men's and children's — for a major technology group's marketplace, building the strategy and team that took the business to third position in its market within a year, and developing a personalised styling service from concept to board-approved working product.
  • Led business development for an international fashion platform, managing financial planning, partner acquisition, key partner management and consulting services across a group operating in four countries.
  • Built and led a centralised group procurement function, hiring and managing a team of ten, and delivering cost optimisation of up to 30% and a fifty-day improvement in payable terms with no service level violations.
  • Led negotiations with fifty strategic international fashion suppliers, improving portfolio-wide commercial terms, and acquired brands including Topshop and Topman, River Island and Brave Soul from first contact through to signature.
  • Founded, built and sold a women's swimwear brand, taking it from supplier sourcing and certification through to distribution on the two largest online fashion marketplaces in the market.
  • Founded a demi-fine jewellery brand, managing design, sourcing, production and partnerships, with points of sale including a landmark Moscow department store and leading online marketplaces.
  • Managed national key accounts for an international brewing group, including major grocery and hypermarket chains, with responsibility for contract negotiation, profit and loss, and a field sales team of fifteen.